The sick as biological citizens? How patient-user organizations reconfigure the field of health and illness

Abstract

Based on a qualitative two-cased study of patient-user organizations, this article claims that some of the forms of sociality that have emerged in recent decades are changing the landscape of citizenship in the field of health and illness. Findings show that politicised and radical patient-user organizations can effectively challenge biopolitical governmentality, its medical institutions, as well as its configuration of power/knowledge and forms of subjectivation by using what we consider to be affirmative biopolitical strategies.