by Marquard Smith (Author), Joanne Morra (Author)

Paperback – 15 August 2007

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.