I Don't Want to See Myself as a Disabled Person

Continuous Positive Airway Pressure Devices and the Emergence of (Dis)ability as Subjectivity

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5337174
AutoresDana Zarhin (0000-0001-5299-4711, University of Haifa, autor de correspondencia)
Año2018
Volumen43
Número2
Páginas224-246
Fecha de publicación2018-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0162243917711006
OpenAlexW2618842089
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas65

This article explains how the most recommended treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, acts and interacts with users' bodies, sleep partners' bodies, and cultural discourses to produce emotions and practices that generate the subjectivity of a disabled or abled person. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with OSA patients, this article illustrates how introducing CPAP devices into patients' lives may disturb their sleep and breathing, diminish their independence, disfigure their appearance, and problematize intimacy with bed partners, thereby disrupting both the fleshy body and the culturally preferred image of a healthy, independent, and attractive individual. In response, many patients reject this treatment. (Dis)ability as a subjective state is shown to emerge from associations in a network composed of heterogeneous entities that have agency. That is, disabled subjectivity emerges when the device prevents individuals from accomplishing what they consider to be the essential and socially significant aspects of sleep and primarily its disembodied and interembodied aspects

Breathing · Continuous positive airway pressure · Epistemology · Obstructive sleep apnea · Psychiatry · Sociology · Subjectivity · Computer Science · Disability Rights and Representation · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Medicine · Migration and Exile Studies · Psychology · Social Psychology