Cells, Fully Differentiated - Paperback

by Kinsey Cantrell (Author)

What does it mean to differentiate--to diagnose, to be diagnosed, to have a diagnosis?

cells, fully differentiated is an account of non-diagnosis, an experiment in mining memory and parsing trauma in an ultimately failed attempt to construct narrative. Against a backdrop of social and economic precarity, the narrator's effort to understand becomes cyclical. As medical test after medical test result in the same lack of conclusions, memories loop over one another--and still, no cause can be determined.

cells, fully differentiated struggles with the idea of pathologization as metaphor: what it means to be sick, and to be perceived as sick. Fully differentiated cells are cells that have been defined, but also cells that have an explicit role in the functioning of the human body. If understanding and diagnosis are in service of the larger structures of late capitalism, then ultimately cells, fully differentiated rejects that understanding.