The Bionic Body: Disability, Technology and Posthumanism

Abstract

This paper looks at the new field of the critical posthuman disability studies and its potential to provide theoretical framework for critical theory’s engagement with modern technologies. How the concept of the bionic body affects representation of the disabled in contemporary culture and, in turn, how representation of the disabled body affects the changing boundaries of what is and what isn’t considered ‘human.’ Historically, the human body, as represented and defined on stage and in art, has maintained a strictly defined visual integrity. Anything not shaped as ‘human’ was typically deemed monstrous (from hybrid mythological creatures to severely disabled ‘elephant men’). Simultaneously, the category of ‘human’ was used to circumscribe the boundaries of belonging and the categories of valuation: some groups, including the disabled were deemed ‘sub-human’ and designated to either be disposed of (as the carrier of ‘life unworthy of life’) or, if possible, to approximate the ‘human’ body. (Romanska 2019: 92-93). Until very recently, the goal of the prosthetics industry was to create limbs that would serve as visual stand-ins for missing limbs. Similarly, the technological capacities of prosthetic limbs were delineated by human capacities: the disabled were to be given as much ‘abilities’ as the non-disabled, but no more. However, this perception of what the disabled body can and should do has changed with technological progress: not only do the newest prosthetics often look as ‘unhuman’ as possible, but their capacities put into question the capacities and limits of the non-disabled body. All of these and other issues that have emerged in recent years at the crossroads of posthumanism, disability, and biomimicry have led to the development of posthuman disability studies, which tries to untangle and reconceptualize the ethical, legal and philosophical boundaries of human enhancement, species belonging, life and death, and human rights. The posthuman biomimicry, and the prosthetic aspects of digital and AI technologies presupposes a form of disabling of the human body: body without any connection to some type of machine is an inferior body.  In this context, understanding the historical dynamics, critical, philosophical, and ethical debates that have dominated disability studies can provide a framework to how we reconceptualize our posthuman, hybrid future in which our existence with the machines that redefine previous hierarchies is inevitable.