Addenda, Phenomenology, Embodiment: Cyborgs and Disability Performance

The cyborg is a person with addenda — something strange, foreign, other is added to the basic ingredients which denote ‘human’. Cyborgs abound in popular culture, myth and legends, and in contemporary culture, the cyborg has a greater presence than ever. Many of the cyborgs of contemporary cinema, digital storytelling and visual culture are disabled people, enhanced and supplemented by technology. Some cyborg discourses show a fascination with the sensual and kinaesthetic experience of ‘being-added-to’, being different. In particular, some of these discourses which find expression in popular visual material focus on lived experience and the corporealisation of the cyborg- on the performance aspects of visual media. I want to argue that the sensationalised ‘addenda’ of disabled people — such as high-tech prostheses, and also wheelchairs and crutches — can have a dual function in contemporary visual work. They not only act as semiotic markers of difference, but also as seductive performance invitations into a different form of embodiment.