dysconscious

English

Etymology

From dys- +‎ conscious. Coined by academic Joyce Elaine King in 1991 (see quotation).

Adjective

dysconscious (comparative more dysconscious, superlative most dysconscious)

1. (chiefly sociology) Relating to or involving dysconsciousness ("a state of impaired or distorted consciousness or awareness, especially in regards to social issues").
   • 1991 Spring, Joyce E[laine] King, “Dysconscious Racism: Ideology, Identity, and the Miseducation of Teachers”, in Journal of Negro Education, volume 60, number 2, Washington, D.C.: Howard University, →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC, pages 133–134:

     The findings presented herein will show what these beliefs and responses have to do with what I call "dysconscious racism" to denote the limited and distorted understandings my students have about inequity and cultural diversity—understandings that make it difficult for them them to act in favor of truly equitable edutcation. This article presents a qualitative analysis of dysconscious racism as reflected in the responses of my teacher education students to an open-ended question I posed at the beginning of one of my classes during the fall 1986 academic quarter to assess student knowledge and understanding of social inequity.

   • 2003, Eugenie Nicole Gertz, Dysconscious audism and critical deaf studies: Deaf Crit's analysis of unconscious internalization of hegemony within the deaf community (thesis), Los Angeles, C.A.: University of California, Los Angeles:

     Directly impacting Deaf consciousness, dysconscious audism is a form of audism by means of an implicit acceptance of the dominant hearing norms and privileges. Dysconscious audism hampers to varying degrees the Deaf individual's consciousness of Deaf identity. The effect of dysconscious audism on Deaf identity is the weakening, if not complete lack, of a Deaf consciousness.

   • 2011, Ivan Osorio, Hitten P. Zaveri, Mark G. Frei, Susan Arthurs, editors, Epilepsy: The Intersection of Neurosciences, Biology, Mathematics, Engineering and Physics, Boca Raton, F.L., London, New York, N.Y.: CRC Press, →ISBN, page 16:

     Once the seizure activity spreads to involve areas of the brain that alter consciousness, the patient becomes unaware of their behaviors and does not encode the activity they are involved in. They are thus amnestic for this period, unable to recall what happened to them. This alteration of consciousness, usually termed loss of awareness or a dysconscious state, is different from unconsciousness.

Related terms

• dysconsciousness