I had three problems when I was very sick: my own attitude toward my body; the commercialization of medical care; and racism. These really amount to one problem. If we do not recognize the general predicament of illness and death, if we do not recognize all bodies, then we do not recognize our own predicament when we are sick and what it means for freedom. If we conceive of liberty only as freedom from, we don’t think expansively enough; we think only of ourselves, or about ourselves against the world. When we don’t see the bodies of others, we don’t really understand our own, and we end up
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