Resilient Cyborgs
Living and Dying with Pacemakers and Defibrillators
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Springer Verlag, Singapore
Published:3rd Apr '21
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£74.99(9789811525285)
This book examines how pacemakers and defibrillators participate in transforming life and death in high-tech societies. In both popular and medical accounts, these internal devices are often portrayed as almost magical technologies. Once implanted in bodies, they do not require any ‘user’ agency. In this unique and timely book, Nelly Oudshoorn argues that any discourse or policy assuming a passive role for people living with these implants silences the fact that keeping cyborg bodies alive involves their active engagement. Pacemakers and defibrillators not only act as potentially life-saving technologies, but simultaneously transform the fragility of bodies by introducing new vulnerabilities. Oudshoorn offers a fascinating examination of what it takes to become a resilient cyborg, and in the process develops a valuable new sociology of creating ‘resilient’ cyborgs.
“Resilient Cyborgs is an exquisitely observed account of an important topic, and deserves a wide readership. In feminist science and technology studies and related fields, we have much to learn from the wired heart cyborgs living among us.” (Anne Pollock, Catalyst, catalystjournal.org, April, 2021)
“I found Resilient Cyborgs to be an excellent discussion of the shared work required in order to live (and die) with a pacemaker or defibrillator. Oudshoorn is particularly successful in placing patient experience and expertise front and centre, without ever under-( or over-) stating the role of medics, technicians, friends and family, society and politics. As a young, female wired heart cyborg myself … encountered many new-to-me aspects of life with a cardiac device.” (Laura Donald, Sociology of Health & Illness, April 8, 2021)
“This book can act as a thought-provoking work for different scholars in getting closer to a complex theme. … Oudshoorn’s analysis on a more solid basis. The intersectional approach may provide an important heuristic for grasping the multiple differences on building resilience.” (Veronica Moretti, TECNOSCIENZA, Vol. 11 (2), 2020)
ISBN: 9789811525315
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
350 pages
1st ed. 2020