Comment from the Field: Transforming Bodies: Prosthetics Seminar

Abstract

Organized by Dr. Ria Cheyne, Lecturer in Disability Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University, this seminar took place in November 2010. It was the first of three seminars in the series Transforming Bodies: New Directions in Medical Humanities and Cultural Disability, funded by the Wellcome Foundation to engage with key topics at the intersection of medical science, disability, and culture. Professor Stuart Murray from the University of Leeds opened the proceedings by underlining the multidisciplinary nature of all three seminars, which seek to address directly the dearth of conversations between medical practitioners and cultural theorists. Murray argued that an interdisciplinary engagement with the theme of prosthetics is crucial, particularly since a tension has grown up between cultural theorists' use of as part of a critical vocabulary, where the term may have status as merely an unreflective metaphor, and the fact that constitutes a material reality of twenty-first-century life. Moreover, the science of prosthetics offers a challenge to our notion of normality, since prosthetic interventions increasingly extend human embodiment into hyper-ability in addition to their original function of the body which is disabled by lack. Dr. Julie Anderson from the University of Kent gave the first presentation, Intimate Aids, Public Scrutiny: Ex-Servicemen, Artificial Limbs and Queen Mary. Using authentic photographic material from the World War I period, this paper examined the role of military hospitals as sites of spectacle, where patients and their prostheses were constructed as objects of curiosity. In establishments such as Roehampton Hospital, wounded servicemen's management of their prosthetic limbs was scrutinized not only by medical staff, but also by members of the public, and even members of the royal family, such as Queen Mary, who were invited to marvel at technical interventions in the men's damaged embodiment. Dr. Anderson pointed out that this prurient interest in rehabilitated bodies lay in juxtaposition to the private process of psychological and physical adjustment among the ex-servicemen. Dr. Anderson's fascinating presentation of the lived reality of adjusting to prosthesis use at a point now beyond living memory was to meet an absorbing counterpoint later in the day when Sarah Deans explored present-day attitudes to the rehabilitation process. In the same panel, online materials from the British Optical Association Museum's gallery of artificial eyes, spectacles, and contact lenses were presented by its curator, Neil Handley, who indicated the museum's commitment to opening this rich resource to wider professional and public audiences alike. In this sense, Handley's presentation proved an illustration of exactly the kind of dynamic encounter to which the seminar was committed. Handley outlined a history of ocular prosthetics, arguing that the development of artificial eyes was of principal benefit not to the prosthetic wearer, but to other people, because it was designed to deflect attention and prevent revulsion. Handley's paper showed how the museum also engages with the symbolic meaning of eyes: he argued that there has been a recent shift in the cultural value pertaining to some ocular prostheses with the entry into the commercial market of, for example, coloured contact lenses. Handley's point led to a lively post-panel discussion about the growing trend to use prostheses as body-enhancing supplements, rather than as solely a means of making good a loss or absence. The actress and activist Aimee Mullins was mentioned as an example of a prosthetic limb user who commissions legs to enhance her body as well as to replace missing parts. From the Centre for Biomedicine and Society, King's College London, Dr. Alex Faulkner gave a presentation entitled Policing Prosthetics: Conflicting Pressures on Orthopaedic Implants, which traced the development of prosthetic practice from its basis in hardware prosthetics to a field which now includes the potentiality of regenerative techniques using orthobiology and nanotechnology. …