Chapitre 10. La part sociale des transplantations d'organes.

What do we share when we donate or receive an organ? What meaning does donation have in the mourning process of a loved one or in the therapeutic process of a transplant patient? These questions rarely reach the public arena, but they do animate the people who concretely participate in the circulation of organs, whether it is because they accept the removal of an organ, receive one or are in charge of organizing it. With this contribution, I wish to shed light on the answers to these questions, as they emerge in practice, and thereby expose the social component of these surgical operations. I first examine the trend towards the promotion of organ donation and transplantation since the 1970s; then I look at the limits for the patients of an approach to transplantation based solely on a biomedical prism; and finally I examine the horizon of possibilities in terms of recognition of the relationships that organ transplant can create between donors and receivers.

Chapitre 10. La part sociale des transplantations d'organes.

What do we share when we donate or receive an organ? What meaning does donation have in the mourning process of a loved one or in the therapeutic process of a transplant patient? These questions rarely reach the public arena, but they do animate the people who concretely participate in the circulation of organs, whether it is because they accept the removal of an organ, receive one or are in charge of organizing it. With this contribution, I wish to shed light on the answers to these questions, as they emerge in practice, and thereby expose the social component of these surgical operations. I first examine the trend towards the promotion of organ donation and transplantation since the 1970s; then I look at the limits for the patients of an approach to transplantation based solely on a biomedical prism; and finally I examine the horizon of possibilities in terms of recognition of the relationships that organ transplant can create between donors and receivers.

Giving, receiving and forgetting? On the social conditions of receiving an anonymous face transplant.

In 2004, the French National Consultative Ethics Committee expressed strong misgivings about the proposal to include the face among body parts that can be removed from deceased donors for organ transplantation. Yet, the first face transplant was performed a few months later. How do medical teams and patients deal with the singular nature of the face? I argue that what the face represents - from the medium of the donor's personal identity to an interchangeable organ - is not fixed. It emerges through the practices and can evolve through the interactions between medical professionals and patients. In the postoperative time, I show that patients receive potentially contradictory recommendations about how to integrate the organ: to consider it theirs and forget the donor, but also to thank the donor for the donation and never forget the origin of the graft. Based on the plurality of relationships developed by the patients with their donor, I revisit Maussian interpretative analyses of organ reception. The effects of giving a face vary both in terms of reciprocity and identity: the feeling of debt is variably felt and can be interpreted negatively or positively, and the experience is more or less transformative.

[A sociological perspective on facial transplant]. / Greffe de visage, regard sociologique.

Is disfigurement a medical or social problem? Trajectories of people in facial surgery services reveal the privilege of normality. Since 2005, four out of ten transplant patients in France have died. In England, a charity campaigns for the right to live with a facial disfigurement.