Differential Pace: Technology and Inequality in the Making of Episodic Disability

Abstract

This article reworks disability frameworks to account for the sustained denial of recognition and care experienced by many episodically disabled people. This reworking is grounded in an ethnographic examination of how people obtain an epilepsy diagnosis in the Midwestern United States. Diagnosis can be straightforward for people whose seizures are witnessed by other people or medical technologies and people who can access specialty care. Others remain undiagnosed for long periods because first-line medical practitioners may not recognize epilepsy due to a confluence of social and technical factors. The article proposes the notion of differential pace to account for temporal relations in the construction and experience of episodic disability. Unpacking the interaction between time, technology, and inequality in patient experience, the article advances disability theory and makes critical contributions to debates in disability studies, the medical humanities, and medical anthropology.