Our strange body (2014)

Contemporary medical technologies increase the possibilities of (re)shaping the human body. Interventions such as organ and tissue transplantation, and high-tech reconstructive surgery and prosthetics have evolved into standard treatments in current medicine and health care. Suspending the obvious question of whether these kinds of interventions are morally desirable or not, this book analyzes in what ways they put into question our sense of individual identity. Based on a careful if unconventional reading of various philosophers and theorists, Jenny Slatman develops the thesis that we call our own body (corps propre) always entails a strange dimension. Precisely because of this element of strangeness in our own body, we are capable of incorporating strangeness and adjusting to radical physical changes. Interspersed with the philosophical arguments in this study, Slatman discusses relevant and elucidating examples from popular culture, sports, art and literature, as well as from state-of-the-art medical and life sciences.