The Aesthetics of Prosthetics

Abstract

The history of limb prostheses and soft-tissue replacements has centered largely on discussions of mimesis: the attempt to make the body whole again and mitigate the “uncanny gaze” that might call attention to visible deviations from the normative human body. This mimetic impulse has dominated prosthetic design theory for the last two hundred years. Recent developments in robotics and medical device technology—aided by the history of art and design—have questioned the necessity of mimesis in artificial body parts by embracing the uncanny and exploring the social and philosophical precepts of what it means to be human. However, these fundamental questions of mimetic prostheses and body augmentation are not novel to modernity. Ancient and medieval societies grappled with the same issues when confronted with disability or nonnormative bodies, and they frequently rejected mimesis as a guiding principle for making the body whole again. Instead, they often pushed the boundaries of bodily agency through a keen awareness of materiality, designing prostheses that subverted the power of the uncanny gaze while embracing the uniqueness of the trans-, meta- or even posthuman body.