An historical perspective of breast cancer in Mexico: information flows and the technological engagements of the post/genomic era
Descartes Centre Colloquium – Tuesday 9 May 2023
Speakers: Abril Saldaña-Tejeda (Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico and Senior Fellow at the Descartes Centre)
Date: Tuesday 9 May 2023
Time: 15:30 – 17:00h
Location: Sweelinckzaal (0.05), Drift 21 – Utrecht
(If you would like to participate online, please send an email to dc-colloquium@uu.nl
Ex-voto of Josefa Peres Maldonado. First registered masectomy in Latin America.
Aguascalientes, Mexico, 1777. Oil on canvas. 27 1/4 × 38 1/2 in. (69.2 × 97.8 cm).
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, 2004.10.
An historical perspective of breast cancer in Mexico: information flows and the technological engagements of the post/genomic era
The end of World War II was accompanied by an ideological conflict that used information as one of its main instruments of power. The use of international news agencies was set to be a key political instrument supposedly aiding the reconstruction and aid package designed from the power block to emerging nations. By the 1970s, up to 80 percent of information distributed around the world was in the hands of a few international news agencies. Non-aligned nations denounced this as a new form of ‘informative colonialism.’ I look at the power of news agencies in the configuration of ‘subjectivities of health’ during the twentieth century. I consider news’ content on breast cancer as an emergent public health concern and show how agencies were deeply linked to the makeup of patients, technologies of diagnosis, treatment, and the ‘authoritative knowledge’ behind them. I argue that current scientific and medical approaches to breast cancer and the enduring racial disparities in diagnosis and mortality rates are deeply enmeshed with a history of informational colonialism that started during the post-war era and continues today in the form of news, codes, biobanks, health registries and other technologies of life.
PFA some reading material. Abril would love to get some feedback on her work in progress.
Short biography
Abril Saldaña-Tejeda is Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Philosophy, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico, and focuses on the social determinants of health, genomics and postgenomics. She has investigated scientific discourses on race and gender in the context of epigenetics and theories of genetic predisposition to obesity among Mexican mestizos. Her latest research project (Wellcome Trust 218699/Z/19/Z) explored bioethical principles, practices and regulations on human genome editing and stem cell research in Latin America. She is now working on a book that investigates new technologies of life in Mexico and Latin America.