Oltre l'immaginario scientista: la malattia cronica tra ospedalizzazione e vita quotidiana

Modernity has produced the image of the disease like an organic disorder on which the medicine operates, by its scientific method, to lead the body back to the norm. So, the modern medicine carries out a soteriological function: to emancipate man from the utmost Evil and save him from death. The scientific paradigm has interpreted the disease by the opposition good/evil, separating it from the life and controlling it by its instruments. The consequent medicalization of social space is a reply to the need to keep the order purging the society from every form of Evil. But what happens when the chronic disease gets out from under science and enters daily life? When difference imposes on the social order and the disease, rather than being forced into elsewhere, is part of the life obligating us to recognise an indissoluble bond between good and evil? The article will try to respond to these questions, from the analysis of the process of social construction of the modern categories of health and disease and the related imaginaries.