Abstract:
This thesis is a socio-historical study of cervical cancer from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. It explores the ways in which discourses have constituted knowledge, social practices and subjectivities in relation to cervical cancer. It also explores the ways in which power has operated on the bodies of New Zealand women. In doing so it criticises orthodox histories of medicine, problematises the knowledge claims of medicine and argues for a sociological account of medical knowledge. In this thesis discourses on cervical cancer have been subjected to a feminist-Foucauldian analysis which reveals their historical specificity and their social location. The gendered bodies of women are placed at the centre of this analysis. This thesis challenges constructionist accounts of medicine which do not pay sufficient attention to the role of gender relations in the construction of bodies. This thesis also develops against feminist theorists a view of women as actively constituting their bodies by responding to and challenging medical discourses whilst at the same time being shaped by these discourses.
In this study, cervical cancer is subjected to a sociological analysis which problematises its existence as an unalloyed biological phenomenon. It is argued that women's bodies have been the contested sites for knowledge/power and that the cervix and its diseases have been constituted as variable medical artifacts throughout specific historical periods from the 1890s to the 1990s. The study also shows however, the ways in which women have been active participants in the disciplining of their bodies. In this thesis, the medical profession, state actors and feminists are shown to interact in an interweave of power. In doing so the socially negotiated status of medical knowledge of cervical cancer is revealed.
