Vital Signs vigorously brings feminist philosophical and postmodern thinking to bear on the 'matter' of biomedicine and the body. Bringing together the very latest research in the field, and organised around concepts of surface and depth, and flux and flow, the book examines issues such as medi(t)ating bodies; sexuality and the clinical encounter; the heart as metaphor and anatomic entity; orality and the clinical gaze; spatiality of bodies and sexual abuse; post-colonial bodies and the clinic; the micropolitics of biopsychiatry; tanning the body; malformed bodies and disabilities; disabled states and emergent illnesses; shell-shock and 'hysteria'. Topical, pathbreaking and distinctive in its claims to offer 'postconventional' modes of enquiry, the volume includes contributions from Sara Ahmed, Lynda Birke, Rosi Braidotti, Ros Diprose and Ailbhe Smyth.