REVIEW, “Hacking the Feminist Body”

This paper is an interesting autobiographical description of the author’s relation to the artefacts used to control blood sugar in Type-1 Diabetes and the evolution of her approach to managing their complex, often proprietary technologies and bodily interfaces. The idea of using one’s body as a proxy for a feminist understanding of hacking is quite interesting and could be very productive. Still, I believe the manuscript is quite not ready to be considered for publication and has several major weaknesses. It could be improved but in my opinion that would require a deep commitment to re-thinking some key areas.

I have a number of major concerns/suggestions:

First, the author claims she is “hacking” diabetes but does not make entirely clear in which sense an act of disobedience such as slightly prolonging the life of some disposable would be related to hacking. The risk here is that adopting such a broad definition of hacking (any, even minimal, transgression to the prescribed use of a technology?) would empty the very concept and make it unproductive. Without a deep exploration of what hacking means in this context, and with just a quick discussion of what “feminist” means, the paper cannot convey a robust contribution to the special issue. Perhaps this could be addressed not only in the body of the paper, but also in the more normative, political conclusions.

Second, honestly some of the stories that compose this paper, for example the problems experienced while having dinner with colleagues, sound like common issues that most people using an insulin pump must routinely experience. While these vignettes are per se very interesting and help situate the paper in the everyday life of a diabetes patient, as well in the messy world of technologies, bodies, and expertise, the author does not position all of them as part of the core argument, i.e. feminist hacking.

A third major problem is that the author seems to underestimate (or ignore) that diabetes actually seems to be one of the most interesting conditions in terms of open
source or community-driven approaches to the technologies used to control blood sugar and deliver insulin: several such technologies are currently in use or been developed. Some examples include the Nightscout community, Tidepool, Diabetik, Open Source Diabetes, etc. While the author seems to assume that open source medical devices are not really developed or available, she should acknowledge that lots of OS options (more or less viable and functional, I suppose) are available to a North-american middle-class person. Obviously this does not mean she should use them! Indeed, the author refers to hacking as the re-purpose of proprietary, commercial technologies, but ignoring them makes the overall argument very weak. Please note I am not an expert in such technologies, but a quick Internet search would have exposed the author to a number of recognized and currently utilized open source
approaches to insulin delivery etc…

On the other hand, it is not entirely clear how intellectual property rights came to play a role in the author’s relation to the used devices. They are proprietary, but how did she disobey to IPRs in this story? Again, a more straightforward mention of the problem would make the paper much stronger.

Finally, in the first part of the paper the author introduces several bibliographical references, for example on materiality, ontology, conflict, agonism, etc. Not being a full, research-based paper, I was left wondering whether part of those references might be omitted, especially when they are used to refer to broad concepts (i.e. friction) without explaining the role of such concepts within the overall argument. This could be coupled with an inclusion of some more specific literature on hacking, open source, or patient activism – just an example of a work that encompasses several of those approaches and might be useful for this paper: Michelle Murphy, Seizing the Means of Reproduction (2012). The discussion of relevant literature on the gendered character of hacking, and feminist approaches to medical technologies would be more important than part of the present bibliography. Also, a number of “empirical” statements are not supported by any literature review or mention.

Some minor notes:

It is a bit difficult to understand the complex interplay among the different devices/companies (FitBit, Dexcom and Medtronic). The author should add a few extra lines to explain more clearly their functioning to the non-expert reader. I had some issues with the idea that “the interface between the body and the device is a living surface”. Isn’t that living surface part of the body? What is an interface here? This concept could be nuanced. This might be a matter of personal sensibility, but I found the claim that the author is creating anti-capitalist practices rather exaggerated. Stating that prolonging the life of some devices is an anti-capitalist practice that reclaims the body from the logics of capitalism is a bold claim: the author should either discuss in depth how this might be the case, or be humbler and remove those parts.

The manuscript is rather sloppy and would need a deep round of editing to get rid of all the typos and make the paper more readable.

Finally, I must stress it’s “linguine alle vongole” and not “a le vongole” 🙂

1. Is the subject matter relevant?

Yes, I think so.

2. Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?

I’m not so familiar with the subject matter of this article, in this sense I can’t evaluate if there are some essential citations omitted. Nevertheless I found very interesting the subject and the treatment.

3. Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?

The author is talking about her personal experience, and this seems to me acceptable and is appreciated.

4. Is the article well written?

Yes

5. Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?

In my opinion is good.