On Becoming a Cyborg: A Reflection on Articulation Work, Embodiment, Agency and Ableism

This article auto-ethnographically explores my experiences over the course of several years as I transitioned from able-bodied, to frequent cane user, who used a scooter to attend academic conferences, to a user of robotic telepresence. I discuss the different affordances that those technologies allow, issues of embodiment, articulation work, agency and ableism. The telepresence robot did not ‘fix me’ as is often implicated in the medical model of disability (Thomson in Extraordinary bodies: figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. Columbia University Press, NY, 1997), or augment my experience to make it more palatable to the able-bodied majority. Instead, it allowed me to make conscious trade-offs between the affordances of my corporeal body and an emergent cyborg-self in the context of a degenerative autoimmune disease. Thus, in writing this article, it is my intention to improve the social acceptance of the disabled cyborg person, and through improved design, I aim to afford disabled persons choices.