When I was young….

1. When I was young…. This is the first page

2. “Gentlemen {sic}, we can rebuild him we have the technology…(yeah but how did it feel to be Steve Austen….!)” Gill Haddow

3. Human, Animal and Mechanical Implants – some early thoughts • In some way, if our body parts represent who we are then do changes or additions to the interiors of the body alter our sense of self? (human, animal and mechanical) 1) Specific transfers (human-human; animal-human; mechanical-human…) 2) Nature (organic vs inorganic; once living or inert) 3) Amount of material (difference between implanting cells, valves or organs; mechanical implants, joints or organs) 4) Socio-cultural history & agency attached to the replacement (Difference between shrapnel vs pacemaker; xenotransplant vs ICD?)

4. To have (to own) or to be (me)…. • Cartesian Dualism = association with the medical professional and especially organ txp. • Construction of self often stems from manipulation of living body (exercise, diet, cosmetic surgery…) • Phenomenology of the body – experiential basis of the lived body suggests that we both have and are a body • …the assumption that we have a coherent body or are a whole hides a lot of work. This is work someone has to do. You do not have, you are not, a body-that-hangs-together, naturally all by itself. Keeping yourself whole is one of the tasks of life. It is not a given but must be achieved, both beneath the skin and beyond, in practice (Hoeyer 2013 quoting Mol & Law)

6. 1st Heart Transplant • 1967 conducted by Christiaan Barnard • Female car-crash victim: 25-year-old Denise Darvall. • Louis Washansky who survived for 18 days. • ….for the first time one of the most important metaphors for personhood had been cut out, handled and cleaned, and then placed inside the body of another individual. In a few historic moments, the borders of one human body had been breached by the symbolic core of another” (Helman, C. (1991). Body Myths. London, Chatto and Windus.)

7. ….and recipient apprehension It started with “The Man With The Golden Hands,” which is how Louis Washkansky, chatting in Yiddish to his wife, describes Christiaan Barnard who performed the world's first heart transplant on Louis. He died a couple of weeks later ... At first Louis seemed to be doing wonderfully well. She was not allowed to see him until three days after the operation ... “I was very apprehensive because I thought his personality might have changed, not realising that it is the brain that makes the person. I was happy to see he was the same Louis” “A Knife To The Heart,” BBC1; 31. 4. 96 emphasis added.

8. Symbolism continues…

9. Organ Txp as a Transformative Experience • Interviews with 26 recipients • Most celebrated a re-birthday (with cake) • Mentioned acquiring (imaginary?) donor’s emotional, moral or physical characteristics. …”You might start peeing sitting down now that lady’s kidney!...So every day I assure them, nope, I’m still peeing standing up” (kidney recipient in Sharp 1995: 372) Sharp, L. (1995). Organ Transplantation as a Transformative Experience: Anthropological Insights into the Restructuring of the Self. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 9(3), 372 and Sharp, L. (2006). Strange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self California: University of California Press

10. Organ Restriction/Retention • A third refused to donate the eyes. • “Windows of the soul.” • Eyes give sight, but also in-sight. GH: And you didn’t place any restrictions? MR Johns: No. GH: Why not? MR Johns: Well what’s the use to her [mother]? That’s basically the idea behind it, as they say, “they can’t take it with you” so you might as well use them. I mean, it’s a body. It’s not really a person that you grew up with or anything like that. • Haddow, G. (2005). The Phenomenology of Death, Embodiment and Organ Transplantation. Sociol Health & Illness, 27(1), 92-113.

11. Impact on Recipients : Clint Hallam’s Hand

12. ‘Removing a face transplant?’Isabelle Dinoire

13. Xeno – ‘rejected’ then and now….

14. Identity Issues - Interviews Study: Parkinson Disease patients who had received fetal cells Diabetic patients who had received porcine islets “It feels like something big and meaty. And I am wondering what way it can change me as a person. Yes, not that I’ll develop a tail or anything like that—but that something will happen to me all the same” (Lundin 2002: 337). “Like small piglets …tiny pig cells that I have no control over and that can pump something animal like into my body.” (Eva in Lundin 2002: 337) “You have surely urinated out the cells a long time ago, and if not, we certainly don’t transplant souls in this hospital” (Eva’s doctor in Lundin 2002: 337 emphasis added). Lundin, S. (2002). Creating identity with biotechnology: The xenotransplanted body as the norm. Public Understanding of Science, 11(4), 333-345.

15. Problems with human-animal transfers • “The Ham Sandwich” Michael, M., & Brown, N. (2004). The meat of the matter: grasping and judging xenotransplantation. Public Understanding of Science, 13, 379-397. 2) “Pollution behaviour is the reaction which condemns any object or idea likely to confuse or contradict cherished classifications” (Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, 1966: 36). 3) The ‘wisdom of repugnance’ or the ‘YUK’ factor…. Freudian ideas of the Heimlich and Unheimlich (familiar and unfamiliar) where an entity can be both familiar yet strange – resulting in the paradox of the ‘uncanny’ so it can seem ‘strangely familiar’ yet still the familiar is strange.

16. An ICD – “stand clear” Prophylactic technology – disease onset or occurrence. Unpredictable - “Kicked in the chest by a horse” Anxiety, depression and avoidance of physical or sexual contact as well as effecting family relationships (Ahmad M., Bloomstein L., Roelke M., Bernstein A.D., & Parsonnet V., 2000; Dunbar S.B., Warner C.D., & Purcell J.A., 1993; Heller, Ormont, Lidagoster, Sciacca, & Steinberg, 1998; Luderitz B., Jung W., Deister A., & M., 1994); Affects quality of life, relationships with others, but identity (cf Mrs Washansky)?? Implantable Cardiac Defibrillators

17. Some quotes and random questions… • The contemporary need for naturalness can be better understood as a response to the fact that technology makes reality more and more makeable and, consequently, more contingent. Advancing technology changes everything that is, into our object of choice…[I]f human nature itself becomes makeable, it can no longer naively be laid down as the norm (Swierstra, Van Est, & Boenink, 2009). • Is what is natural the equivalence of what is normal? And what is normal (minus “ ….”). • Normalisation of natural – getting over the “yuk” to the “used to”?

18. To have, to be, to do…. • Not just boundaries of the body (although it is) dependent on what, where and why but acclimatisation to new boundaries of embodiment incorporating the new additions (inside and out)….by individuals and others… • What part will regulatory, economic and political decisions shape the redrawing of the parameters of embodiment?

19. Heads up to Shawn, Leah, Duncan McLaren, Astrid, Emma King, Alan Murray, Joyce, Laura Downey, Carrie Purcell for the mechanical…. • You! • …and Steve Austen..