research question method(ology) and medicine embodiment · 2019-12-25 · embodied rhetorics:...

C ybernetic Metabolism, (Dis)Embodiment, and the Freedom to MoveDeveloping a Framework for Analyzing Diabetes Wearables and their Associated Rhetorics

Jeremy Rosselot-Merritt University of Minnesota Department of Writing Studies

Rhetoric of Healthand Medicine Embodiment

Agency Disability Studies

Method(ology)Research QuestionIn what ways can theoretical perspectives beused to contextualize the lived experiencesof people who use diabetes wearables andthe rhetorics that attend those experiences?

The research consists of a review andsynthesis of relevant theories leading to ahybridized framework for studyingdiabetes wearables, such as insulinpumps and continuous glucose monitors(CGMs), and associated rhetorics.

Segal (2005) provides a frameworkfor the rhetorical analysis of healthand medicine. Building onrhetorical theory, Segal proposes amodel grounded in kairos forunderstanding medicine andmedical texts; she provides insightinto the rhetorical nature of amedical condition.

Diabetes is a social, technological, and rhetorical disease. Social processes enable technological modalitiesto prolong the lives of people with diabetes. Social exchanges in person and in diabetes onlinecommunities (Arduser, 2017) allow people with diabetes to share experiences and build complexidentities in a world where metabolic privilege is the default—in the workplace, in the academy, ininterpersonal dynamics. The (dis)embodied technologies of diabetes wearables create a basis forconstructing shared identities and enhancing agency. They give people with diabetes the freedom tomove about the world in the bodies they inhabit and the freedom to move others to rethink diabetes.They compel new directions in the rhetoric of diabetes.

Meloncon (201 ) states that“[w]hen embodiment incorporatestechnology, the body and its actionsbecome technologically embodied”(p. 68). Diabetes is an embodied(and often invisible) condition, yetits modalities of treatment, bycontrast, are often disembodied.

Straehle (2016) contrasts healthagency with vulnerability,suggesting an inverse relationshipbetween the two. The person withdiabetes is inherently vulnerable—to judgment, to a host of medicaland emotional complications, andwithout treatment to their ownmortality. Through (dis)embodiedtechnologies comes agency.

Wilson and Lewiecki-Wilson (2001)discuss the intersection of embodiedrhetorics and disability studies. Theywrite of a need to expand the“definition of disability as exclusionand lack of agency” (p. 4) to one thatis broad, allowing the “disabilitycommunity to debate, contest, andchange their preferred definitions ofdisability” (p. 10). People withdiabetes form such definitionsthrough complex social andintellectual dialogues.

Cited sources: Arduser, L. (2017). Living chronic: Agency and expertise in the rhetoric of diabetes. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Meloncon, L. K. (2012). Toward a theoryof technological embodiment. In L.K. Meloncon (Ed.), Rhetorical accessability: At the intersection of technical communication and disabiity studies. (pp. 67-81).Amityville, NY:Baywood. Segal, J. (2005). Health and the rhetoric of medicine. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Straehle, C. (2016). Vulnerability, Health Agency and Capability toHealth. Bioethics, 30(1), 34-40. Wilson, J. C., & Lewiecki-Wilson, C. (2001). Embodied rhetorics: Disability in language and culture. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Prismatic body image from openclipart.org (search term: body). Insulin pump image from wikimedia.org (search term: insulin pump; see h�ps://goo.gl/couWW7).

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