Making Up Excited Delirium

Authors

  • Seantel Ara Blythe Anaïs University of Victoria

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/cjs18502

Keywords:

Excited delirium, fatality inquiries, historical ontology, science and technology studies

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of a medical condition increasingly cited as a cause of death in fatality inquiries in Canada: Excited Delirium. Beyond the association between excited delirium and police use of electrical weapons known as Tasers, one common concern about the medical condition is whether or not it is “real.” Bypassing strictly realist or purely constructivist accounts, this article uses the conceptual language of historical ontology and science and technology studies to investigate how excited delirium is enacted within and between disparate medico-legal sites. Contributing to sociologies of death and dying and category formation, it attends to the textually-mediated practices of legal and medical experts in the United States and Canada that labour to produce excited delirium as a coherent medical condition rather than a “diagnosis of exclusion” reached upon autopsy.

Author Biography

Seantel Ara Blythe Anaïs, University of Victoria

Seantel Anaϊs is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria. Her current research program focuses on two areas: critical security studies and critical socio-legal studies. Two of her ongoing research projects address these concerns: the first involves an analysis of the materialities of sites of security by focusing on Cold War nuclear test and training ranges and their post 9/11 transformations; the second focuses on official fatality inquiries and the connection between medical expertise, police use-of-force, and emergent psychiatric and medical conditions.

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Published

2014-03-31

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 1 (2014)

Section

Articles

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