A New History of Identity

David Armstrong has published widely on the sociology of medical knowledge, including "Political Anatomy of the Body: Medical Knowledge in the Twentieth Century".

Medical texts provide a powerful means of accessing contemporary perceptions of illness and through them assumptions about the nature of the body and identity.Medical texts provide a powerful means of accessing contemporary perceptions of illness and through them assumptions about the nature of the body and identity. By mapping these perceptions, from their nineteenth-century focus on illness located in a biological body through to their 'discovery' of the psycho-social patient of the late twentieth century, a history of identity, both physical and psychological, is revealed.