The Prosthetic
Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a
Biocultural Future
by Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra, Editors
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005
340 pp., illus. 32 b/w. Trade, $34.95
ISBN: 0-262-19530-5.
Reviewed by Rob Harle
Australia
harle@dodo.com.au
It is quite rare to have the privilege
of reviewing a book, the contents of which
represents scholarship at the highest
level and is also written extremely
well. This is one such book. Considering
the complexity of the subject matter,
both the contributors and the editors
are to be congratulated in providing the
reader with an interesting, pleasurable,
and enlightening experience. This book
is not concerned with current high-technologies
per se for extending ourselves
into a posthuman style technoculture.
The book tends to play down this rather
populist, ill-conceived concept. That
is, the notion of the majority of us being
uploaded to super bionic bodies, riddled
with nanobots, and leaving our biological,
evolutionary enheritance behind completely.
The Prosthetic Impulse, in part
due to this non-hysterical approach, is
like a breath of fresh air in the field
of cyborg, posthuman, post-biological
literature, much of which has become bogged
down in uncritical rehashed tropes and
over-enthusiastic hype for every new plastic
encased electronic prothesis that is put
in or added on to our bodies. This book
discusses and investigates prothesis
in its broadest sense and especially from
a contemporary cultural theory point of
viewrather than from a medical or
engineering perspective. Together with
contributions from cultural and disability
studies the book considers, ". . . prothesis
as both a literal, material and phenomenological
concern and a metaphorical, theoretical,
and philosophical one" (pp. 256-266).
The book contains 13 chapters that are
divided into two sections. The first:
Carnality: Between Phenomenology and
the Biocultural covers a enticingly
diverse range of topics, including Aimee
Mullins erotic glass legs, the prosthetics
of war, stumped genes, and disappearing
bugs (both literal and metaphoric). The
second section: Assembling: Internalization.
Externalization discusses prothesis
more as a cultural phenomenon through
the discourse of such disciplines as evolution,
psychoanalysis, and art. There is a smattering
of black and white illustrations relevant
to each contributors essay, an Introduction
by the editors, Marquard Smith and Joanne
Morra, and a List of Contributors.
This book will become essential reading
for all scholars and students involved
across the broad range of disciplines
that prosthetics covers. The main reason
for this is the depth of critical analysis
the book brings to the overall problem
of prosthetics. Almost all essays are
at pains to point out that "the prosthetic
impulse" involves far more complex issues
than simply, for example, constructing
an aid to regain mobility. Humans have
become, over hundreds of thousands of
years, a technological species and as
such our tools (extensions of our bodies)
can rightly be considered prostheses.
Quite a few of the essays in this volume
ground their discussion in a broad approach
to prosthetics throughout history. Simply
stated, virtually everything we have created,
through extending our very limited physical
bodies, to growing large brains, to externalising
our internal dialogues and visions comes
under the rubric of prosthetics. "The
prosthesis is not a mere extension of
the human body; it is the constitution
of this body qua human
(p. 7). As the editors point out, the
essays take an eclectic approach, ". .
. drawing on historical and theoretical
methodologies from gender studies and
philosophy, literary criticisms and visual
culture, psychoanalysis and deconstruction,
critical race studies, cybertheory, and
phenomenology" (ibid).
The more sophisticated and smaller our
computers become and the further we advance
in high-body technologies (such as gene
manipulation therapies), the more pressing
and urgent will become the need for a
broad multi-disciplined discussion and
critical investigation into "the prosthetic
impulse". This book will surely become
a respected reference work in this field.