The Trace and the Profane

Looking at the relationship between the health-care sector and community-trained first-aid workers, especially regarding the use of medical imaging such as the cardioscope (with a cardiogram) introduces the problem of the subject’s confrontation with an enigmatic image. Can we approach the graph on the screen as a metaphor of life and death? In a space where the unspeakable can plunge the layperson into a violence of the seen, medical speech emerges as a potential of re-symbolization. The urgent nature of first-aid interventions and their particular temporality raise the question of a certain ethics of the gaze.