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Athetosis
9 min read
Also known as: athetoid movements · involuntary movements · writhing movements · worm-like movements · choreoathetosis · slow movement restlessness · dyskinesia · uncontrolled hand movements
Your Body Is Speaking
Your hands move without your willing it. Your fingers curl, stretch, writhe — slowly, fluidly, ceaselessly. These winding, serpentine movements often affect the hands and feet, sometimes the face, sometimes the entire body. Medically, athetosis is a movement disorder caused by damage to the basal ganglia — those brain regions responsible for the fine control of movement. Neurology describes what happens. But it does not answer the question that lies behind the symptom.
For what does a body show when it moves without its inhabitant being able to steer it? What is expressed when control over one's own movement — over one's own capacity for action — no longer rests with the self?
Athetosis is not a disorder. It is a becoming-visible.
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