Between dreams and quimeras: sociability and subjectivity in organ transplants

Abstract

The objective of this article is to present and discuss, from ethnographic data, how people who performed organ transplants reconstruct their trajectories and social relationships by incorporating an ethic of conduct marked by biomedical parameters, privileging, for that, not only the fact to receive a transplant, but to live with a transplanted organ over time. The body of the transplanted individual must be produced daily, the target of constant vigilance and continuous action. After surgery he will be responsible for maintaining the tenuous balance between his body and the donated organ, administering rejection, which involves changes in behavior, lifestyle and self-care. This health care highlights the question of "how to live" that is, of the different ways of conducting life, placing the individual in a complex field of interpersonal relationships.