Getting Out of the Plaster Room

• In Event: Replaceable Parts: Prosthetic Technologies in Biomedicine

Abstract

Vivian Sobchack reminds us that behind metaphorical ideas of prosthetics as extensions of capability designed to move normative individuals to yet new levels of ability, there is the entirely literal prosthetic. The printAbility project is a sociotechnical intervention seeking to improve the low end of those entirely literal prosthetics for users who might otherwise have difficulty accessing the mobility enabled by such literal prosthetics. In developing the project, we have engaged with professional prosthetists, watching as they attempt to navigate a digitally-mediated version of what has historically been a hands-on process. Our presentation details some of the slippages and persistences we have noticed in conducting field work with prosthetists in both Canada and Uganda. In particular, we look at the significance of embodied action in the process of building a custom prosthetic socket. The movements of prosthetists as they attempt to replicate their material practice, the recourse to their own bodies, and the moments when they run up against the limitations of screen-based media: all of these are fodder for enquiry into the persistence of embodied practice in the practictioners who build prosthetics.

Authors

• ginger "all-lower-case" coons, University of Toronto

• Matthew Ratto, University of Toronto