Materializing Datafied Body Doubles: Insulin Pumps, Blood Glucose Testing, and the Production of Usable Bodies

Abstract

The network of devices involved in insulin pump treatment reads and quantifies the physiological processes of Type 1 Diabetes as it performs life-sustaining functions inside and upon users’ bodies. Together, these devices gather that information to produce what I call Datafied Body Doubles: numerical stand-ins for the body that recreate them as both usable and controllable for pump users and their physicians. By establishing and normalizing a system of quantification through blood glucose testing and temporally mapping body-readings into data collections, these Datafied Body Doubles fundamentally alter the conceptual and material experience of living with Diabetes. As medically-compelled users, people with Type 1 Diabetes participate in their own datafication through their continued use of those devices—a choice which is not much of a choice at all—but their bodies are re-created and used to drive their participation in those very techno-medicalized treatments nevertheless.