{"product_id":"the-unknowable-body-hardback-9781509570744","title":"The Unknowable Body (Hardback) 9781509570744","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eThe Unknowable Body\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eLisa Jean Moore (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9781509570744, Polity Press\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 20 March 2026\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e240 pages\u003cbr\u003e21.8 x 14.5 x 2.8 cm, 0.431 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Unknowable Body\u003c\/i\u003e argues that the escalation of medical tests, technologies, and risk-reduction strategies has, paradoxically, made our bodies more unknowable. Moore's compelling and beautifully written autoethnography of her own and her family's medical experiences shows that expanding modes of medical surveillance enable new treatments and payment schemes. Yet they also position us as perpetually unknowable, highly stratified subjects of life-long embodied uncertainty.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRayna Rapp, co-author, \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eDisability Worlds\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"Lisa Jean Moore's \u003ci\u003eThe Unknowable Body\u003c\/i\u003e is a searching and resonant account of the persistent tension between medical knowledge and the body's enduring mystery. Drawing on her personal experience, Moore explores what it means to be a 'patient-citizen,' what forms a family can take, and how essential networks of care must expand. Through this analysis, she illuminates the aspects of medical culture that shape what patients feel, know, and fear. Moore investigates the uneasy territory of surveillance medicine; while grateful for scientific advances, she heeds Audre Lorde’s call for 'heretical knowledge' – the wisdom of subjective, emotional experience. Ultimately, Moore offers new ways to think about uncertainty, care, and the limits of medicine.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSuzanne Scanlon, author of \u003ci\u003eCommitted: On Meaning and Madwomen\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Unknowable Body\u003c\/i\u003e, Lisa Jean Moore explores the profound disconnect between how we experience our bodies and how the medical world interprets them. Drawing on her own journey through DCIS diagnosis, mastectomy, and reconstruction – alongside her family's navigation of her ex-partner's brain tumour – Moore investigates various unsettling dimensions of bodily uncertainty that emerge when illness enters our lives.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs scans revealed secrets that human perception failed to, and while navigating a queer family system that didn't fit institutional categories, the author found herself in territory few roadmaps could chart. This book weaves candid humour and poetic personal narrative and analytical vision to examine how bodies resist complete knowing – medically, emotionally, in time, and through gender and identity. It offers new ways of thinking about embodiment in an age of increasing medical surveillance, technological intervention, and economically profitable uncertainty.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat began as an investigation into cancer treatment evolved into a deeper exploration of how bodies exceed our frameworks for understanding. Whether through scans that simultaneously reveal and obscure, emotional reverberations that transform family systems, temporal disruptions that fracture our sense of before and after, or gender expectations that shape medical encounters, our bodies remain fundamentally mysterious even as we attempt to make them knowable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis thought-provoking, enriching book isn't just about illness, but about how all bodies exist in states of becoming and evade categories.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003ePreface\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction: The Unknowable Body\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 1: Medical\/Diagnostic Unknowability\u003cbr\u003eChapter 2: The Emotional Landscape of Bodily Uncertainty\u003cbr\u003eChapter 3: Temporal Unknowability\u003cbr\u003eChapter 4: Gender\/Identity Unknowability\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConclusion\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgements\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eSubject Areas: Sociology \u0026amp; anthropology [\u003ca title=\"See our other books on Sociology \u0026amp; anthropology\" href=\"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/search?q=%22Sociology%20\u0026amp;%20anthropology%20%5BJH%5D%22\"\u003eJH\u003c\/a\u003e]\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Polity","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52501362278680,"sku":"9781509570744","price":18.55,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0730\/2037\/5320\/files\/9781509570744.jpg?v=1786233823","url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/the-unknowable-body-hardback-9781509570744","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}