Veronica Moretti e Barbara Morsello (eds.), Interferenze Digitali. Prospettive Sociologiche su Tecnologie, Biomedicina e Identità di Genere, FrancoAngeli, 2019
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17558
application/pdf
2038-3460
17558
2
en
Angela Balzano
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Veronica Moretti e Barbara Morsello (eds.), Digital Interference. Sociological Perspectives on Technologies, Biomedicine and Gender Identity, FrancoAngeli, 2019
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
12
Book Reviews
2022-03-26
2023-06-30
2022-03-26
2023-10-23
238-242
TS
Angela Balzano
2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17558
238
University of Bologna
2038-3460
2
en
242
Veronica Moretti e Barbara Morsello (eds.), Digital Interference. Sociological Perspectives on Technologies, Biomedicine and Gender Identity, FrancoAngeli, 2019
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17558/16408
12
238                                                              Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
       ion’s Societies, in N. Marres, M. Guggenheim and A. Wilkie (eds.), Invent-
       ing the social, Manchester, Mattering Press, pp. 149-172.
Latour, B. (1993) We have never been modern, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Univer-
       sity Press.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network The-
       ory, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Marres, N., Guggenheim, M. and Wilkie, A. (2018) Introduction: From Perfor-
       mance to Inventing the Social, in N. Marres, M. Guggenheim and A. Wilkie
       (eds.), Inventing the social, Manchester, Mattering Press, pp. 17-40.
Yaneva, A. and Jaque, A. (2015) An Interview with Andrés Jaque, Office for Political
      Innovation, in A. Yaneva and A. Zaera-Polo (eds.), What Is Cosmopolitical
      Design? Design, Nature and the Built Environment, Farnham, Ashgate,
      2015, pp. 57-78.

                                       ***
    Veronica Moretti e Barbara Morsello (eds.)
Interferenze Digitali. Prospettive Sociologiche su Tecnologie, Biomedicina e
Identità di Genere [Digital Interference. Sociological Perspectives on
Technologies, Biomedicine and Gender Identity], Milano, FrancoAngeli,
2019, pp. 184

