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
© 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.
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For Isaac,
who keeps life sweet
CONTENTS
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
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