Janos Sugar on Mon, 10 Jan 2005 01:01:51 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> (fwd) Phantom Limb Phenomena @ Goldsmiths College |
http://www.artbrain.org/events.html Phantom Limb Phenomena: A Neurobiological Diagnosis With Aesthetic, Cultural and Philosophic Implications. Goldsmiths College, Saturday 15th, and Sunday 16th, January 2005. Warren Neidich, Department of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths College and Jules Davidoff, Department of Psychology, Goldsmiths College- Organizers. Since its original description in 1866 by the Neurologist S. Mitchell, the phantom limb phenomena have attracted many scholars across a broad spectrum of fields. The phenomena describe the condition found in many amputees in which sensation of the removed limb persists. As such, it has served as a metaphor for many ideas in other fields beyond the scope of neurobiology and neuropsychology including philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies, anthropology, literature, film and art. The purpose of this conference is three fold. First, it brings to the public's attention this fascinating and significant medical problem. Second, it not only looks objectively at the way that these phenomena have stimulated interest across such a wide variety of fields but also shows how successful it is as a inter-disciplinary signifier; an issue important for both art and science initiatives. Last, it hopes to open up possible new links between participating professionals who seldom have the opportunity to meet and discuss ideas at the limits of their own interests. It will be divided into four sections. They are in order of their occurrence: Day 1 1. The Cognitive Neuroscientific and Neuropsychological Implications of the Phantom Limb 2. The Phantom Limb as Cultural Probe Day 2 3. Virtual Aspects of the Phantom Limb 4: The Psychoanalytic and Philosophical Implications of the Phantom Limb /.../ Participant Abstracts * Nicholas J. Wade The Legacy of Phantom Limbs Evidence of loss of limbs, through disease, accident, warfare, or ritual has been commented upon since records began. With this legacy, it is remarkable that reports of phantom limbs entered so late into medical records. The experience of sensations in lost limbs provides an example of the ways in which novel phenomena can be interpreted. The first phase is a description of the phenomenon. Ambroise Par=E9 (1510-1590) initiated medical interest in this intriguing aspect of perception, partly because more of his patients survived the trauma of surgery. This is followed by attempts to incorporate it into the body of extant theory. Ren=E9 Descartes (1596-1650) integrated sensations in amputated limbs into his dualist theory of mind, and used the phenomenon to support the unity of the mind in comparison to the fragmented nature of the body. Finally, the phenomenon is accepted and utilized to gain more insights into the functioning of the senses. This was achieved in the eighteenth century by many physicians, but particularly by William Porterfield (ca. 1696-1771), who described and interpreted the feelings in his own missing leg; he considered that sensations projected to the missing leg were no more remarkable that colours projected to external objects. Thus, the principal features of phantom limbs were well known before Silas Weir Mitchell (1829-1914) gave them that name. Despite the puzzles they still pose, these phantoms have provided perception with some potent concepts. * Peter Brugger Phantom limbs and phantom bodies. Three stereotypes are apparent in popular conceptions of and current research in phantom limbs. First, there is a relative overemphasis of painful post-amputation phantoms. Second, phantom sensations are too unilaterally conceived as sensorimotor memories of a once functional limb. Third, there is a bias toward the investigation of phantoms of single body parts. My presentation will focus on non-painful, non-amputation phantom phenomena. Observed in people with a limb missing since birth, they defy an explanation in terms of perceptuo-motor memories. Targeting one half of the body ("hemiphantoms") or the entire body (as for instance in out-of-body experiences) they point to phantomization processes in their most general form. I try to delineate the scope of a proper "phantomology" (Stanislaw Lem) whose aim is to study the virtual reality of bodily awareness - from phantom limb to phantom body. * David McGonigle, Brain Imaging Research Center, Edinburgh University The Body in Question: Phantom Phenomena and the View from Within The phenomenon of the post-amputation 'phantom limb' was first described medically by the French military surgeon Par=E9 in the 16th Century, and continues to attract both public interest and empirical study in the 21st. In this talk I will outline a history of studies and observations of the 'phantom menace', focusing on the recent use of non-invasive neuroimaging techniques to provide unique descriptions of the neurobiological mechanisms underlying it. * Chris Frith, Awareness and automaticity in motor control: Is it my limb and who's moving it? Phantom limbs only seem mysterious if we think of the brain as a passive transmitter of