‘Don’t touch/push me!’ From disruption to intimacy in relations with one’s wheelchair: An analysis of relational modalities between persons and objects

Abstract

In this article, I re-examine the question of the relationships between humans and non-humans, between subjects and objects. I analyse how relationships shape and define these – both themselves and their assemblage. While I concur with work in STS that has shown the ongoing process through which the embodied self is performed, I shift my attention to the nature of the entities resulting from this process: from adjustment to entanglements, and to analysing the different ways of ‘being entangled’. Some of these produce intimacy, others do not. This analysis is based on ethnographic fieldwork on the use of wheelchairs. I identify five relational modalities between the person and their wheelchair: intrusional, instrumental, functional, internalised and bound. Each defines the particular status of both the wheelchair and the person, and the way they live together. The analysis allows me to discuss the way different relationships lead to different descriptions and perceptions of the wheelchair and of the person, and has implications for both the analysis of ‘prosthesis’ and of ‘disability’.