Giving, receiving … and forgetting? On the social conditions of receiving an anonymous face transplant

Bibliographic Data

ID17545998
AuthorsMarie Le Clainche-Piel (0000-0003-1033-8358, National Centre for Scientific Research Centre for the Study of Social Movements Paris France, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume42
Issue8
Pages1949-1966
Publication date2020-09-24
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology of Health & Illness (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0141-9889 • E-ISSN: 1467-9566
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1467-9566.13178
PMID32970899
OpenAlexW3087861711
LanguageEN
References cited53

In 2004, the French National Consultative Ethics Committee expressed strong misgivings about the proposal to include the face among body parts that can be removed from deceased donors for organ transplantation. Yet, the first face transplant was performed a few months later. How do medical teams and patients deal with the singular nature of the face? I argue that what the face represents – from the medium of the donor’s personal identity to an interchangeable organ – is not fixed. It emerges through the practices and can evolve through the interactions between medical professionals and patients. In the postoperative time, I show that patients receive potentially contradictory recommendations about how to integrate the organ: to consider it theirs and forget the donor, but also to thank the donor for the donation and never forget the origin of the graft. Based on the plurality of relationships developed by the patients with their donor, I revisit Maussian interpretative analyses of organ reception. The effects of giving a face vary both in terms of reciprocity and identity: the feeling of debt is variably felt and can be interpreted negatively or positively, and the experience is more or less transformative

Aesthetics · Developmental psychology · Donation · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Face-to-face · Feeling · Identity (music) · Organ donation · Political science · Sociology · Transformative learning · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies · Law · Medicine · Organ and Tissue Transplantation Research · Psychology · Social Psychology · Surgery · Transplantation

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