knowledge from the physical world into the mind. But our brain is far from passive. It makes predictions about the world and then acts to see if these predictions are correct. In order to make these predictions our brain contains representations of where our limbs are now, where they will be after we make our intended movements and what these movements will feel like. But although our brain uses these representations we are not aware of all of them. Often what we are aware of is not the actual state of our body, but the predicted state. When the brain functions abnormally patients can experience limbs that are not their own, or limbs that are controlled by alien forces. I shall show how damage to the motor system can lead to all these strange experiences. * Andrew Patrizio Artistic Responses to the Phantom Limb I geared my initial research towards curating an exhibition on phantom limbs. A gallery nearly took it on, which included my proposal that no objects were exhibited. (We would not borrow work from artists such as Douglas Gordon, Caroline Rye, Alexa Wright, Claude Heath and Sophie Calle.) That non-moment has now gone, but my inquiry continues, particularly with the notion that the phantom limb phenomenon can still be a means to bring research and new ideas into the cultural arena. But am I, like others, (ab)using the phenomenon like many other intellectual and cultural activists? Phantom limbs are typical of many flowing and contested scientific discourses around at the moment, whose very elusiveness and ambiguity seems attractive in a multi-disciplinary kind of way. Rather than studying phantom limbs per se, I am currently asking - Does the exhibition as a format deal well with such subjects of an unsolved nature? Would my interest as a curator diminish if an explanatory model were accepted? How are artists working with the mystery, symbolism and science of phantom limbs, erecting a platform for creativity without dismantling the enigma? Ultimately, I see my participation in this event as offering a platform for an exhibition project to arise, in which a group of individuals, including artists, could explore the dynamic flow of research and ideas mediated around the concept of the phantom limb. * Janet Sternberg Phantom limb: the press of history on the nerve of the moment. Each of us has the condition, someone or something no longer with us who nonetheless continues -- for better and for worse -- to feel part of us.Elizabeth S. Cohen The phantom limb phenomenon presents numerous conundrums for artistic practice. It has been a ground of exploration for me in my visual work. I will be presenting this artwork and speaking to the issues that inform this work rooted in questions provoked by the phantom limb phenomenon. A person's relationship to his or her body is radically altered by the loss of a limb. This loss also affects his or her relationship to space and being in the world. Where does one's body end and the world begin? With the loss of one's leg, for example, phantom sensations can replace the ground as his or her body's registration in space. An extraordinary physical phenomenon, phantom limb phenomenon is a potent metaphor and has far-reaching social and political implications. Phantom limb phenomenon, while rooted in physiological conditions, allows for a transformation or reclamation. When certain amputees wear their prosthetics, the phantom sensations seem to merge with it, animating it in a way and reaching to include it within the map of the body. In this way, phantom limb phenomenon speaks to the regenerative possibility of incorporation. For me, this is connected to Mikhail Bakhtin's grotesque body of medieval times. "The grotesque body is not a closed complete unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits. Life is shown in its epitome of incompleteness. The unfinished and open body is not separated from the world by clearly defined boundaries, it is blended with the world, with other bodies, with objects, with animals". * Nicola Diamond Phantom Limb: Body and Language, Cultural Expression and Difference "The psycho-physiological equipment leaves a great variety of possibilities open and there is no more here than in the realm of instinct a human nature finally and immutably given" (Merleau-Ponty p189 1962) This paper will consider bodily expression as a form of culturally specific language. Bodily expression will be viewed as a form of language which brings emotion and meaning into being. There is scant 'evidence' of phantom limb phenomena and the like in cross-cultural work, the analysis will where possible refer to relevant example and shall address the formation of the body schema and social plasticity. * Stuart Brisley I should like to read from the novel Beyond Reason: Ordure which contains a section on body dismorphic Disorder and has at its theme the dream of Louise Bourgois`s amputated legs. * Vivian Sobchack Real Phantoms/Phantom Realities: On the Phenomenology of Bodily Imagination This paper is a phenomenological autobiography that explores the complexities and dynamics of living the experience of what is called a "phantom limb" but what is, in embodied fact, not a phantom at all. An above-the-knee amputee