(per)forming the practice(d) body: Gynecological teaching associates in medical education

Abstract

This chapter discusses aspects of my doctoral work, which critically explored the ‘silences’ or taken-for-granted assumptions embedded within pelvic teaching utilizing Gynaechological Teaching Associates (GTA). Throughout this chapter, I draw upon my own storied reflections (alongside the voices of my participants) of working as a GTA to give a distinctive, often-unarticulated voice to the practice/performance of a GTA – a voice that questions the (re)positioning of women through a language that speaks us into being, drawing attention to how we come to be known in particular ways as a consequence. I raise up to question – What does it mean to be/become a practice(d) body in pelvic teaching from the perspective of GTAs? Furthermore, what are the possible consequences for (the practice of) GTAs whose bodies operate as sites where medical students’ practice is practiced upon, and from where practice(d) knowledge is (re)generated through (not) ‘talking’ the body? Such questioning, informed by the work of Butler, Foucault, and (post-)critical feminist theories, invites us to consider how notions of professional(ization), as taken up within medical education, exist and participate in the creation of other bodies – caught-up in a normative feedback loop where ‘one’s’ practices (re)create the very body one sets out to find. The chapter discusses how medical students working with/on me and other GTAs, as both model and ‘teacher/text’, endeavoured to accomplish the goal of ‘being’ a professional in that space, which often meant operating from a place of (supposed) disembodiment while simultaneously engaging intimately with my/our bodies.