Chris de Wet: Medical Discourse, Identity Formation, and Otherness in Late Ancient Christianity

The use of medical discourses is never neutral or innocent. During late antiquity medical knowledge was disseminated through various alternative literary genres, such as homilies, hagiographies, and theological treatises. The social effects of this epistemological shift in medical discourse, however, requires further examination. The purpose of this paper, specifically, is to ask, first, how medical discourse shaped the formation of late antique Christian identities and, second, how medical discourse was utilized in the fashioning of alterities (formations of otherness). Inevitably, issues such as purity and filth, quarantine and contagion, and safety and danger feature extensively in these discourses. But is there perhaps even something more pervasive present? As case studies the works of Theodoret and John Chrysostom will be examined. What I hope to achieve with this study is a deeper understanding of the power dynamics of medical discourse when utilized in contexts that are not conventionally associated with medicine and healthcare. The paper is an exploration into the medically constructed self and other.