Subjects at risk in a transhuman and post-clinical world: Reflections on Saramago’s All the Names and the Wachowski Sisters’ The Matrix

Naomar Almeida-Filho PhD in Epidemiology. Visiting Professor, Institute of Advanced Studies, Universidade de São Paulo. Senior, Tenured Professor, Instituto de Saúde Coletiva, Universidade Federal da Bahia. AI Researcher, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimiento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). image/svg+xml
Received: 15 October 2019, Accepted: 16 December 2019, Published: 26 December 2019 Open Access
https://doi.org/10.18294/sc.2019.2595 | PMID: 32022134
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Abstract


The main premise of this paper is that common social discourse, manifested in the Arts & Humanities, has played a crucial role in the construction of technoscientific languages and cosmologies. I explore this argument in relation to recently established scientific disciplines, such as Epidemiology, through the lens of two works of cultural production: Saramago’s novel All the Names, and cult movie trilogy The Matrix, written and directed by the Wachowski Sisters. Both are allegories that exemplify a virtual world made possible by technoscience. A parallel is suggested between the first social observatories that encapsulated whole populations for systematic observation (allowing improvement of epidemiological methodology) and the “epidemiological dream” – nearly realized through the introduction of electronic data processing, enhanced by the advancement of modeling and simulation strategies and the organization of immense databases on health, disease, life, and death.

Keywords: Epidemiological Theory, Risk, Literature, Films

Categories: Epistemology


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