The Biopolitics of Subalternity and the Sovereignty of Care: A Transnational Genealogy and the Emancipatory Praxis Paradigm in Nursing

ABSTRACT

Contemporary healthcare systems face a structural crisis driven by biomedical reductionism, institutional biopower, and corporate rationalization. In this context, professional enculturation in nursing has historically functioned to reproduce subalternity and institutional docility through a clinical hidden curriculum that privileges delegated biomedical routines over autonomous care. Drawing upon a transnational genealogy across four foundational paradigms (biomedical positivist, interpretive‐humanistic, disciplinary, and critical‐sociopolitical), this article deconstructs how organizational architectures constrain Care Science. Crucially, rather than framing role transition shock and moral distress as individual psychological fragility or resilience deficits, we conceptualize them as acts of legitimate epistemological resistance. To overcome this institutional alienation, we propose the Emancipatory Praxis and Care Sovereignty Paradigm (EPCSP). Grounded in critical pedagogy, feminist ethics, and systemic humanism, the EPCSP redefines nursing education and clinical practice. It establishes the ontological parity of care in relation to medical cure, equips practitioners with critical agency to dismantle institutional biopower, and provides the operational framework required to address complex chronicity, mitigate clinical iatrogenesis, and secure the disciplinary sovereignty of Care Science.