Product Description

Where does the body end? This book explores the material and metaphorical borderline between flesh and its accompanying technologies.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.The eclectic approach taken by "The Prosthetic Impulse" draws on disciplines ranging from gender studies, philosophy, and visual culture to psychoanalysis, cybertheory, and phenomenology. 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."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #481519 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 312 pages

Review
"Intriguing and delightful.... Together, these essays offer real insight into what it means to be human in a pervasively mechanical world." - The Futurist"

About the Author
Marquard Smith is Course Director of the Masters Programme 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.