Below is an excerpt form a text I found
"Understanding of “the new body”
Despite promising technology and the potential
growth of the market, we are still stuck with the
general imagery of prosthetics; uncanny and
unnatural. This may hinder possible exploration of
the patientʼs lifestyle, but mostly, it will not mitigate
the patientʼs fear of living as a handicapped
person. Why is this all happening?
1) A super human, robots, or in between
What we have seen in the media is the Six Six
Million Dollar Man accomplishing the mission
regardless his glamorous “handicaps”, however
this does not convey the image of RoboCop or
Terminator, which most of the actual prosthetic
legs look like. Unfortunately, this gap between the
fictional fantasy and reality is not getting smaller
with current technology.
Donald E. Hall argues that “the sight alone of the
whole form of the human body gives the subject
an imaginary mastery over his body... which
entirely structures his fantasy life.”4 What you see
is what you are, yet the problem here is, it is not
who you are. As technologies mimic human
performance with more accuracy, there are
growing chances of negative reactions5 from the
people who look at the artificial limbs, because of
not only the prosthetics being made out of carbon
fiber tubes, mechanical parts, or a skin toned
silicone cover, but also the conflict between two
ideas: the prosthetics are to replace the missing
form and the function”, yet we do not believe that
humanness can be replaced. Until this “social
negotiation”6 is settled, viewers will struggle with
intense emotions trying not to compromise the
selfhood over artificial body. Production of the
human-looking artificial limb could be a solution,
but the technology has not reached that level of
perfection yet."
The full text can be found here
No comments:
Post a Comment