"What Can I Do to Help Myself?" Somatic Individuality and Contemporary Hormonal Bodies

Abstract

Today health consumers and citizens are repeatedly asked to actively manage their own bodies and those of their families in order to maximize health outcomes. This contemporary demand can be theorized as a form of somatic individualisation: a subjectification process establishing new and ever-closer relations between bodies and selves. Somatic individuality, according to Novas and Rose (2000), involves citizens and health consumers in ever-increasing levels of responsibility for bodily care and consequent practices of prudence and caution about physical futures. This paper critically examines the concept of somatic individuality, asking both how these forms of “responsibilisation” are intertwined with normative gendering processes, and if there is a disjuncture between rhetorics of responsibility and patients’ experiences in medical clinics. Two case studies of contemporary hormonal bodies are analysed: discourses describing the effects of endocrine disrupting chemicals; and discourses of menopausal women’s use of hormone replacement therapy.