The Politics of Medicine: Post-colonialism and Science as Morality

The choice of syntax and vocabulary is a political act that defines and circumscribes the manner in which "facts" are to be experienced. Indeed, in a sense it goes further and even creates the facts that are studied.

R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

Jean Langford originally sets out to do a comparative analysis between modern biomedicine and traditional Ayurvedic practices and their incorporation in post-modern India. In Fluent Bodies, Langford discovers the complexities and ultimate refusal of Ayurvedic concepts to be enframed within a Western epistemological framework. Langford states, "my modern assumptions were reflected back to me through answers to my questions that resisted their epistemological thrust" (19). The unfolding of Langford's ethnography depicted a practice that appeared to trivialize such westernized conventions such as mapping medical concepts onto the human body, transcend the public/private dichotomy of biomedicine, and elude the modern perception of traditional "ethnomedicine" as relatively static against a dynamic scientific backdrop. Langford depicts patterns of Ayuvedic integration within the biomedical model as well as post-colonial resistance to the perceived hegemony of allopathy. Ayurveda appears to elude modernist tendencies towards compartmentalization and reification. Langford distinguishes her methodology as resisting the temptations to "police" the boundaries and demarcations of authentic Ayurveda. Rather she sets out to take a deeper gaze at the forces that create authenticity within Ayurveda. It appears that the reverberations of colonialism create a dynamic that attempts to incorporate biomedicine in order to achieve institutional clout in a post-colonial setting, while simultaneously attempting to ward off hegemonic devices of classification and control. Langford discovers ranges of this incorporation and resistance within the practices of Ayurveda that manifest themselves in the sentiments of their practitioners, whether it be a vaidya who received his credentials at a mimetic institution of Ayurvedic medicine or a rural Kaviraj who sells mixtures of boiled sugar and passes them off as "authentic" Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia (207).

It appears as though there is a state of ambivalence for the post-colonial consumer of healthcare. The consumer may perceive some value in biomedical approaches but may view procedures as invasive, dangerous, and even short-lived as many biomedical approaches are perceived as only riding the body of the undesired symptoms of affliction and not the source of the affliction. The healthcare market, consequently, has been forced to adapt to the needs of the ambivalent and multi-dimensional consumer in order to ensure its own economic survival. It appears as though many practitioners of Ayurveda are reluctantly subjected to packaging and essentializing Ayurveda, to the expectations of their customers, while simultaneously resisting the political categorization of Ayurveda by imperialist ideologies. Scientific rationalism, under the guise of objectivity, may be used as an agent of coercion to facilitate adherence to the dominating political doctrine of the occupation, or the ideological remnants and the institutional frameworks left behind by the occupation after independence. Collective experiences, observations, and practices are perceived as shaping the social and political terrain of a population. Langford, rather depicts how the social and political terrain of post-colonial India shapes the experiences, observations and practices of the population.

Under the guise of altruism, one can be reminded of countless examples where biomedicine has been used as a tool to uphold oppressive political doctrine. For instance, Nancy Rose Hunt discusses political campaigns in Zaire during the early 1900s, that were employed to encourage birth rate and to increase African infant survival rate. Mothers were given milk as well as medical knowledge regarding the health of their child. Missionaries worked tirelessly to circumvent traditional practices of birth spacing or post-partum abstinence. Birth spacing had been established in African cultures to ensure optimal care for the child, however, since Zaire experienced a morbidly low population during the years of early twentieth century colonialism, missionaries adapted strategies that would delineate from the traditional pattern. Interest in the medical well-being of Zaire's population proved to be one of "Imperial importance" (Hunt 289). Colonists were addressed by the president of an organization that emphasized healthcare for mothers and infants with the following statement: "Help us by all means in our ability to protect, to care for the child while educating indigenous mother, it is a duty. We need black labor....To protect the child in the Congo is a duty, not only of altruism, but of patriotism" (Hunt 289). One can observe how medicine quickly delineates from a pattern of objectivity to a politically motivated tactic that promotes the efficacy of establishing colonial dominance.

In the Politics of Experience R. D. Laing states, "The colonists not only mystify the natives....they have to mystify themselves." He continues, "We in Europe and North America are the colonists, and in order to sustain our amazing images of ourselves as God's gift to the vast majority of the starving human species, we have to interiorize our violence upon ourselves and our children and to employ the rhetoric of morality to describe this process" (36). It appears that scientific objectivity and biomedical expertise have become our post-modern rhetoric of morality and are used as gauges to measure the sophistication of culture. Langford's book shows how the fluid and adaptive quality of Ayurveda, both in practice and in theory, transcends and "spills over" all attempts at encapsulation.