If there is one system that epitomizes Haraway’s description of the informatics of domination as “scary new networks,” it is the US private health care system—and in particular the precarious position that disability occupies within a system that is defined by the mandate of calculating “costs of lowering constraints.” In order to suggest how photographic images can help us think about the place of disability within the informatics of domination, the essay focuses on the depiction of the white medical gloves worn by police: a nonorganic barrier ostensibly used to protect the health of the police and the activist. The gloves remedicalize the body of the activist. Disability activism emerges from a moment of circumventing one’s submission to medical sovereignty. It is an attempt to rescript the atomizing force of disease into one of political solidarity, in which one’s body becomes the possible grounds for performative protest.
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