First published online as a
Review in Advance on
June 28, 2005

In the wake of critiques that have rendered problematic such famil- iar objects of study as culture and social structure, anthropologists seeking ways to engage ethnographically with the complexities of the contemporary world have fashioned new kinds of objects of study. These generally continue, however, to be framed as just that\u2014as objects. Rather than pursue the \u201canthropology of\u201d any particular object that preexists ethnography, anthropologists should \ufb01nd ways of bringing the openness and creativity of ethnographic work more boldly into the theoretical framing of what it is that they study. I propose here the notion of surfacing the body interior as one fram- ing device that may help facilitate such ethnographic explorations into bodies, their interiors, and their surfaces as contingent con\ufb01g- urations made and unmade through practices that are at once social, material, and representational.

BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE.... 743 PRACTICE MAKES SURFACE.... 744 SURFACING THE BODY

INTERIOR...................... 746 GIVING SURFACE................ 748 SURFACING STRUGGLES....... 749 RUMORS THAT SURFACE....... 750 CONCLUSION.................... 751

Anthropologists are carving out novel kinds of objects of study in response to the challenge of \ufb01nding new ways to engage ethnographi- cally with the complexities of the contempo- rary world. The central theoretical place once occupied by culture and social system now ac- commodates other objects of study, some of which are new (such as globalization or dias- poras) and others newly annexed as suscepti- ble to ethnographic study and anthropological analysis (such as science, law, or the state).

Analyses are limited in scope, however, be- cause these objects of anthropological study generally continue to be framed as just that\u2014 as objects. Acting collectively within the profession, anthropologists tend to organize knowledge-production practices in ways that serve to solidify and entrench the same ob- jects that individual anthropologists in their ethnographic work seek to dismantle andcon- test. Consider, for example, the young scholar who devotes considerable time and talent to calling into question a certain object by doc- umenting ethnographically how said object is produced by and enmeshed with its social, cul- tural, historical, and political contexts. This same scholar, meanwhile, through his or her professional organizations, reading habits, job applications, course titles, choices of publica- tion venues and so forth, will work to develop and contribute to an \u201canthropology of\u201d the

object in question. What ethnography as prac- tice and mode of analysis unsettles, in other words, anthropology as discipline andprofes- sion restores. Anthropologists remains always \u201canthropologists of,\u201d ambiguously positioned as experts who specialize in research and writ- ings that seek to dismantle and dissolve the very same objects on whose coherence and persistence their professional identity and ex- pertise in some sense depends.

At the risk of slightly damaging such a beautifully dialectical structure, I urge an- thropologists to embrace more decisively and courageously its ethnographic moment. Do- ing so will entail seeking out ways to frame anthropology less as the \u201canthropology of\u201d any particular object that preexists ethnogra- phy and more as the work of exploring ethno- graphically how objects\u2014objects of study, as well as objects of other sorts\u2014precipitate out of practices and processes that are at once so- cial, material, and representational. What is needed, then, are more labile and refractory framing devices that can help guide ethno- graphic explorations to discover just what are the relevant contours of that which we study, the better to pursue \u201cethnography on an awk- ward scale\u201d (Comaroff & Comaroff 2003).

I propose here one such framing device, which I hope will help anthropologists ex- plore as \u201cbusy intersections\u201d (Rosaldo 1989) what tend too often to be regarded as objects. Speci\ufb01cally, I propose the notion of surfac- ing the body interior as a way of framing ex- plorations into bodies as made and unmade in and through practice. The term surfacing can mean giving something a surface (as in surfacing a road), but it can also mean com- ing to the surface (as when a submarine sur- faces) or bringing something to the surface (as in mining when one brings gold to the surface by washing away soil deposits). Em- bracing all these meanings, surfacing the body interior points toward the range of practices andprocesses that both materialize bodily sur- faces as signi\ufb01cant sites within broader orders, and surface that which lies hidden beneath them.

Thus, what follows is not a standard re- view of recent work in an established sub\ufb01eld of anthropology. Quite the contrary, I hope with this review to encourage and embolden anthropologists to, in some small way, help unsettle sub\ufb01eld boundaries currently taking shape and facilitate those who wish to trespass across them.

Among the most vibrant of new directions recently taking shape has been the ethno- graphic study of what we might call the biomedical technosciences, i.e., those rapidly emerging projects of knowledge-production and intervention that are both intensively focused on delineating the (universal) body and increasingly imposed on actual, particu- lar bodies and the subjects who inhabit them (Brodwin 2000, Casper 1998, Downey & Dumit 1997, Martin 1994). Intrepid ethno- graphers who creatively fuse questions, methods, and insights from medical anthro- pology with those drawn from the interdisci- plinary \ufb01eld of science studies have in recent years provided ethnographic accounts of a wide range of new sciences, technologies, and procedures. We have thus far seen ethnogra- phies of, for example, genetics and genomics (Goodman et al. 2003; Rabinow 1996, 1999, 2003; Rabinow & Dan-Cohen2004; Reardon 2005; Taussig2004), medical imaging (Dumit 2004; Mitchell 2001; Taylor 1998, 2000, 2004a), procreative technologies and arrange- ments (Davis-Floyd & Dumit 1998, Franklin 1997, Franklin & Ragone 1998, Morgan1998, Morgan & Michaels 1998, Ragone 1994, Ragone & Twine 2000, Thompson 2005), amniocentesis (Rapp 1999), tissue engineer- ing (Hogle 2003; Landecker 2000, 2003), or- gan transplantation (Hogle 1999, Joralemon 2000, Lock 2002b, Scheper-Hughes & Wacquant 2002, Sharp 2001), and others. Some have hailed such work as heralding the emergence of a distinct new sub\ufb01eld. Franklin & Lock (2003), for example, in a compelling

recent intervention, have namedthis new sub- \ufb01eld \u201can anthropology of the biosciences.\u201d Thus to name and frame this newwork makes very good sense, of course, because it legit- imates an anthropological claim and asserts an anthropological voice in the study of the biosciences as (exotic) cultures.

At this juncture, however, the moment may be ripe to consider whether there might not (also) be other possible ways of framing ethno- graphic studies that engage with biomedical technosciences. In this regard, the emergence of medical anthropology may offer some cau- tionary lessons. Many remain critical of the decision, made years ago, to name and to frame this new sub\ufb01eld of anthropology in terms borrowed from the more powerful in- stitutionalized profession of medicine, thus arguably missing the opportunity to reframe illness, health, and healing in ways more fun- damentally challenging to the structures of power that ethnographers of illness, healing, and medicine seek through their work to re- veal, critique, and change (Browner 1999). Also at stake, in the case of ethnographic stud- ies of the biosciences, is the question of how best to nourish and sustain the comparative impulse that has long distinguished anthro- pological work. With some notable exceptions (Anderson2003; Cohen1998; Fullwiley 2004; Gruenbaum 1998; Hayden 2003; Inhorn 2003; Kahn2000; Langford 2002; Lock 1993, 1998; Morsy 1998), this emerging literature, like the biomedical technosciences that it crit- ically examines and like the \ufb01eld of science studies on which it draws, has been focused primarily in cosmopolitan North American and northern European contexts. Precisely suchproblems withframing \u201cscience\u201d as one\u2019s object of study have moved Lowe (2006) to call for the forging of a new alliance between science studies and postcolonial theory.

How else, then, might one frame ethno- graphic explorations of such matters as genet- ics, medical imaging, and tissue culture, if not as instances of an \u201canthropology of the bio- sciences\u201d? Where could an interest in such topics lead, if not deeper into the (usually