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Prosthesis -- pointing to an addition, replacement,
extension, enhancement -- has become something of an all-purpose
metaphor for the interactions of body and technology. Concerned
with cybernetics, transplant technology, artificial intelligence,
and virtual reality, among other cultural and scientific
developments, "the prosthetic" conjures up a posthuman
condition. In response to this, the thirteen original essays
in The Prosthetic Impulse reassert the phenomenological,
material, and embodied nature of prosthesis without dismissing
its metaphorical potential. They examine the historical
and conceptual edge between the human and the posthuman
-- between flesh and its accompanying technologies. Rather
than tracking the transformation of one into the other,
their essays address this borderline instead, and the delicate
dialectical situation in which it places us. Concentrating
on this edge, the collection demonstrates how the human
has been technologized and technology humanized.
The eclectic approach taken by The Prosthetic
Impulse draws on disciplines ranging from gender studies,
philosophy, and visual culture to psychoanalysis, cybertheory,
and phenomenology. The first section, "Carnality: Between
Phenomenology and the Biocultural" concentrates on
the organic, describing a body that, by its very materiality,
is always and already prosthetic. The second section, "Assembling:
Internalization, Externalization," considers the technological
qualities and peculiarities of prosthesis, raising questions
about the ways in which film, photography, AI, drawing,
and literature -- representation itself -- can be situated
within the framework of a prosthetic discourse. Taken together,
the essays suggest that prosthesis is material as well as
metaphorical. "It is just a matter of pondering where
the inelegant edges lie," the editors write, "and
living them most wonderfully."
Marquard Smith is Course Director of
the MA in Art History and Senior Lecturer in Visual Culture
in the School of Art and Design History, Kingston University,
London. He is editor-in-chief of the journal of visual
culture. Joanne Morra is Senior Lecturer in Historical
and Theoretical Studies at Central Saint Martins College
of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. She is
principal editor of the journal of visual culture.
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