Abstract
Thanatopolitics are social, political, and economic systems of power that facilitate and perpetuate a politics of death. They work in contrast to processes that produce and reinforce life. As COVID-19 continues to ravage the African American community in the United States, it becomes pertinent to not only evaluate the medical practices that have perpetuated medical inequity and health disparities within the African American community, but also the historical epistemologies that have normalized and legitimized thanatopolitics. In tracing these subjectivities, the culture of medicine and the structure of medical education will be able to take a more targeted approach to deconstructing race-based thanatopolitics that perpetuate medical inequity and health disparities. With this in mind, this study is an examination of the intergenerational, socio-medical effects of racialized epistemologies within the history and praxis of Western Medicine.
Presenters
Imanni Sheppard, PhDAssistant Professor/Medical Education Facilitator/Co-Director of Medical Ethics and Humanities Thread, Biomedical and Translational Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Health Promotion and Education
KEYWORDS
Medical Inequity, Health Disparity, Medical Education, Biopolitics, Race, Racialization
