Visceral Prostheses

Margrit Shildrick is an important and original thinker whose work brilliantly brings together bioethics, feminist and queer theories, and critical disability studies. In Visceral Prostheses, Shildrick extends her thinking on posthuman embodiment into new territories, including the microbiome and microchimerism. Her analyses of various case studies of prostheses as both external and internal to corporeality takes feminist thought in new directions. * Lisa Diedrich, Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Stony Brook University, USA * A fascinating reconceptualization of the notion of prosthesis through the lens of critical disability studies that views a range of contemporary medical interventions involving live but non-self materials as visceral prostheses requiring a reconceptualization of the human body as open to creative expansion. To frame stem cell transplants, heart and liver transplants, or even fecal transplants as prosthetics is reframes our conventional understanding of prosthetics as remedying a lack. Instead, these are all seen as journeys into a new realm of problematized and extended selfhood. For those engaged in critical disability studies, this reconfiguration of prosthesis is exciting. And for scholars engaged in studying biomedical innovations, the foundational role played by critical disability studies in this analysis of new biomedical strategies promises to reorient medicine in productive ways. * Susan M. Squier, Brill Professor Emeritus of English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University, USA *