Survivability in Kidney Transfer as Becoming: Embodiment, Materiality, and Time in Kidney Failure and Transplant.

This paper explores embodied experiences of survivability in kidney transfer. By drawing on interviews with, and photography produced by, people on dialysis or with a kidney transplant, this paper counters biomedical approaches to survival by examining the fluid, dynamic, and shifting relations and affects of living on and with kidney transfer. Through an engagement with vitalist thinking, it is argued that kidney transfer is an ongoing process of becoming. In doing so, three characteristics of becoming in kidney transfer are identified: first, becoming in kidney transfer is characterized by material embodied experiences, which occur across and between the intersecting registers of the bodily interior, exterior, and body-in-space; second, experiences of survivability in kidney transfer are shaped through highly relational and dynamic engagements with other people, the more-than-human, and place; and third, becoming in kidney transfer involves developing new relationships to time and temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]