Limites, traductions et affects : Professionnels de la santé en contexte amérindien

Abstract

The present article symmetrically deals with health professionals who work in indigenous contexts, developing the following questions: what happens to health professionals who find themselves directly relating to different conceptions of body, health and disease? What happens when health practices take place in the context of the process of translating the very concept of health itself? How are these professionals affected by the experience of contact with radical otherness? In seeking to reflect upon these questions, we focus upon the stories of a doctor and a nurse, highlighting points contained in their narratives that tell us something about constraints, limits and translation processes. The scenario described here might temper belief in a homogeneous biomedicine and healthcare professionalism that is exclusively rooted in power: always wrapped in reified and reifying relations.