Research project The meaning and significance of prostheses: biotechnologies and the posthuman future of embodiment

The interface of bodies, biologies and technologies increasingly challenges not only normative embodiment, but also the understanding of what counts as human. My research opens up the significance of both inorganic and organic prostheses across disability, transplantation and at the cellular level in the microbiome and microchimerism.

In the postmodern era, the deployment of prostheses, is one major area which demonstrates how the usual markers of human being – bounded bodies, unique DNA, an enduring sense of self – can no longer be taken for granted. Existing studies usually explore prosthetic technologies in relation to their utilisation by people with disabilities, and by those undergoing organ transplantation, but research in the biological sciences indicates that each of us carries a variety of non-self, effectively prosthetic, cells from multiple sources. Where prostheses once simply marked rehabilitation to normative practice or appearance, they now indicate transformative possibilities that both limit and extend the nature of the embodied self. My research use recent continental philosophy and feminist theory to open up the significance of prostheses in revaluing transcorporeality as the very condition of life.

This research project has no members.

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