Angela Balzano University of Bologna

    When students ask me how to evaluate the quality of a book, I use to
answer: “a book that deserves to be read is a book that teach us some-
thing”. However, this sentence needs to be at once amended: a book must
teach us something not recurring to any universalistic methodology, rather
grounding its insights in embodied and embedded cartographies. That’s
exactly what Interferenze Digitali does, it provides us new pieces of situated
knowledge (Haraway 1997) that take its own space and time in the frame-
work of posthuman knowledge (Braidotti 2020). Reading Interferenze Dig-
itali, edited by Veronica Moretti and Barbara Morsello in 2019 for Fran-
coAngeli, we not only learn a lot on cutting-edge bio/infotechnologies, but
we also know more about our bodies, ourselves in the biomedical arena.
Interferenze Digitali it’s a cartography of the bodies that we are becoming.
We are not all man and neurotypical, there is a plethora of non-conforming
subjectivities that simultaneously upsets both male-centered medicine and
male-centered sociology. Interferenze Digitali helps us in knowing these
non-conforming subjectivities: in this book you will encounter non-stand-
ard bodies with all their living questions, not depicted as isolated and ab-
stracted, rather as part of a natureculture continuum. All the essays col-
Book Review                                                                 239
lected in the volume share this belief, as Assunta Viteritti states in the pref-
ace: “human beings […] cannot be understood and analyzed a priori as
autonomous entities abstracted from the matter, rather they are actors in-
tertwined in heterogeneous techniques, social spaces and network” (p. 7).
    These complex heterogeneous techniques, social spaces and network
in which human beings, together with others, became, need to be scruti-
nized all the more today that bio/infotechnologies are so pervasive and fast-
changing. Interferenze Digitali is fully devoted to this task, in the attempt
of contributing to the debate on how cutting-edge technologies are re-
shaping care and health. The third chapter, titled “Mano, Cervello, Cuore:
Uno Sguardo di Genere e Femminista sul sapere scientifico” (“Hand,
Brain, Heart: A Gender and Feminist Look at Scientific Knowledge”),
written by Maria C. Sciannamblo, constitutes the theoretical framework of
the collective volume. Here Sciannamblo asks the crucial question: “how
do knowledge and narratives change when adopting a gender perspec-
tive?” (p. 50).
    All authors agree on the starting point: to adopt a gender perspective
in science and technologies studies means to embrace the situated
knowledge methodologies, as Moretti and Morsello remind us quoting
Haraway: “only a partial perspective can allow an objective vision” (p. 12).
When the universal masculine model is no longer the only subject of
knowledge, when a gender sensitive and feminist gaze is applied to science
and in particular to medicine, what come in foreground are the embodied
and embedded experiences of sickness, care and cure. No one of the expe-
riences analyzed in the volume pretend to be an “all-representative case”.
Sickness, care and cure experiences are always grounded in highly different
subjectivities, shaped by sex and gender, class, race and age: hybrid identi-
ties, in Morsello’s words.
    Female cancer patients, diabetic men, physicians, menstruating people
struggling with various types of apps, enhanced bodies at work: you will
encounter this and much more in the ten chapters of the volume. In chap-
ter one Veronica Moretti focuses on the digital surveillance in the socio-
medical framework, in chapter two Barbara Morsello analyses the recent
innovations in genetic screenings and how the affect gender relations. As
anticipated, in the third chapter Maria C. Sciannamblo provides a feminist
theoretical framework for thinking science. In the fourth and the fifth
chapters Marta Gibin and Valentina Cappi respectively scrutinize blogs
and medical drama to highlight the ongoing mutations in desires and gen-
ders’ roles. In chapters six and seven Letizia Zampino and Valeria Quaglia
focus on health’s self-monitoring technologies for both genders, while in
the eighth chapter Flavia Atzori broaden the reflection introducing the is-
sue of male chronic illness. Chapter nine and ten, written respectively by
Lia Tirabeni and Arianna Radin, analyze the intersections between health,
care and work environment, focusing not only on patients but also on med-
ical personnel.
240                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
    Let us focus on three chapters: “Identità ibride. Come le innovazioni
biomediche modificano pratiche e routine nelle pazienti oncologiche” (Hy-
brid Identities: How Biomedical Innovation are Modifying Oncological Pa-
tients’ Practices and Routines, Barbara Morsello); “Quando una madre si
ammala di cancro: gestire la cura dei figli tra aspettative e ruoli di genere”
(When a Mother Gets Cancer: Managing Childcare between Expectations
and Gender Roles, Marta Gibin) and “Biomedicalizzare la sindrome pre-
mestruale: come le app prescrivono conoscenze e corpi” (Biomedicalizing
Pre-menstrual Syndrome: Apps Prescribing Knowledge and Bodies, Letizia
Zampino).
    Before looking closely at these three chapters, I must explain that my
choice is not neutral neither impartial. Morsello, Gibin and Zampino chap-
ters interpellated me not only as a Gender Science and Technologies Stud-
ies’ scholar, they also interpellated the multiple layers that build together
the hybrid subjectivity that I am. Reading Morsello, Gibin and Zampino I
felt involved as a daughter and as a woman, in particular as daughter of a
mother with breast cancers and as a woman still in her reproductive age
with all the troubles linked with having female reproductive organs, tissues
and fluids in these techno-mediated yet still very misogynous days.
    I emphasize here my embodied and embedded reading to pay homage
at the explicit aims of the editors: “the will to start from personal and bio-
graphical experience” always joint with “our gendered perspective as
young researchers” (p. 11). As for Gibin essay, I am a very partial reader,
one that three times in her life struggled together with her mother against
different kinds of cancer. My mother is a cyborg, writes Ilaria Santoemma
(2020), and adding to Santoemma a Butler’s novel title (1978), I would say:
“my mother is a cyborg and a survivor”. First the uterine cancer, followed
by a hysterectomy, later she also experienced breast cancer, twice. I am an
only child grew up among several serious diseases, since while my mother
experienced few years of peace between a cancer and another, my father
ended in hospital for chronic ulcer.
    I grew up looking at my mother packing bags for the clinics: for herself
as well as for my father. Now, in tune with Gibin’s essay, I cannot avoid