for nearly a dozen years, I have experienced a changing bodily morphology--its shape related to time, function, and language. The paper's thick description and interpretation of this variable experience is meant, on the one leg, to highlight the specific experience of someone living a "phantom limb" but, on the other leg, to suggest that this experience is common to all human embodiment, even as it is conceived of as unimpaired and "all there." If there are such phenomena as "phantom limbs," then we all have them in one form or another. In sum, our subjective bodily imagination and objective images of the body, while related, are never completely coincident and cannot be compared along a binary of presence and absence, phantom and real. * Andreas Weber Body experience as value experience. The phantom limb as paradigm for a biological meaning space. The phantom limb phenomenon as an experience of embodiment without a body continues to challenge biological and psychological theories of selfhood. In his influential theory of embodiment Merleau-Ponty viewed the phantom limb phenomenon as residue of the meaning space opened by interactions of body and world. Recent studies, however, have shown that phantom limb phenomena also occur with aplasia, where children are born with a limb lacking. These recent findings call for a primitive innate body schema, to some degree independent of the sensor/motor interaction with the Umwelt. In my approach I want to explore the phantom limb issue via the biosemiotic concept of an intermodal meaning space, or biological eidos. I will argue that there is a set of =93hard wired" categories embodied in the =93Bauplan" (von Uexk=FCll) of each organism, which is the ontogenetic goal, that a developing (and later an autopoetically self-realizing) organism is striving to. Deviations from achieving this goal are categorised via values, which are the primary units of perceptions. The phantom limb phenomenon, and more particular phantom pains, are hence instances of value embodied in functional units. They may classify as indications of =93needs" and hence as instances of re-embodied meaning. Also =93self" is already inscribed into the primary Bauplan of an organism, although during ontogeny (and later in any encounter with =93outisde") the exact boundaries of self have to be renegotiated in a reciprocal specification between needs of self-achievement and the outside impact. Perception is guided by value correlated to the realization of Eidos specified by the Bauplan. Several conclusions may be drawn from that: 1) Because perception is realized by means of value, self is not a model of body but rather a symbol of it. 2) As self functions symbolically, pain can be described as symbolic mediation of a disturbance in the maintenance of self. 3) The primary body schema is intramodal, specific qualities are projected after the primary value experience has arisen. 4) Conflicts between the innate Eidos and the realized body may occur. These are instances of the negotiation between =93self" and =93outside" in the meaning space. 5) As meaning arises symbolically from innate body schemata, from embodied experience and from reciprocal specification of that experience with the world, also the vice versa symbol process is necessary: meaning must be expressed via body. Value experiences have to be embodied to fully unfold their value load. This can be triggered experimentally, as e.g. in grievers taking habitual positions to lost persons. * Arnold H. Modell, The sense of agency and the illusion of self. If one places phantom limbs within the context of the self, the phenomenology of these phantoms confronts us with some very interesting ontological questions regarding mental causation and the relation of illusion to the real. The self and phantom limbs do not exist in the physical world as they are unconsciously generated constructions of the mind/brain. In this sense they are neuro-psychological illusions .The sense of ownership of the body and the sense of agency are also illusionary aspects of the self. Illusions should not be discredited as false beliefs, as they may be necessary for survival. The phantom limb is viewed as a miscarried attempt to re-establish a sense of agency and unity to the damaged body image and the self. * Eleanor Kaufman This paper examines the dualistic logic of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception, as it is elaborated through the opposition he makes between the phantom limb and anosognosia. The phantom limb--a sensation that an absent body part is still present--is distinguished from anosognosia--the sensation that a present body part is absent. Whereas the phantom limb falls into a seemingly straightforward representational logic, the experience of anosognosia is more complicated in that it is the representation of an absence. Yet for Merleau-Ponty, both phenomena remain trapped in a dualistic logic with no mediating term. I will suggest that anosognosia nevertheless approximates this mediating role and thus anticipates the breakdown of dualistic logic that we see in Merleau-Ponty's late work, in particular The Visible and the Invisible. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net