Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency

6. A Sacred Technology?: Theorizing Visual Knowledge in the Twenty-first Century

6 A Sacred Technology? Theorizing Visual Knowledge in the Twenty-first Century M agnetic resonance imaging is a cultural icon. It evokes a sense of wonder among patients and medical professionals. Both the technology itself and the scans it produces serve as totems, or sacred objects (Durkheim 1995 [1913]). By offering the promise of definitive knowledge and health, these totems represent hopes and dreams. For physicians, MRI scans provide direction and a sense of assurance when exploring treatment options. As one neurologist I interviewed commented, “There are clearly cases right now that without MR, I would be shooting in the dark. MR provides me with the light to decide what path of a different therapy I am going to take.” MRI is believed to provide a light as physicians travel along the often confusing, contradictory, and challenging medical path of diagnosis and treatment. Such light is needed to help clinicians negotiate the ambiguities of their work in a fast-paced, litigious environment. Like their patients, physicians and technologists evoke the technology’s sacred status when they discuss MRI through the use of words such as miracle , awe, and magic. One physician I interviewed explained that he feels a “thrill when he looks at MRI examinations.” He further noted, “Ultrasound images are not aesthetically wonderful images, and x-rays cast shadows . So I think it’s nothing short of a miracle to be able to look at [the body through MRI].” For another physician, MRI exams produce a sense of wonder: “I am still always in awe [when I see an MRI exam]; I stare at them for hours.” Still other technologists and physicians use language that aligns the technology with magic. When a resident watched the production of an image for the first time, she exclaimed, “MRI is a form of American witchcraft!” Another physician exemplified the link between the supernatural and MRI when he explained, “I have a theory that medicine has not evolved terribly much, sociologically, beyond the shamans. And, therefore, it’s mostly magic. The more powerful the magic, the bigger drum, the better. When a patient is brought into a room with huge equipment for a long exam that has lots of noise and all sorts of bells and whistles, that’s a much more powerful, potent magic than if a stethoscope is placed against the patient.” For this physician, MRI is not simply a biomedical tool; it also represents a powerful form of contemporary magic.1 Patients also react to the machine in ways that recognize its technological and cultural power. Although most of the patients I observed during my fieldwork managed to complete the examination, some had emotional reactions to the machine. Fear and anxiety caused some to back out of the room or cry after they saw the machine. Other studies report similar responses (MacKenzie et al. 1995; Melendez and McCrank 1993), and the technologists I interviewed told me that this type of reaction occurs regularly. The stillness of the dimly lit, windowless examination room, the machine’s large size, and the idea that this test might reveal whether one has an illness intensify a patient’s emotional reaction to the pending procedure. Other imaging technologies such as ultrasound do not typically provoke similar responses.2 Situating the Image Chapters 1 and 3 highlight how cultural beliefs about technologically produced images contribute to the power attributed to MRI. By investigating the emergence, perceptions, and uses of MRI in biomedical practice, this book reveals that this imaging technology can be understood only by looking at the economic, social, and cultural contexts that shape its meanings and uses. What counts as MRI varies as these contexts change. MRI tech150 MAGNETIC APPEAL 1 Advertisements for MRI on manufacturers’ websites and in medical journals both draw on and reinforce the notion of the sacred. Bright, white light highlights the machine, illuminating the tube in the machine. Some ads place the machine in front of drapes, which further emphasizes the idea that these machines are beautiful objects. These techniques, both of which draw from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European painting, create an aura of radiance around the machine (Berger 1973, 137–139). 2 A patient does not have to go into the ultrasound machine to be scanned. Rather, the machine is positioned next to the patient, and the technologist puts a small wand, called a transducer , on the person’s body. nology and the...