Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismA Word to Stand OnIt begins as a grammatical function, adding letters to words, as in "besotted." A flourish, an extravagance. It becomes a surgical effect, completing deficient bodies, as in artificial legs or teeth. The strange destiny of prosthesis, from linguistic excess to anatomical simulacrum, from addition to substitute. Something of the double logic of the supplement is at work here, crossing words and bodies. [1] Crossing from words to bodies and back again. Language: the letter exceeds the word. Surgery: the operation completes the body. Prosthesis: the double movement of excess as deficiency. [2] Verbal addition as corporeal completion. Did Byron walk with a stutter? Notes1. See Jaques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1975). 2. David Wills examines the corporeal effects of this logic in Prosthesis (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995). Navigation |