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Thesis seminar: The Travels of Diabetes: Formations and transformations of diabetes in Cairo, Egypt

By Mille Kjærgaard Thorsen

Info about event

Time

Tuesday 1 May 2018,  at 09:30 - 11:30

Location

Auditorium 1 (4206-117), Moesgaard Campus

The dissertation focuses on the topic of diabetes in Cairo, specifically how the onset and treatment of diabetes are perceived by many as related to the notion of daght, loosely translated as ‘stress,’ more literally as ‘pressure’. I unfold how daght is related to motions in both bodies and environments. I thus argue that understandings of diabetes in Cairo are not confined to the physiology of bodies alone, but grow also out of rumors, conspiracies, fear, paranoia, grief, nostalgia, economic inflations and many similar abstractions and specifics. Simultaneously, the prevention and treatment of diabetes revolve around relieving the ill of such pressures, for example, by way of relaxation, laughter, sugar intake, yoga, comedies and caricatures.

Discussants: Christian Suhr and Susanne Højlund