Work

Signs of Nothing: Negotiations Over Semiotic Indeterminacy in Danish Lung Cancer Diagnostics

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: In Denmark, injunctions of "early" cancer diagnosis increasingly imply surveillance of small tissue changes, which may or may not develop into cancer. Based on fieldwork at diagnostic lung cancer clinics and with people in CT surveillance for tissue changes, I explore how detected tissue changes are ascribed meaning as signs of "nothing" or "something." Inspired by Peircean semiotics, I suggest that the semiotic indeterminacy of tissue changes points to how diagnostic socialities both expand medical semiotics and enable this expansion. The article, thereby, contributes to understandings of signs as diagnostic infrastructures.

Source: Medical Anthropology

DOI: 10.1080/01459740.2023.2206966

Author: Michal Frumer

Institution: Aarhus University Hospital

Language: English

Topic: Semiotics and Representation Studies

Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Funders: Kræftens Bekæmpelse, European Commission