“The Infurnal Thing”: Autonomy and Ability in Narratives of Disabling, Self-acting, and Weaponized Prostheses

Abstract

Focusing on the themes of agency and ability, this chapter examines the power play at work between person and prosthetic part in various nineteenth-century imaginaries. The chapter draws from mechanical and materialist understandings of the human body and attitudes to automatic machines to place literary and cultural representations within wider historical contexts pertaining to ability, autonomy, and wholeness. Exploring the extent to which artificial body parts were seen to enhance or assume the agency of the user, the chapter argues that a range of prosthesis narratives produce transgressive prosthesis users or false body parts that threaten the dominance of the physically whole. It investigates three key tropes: narratives of disabling, self-acting, and weaponized prostheses.