asking: who healed my family? Who cared for my mother and my father,
who cared for me and in which different ways?
    To answer these questions Gibin adopted the online ethnography’s
methodology, analyzing conversations and narratives on cancers, focusing
in particular on blogs written by mothers with cancers and under 14 chil-
dren. In these online diaries emerge how care and cure are strictly entailed,
how they are not distributed equally among genders. Gibin’s contribution
shed light not only on expectations shaped by gender rules that negatively
affect the subjectivities at stake, but also on the impact of sexual division
of labor on the illness itself. I’ve seen my mother struggling against cancers
as well as against social expectations and gender rules, just like the moth-
ers/bloggers of Gibin’s research. I’ve seen myself struggling against the
Book Review                                                                241
fears of losing my mother as well as against the fear of developing in my
turn the same cancers, just like the daughters of the oncological patients
interviewed by Morsello.
    Gibin’s and Morsello’s essays offer us the possibility to look at onco-
logical patients in a way that differs from the traditional bioethical ap-
proach, too focused on the patient as “autonomous subject”. They are
aware that bioethics, in particular in western society, adopting the concept
of “autonomous subject” contributed to the spread of an egoistic and in-
dividualistic subject. They are also aware that the classical physician-pa-
tient relationship is not only hardly appliable in these days of biomedical
and infotechnological innovations, but also unfair and unbalanced. They
reckon the physician-patient relationship is not the only social dynamics
worthy to be investigated. We see together with Morsello and Gibin that
patients are more “subjectivities in relation” that “autonomous subject”
and that there is a whole network of relations around patients as well as
multiple layers inside them.
    Morsello brilliantly shows how patients are hybrid identities that struc-
ture themselves in relation with biomedical innovations highlighting the
points of view of “privileged actors: patients and their experience of em-
bodiment of early diagnosis practices” (p. 36). Her qualitative research in-
cluded 51 female patients aged 44-65, to explore their risks perceptions,
genetic mutation and their attitude towards biomedical innovations. She
concluded that patient’s agency has always a pivotal role in “defining spe-
cific knowledge ecologies in which the body becomes both a catalyst for
care practices and a self-affirmation device” (p. 47). Patients’ agency is also
at the center of the mothers with cancer/bloggers’ self-narratives investi-
gated by Gibin, even if as a site of conflicts and contradictions. Thus, read-
ing Morsello and Gibin together enable us to see how agency does not cor-
respond to a will’s act, at least not for women that have to mediate and
negotiate their illness with their relatives. Patients’ agencies emerge from
their essays as a negotiation process, one that involves different actors with
diverse degree of responsibility, specific needs and know-how.
    The problematization of agency is the conceptual junction of the vol-
ume but it is in the essay of Zampino that we can find a statement that
clearly argues in favor of a relational agency tenet: “agency is relational and
it works inside and across intra-actions among humans and non-human
beings acting together in the process of constitution of emerging, situated
and endless becoming assemblages” (p. 101).
    In Zampino contribution patients’ agency also implies the self-aware
use of pharmacological and infotechnological devices. In her essay, the role
played by the online “light” programs, such as apps, is at the center of the
analysis. Embracing a feminist and materialist approach, Zampino believes
that apps are in relation with humans in “human-app-assemblages in which
living matter is an active part in the process of co-building of bodies, mean-
242                                                          Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
ings and languages” (p. 101). Smartphones and digital body devices now-
adays provide us with the possibility of using “self-tracking medical apps”
and this fact itself should be object of in-depth studies for enquiring both
their role as subjective agency’s instruments and as bodies’ controlling de-
vices, not only in the hands of patients but especially in the hands of “phar-
maceutical industries, governments, research centers” (p. 100).
    As for Morsello and Gibin’s essays, also for Zampino contribution I
have to admit I am a deeply concerned reviewer, one that suffered of amen-
orrhea and folliculitis. Zampino’s conclusion resonate with my personal
experience as user of menstrual cycle monitoring apps. They really sup-
ported me in the attempt of gaining more knowledge on my bodily trans-
formations. However, exactly as Zampino demonstrated through her qual-
itative analysis of 20 monitoring menstrual cycles apps, some apps seemed
to me too invasive and scrupulous in their attempt to improve my health.
The border between self-empowering, a process in which the subjectivity
of the patient is pivotal, and biomedicalization, a process in which to be
pivotal are the interests of biotech farms and start-ups, is a tiny and thin
one. Zampino refers to the concept of “datification” to clarify the issue of
biotech farms’ interests. The biotech market is highly interested in gather-
ing our biological and behavioral data, since analyzing these data allow
them to “influence citizenship’s choices and lifestyles” (100). I share with
Zampino this concern, especially regarding women in reproductive age,
too exposed to various kind of influences and social pressures and im-
mersed in cultures full of gender biases.
    New technologies appear to have both a bright and a dark side and I
reckon in Interferenze Digitali both are explored in an excellent way. Edi-
tors and authors seem very conscious of the tiny and thin border in which
all of us move when confronting with health in the XXI century. This tiny
and thin border is indeed very crowded: how many times have we found
ourselves and the people we love intra-acting with drugs, apps, clinics, phy-
sicians and diseases, trying to navigate the precarious paths for a better
health?

References
Braidotti, R. (2020), Posthuman Knowledge, Cambridge, Polity Press.
Butler, O. (1978), Survivor, New York, Doubleday.
Haraway, D. (1997), Modest Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan_Meets_On-
      coMouseTM, London, Routledge.
Santoemma, I. (2020), My Mother was a Cyborg, New Technologies and Hybrid Sub-
      jectivityes, in “S&F”, n. 23, pp. 127-141.

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