Visible Humans, Vanishing Bodies, and Virtual Nursing: Complications of Life, Presence, Place, and Identity

Abstract

The emergence of the posthuman body and the disappearance of the humanist body serve as background for the rediscovery of the body as resource and problem in nursing. At the precise moment when the fleshy body is deemed increasingly irrelevant and immaterial in cyberspace come divergent moves in nursing toward not only resurrecting this body, but also toward virtual environments of nursing care, where fleshy bodies never encounter each other. The posthuman conflation of bodies and information poses the greatest challenge yet to the secure place, presence, and identity of nursing in health care.