Managing Diabetes. Jeffrey A. Bennett

      

      MANAGING DIABETES

      BIOPOLITICS: MEDICINE, TECHNOSCIENCE, AND HEALTH IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SERIES

      General Editors: Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore

      Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility

      Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore

      Against Health: How Health Became the New Morality

      Edited by Jonathan M. Metzl and Anna Kirkland

      Is Breast Best? Taking on the Breastfeeding Experts and the New High Stakes of Motherhood

      Joan B. Wolf

      Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction

      Thomas Lemke

      The Material Gene: Gender, Race, and Heredity after the Human Genome Project

      Kelly E. Happe

      Cloning Wild Life: Zoos, Captivity, and the Future of Endangered Animals

      Carrie Friese

      Eating Drugs: Psychopharmaceutical Pluralism in India

      Stefan Ecks

      Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology

      Cassandra S. Crawford

      Heart-Sick: The Politics of Risk, Inequality, and Heart Disease

      Janet K. Shim

      Plucked: A History of Hair Removal

      Rebecca M. Herzig

      Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis

      Georgiann Davis

      Men at Risk: Masculinity, Heterosexuality, and HIV Prevention

      Shari L. Dworkin

      To Fix or To Heal: Patient Care, Public Health, and the Limits of Biomedicine

      Edited by Joseph E. Davis and Ana Marta González

      Mattering: Feminism, Science, and Materialism

      Edited by Victoria Pitts-Taylor

      Are Racists Crazy? How Prejudice, Racism, and Antisemitism Became Markers of Insanity

      Sander L. Gilman and James M. Thomas

      Contraceptive Risk: The FDA, Depo-Provera, and the Politics of Experimental Medicine

      William Green

      Personalized Medicine: Empowered Patients in the 21st Century

      Barbara Prainsack

      Biocitizenship: On Bodies, Belonging, and the Politics of Life

      Edited by Kelly E. Happe, Jenell Johnson, and Marina Levina

      Toxic Shock: A Social History

      Sharra L. Vostral

      Managing Diabetes: The Cultural Politics of Disease

      Jeffrey A. Bennett

      Managing Diabetes

      The Cultural Politics of Disease

      Jeffrey A. Bennett

      NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

      New York

      NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

      New York

       www.nyupress.org

      © 2019 by New York University

      All rights reserved

      References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Bennett, Jeffrey A. (Jeffrey Allen), 1974– author.

      Title: Managing diabetes : the cultural politics of disease / Jeffrey A. Bennett.

      Description: New York : New York University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Identifiers: LCCN 2018041801| ISBN 9781479830435 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781479835287 (pb : alk. paper)

      Subjects: LCSH: Diabetes—Treatment.

      Classification: LCC RC660 .B386 2019 | DDC 616.4/62—dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041801

      New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Also available as an ebook

      For Isaac,

      who keeps life sweet

      CONTENTS

       1. Critical Conditions

       2. “HIV Is the New Diabetes”: Analogies of Apathy

       3. Lethal Premonitions: Fatalism and Advocacy

       4. Containing Sotomayor: Narratives of Personal Restraint

       5. Troubled Interventions: “Epidemic” Logic and Institutional Oversight

       6. Cyborg Dreams

       Acknowledgments

       Notes

       Index

       About the Author

      1

      Critical Conditions

      Besides, I think that the cicadas, who are singing and carrying on conversations with one another in the heat of the day above our heads, are also watching us. And if they saw the two of us avoiding conversation at midday like most people, diverted by their song and, sluggish of mind, nodding off, they would have every right to laugh at us, convinced that a pair of slaves had come to their resting place to sleep like sheep gathering around the spring in the afternoon. But if they see us in conversation, steadfastly navigating around them as if they were Sirens, they will be very pleased and immediately give us the gift from the gods they are able to give to mortals.

      —Socrates, Plato’s Phaedrus, 259A–259E

      As soon as you awake, the familiar pressure is there: Should you write or not? Yes, no, maybe. You heave your body out of bed, prick your finger, and squeeze a drop of blood onto the glucose meter. You shoot insulin into your stomach, eat, go for a walk. You concentrate on your feet touching the ground, on the blue stretch of sky, the roar of crashing waves, the pungent odor of guano. You listen