The Queer Erotics of Visceral Prosthetic Connections

In Visceral Prostheses posthumanist bioethicist and feminist biophilosopher Margrit Shildrick takes on the ambitious task to radically queer human embodiment and conventional modernist ideas about an autonomous embodied self through investigations of the multiple phenomenon of visceral prosthesis. With the concept of visceral prosthesis Shildrick addresses the inextricable and intimate entanglements of our bodies and biologies with technologies in contemporary modern societies. The aim is to show how these entanglements fundamentally challenge any humanist understanding of fixed and clear self/other boundaries. To pursue this aim Shildrick engages in empirical analyses and in-depth biophilosophical reflections on the ways in which the phenomenon of visceral prosthesis opens studies of disability, transplantation, and microbiology to radical new understandings. According to Shildrick, these are all areas that mobilize technoscience and biomedicine in ways that make them appropriate for investigating what she calls “erotics of connection” of prosthetic viscerality—connections that transgress “the tired old discourses...