The times and spaces of transplantation : queercrip histories as futurities

With a focus on Larissa Lai's The Tiger Flu, this article explores how transplantation is part of the ongoing transformation of being in a body that is of the world. That is, it examines how we may require other ways of thinking bodies as constituted by histories, spaces and times that may be ignored in the biomedical arena. The Tiger Flu, I argue, calls for an intra- and inter-connected way of thinking how we treat bodies, and thereby ways of working with bodies affected by environmental disasters (both acute and ongoing capitalist and colonial projects), multiple selves and time as more than linear. I turn to queercrip as a way of defying a curative imaginary that dominates transplantation and in so doing examine the colonial, capitalist violence of present day living. I move through Eve Hayward's and Karen Barad's work to examine how the cut of transplantation is a transformation, as integral to the ongoing experience of having a body in the world and yet potentially unique in its force of bringing inter- and intra-relatedness to the fore of one's existence. Rather than sick or cured, I argue that transplantation is a transformation that captures our bodily changes, how the environment constitutes the self, how parts may feel integral to the self or easily disposed of, how viscera may tie us to others, and how the future may only be forged through a re-turn to the past (of the donor and a pre-transplant self). Transplantation is not about loss of self or gaining of an other, but rather about rendering apparent our multispecies, multiworld ties, and thus how we are bound by the histories we forge and the futures we re-member

Living with others inside the self : decolonising transplantation, selfhood and the body politic in Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring

This article examines anxieties concerning organtransplantation in Nalo Hopkinson’s prize-winning novel Brown Girl in the Ring (1998). The main focus is how this novel re-imagines subjectivity and selfhood as an embodied metaphor for the recon!guring of broader sociopolitical relations. In other words, this article analyses the relationship between the transplanted body and the body politic, arguing that a post-transplant identity, where there is little separation between donor and recipient, is the foundation for a politics based on responsibility for others. Such a responsibility poses a challenge to the race and class segregation that is integral to the post-apocalyptic world of Hopkinson’s novel. Transplantation is not a utopian vision of an egalitarian society coming together in one body; rather, this biotechnological intervention offers a potentially different mode of thinking what it means to work across race, class and embodied division, while always recalling the violence that might facilitate so-called medical progress

The haunting temporalities of transplantation

This article examines the temporality of organ transplantation with a focus on memoirs where the recipient has received an organ from a deceased donor. I argue that death constitutes life. That is, this absent presence – that the organ is materially present but the person is dead and therefore absent – is the foundation for rethinking relationality as constituted through the haunting presence of those who remain central to the continuity of life but who are not alive in any strict definition of the term. This article is therefore attentive to the various meanings of haunting, drawing on queer theory to show how narratives of haunting are derealised experiences and thus a struggle for epistemological authority over specifically transplantation and relationality more broadly. It draws out how these epistemological challenges reimagine ontology as a haunted experience, and thus an intimate tie between the living and the unknown – and somewhat present – dead

'Do you believe that space can give life, or take it away, that space has power?' : space and organ transplantation in contemporary film

The white posters from Miguel Sapochnik's 2010 film Repo Men go against repeated medical advice across the Anglophone world by telling us to 'drink irresponsibly' and 'have the cheeseburger'. Health worries have vanished in this imagined future where antiforg technology has resulted in almost miraculous human organ replacement advancements. Current issues, such as immunological rejection, life-long immunosuppression and organ shortages, have been eradicated by unexplained technological innovations. The small print at the end of these posters reads: 'Repossession of antiforgs may be performed at lessor's discretion. The Union is not at fault for any and all resulting injuries or fatalities related to antiforg repossession.' The utopian solution to the so-called problems of organ transplantation are framed from the start of the film by the repo man Remy – played by Jude Law – slicing into a still breathing man to retrieve a mechanical liver for which this soon-to-be-dead man (because he is killed by Remy as a result of the liver removal) has not kept up the necessary payments. As Remy turns on Rosemary Clooney's 1960 version of Sway, the audience witnesses the gruesome reality of this upbeat, utopian-eqsue world: failing to keep up the payments will result in a painful death where one's organs, or more accurately what is the technological property of the Union, are torn out and returned to their rightful owner

Carceral imaginaries : segregating space and organs through national reproductive norms

This article examines the carceral imaginaries that emerge from the late capitalist structure of organ donation as an issue of short supply. This piece explores this issue through the lens of spatial segregation, arguing that carceral imaginaries are spaces of luxury where donors are segregated from recipients and are thereby legally murdered. The focus is Ninni Holmqvist’s novel The Unit (2008) where the future is structured through gender equality but reproductive normativity. Donors are segregated away in the luxurious unit because they have not repro- duced. Having not produced future generations of labourers, these donors must contribute to the nation by donating their body parts to the reproductive – and therefore productive – members of the nation. Focusing on Sweden’s history of eugenics and on gender equality, this article argues that the very space of care, namely the clinic, which facilitates life-saving treatments also subjects whole populations to violence and death through reproductive norms. Finally, it sug- gests that space is both that through which bodies move, but also the body itself. That is, the segregation of the body’s parts and the idea that space may be divided by borders are mutually constitutive and found both the restrictions of bodily movement through space and murder as the gift of life

