Patchwork diagnoses: The production of coherence, uncertainty, and manageable bodies

► This paper explores the link between diagnostic practices, patient awareness of the body and biopolitics, using a material semiotics methodology. ► Material semiotics prescribes an ultra-relativist empirical method, tracing how both humans and non-human entities produce intelligibility. ► Diagnosis can involve diagnostic practices that enact potentially conflicting accounts of the body, which reify, rather than eliminate, risk. ► In cardiology, such risk becomes the basis for self-surveillance and management of the body.