Deviant Bodies. Extended Bodies. When Motility Disability faces Enhancement in a Phenomenological Sociological Context
Sociological Theory
Final Report Abstract
The aim of the project was to analyze how “deviant” and “extended” bodies emerge and transform due to the design and use of exoskeletal devices from a phenomenologicalsociological perspective. The observed cases referred to motor impairment (spinal cord injury and stroke) and able persons working in industry and armed forces. To observe how these novel devices impact the experiential background of their users and how they further reformulate human bodies in terms of “objective bodies” empirical fieldwork in the form of multisited and focused ethnography, narrative and expert interviews was conducted in France, Germany and Switzerland. One of the most original aspects of the project relies in the empirical reinvestment of classical phenomenological categories describing the reality of human bodies in specific contexts, reinvention of “living bodies” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012; Gugutzer 2012; 2017) and “objective ones” (Husserl 1952) and their challenges in producing and maintaining “senses of agency” and “ownership”, categories defended by the enactivist orientation in contemporary phenomenology. Second, the facts observed during fieldwork revised the initial conception of the category “enhancement” with respect to the design and use of exoskeletal devices, and correlatively that of “corporeal deviance”. In all three observed cases, exoskeletons produce “extended” bodies that are correlated to temporary types of ability and phenomenological forms of “I can”. These phenomena individualize three specific “corporeal worlds”. Thus contrary to some visions correlating the development and use of exoskeletons to enhancement, what these devices currently offer are either possibilities of rehabilitation or partial assistance for specific motor patterns in specifically defined contexts, such as industry or military. Third, a common parameter that all three observed cases of rehabilitation, industry and armed forces share is that exoskeletons show the corporeal vulnerability of their users, a fact that challenges further on the category of “enhancement”, which the project intended to analyze.
Publications
- Exoskeletons, Rehabilitation and Bodily Capacities. Body & Society. Vol 27 (3) 28-57
Denisa Butnaru
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X211025600) - Simulating the Healthy Body: How Exoskeletal Devices Invent New Forms of Capability in Rehabilitative Environment. Conference Proceedings of the STS Conference Graz 2021. Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies. Verlag der TU Graz 2021, 89-108
Butnaru, Denisa
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3217/978-3-85125-855-4-05) - Temporarily Abled: How Exoskeleton Experience Reinvents Corporeality in Spinal Cord Injury and Cerebrovascular Accidents. NanoEthics. Special Issue Manufacturing Life
Sahinol M. and Compagna D. (Eds.)
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-021-00402-x) - Exoskeletal Devices and the Body: Deviant Bodies, Extended Bodies. 2023, 304 S.
Denisa Butnaru
(See online at https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003398240)
