Iranian Journal of Sociology

Abstract The present study is a kind of poststructuralist study of disease and its perception mechanisms that tries to formulate a form of theoretical and conceptual medical sociology. Here, with the help of some theoretical capacities of Foucault and Lacan, we tried to provide conceptual implications on the perception of disease and the processes of its formation. Foucault's theory of hermeneutics of the self, and the Lacanian concept of the symbolic, give different implications for the perception of disease and how it is formed; implications that despite the distinctions, are based on similar fundamental propositions. According to the ontological aspects of both thinkers, the body is a field of writing that is coded and encoded by symbolic signifiers. Therefore, the perception of disease is an analytical cognition resulting from the re-reading of the pathological symptoms on the body text. Reading is formed by intersecting body text with medical discourse and specialized knowledge as the overlay text. A final point is the recognition of the mechanism of intertextuality in the perception of disease, according to which the body text is interpreted as a priori and inclusive text by encountering medical discourse.