prosthesis

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is a boundary marker between that which is human and that which is cultural. It points to the incompatibilities of nature/culture, body/machine, normal/abnormal, and other delimiting dualisms.

For Freud, prosthesis presents the boundary between that which is human and that which is cultural,' suggesting that the 'troubles' about which Freud writes call attention to the incompatibilities of nature/culture, body/machine, normal/abnormal, and other delimiting dualisms (Soby 2005, 6)

is an extension of ourselves. The wheel as an extension of the foot, clothing as an extension of the skin, and electric technology as an extension of the central nervous system.

In Marshall McLuhan's seminal text, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, he uses the concept of prosthesis to explain media's function as 'any extension of ourselves' (7). Stressing the physicality of media extensions, McLuhan describes the wheel as an extension of the foot, clothing as an extension of the skin, and electric technology as an extension of the central nervous system.

is an extension of the body (via media such as a t.V. Or a set of bike wheels) which, though extending our perception, also amputates it by numbing it or blocking the ability to feel intensely with the body.

Yet as media extends, it also amputates. Although electric technology extends the central nervous system, 'such amplification is bearable by the nervous system only through numbness or blocking of perception' (McLuhan 43). Thus McLuhan asserts that a process he terms 'autoamputation' accompanies any extension of media.

is contra to merleau-ponty who argues that is an extension of our body, instead a full-on replacement for our capacity to see, stripping the experience from the body.

But while Merleau-Ponty does not hesitate to explore the use of prosthetics (canes, eye glasses) as extensions of our sensory organs, in contrast, Virilio posits that prosthetic devices, especially modern optical devices (for example, see the discussion of military sighting technology below), replace versus extend our capacity to see. He argues that as we increasingly rely on vision machines, we no longer regularly practise bodily techniques (phenomenological means of apprehension) (Virilio, 1994).

is the essence of technology. With all his tools, man improves his own organs. Ships, aeroplanes, telescopes and cameras, gramophones and telephones all these afford man the omnipotence and omniscience he attributes to his Gods.

For Freud, prosthesis is the essence of technology. 'With all his tools,' he writes in Civilisation and its Discontents, 'man improves his own organs, both motor and sensory, or clears away the barriers to their functioning.' Ships, aeroplanes, telescopes and cameras, gramophones and telephones all these afford man the omnipotence and omniscience he attributes to his gods, thus making him 'ein Prothesengott', a kind of god with artificial limbs, a prosthetic god. 'When he puts on all his aux iliary organs he is truly magnificent,' Freud writes, 'but those organs have not grown onto him and they still give him much trouble at times.' Man's technological appendages both enhance and diminish him. It's what Hal Foster, in his book Prosthetic Gods, calls 'the double logic of the prosthesis': an addition that threatens, or marks, a subtraction.

prosthesis, n.One-Liners

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