This lecture is based on a recently published book, Incommunicable: Toward communicative justice in health and medicine. It proceeds in two parts. First, arguing for greater integration of linguistic and medical anthropology, it traces ways that language and medicine have been enmeshed—often problematically—through the work of three philosopher physicians: John Locke, Frantz Fanon, and Georges Canguillhem. Locke concealed the medical roots of his language philosophy, even as nosologies of pathology structured his purification program. I pry loose the continuing hold of Locke’s legacy by invoking Fanon’s analysis of the linguistic violence that structures colonial medicine and Canguillhem’s account of how clinical discourse thwarts chronic disease patients’ ability to create new languages for experiencing “normal” and “pathological” states.

The second part illustrates this cat-and-mouse game of entanglement and dissociation through an analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic. Going beyond conventional narratives that seek to explain why nearly half of U.S. residents rejected COVID-19 guidelines, I trace a 40-year history of entanglements between communication, medicine, and racialization that led many white conservatives to frame public health discourse as an attack on “my freedom.” I suggest the relevance of this pandemic communicative trainwreck for interpreting the current U.S. socio-political landscape.