Article,
Signs of Nothing: Negotiations Over Semiotic Indeterminacy in Danish Lung Cancer Diagnostics
Affiliations
- [1] Aarhus University Hospital [NORA names: Central Denmark Region; Hospital; Denmark; Europe, EU; Nordic; OECD];
- [2] Research Unit for General Practice [NORA names: Unclear Universities; University; Denmark; Europe, EU; Nordic; OECD]
Abstract
In Denmark, injunctions of “early” cancer diagnosis increasingly imply surveillance of small tissue changes, which may or may not develop into cancer. Based on fieldwork at diagnostic lung cancer clinics and with people in CT surveillance for tissue changes, I explore how detected tissue changes are ascribed meaning as signs of “nothing” or “something.” Inspired by Peircean semiotics, I suggest that the semiotic indeterminacy of tissue changes points to how diagnostic socialities both expand medical semiotics and enable this expansion. The article, thereby, contributes to understandings of signs as diagnostic infrastructures.
Keywords
Cancer,
Denmark,
diagnostics,
early diagnosis,
medical surveillance,
semiotics