The development of the Person-Centred Situational Leadership Framework: Revealing the being of person-centredness in nursing homes

Aims and objectives\ud \ud To implement and evaluate the effect of using the Person-Centred Situational Leadership Framework to develop person-centred care within nursing homes.\ud \ud \ud Background\ud \ud Many models of nursing leadership have been developed internationally in recent years but do not fit with the emergent complex philosophy of nursing home care. This study develops the Person-Centred Situational Leadership Framework that supports this philosophy. It forms the theoretical basis of the action research study described in this article.\ud \ud \ud Methods\ud \ud This was a complex action research study using the following multiple methods: nonparticipatory observation using the Workplace Culture Critical Analysis Tool (n = 30); critical and reflective dialogues with participants (n = 39) at time 1 (beginning of study), time 2 (end of study) and time 3 (6 months after study had ended); narratives from residents at time 1 and time 2 (n = 8); focus groups with staff at time 2 (n = 12) and reflective field notes. Different approaches to analyse the data were adopted for the different data sources, and the overall results of the thematic analysis were brought together using cognitive mapping.\ud \ud \ud Results\ud \ud The Person-Centred Situational Leadership Framework captures seven core attributes of the leader that facilitate person-centredness in others: relating to the essence of being; harmonising actions with the vision; balancing concern for compliance with concern for person-centredness; connecting with the other person in the instant; intentionally enthusing the other person to act; listening to the other person with the heart; and unifying through collaboration, appreciation and trust.\ud \ud \ud Conclusions\ud \ud This study led to a theoretical contribution in relation to the Person-Centred Practice Framework. It makes an important key contribution internationally to the gap in knowledge about leadership in residential care facilities for older people.\ud \ud \ud Relevance to clinical practice\ud \ud The findings can be seen to have significant applicability internationally, across other care settings and contexts

Integrating testing for sexually transmissible infections into annual health assessments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people: a cross-sectional analysis

Background In the context of an expanding syphilis epidemic, we assessed the integration of sexually transmissible infection (STI) testing within annual health assessments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people aged 16–29 years in Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services between 2018 and 2020. Methods Using routinely collected electronic medical record data from a national sentinel surveillance system (ATLAS), we performed a cross-sectional analysis to calculate the proportion of assessments that integrated any or all of the tests for chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis, and HIV. We used logistic regression to identify correlates of integration of any STI test. Results Of the13 892 assessments, 23.8% (95% CI 23.1, 24.6) integrated a test for any STI and 11.5% (95% CI 10.9, 12.0) included all four STIs. Of assessments that included a chlamydia/gonorrhoea test, 66.9% concurrently included a syphilis test. Integration of any STI test was associated with patients aged 20–24 years (OR 1.2, 95% CI 1.1–1.4) and 25–29 years (OR 1.1, 95% CI 1.0–1.2) compared to 16–19 years and patients residing in very remote (OR 4.2, 95% CI 3.7–4.8), remote (OR 2.4, 95% CI 2.1–2.8), and regional areas (OR 2.5, 95% CI 2.2–2.8) compared to metropolitan areas. There was no association with patient sex. Conclusions Integration of STI testing into annual health assessments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people was higher in remote areas where disease burden is greatest. Integration is similar in men and women, which contrasts with most studies that have found higher testing in women

Bodies on the border : between ableist cures, nationalist hostilities and deadly futures

This series of images emerges from a collaboration between academics and artists focused on organ transplantation and chronic illness. The images are part of the ongoing work of Capturing Chronic Illness, a project founded by UK-based medical humanities academics Donna McCormack (University of Strathclyde, UK) and Ingrid Young (University of Edinburgh, UK) to explore how arts may engage with health, illness, and non-normative embodiments that exceed dominant narratives. The exchange that produced the images is based directly on McCormack’s project, Transplant Imaginaries, which analyses fictional texts (novels and films) to explore biotechnological and anticolonial embodiments and relationalities in representations of transplantation. The three images, produced with Lynne Zakhour and Richard Kahwagi, explore transplant medicine beyond a curative imaginary. They point to key issues that are rarely discussed or even acknowledged in the clinic, but may be discussed in memoirs, by recipients and in fiction. These images, then, push us to reconsider how organ transplantation necessarily demands we pay attention to those embodied stories of living with the dead, crossing borders and how care, even that deemed "lifesaving," may be violent. Capturing Chronic Illness explores how the arts can listen to silenced or denied experiences of (particularly) queer health and illness

Remote Aboriginal-led primary care services integrate testing for sexually transmitted infections into comprehensive annual preventive health assessments in regions with highest prevalence

Top Abstracts of the Joint Australasian Sexual Health and HIV & AIDS Conferences, Held 29 August-1 September 2022 at the Sunshine Coast Convention Centre