ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Possessed, “Crippled”, Uncombustible: Bodies at the Limit of Technologies and Genders

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

A body that bears burning ashes, women and children mediums who communicate with the afterlife, and the first paraplegic athletes: ours is a diverse group of bodies that supposedly defy physical and mental limits. From the 18th to the 21st century, our collection of cases explores the epistemic, political, and cultural construction of embodied experiences that, in very different ways, appear to break boundaries.

We argue that paying attention to these extreme experiences opens new ways of thinking about corporeality, male and female subjectivities, truth/fraud, normativity, disability, and the relationships between mind/soul, bodies, and technology. Our collection moves away from existing literature on “science and spectacle” to focus on the body as a means of forging connections and co-constructing scientific knowledge, in which audiences, trainers, intermediaries and carers also participated, and in which gender assumptions play a key role in this dynamic between sensory experience and epistemic authority. On the one hand, we are interested in examining how the body and its limits become the subject of empirical experimentation. How did these individuals and their contemporaries perceive the functioning of the senses and the mind in these “extreme” situations? How did training supposedly improve or hinder these faculties? However, on the other hand, these intimate struggles became collective businesses for different reasons: We are also interested in exploring how these bodies are constructed, narrated and made intelligible through rituals, spectacles and alternative philosophical strands, or conversely, how they are questioned and accused of fraud. The papers invite us to reconsider how physical experience —felt, performed, disciplined, or imagined— has continually mediated the making of science.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Juan-Andrés León, Science Museum London

Individual Presentations

• The Incombustible Man - Elena Serrano, Institute of History of Science. Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

• Speaking Between Worlds: Translating Mediumistic Experience into Science - Mónica Balltondre, Institute of History of Science. Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

• Fighting Spinal Cord Injuries: Ludwig Guttmann (1899-1980) and Sport Therapy - Agustí Nieto-Galan, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Receptive mothers, enchanted children, and the parascientific mind - Alicia Puglionesi, Johns Hopkins University

Session Organizer

• Elena Serrano, Institute of History of Science. Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona