Exoskeletal Devices and the Body: Deviant Bodies, Extended Bodies (Routledge Advances in Sociology) [1 ed.] 1032503769, 9781032503769

Citation preview

Exoskeletal Devices and the Body

This book enquires from a sociological perspective into contemporary corporeal transformations brought about by exoskeletal devices. Challenging material boundaries of human bodies, their capacities, (in)abilities and skills, exoskeletal devices question social norms of corporeal “deviance” and “extension.” Through multi-sited ethnography, interviews and analyses of contemporary science and technology studies (STS), sociological literature and current approaches from the phenomenology of the body, this book shows how exoskeletons contribute to forging three contemporary “corporeal worlds”: impairment, ability and above-average ability. The text questions deeply held ideas about enhancement and augmentation, corporeal deviance and “normality,” in the three studied fields of rehabilitation, industry and the armed forces. It will appeal to scholars and advanced students across the social sciences and humanities, including from sociology, philosophy, body studies, and science and technology studies. Denisa Butnaru is Deputy Professor of General and Cultural Sociology in the Department of History, Sociology, Empirical Educational Research and Sport Science, University of Konstanz, Germany. Her areas of research are socioanthropology of the body and technology, contemporary developments in phenomenology of the body, and qualitative methodology in the social sciences.

Routledge Advances in Sociology

356 Social Cohesion in European Societies Conceptualising and Assessing Togetherness Bujar Aruqaj 357 Governing Families Problematising Technologies in Social Welfare and Criminal Justice Rosalind Edwards and Pamela Ugwudike 358 Class, Trauma, Identity Psychosocial Encounters Giorgos Bithymitris 359 Protest in Late Modern Societies Dynamics, Forms, Futures Edited by Monika Banaś and Ruslan Saduov 360 Virtually Lost Young Americans in the Digital Technocracy Garry Robson 361 Will Schooling Ever Change? School Culture, Distance Learning and the COVID-19 Pandemic Piotr Mikiewicz and Marta Jurczak-Morris 362 Exoskeletal Devices and the Body Deviant Bodies, Extended Bodies Denisa Butnaru For more information about this series, please visit: https://www​.routledge​.com​/Routledge​-Advances​ -in​-Sociology​/book​-series​/SE0511

Exoskeletal Devices and the Body

Deviant Bodies, Extended Bodies

Denisa Butnaru

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Denisa Butnaru The right of Denisa Butnaru to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-50376-9 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-50377-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-39824-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240 Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

For all the people who helped me accomplish this study. Especially for Petre, Silvia and Doina Barbu

Contents

List of Figures x Acknowledgments xi

1 Introduction: From science fictions to science facts

1

Exoskeletal devices and their societal challenges  1 What exoskeletons are and what they are not  4 Looking at corporeal deviance through corporeal extension: exoskeletons and their contexts  6 Sociological worlds of movement  7 Why phenomenology still matters: its contemporary relevance for a sociological research on exoskeletons  9 Demystifying technology: Exoskeletons and enhancement?  11 Synopsis of the Book  13 Notes 16 References 16 Websites  PART I

Technological objects facing embodied subjects

21

2

23

Among bodies, exoskeletons and sites The “Hows” and “Whats” of fieldworking with exoskeletons and their bodies  23 Technological objects and their mono-usage  28 Phenomenology as methodology: Empathy and sympathy  30 Needing a “proper body” when doing research on bodies and embodiment: Re-conceptualizing methodological situationism  37



viii Contents

Notes 39 References 41 Websites: 46 3

Where exoskeletons aim to enter: Realms of human bodies

47

Novel corporeal extensions and materialities: Bodies as media  47 Exceptional bodies  50 Phenomenology again? Living bodies and their multiple realities 54 Notes 61 References 62 PART II

Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

67

4

71

Impaired bodies Motility impairments as a source of corporeal alterity: The case of SCI and CVA  71 Objectifying one’s “own body”: The “body present”  75 Discovering an “other” in the self: New corporeal potentialities 80 Recovering the other in the self  87 Exoskeletons as ability markers for impaired bodies  92 Notes 119 References 122

5

Able bodies Introduction 129 Corporeal assistance: Bodies at work  132 The “tooled” body: Limits and possibilities of exoskeletons in work environments  134 Creating embodiments: Some issues on technological skepticism 141 Resisting embodiments: No “second” skin  147 Questioning augmentation, claiming assistance: Technologies for future bodies at work  152 Corporeal assistance: Bodies at fight  157 Partial extensions: Entering the “snail’s house”  162

129

Contents 

ix

Soldierly phenomenologies of corporeal vulnerability: Embodiment variations  168 The factual body: Deconstructing Iron Man, reassessing augmentation 175 Notes 181 References 183 PART III

What exoskeletons do to the body: Advancing corporealities 189 6

New body shapes

191

Challenging body images: Fictions facing facts  191 Body knowledge(s): Exoskeletons as experimental environments for bodies 197 Redistributing performance while building new bodies 202 Notes 207 References 208 7

Reinvesting corporeal capabilities: “Deviance” and “extension” redefined

210

Recontextualizing corporeal forms of “I can”  210 Questioning bodily techniques and movement technologies  214 Deviant bodies, their abilities and inabilities: Shifting corporeal norms 219 Notes 223 References 224 8

Epilogue: Producing bodies while extending them

226

Revisiting corporeal deviance  226 Bodies (still) hardly “dancing” with machines: Corporeal “surprises” 229 Creating “above-average ability” or repairing it?  232 Notes 234 References 234 Index 237

Figures

1.1 Industrial exoskeleton. Credits: Exhauss, France.

2

1.2 Stationary rehabilitation exoskeleton. Credits: Denisa Butnaru.

2

1.3 Military exoskeleton. Credits: Military Academy of Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan (AMSCC), France.

3

4.1 Rehabilitation exoskeleton. Credits: Myoswiss, Switzerland.

72

5.1 Industrial exoskeleton. Credits: Laevo, Netherlands.

130

5.2 Military exoskeleton. Credits: Military Academy of Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan (AMSCC), France.

131



Acknowledgments

Studies such as the present one are never solitary journeys. Perhaps this is the most contemporary lesson that phenomenology may teach. We are never alone. Being embodied, we resonate with one another. In all these changes, categorical shifts, strong emotions and also strong intellectual revisions, Robert Gugutzer was with me. I thank him for his accompanying me in all these many phases and steps since we first met in 2013, for the time he gave me and for his kindness. Christian Meyer allowed me to carry to the end this project at the University of Konstanz. I hope I did justice to my engagements, and I thank him for trusting my commitment to such a project. I would also like to thank Shaun Gallagher for his willingness to assess the pertinence of philosophical categories that I used in order to build an empirical sociological approach. Such epistemological transfers and imports are never easy. However, all this study could have never got to its final shape without many other people whose support, either scientific or emotional, was deep and complex. I would like to thank Peter Wehling, for having regularly advised me and being of constant support for me. Especially regarding the present book, my debt toward him is huge. His advice both in academic and in non-academic respects was an immense resource in my pursuing this project. I would like to thank Monika Fludernik, Nina Degele, Ulrich Bröckling and Stephan Packard for their help and constructive feedback during my years at the University of Freiburg (Germany). I learned a lot from them, just as I did from my colleagues, Marco Caracciolo, Debora Niermann, Tobias Schlechtriemen, Barbara Wodarz, Marc Wurich, Sebastian Finger and Johannes Franzen. Many categories related to enhancement and the fiction/factuality debates were defined, refined and further changed because you all helped me to. I owe immense help, patience and especially concrete access to the world of exoskeletons to Robert Riener. His kindness, openness and his wish to allow social scientists to experience and understand more about what and how robotics shapes our current worlds permitted me to come closer and observe the realities engineers invent. He and his team had a lot of patience with me. I learned a lot from each and every one of his students and collaborators. Thank you, Jan, for allowing me to become a part of COST! Thank you, Patricia, for having spent so much time with 

xii Acknowledgments

me and allowing me to get into all kinds of exoskeletal gadgets, to have my own experience of what it feels like! I would like to thank Elsa Kirchner and her team for their time and elaborate discussions about the role of exoskeletons in rehabilitation. I learned a lot from all of you. Thank you also, Philipp Beckerle, who is (surprisingly for an expert in engineering sciences) interested in phenomenology! I would like to thank Annette Endraß and some members from her team for allowing me to spend time, carry interviews and discuss with them and with the patients during their training sessions with exoskeletons. I would like to thank Nicolas for explaining me why their project is a medical revolution. I would also like to thank Sven and Niels, and especially André, for the many details they gave me, and Anthony, Fabrice and Emily. Many thanks to Michael, Sarah, Virginie, Anne and Andrew for recounting me about their bodies in pain. Thank you, Vince, Guli, Mr. Schacht and Mr. Ockrent as well! The world of human bodies is wider and deeper because you all taught me to see it. You also taught me why exoskeletons work and why they don’t. I have learned a lot about industrial exoskeletons from Serena Ivaldi and Jean Theurel. Especially Jean welcomed me and allowed me to spend time with his team, bothering everyone with questions, and facilitating me further connections in the world of working bodies. Many thanks to Stuc&Staff for letting me discuss with employees of their company! Many, many thanks to Pierre Davezac (Exhauss, France), Boudewijn Wisse (Laevo, Netherlands), Jaime Duarte (Myoswiss, Switzerland) and to the Communication Department of the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan (AMSCC) (France) for allowing me to use photographs of their projects and activities! In particular, I would like to thank Gérard de Boisboissel for allowing me to enter worlds that are mostly forbidden and observe concretely that there are no Iron Men and for his constant support in my carrying to the end of this monograph project. Armed forces lean on human bodies, and there is where exoskeletons need to play their part. I cannot thank enough my “second skin”, Régis Schlagdenhaufen. His being is endless. I want to thank Tom Boellstorff, Florence Weber, Gili Hammer, Claudia Serban, Taina Kinnunen, Alexander Schmidl, Hisashi Nasu and Jérôme Beauchez, all of who were sources of strength in a variety of moments related to the publication of this monograph. Just as much concerns Martin Zierer, Samaki Dorsey and Manuel Zaepffel. I would like to thank Lena Kolb, Franziska Pérez Mengual and especially my team of “transcriptors”: Malvina Jourdain, Stefania Loukanova and Viktor Reichelt. Thank you, Melissa Reed, River Ramuglia and Robert Parkin, for giving my English a more elegant shape and coping with strict deadlines! I would like to address my deepest thanks to Judith Theben (Freiburg) and Stephanie Preuß (Konstanz). Without their help and support, this study would literally have not been possible. I owe Judith Theben much more than she perhaps thinks.

Acknowledgments 

xiii

I am deeply grateful to the German Research Council (DFG), which financed this study both during my employment at the University of Freiburg as a Postdoc in the GRK 1767 (2014–2016) and at the University of Konstanz (2018–2021) where I was granted the funding of a project. I want to thank my family, especially to my grandfather, Petre Barbu, who was in my life when this study started, but who unfortunately could not see it through to its end. He had faith in me, taught me strength and showed me love. I made all my academic journeys because I was lucky to have him in my life. All of you gave me much more than what I could convey in these few lines and in the pages of the following study. Any missteps or errors are entirely mine.

Chapter 1

Introduction From science fictions to science facts

Exoskeletal devices and their societal challenges Back to 2014, due to my interest in persons with cerebral palsy, I discovered the first exoskeleton designed by the Japanese company Cyberdyne.1 I was intrigued by the shape of this object, especially by its futuristic appearance that seemed to encourage the perception of exoskeletons via a science-fictional imaginary. At that time, it seemed to me that exoskeletons depicted human bodies endowed with extra powers; moreover, these technologies seemed to be associated with another challenging transformation: that of people having some forms of motor impairment into people whose bodies are enhanced. Fascinated by the ambivalence that this technological object cultivates about and around human bodies, I have engaged during several years into a long ethnographic journey. My purpose was to observe and understand whether exoskeletons and their bodies were indeed fluid signifiers moving between the world of facts and that of fiction, and not less importantly, between the world of impaired bodies and a supposed (and perhaps hoped for) world of enhanced ones.​​ My researching on human bodies accompanied by exoskeletons was motivated by an exploration of how corporeal boundaries constantly oscillate and of their impact on conceptions of norms and deviance. This book is guided by this broader aim. Currently, exoskeletons “accompany” bodies that are either exceptional, in the sense that these bodies are or do something “less” than what average bodies do or are, or they accompany bodies that are not necessarily exceptional but that need to respond to exceptional circumstances or contexts. To see these technologies in reality that are associated with science fiction clearly impacts the factual consistency of contemporary conceptions of how we are our bodies and highlights the tremendous effect that ongoing scientific projects have on our manners of living it. Their presence thus invites to rethink a crucial transformation in the relation between bodies and machines. The intention of this book is to problematize this alteration. Tools and machines have accompanied human beings in various actions and activities for centuries (Black 2014); yet, the changes we experience at present have surprising and unprecedented outcomes, as machines are becoming increasingly

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-1

2 Introduction

Figure 1.1 Industrial exoskeleton. Credits: Exhauss, France.

Figure 1.2 Stationary rehabilitation exoskeleton. Credits: Denisa Butnaru.

I ntroduction 

3

Figure 1.3 Military exoskeleton. Credits: Military Academy of Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan (AMSCC), France.

proximate and present. They are constant partners in being, not only in acting. They constitute infrastructures and embed human beings in them, features that turn machines into more than just figures belonging to cultural and practical forms of life. They become real actors that change our ways of being and interacting, many of them intervening in the deepest manner of being ourselves: our bodies. This proximity is one of the peculiarities of their use in current society, and here is where exoskeletons aim to find their way. How do these novel technologies transform bodies and their social realities? What corporeal norms do they advance in the application fields where they are currently implemented or designed to be implemented? And not less importantly, how do they concretely transform and shape the subjective experiences of their users as well as external perceptions of them? These questions provide a significant framework to question “deviance,” one of the classical topics in sociology (Ogien 1999; Terry & Urla 1995) while correlating it to another category known mostly through research developments in media studies (McLuhan 1995), namely “extension.” Both categories will be further considered with respect to the transformation and production of bodies in three types of environments: rehabilitation, industry and military. The association between deviance and disability is standard in sociology and has mostly negative connotations (Goffman 1963). Exoskeletons, however, invite a positive consideration of deviance, because they introduce a perceptual ambivalence. The ambivalence of able/

4 Introduction

impaired or able/enhanced occasionally occurs in the use of exoskeletons by people with impairments. In this vein, they change human experientiality and especially body images while inviting to rethink upgraded qualities (Spreen 2015). Moreover, since exoskeletons impact motility, they entail a particular phenomenological potential, which is why an inquiry into their application and use represents a significant starting point to revise, redefine and adjust categories from this current of thought. In this book, I explore how this change is enacted and what concrete consequences it has for the reality of the bodies in contexts where this shift takes place. Drawing on extensive ethnographic material, I show how phenomenological categories resonate with current societal transformations, which technological objects such as exoskeletons have begun to actively shape. These devices target primary experiences of embodied self and forms of selfhood (Charmaz 1991; Gallagher 2012; Gugutzer 2002; Mead [1934] 1962; Turkle 2005; Zahavi 2005), but also our being capable and sometimes not enough capable bodies, characteristics that are highly contextual and situational. Exoskeletons are responsible for how specific contemporary forms of corporeality are sequentially and temporarily transformed. Regaining lost abilities or protecting abilities from not being damaged from overwork, as is the case in industrial and military fields, are traits that individualize the contextual production of bodies. I will show in the following chapters that exoskeletons contribute to advancing further understandings of how nature and nurture interact and reciprocally shape rather than oppose each other (Geertz 1973; Hutnyk 2006; Macnaghten 2006) while drawing attention to the socio-anthropological challenges that these alterations yield. What exoskeletons are and what they are not Exoskeletons are technologies that either help to rehabilitate in cases of motor deficiency, such as those caused by neurological impairments, or aid persons to perform motor sequences like lifting or carrying heavy objects in industrial environments and military settings. An exoskeleton is an electromechanical structure worn by [an] operator and matching the shape and functions of human body. It is able to augment the ability of human limb and/or to treat muscles, joints, or skeletal parts which are weak, ineffective or injured because of a disease or a neurological condition. […] The exoskeleton works mechanically in parallel with [the] human body and can be actuated passively and or actively. (Anam & Al-Jumaily 2012: 988) Active actuation means that they function with batteries and are therefore usually heavier. Passive exoskeletons, on the other hand, function with springs and are lighter on average. Projects developing exoskeletons for combat such as TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit)2 from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) are popular in the media and, as a result, the idea of enhancement

I ntroduction 

5

or augmentation has spread. Some researchers also encouraged these views. For example, according to Dr. Bertalan Mesko, for years, movies have featured these robotic structures that carry people in them but still mimicking the movement of the human body. Avatar, The Edge of Tomorrow, Elysium and Matrix III all depicted them in a way it felt like it would always remain science fiction.3 And as Mesko, a doctor in genomics, further claims, “as this technology keeps on improving, the question soon will not be whether paralyzed people can walk again, but them walking faster than healthy people.” The deviant body of disability would henceforth affirm a new challenge for the “normal” healthy body under these terms: that of above-average ability. As I will detail in the further chapters, this is a view which is difficult to defend at present. Because exoskeletons have been associated with enhancement, the body image they have produced is one of a body with enhanced qualities. Whereas it is true that exoskeletons question various socio-anthropological categories of the body and corporeality, leading to reconceptualizations of “techniques of the body” (Mauss [1935] 1973) and social practices, their augmenting possibilities remain highly contextual and sequential. Indeed, similar to prostheses, exoskeletons popularized the figure of the cyborg. However, as Christelle Rabier notes in a discussion about the contribution of the medical field in shaping this category, “long before the coinage of the ‘cyborg,’ medicine in the early industrial age was a site where powerful human-machine reconfigurations took place” (Rabier 2013: 442). Medicine has long held this privileged position, turning the body into an infinite object due to its ongoing exploration. The medical field has also developed discourses theorizing the new category of “anthropotechnics” (Andrieu 2007; Goffette 2007; Guérin 2020; Sloterdijk 1999) that refers explicitly to medical practices intended not to heal the body, but to ameliorate it (Goffette 2007: 121). And yet the role of exoskeletons is different than other technologies popular in medical worlds, despite their association with the figure of cyborgs and corporeal augmentation. The perspective I defend in this book is that exoskeletons do not participate in a social transformation of human bodies in the manner described by anthropotechnics, but in how bodies invent themselves along with what I name proximity technologies, a category to which exoskeletons belong. Besides marking a specific step in the evolution of human–machine relations and, on another scale, human–machine interaction, exoskeletons engage the human body in further representation and constructions of body images. Unlike cyborg depictions, which often stress the intertwining between various realms and species such as humans and machines (Clynes and Klyne [1960] 1995), humans and various other technological productions (Gray 1995; 2000) or humans and other forms of life (Haraway 1991, 2008), exoskeletons do not fulfill these requirements. In some respects, they may share features with prostheses, but they are not incorporated into the human body. Similar to suits – some of them are even

6 Introduction

named “exosuits” – exoskeletons remain, as their own name suggests, external to the human body. They are “exo,” not “endo,” which influences how the relation with human bodies is negotiated and the type of body they produce while their being used. It has already been acknowledged that technics is not neutral, being “in general a product of human activity and due to it always (whether consciously or unconsciously) determined through norms and values” (Loh 2019: 9; my transl. from German). Exoskeletons follow a similar development. Furthermore, current advances in robotics, raise new challenges: for some, they enlarge the already wide panoply of tools and machines, whereas for others, they question fundamental relationships maintained and entertained by human beings: en gros, our intersubjectivity potentials. As Sherry Turkle notes while discussing the case of robots, “more than harmless amusements, they [robots] are powerful because they invite our attachment. And such attachments change our way of being in the world” (Turkle 2017: 79). Social robots are starting to represent forms of companionship in contemporary societies, in that they try to replace other human beings with whom we interact. Turkle terms these contemporary technological forms “relational artifacts” (Turkle 1984, 2005; Turkle et al. 2006). Exoskeletons invite other types of attachment and offer different possibilities for companionship, which is what I investigate. Being primarily tailored and conceived to match one’s specific body motor needs, they are objects gravitating around one’s own body. This is a very different situation than that of a robot that might help us with tasks such as housecleaning or cooking, referred to as social robot. An exoskeleton’s aim is not to replace the active presence of a human being, but to accompany one’s body, and even more specifically, one’s body schema. Because of their intimacy with human bodies4 and their very direct impact on corporeal phenomenologies, they belong to the class of technologies I previously named “proximity technologies.” Much of the fascination for technologies has to do with “wanting to fill in […] blanks” (Turkle 2017: 24), and exoskeletons partly conform to this adage. “Filling blanks” reinforces the understanding of the human body in terms of a material project, an idea already formulated by Chris Shilling (1993: 5). As he argues, “the body as a project can be found in the unprecedented amount of attention given to the personal construction for healthy bodies” (ibid.). Technologies of proximity, exoskeletons being one example thereof, contribute to partially engage human bodies in such forms of becoming. In doing so, they sanction a social space of potentials, explicitly acknowledged by their currently being “in progress.” Looking at corporeal deviance through corporeal extension: exoskeletons and their contexts Like other tools and machines conceived to be related to what we do in specific contexts, exoskeletons respect similar imperatives. They concretely mark our capability or incapability to perform specific movements, tasks and actions, usually

I ntroduction 

7

completing or helping bodies with segments of movement they need to perform. In these attempts, these devices accompany forms of corporeal “deviance.” Deviance has a long history in sociology, with the first explicit studies developed in the Chicago School tradition (Bulmer 1984; Chapoulie 2001; Salerno 2006). As a social phenomenon, deviance had mainly negative connotations, as it referred to categories of persons that, in the context of American society from the beginning of the 20th century, seemed to threaten the social order. As Roger Salerno recalls, these included “the marginalized, the lonely, the ambivalent. It portrayed the moral uncertainty of this era, an era where many were still reeling from the horrors of World War I” (Salerno 2006: 26). Erving Goffman (1963) and Howard Becker later studied different populations than those analyzed in the sociological studies of the first generation of the Chicago School (Thomas [1923] 1967; Thomas [1907] 1974; Anderson 1923; Wirth 1928), further supporting the importance of the category of deviance within the sociological discipline. By altering corporeal appearances, exoskeletons impact the “presentation of self” (Goffman 1959). In the case of impairments, the change they produce is crucial, since they may reintegrate the negatively stigmatized body into the world of able ones for a short period of time. Because exoskeletons modify the condition of impaired bodies by means of extension, but also of healthy ones, as I show with respect to industry and military, I speak of an extended body. Interestingly, because some technological objects that commonly accompany disabilities may occasionally provide healthy functional bodies with abilities they lack, the vision of an enhanced body emerged (Coeckelbergh 2017: 190-197). Consequently, some forms of disability seemed to be redefined, and with them the category of “deviance.” The latter category, instead of retaining its negative connotation, shifted. Rather than seeing the “lack” in the missing functions of the body as something negative, medicine accompanied by concurrent progress in technology reformulated those aspects in the human body as those which are “possible.” Absences in corporeal abilities have become a rich ground for reinventing novel organic limits. In turn, these contribute to the recalibration of the tension between definitions of health and corporeal impairment, as well as between health and corporeal ability and augmentation of specific functions and contextual applications, as the examples of exoskeleton use in industrial and military environments show. Looking at the category of “deviance” proves itself to be a productive analytical tool for current socio-anthropological understandings of corporeal transformations for which exoskeletons are partly responsible. Sociological worlds of movement Dealing with motility as a sociological category may perhaps surprise at first sight. However, this is what exoskeletons primarily aim to modify. One does not notice motility until something goes wrong. Only when the individual’s body is confronted with dysfunctions or contextual limits, does motility (and correlatively corporeality) become present and strongly visible. And so do the technological

8 Introduction

gadgets marking these gaps. Such a type of corporeal presence has a double nature. First, it happens on a personal level: the affected person needs to focus much more on specific gestures and activities than does an able individual or, for example, an individual responding in a more accurate manner to what a situation demands. Second, the body becomes present in the eye of the other because it cannot move, or it performs movements with difficulty. Conditions that mark in what respects our bodies are “less” – various forms of incapacity or incapability – may be accompanied by inanimate objects that move and may move us, normalize corporeal capability for some needs, or enhance it for others. The riddle of these companions has taken on new urgency because they enter intimacy spheres of our bodily boundaries, changing our deepest experiential and intersubjective qualities. Some socio-anthropological inquiries on motility refined such notions as acting subject, intentionality, techniques of the body, and, on a larger scale, corporeality itself. But the focus changes as soon as one starts to consider motility alongside technological gadgets. On a general level, motility is something that bodies do, and also comprises what bodies are. As Maxine Sheets-Johnstone notes, movement is first of all the mode by which we make sense of our bodies and by which we first come to understand the world. It shows, in effect, how we forge a kinetic bond with the world on the basis of an originary kinetic liveliness […], and thus how our tactile-kinesthetic bodies are epistemological gateways. (Sheets-Johnstone 2011: XXV) Specific gestures are sometimes learned to perform diverse work types, like how to hold and use a pickaxe in coal mining or how to carve wood. All these techniques of the body show that it is in its sequential aspect (Schulze 2006: 86) and, I would add, the highly contextual one, that motility becomes recognizable as a social product. Since movement is often defined in terms of doing and ability, many technological developments have been designed to produce or reproduce it, which is what rends movement as a common ground between living human beings and certain technological artefacts. Take, for example the automata,5 the first projects of which date back to Antiquity. Due to extensive progress in various disciplines during the Enlightenment, automata were elaborated technological productions providing conditions for further achievements. The androids of the 18th century pursued this project (Voskuhl 2013; Westermann 2012). Intended to be copies of living humans, they were important milestones for the technological innovations following in the next centuries, decisively contributing to the history of self-moving machines and advances in robotics. If the sociology of movement is a sociology of the body and simultaneously one of embodiment (Williams & Bendellow 1998; Gugutzer 2012), given the wide and complex growth of technological artefacts and their impact on human activities during the past 200 years, this field becomes inseparable from a sociology of technologies and self-moving objects and devices in many respects.

I ntroduction 

9

As will be detailed in the following chapters, movement is taken to be an analytical category joining corporealities and technological objects. Because movement may be understood as the property that both joins us to machines and separates us from them, there is an ambivalence of our both embodied and incorporated relation with these material productions. I purposely avoid speaking of mixing or blending bodies and machines, despite some ambiguities that sometimes exist between these two orders of materialities. Instead, I prefer the term companionship. In some respects, the communication between bodies and machines is possible and even desirable. And yet in many respects, technological and biological materialities remain separated. Take, for instance, the much-debated robot Sophia.6 Like the mechanical productions of the 18th century, such innovations generate a lot of wonder in the beginning, but later show obvious limitations when compared to living human bodies. Some technologies may be embodied or even incorporated, a possibility that occasionally may be founded on movement and that establishes the central role of one’s proprioceptive feedback (Tsakiris, Schütz-Bosbach & Gallagher 2007). I understand embodiment here in terms of working with a gadget or machine and including it in one’s body schema, whereas I conceive of incorporation as the concrete inclusion of foreign objects into the human body, as is the case with various forms of prostheses, implants or piercing. A factual acknowledgment of how exoskeletons change the deviance and extension of our corporealities, along with their phenomenological potential, including motility parameters, allows consideration of their impact and efficiency in terms of embodiment rather than incorporation. Why phenomenology still matters: its contemporary relevance for a sociological research on exoskeletons My use of phenomenology in this study aims to engage some of its classical and contemporary categories about corporeal experience in a discussion about what it is like to design, test and finally use exoskeletons in specific contexts. Inquiring into corporeality refocuses the attention on material aspects of how we are our bodies, their (in)abilities, and interactive possibilities, and more generally, on how we become these very bodies in defined contexts (Gimlin 2002, 2007, 2010; Prentice 2005, 2013). Historically, phenomenology developed as a philosophical tradition (Moran 2000; Gallagher 2012; Zahavi 2012; Zahavi 2019b). However, many other disciplines, especially the social sciences, have been deeply influenced by various categories initially elaborated in the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jean-Paul Sartre, to name only the most influential thinkers. In sociology, the well-known contribution of Alfred Schutz, whose epistemological project of joining the comprehensive sociology and some of Edmund Husserl’s categorical developments, reshaped both sociological theoretical projects as well as philosophical ones (Bird 2009; Ferguson 2006; Schutz [1932] 1967; Barber 2004; Wagner 1986), redrawing the history of ideas in both social sciences and philosophy.

10 Introduction

As Cassandra Crawford notes, phenomenology prioritises experience and materiality, recognising the body as a source of individual and collective social action, as well as social structure. Indeed, it is only vis-à-vis bodily experience that it is possible for the self and society to be constituted. Starting with or from a lived body that is practically engaged with the world, phenomenologists consider reflective thought, inter-subjectivity, and social order to be preceded by embodiment. Although the body is undeniable at the center of analysis, the role that power relations play in making up the body or the role that external constraint has on lived experience is considered by critics to be woefully neglected. (2013: 435) In this book, phenomenology focuses on experiences of corporeal changes induced by exoskeletons, including first-person as well as third-person perspectives. I insist on associating the third-person perspective of the experts with the phenomenological background since their work has an obvious impact on the first-person perspective of the users. Due to their technological projects, experts literally re-embody exoskeletons’ users, and in doing so they re-enact their bodies, which is why the recent branch of phenomenology known as enactivism (Gallagher 2012, 2017) is a helpful conceptual tool to describe these techno-corporeal realities. The phenomenological tradition of the body is present in various sociological projects (Crossley 1994, 1995, 2001; Csordas 1990; Gugutzer 2002, 2012). Nick Crossley, for instance, who elaborates directly upon Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s categorical heritage, defends the project of a “carnal sociology” (Crossley 1995). Loic Wacquant did some years later as well (2015). Interestingly, the latter connects his empirical approach toward the body and embodiment not only to the phenomenological heritage of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, but also to philosophical theoretical perspectives in embodied cognition such as those of Alva Nöe (2004) and Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch (2016), the latter scholars being the first proponents of enactivism.7 Wacquant goes so far as to suggest a new sociological conception based on these findings that he names “enactive ethnography,” understood as the “immersive fieldwork based on ‘performing the phenomenon’” (Wacquant 2015: 2). These categorical transfers show that both methodological and methodical approaches in the sociology of the body take advantage of the undeniable contribution of the phenomenological heritage while simultaneously engaging it into new definitions. The examples encountered during my fieldwork endorse this epistemological transfer. Of course, the association between concepts from the phenomenological tradition and empirical examples is not new. Yet entering the world of conception and use of exoskeletons imposes more than associating theories and realities; rather, it demands a categorical journey in which the final product is certainly not a phenomenology, but due to the multiplicity of contexts and experiential units, a plethora of phenomenologies.

I ntroduction 

11

A productive categorical opposition that I constantly tested during my journeys in labs, clinics, trade shows, or private households was that between the subjective body or “own body” (Leib) and the “objective” one (Körper) (Husserl [1928] 1973; Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012). Despite various embodiment projects, these categories continue to make their mark and fascinate. Initially defined in the work of Edmund Husserl, they were often used to describe opposite conceptions of the human body. The Leib/Körper categorical couple offered me a substantial resource in explaining how “deviant” and “extended” bodies are actively produced. The contrast between these two body definitions, the first displaying a lived motor habituality (either able or disabled), while the second is technologically designed (motility is modified by a technological artifact, i.e., the exoskeleton), allows for the exploration of how changes in corporeality – from disability to contextual forms of ability or from ability to contextual forms of augmented motility – are influenced by the clear presence of an “objective body” defined by experts. Moreover, because there is often a delegation of motor intention from the human to the device, an essential question emerging in the context of my research, and having deep phenomenological implications, was whether the “own” body of the user still holds the status of “own” (Butnaru 2013, 2015). Demystifying technology: Exoskeletons and enhancement? When in a lab, one does not meet Iron Man or Robocop. One does not assist in any “melding of minds with machines” (Coyne 1999: 268), nor in any melding between bodies and technological parts. This is the first phenomenological lesson one learns about bodies working with exoskeletons. This phenomenological lesson also shows to what extent corporeality means being situated (Gallagher 2012). In a lab or clinic, one sometimes meets persons who are in pain or live with constant forms of pain when they have motor impairments such as neurological conditions. In the same spaces, one meets persons who help those in need and who are experts of the body or experts in corporeal technologies. Many of them are engineers, but some are physiotherapists, ergonomists or medical doctors. They all contribute to changing corporeal deviance and to producing corporeal “extension,” and therefore turn the human body into a laboratory in a concrete sense. In a rehabilitative environment, exoskeletons respond to the needs and dysfunctions of the body caused by neurological disorders. The two cases I observed in my study with respect to rehabilitation were spinal cord injuries and cerebrovascular accidents, more commonly known as strokes. Both types of dysfunctions may lead to paralysis, the degree of which may vary according to the anatomical location of the lesion. In rehabilitation, exoskeletons are used to “train” walking – for persons with a spinal cord injury, this is the function which is most often addressed – but also various movements of the hand or arm when the person has had a stroke. In this sense, I claim, exoskeletons do help exceptional “deviant” bodies regain some types of movement they used to have. They also extend them in an obvious way,

12 Introduction

although from this point of view the extension they provide is not so different than that provided, for example, by a wheelchair (Winance 2019). The other two contexts in which exoskeletons are partially used – “partially” in the sense that they have been explored more through trials and research rather than in successful and concrete applications – are industry and military. In some specific types of industrial environments, in which human bodies need to carry, manipulate heavy objects, use screwdrivers to do work above the head, or perform painting work on ceilings (examples I witnessed), exoskeletons can be operated, put on and taken off, and even completely left aside if they encumber specific movements too much. Their use is encouraged in these types of environments to mainly prevent damage to the body. Yet if some exoskeletons already have proven to have certain efficiency for some tasks,8 many others are still in the stages of ongoing development.9 Where the public eye expects to find superheroes, namely in the army, they will be disappointed. It is already acknowledged that technological objects, like any other objects and tools, need entry points in our lives (MacKenzie & Wajcman 1999). Commonly, using an object refers primarily to creating specific habits and skills, and brings the body to forms of adjustment and “corporeal understanding” (Gugutzer 2012: 64). However, what most of us ignore about the duties and exertions required from a soldier’s body is that they are extreme. Soldiers need to endure for example extreme heat or extreme cold; they need to walk many hours while carrying heavy load and develop fast reactions. One of the interviewed engineers told me for example that “soldiers are athletes” (Eng8FR). Accordingly, for bodies which are already “deviant” by being able to do more physically than what average bodies can, exoskeletons actually offer little help. If considering enhancement, exoskeletons may sometimes indeed “extend” soldiers’ bodies for very specific segments of activity or movement.10 Yet, for this third context in which these devices are literally expected to produce “enhancement,” instead of their encouraging the bridge between subjective bodies and objective bodies, rather, as I will explain in the following chapters, they separate the two. The myth of superpower strongly connected to that of the superhero and to a contemporary belief in what Mark Coeckelbergh names “the end of the machine” is strongly challenged by my observed examples. According to Coeckelbergh “the end of the machine” describes a state where “the machine is taken to a stage when it starts disappearing as a machine. As it becomes more ‘alive’ and intimate and takes on a more human or animal form […] it enters the world of the living […]” (2017: 178). That exoskeletons enter the world of the living is not in doubt. That they change experiences of living our abilities and impairments is also obvious. Nevertheless, where they fail to fulfill their promise is in their creation of substantial enhancement forms. In their contextual use in industrial and military fields, exoskeletons are like other “tools,” as I will explain. They help and work with human bodies; sometimes they may fit well with the body schemas of their users – especially in those cases where the users are healthy – and produce new forms of “intimacy with machines” (Turkle 2011: 3). Rather than remaking relations with

I ntroduction 

13

other human beings, they help to remake corporeal abilities in specific contexts, remaining very subjective technologies, and thus display an obvious phenomenological potential. But they are not absorbed into the bodies of their users, remaining what all other artefacts with which we modify and change our reality are: technological companions. Another detail is of note, which is that given the artificiality and constructed settings in which persons “train” in a clinic or lab or work in industrial or military environments, their bodies are indeed pushed towards an “unnatural” ideal: either that of a “healthy” body to be attained, or of an indefatigable body in the working or fighting environment. If one may still insist on considering humans a “cyborg” species (Clark 2003; Malafouris 2013) for which “cyborg” would not involve our concrete hybridity with material artefacts but working with them, this should be constantly understood as a temporary state. In this sense, as I view, our bodies are only temporarily or contextually able at all. Enhancement projects belong to a combined logic of, on one hand, copying what bodies are, and on the other, rendering them stronger, faster and less vulnerable to what environments impose. In this respect, such changes highlight up to what point our corporeality and our bodies in general are imagined as technological entities. Neither conceiving of the human body as a machine is new (La Mettrie 1927), nor is understanding the emergence of current technological projects as products separated from former ones (MacKenzie & Wajcman 1999: 12). Yet what is more obvious at present is the change produced by some technologies as they turn our natural bodies into their growingly “technological” ones. This was possible because, as Chris Shilling mentions, “productive techniques and knowledge have moved inwards, to invade, reconstruct and increasingly dominate the very contents of the body” (Shilling 2005: 173). General developments in biotechnology rigorously follow this trajectory. Among these, enhancement technologies have gone even further in this process through achievements in genetics, for example (Baldi 2001; Sandel 2004; 2007). And yet, despite the feasibility of many projects, others remain only partially possible. Perhaps before seeing exoskeletons as objects producing enhancement, a more careful consideration is needed of them being the proper partners for various forms of what I term “deviant” corporeality. One of the main objectives of this book is to demonstrate how such processes occur in the three worlds of impairment, work and the armed forces. Synopsis of the Book How are human bodies transformed by the use of exoskeletal devices in the contemporary worlds of rehabilitation, industry, and military? How do these alterations forge new cultures of the body and their particular phenomenologies? And finally, how do these novel assemblages challenge socio-anthropological conceptions of norms and deviance while inviting a reconsideration of current forms of corporeal extension? In the first part of the book (Chapters 2 and 3), I explain the multifaceted levels of the fieldwork, what family of technological objects exoskeletons enter, and the

14 Introduction

type of bodies and corporealities that these devices attempt to modify and also de facto do. In Chapter 2, I reassess a classical perspective in qualitative methodology in social sciences, “methodological situationism” (Knorr-Cetina 1988), and relate it to the facts observed in my research. In Chapter 3, I review approaches in the sociology of the body and embodiment while assessing what technological worlds exoskeletons attempt to belong to. I further review the phenomenological conceptual background, especially the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, postphenomenology, enactivism,11 and material engagement theory (MET), in order to construct my own conception of embodiment. In Part II (Chapters 4 and 5), I explain how exoskeletons contribute to shape contextualized corporeal worlds of impairment and dis/ability. In Chapter 4, I focus on the use of exoskeletons in rehabilitative environments with respect to spinal cord injury and stroke. I explore the category of “alterity,” relate it to one’s own impaired body and advance the category of “body present”; I then analyze how people with spinal cord injury or stroke discover new corporeal potentialities and resources to be their actual bodies along with an “other” inside themselves. I examine how they negotiate these actual bodies, a situation in which exoskeletons play a crucial role. I follow with a discussion of a process complementary to the “discovering” of an “other” in one’s self, which I name: “recovering” the other in the self. Using this category as a resource, I further explain how exoskeletons become ability markers for bodies with motor impairments. Here, I revise classical phenomenological categories of the body and impairment while detailing new ones based on the empirical material. I discuss first the notion of I still can, and propose the concept of residual subjectivity. In the second part of this subchapter, I explicate how new corporeal habits are forged with the application and contextual use of exoskeletons in rehabilitation and what specific forms of body work emerge in this type of environment. I proceed with a discussion of a categorical couple defined by Dan Zahavi in the phenomenological discourse, “subjectivity and selfhood” (Zahavi 2005) while correlating it to the facts in my fieldwork and expanding the initial definition. Against this conceptual background, I thus highlight how bodies resist and defy technological objects, affirming fine-grained subjective differences. Finally, I discuss how exoskeletons contribute to map bodies and elaborate possible forms of what is currently known as the “quantified self.” Chapter 5 examines how able bodies are transformed by their specific and precise use of exoskeletal devices. Like Chapter 4, it is divided in two subchapters, where the first addresses the status of bodies in the worlds of work, and the second the status of bodies shaping the military environment. In the first part of this chapter, I explain how exoskeletons belong to the category of tools, and explore their possibilities and current (im)possibilities. I then discuss forms of embodiment of exoskeletons in industrial environments and examine the conditions under which they succeed. Similar to the situation of people with motor impairments, exoskeletons engage the bodies of able people in the world of paid labor in forms of body work. While purposely choosing to note that exoskeletons are far from “a second skin,” I explain that these devices produce corporeal assistance rather than

I ntroduction 

15

augmentation. I finally reinforce the category of assistance, while suggesting that some possibilities of augmentation are not completely excluded in these contexts, as their implementation parallels more general transformations in the current cultures of work. In the second part of Chapter 5, I discuss the impact that exoskeletons have on human bodies active in the armed forces. After briefly evoking the history of using this type of technological object in the military environment, I first explain how exoskeletons may partially contribute to extend the bodies of their users. I discuss in the next subsection how these technologies reinforce the perception of our bodies’ vulnerability while forging peculiar forms of corporeal phenomenologies. In the final part of this subchapter, I reassess the category of augmentation with respect to the use of exoskeletons in military contexts, and defend a factual approach to analyzing these technologies. I explain the concrete possibilities they offer and deconstruct fanciful views advanced by mass media, popular culture or the very companies commercializing exoskeletons. While acknowledging the importance of corporeal (but also cognitive) augmentation in the military field, I suggest that this category needs to be considered with caution when evoking the current state of development of exoskeletal devices for the armed forces. Where is the convergence of the three corporeal worlds that exoskeletons shape? What are their common features and what forms of corporeality do they concretely invent? To pursue these questions in the third part of the book, I examine some common aspects or situations that exoskeletons enable in the three fields in which they are currently developed. Chapter 6 focuses on how exoskeletons advance new body shapes, a notion which I further explore in three subcategories. First, I explain how exoskeletons impact body images; I then provide an analysis of how body shapes are produced in terms of unprecedented body knowledges; finally, I focus on how exoskeletons redistribute types of performance, and in doing so, how they further forge the bodies of their users. In Chapter 7, I concentrate on how capabilities are redefined along with the understanding of the two concepts between which bodies wearing these novel devices oscillate: positively or negatively perceived deviance, and corporeal extension. Asking how corporeal capabilities are advanced by exoskeletal devices, I examine the way these gadgets impact forms of perceiving human bodies as positively deviant, a situation associated with augmentation, or negative deviance (meaning that without these gadgets, human bodies signify “less” in specific contexts of acting and interacting). I first analyze the category of I can and explore how bodily techniques are transformed by exoskeletal devices, which I here further categorize as movement technologies. In the end, I turn to the notion of deviance and show how it is redistributed due to the implementation of these technologies while correlatively considering their impact on the broader conception of corporeal norms. The book ends with a consideration of the main findings of this socio-anthropological adventure: how exoskeletons produce both bodies and, more expansively, corporeal worlds. While providing rich material for their own reinvention with

16 Introduction

technological gadgets, bodies simultaneously resist them. They actively respond to the observed environments, redefining and rebalancing conceptions of deviance and normality, ability and inability, and not least what I name above-average ability. In these categorical shifts, exoskeletons invite further reflections not only on how we are our bodies with these novel technologies; rather, they question how we wish to become these very bodies in the context of their companionship. Notes 1 https://www​.cyberdyne​.jp​/english/ (accessed 15.01.2021). 2 See https://www​.bbc​.com​/news​/technology​-24474336 (accessed 10/04/2020). 3 See Mesko, B. (2016): Paralyzed People Walk Again: A Dutch Story. Retrieved from https://medicalfuturist​.com​/paralyzed​-people​-walk​-again​-a​-dutch​-story/ (accessed 24/04/2020). 4 As I will discuss further, technological products such as trains or planes (apart from jets for the armed forces) are less “proximate” than exoskeletons due to a certain distance they impose on the human body. 5 Despite their miraculous aspects, which were often praised, automata did not always raise enthusiasm. The term “automaton” was also used to describe negative attributes such as stupidity or conformity due to its association with simple tasks and automatic, non-reflective acts. For an elaborate discussion on these negative aspects, see Kang, M. (2011). Sublime Dreams of Living Machines. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 6 The robot Sophia from Hanson Robotics challenged many social representations of what we do or should do with some forms of technologies, with certain ones coming closer to what we are. See: https://www​.hansonrobotics​.com​/sophia/ (accessed 04/04/2020). 7 For the history of “enactivism,” see Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist Interventions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 8 Exhauss is one of the companies that has developed exoskeletons used in construction and interior decoration. The efficiency of the exoskeleton, designed in France, has been proven in environments where the work consists of rubbing or sanding. See the site of the company: https://www​.exhauss​.com/ (accessed 10/05/2020). 9 The Shiva exoskeleton intended to help carry heavy objects is an example in this sense: https://www​.shivaexo​.fr​/en​/shiva​-exo​-2/ (accessed 10/05/ 2020). Other current projects in industry combining various European institutions are, for instance, Exskallerate: https://northsearegion​.eu​/exskallerate/ (accessed 10/05/2020). 10 For concrete examples with respect to the application of exoskeletons in the army, see the videos on the following site: https://exoskeletonreport​.com​/2020​/04​/8​-videos​ -of​-real​-life​-exoskeletons​-with​-super​-high​-production​-value/ (accessed 10/05/2020). 11 I mainly draw on the orientation developed by Shaun Gallagher. Enactivism is a relatively recent philosophical branch, having its roots in phenomenology. However, recent as it is, it has already known a variety of sub-orientations. I will not minutely consider the sub-developments of enactivism, since this will orient my arguments too strongly towards a theoretical philosophical analysis. For the diversity of orientations in enactivism, see Newen, A., De Bruin, L. & Gallagher, S. (2018). The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

References Anam, K., & Al-Jumaily, A. A. (2012). Active exoskeleton control system: State of the art. Procedia Engineering, 41, 988–994.

I ntroduction 

17

Anderson, N. (1923). The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Andrieu, B. (2007) Contre la désincarnation technique : un corps hybride? Actuel Marx 1(41), 28–39. Doi: 10.3917/amx. 041.0028. Baldi, P. (2001). The Shattered Self. Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Barber, M. D. (2004). The Participating Citizen. A Biography of Alfred Schutz. New York: SUNY Press. Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press. Bernard, A. (2007). Contre la désincarnation technique: Un corps hybride? Actuel Marx, 1(41), 28–39. https://doi​.org​/10​.3917​/amx. 041.0028. Bird, G. (2009). What is phenomenological sociology again? Human Studies, 32(4), 419–439. Black, D. (2014). Embodiment and Mechanisation: Reciprocal Understandings of Body and Machine from the Renaissance to the Present. Farnham: Ashgate. Bulmer, M. (1984). The Chicago School of Sociology: Institutionalization, Diversity, and the Rise of Sociological Research. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Butnaru, D. (2013). Body schema(tism) and the logos of life: A phenomenological reconsideration. In I. Copperu, T. Kono & T. Nenon (Eds.), Investigaciones fenomenológicas, órgano de expresión de la Sociedad Española de Fenomenología: Razon y vida (vol. 4(1), pp. 55–77). Madrid: SEFE. Butnaru, D. (2015). Phenomenological alternatives of the lifeworld: Between multiple realities and virtual realities. Societa, Mutamento, Politica, 6(1)2, 67–80. Chapoulie, J.-M. (2001). La tradition sociologique de Chicago (pp. 1892–1961). Paris: Seuil. Charmaz, K. (1991). Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Clark, A. (2003). Natural-born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clynes, M. E., & Kline, N. S. ([1960] 1995). Cyborgs and space. In C. H. Gray et al. (Eds.), The Cyborg Handbook (pp. 26–76). London: Routledge. Coeckelbergh, M. (2017). New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine. Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Coyne, R. (1999). Technoromanticism: Digital Narrative, Holism, and the Romance of the Real. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Crawford, C. S. (2013). ‘You don’t need a body to feel a body’: Phantom limb syndrome and corporeal transgression. Sociology of Health and Illness, 35(3), 434–448. Crossley, N. (1994). The Politics of Subjectivity: Between Foucault and Merleau-Ponty. Aldershot: Avebury. Crossley, N. (1995). Merleau-Ponty, the elusive body and carnal sociology. Body & Society, 1(1), 43–63. Crossley, N. (2001). The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire. London: Sage. Csordas, T. (1990). Embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology. Ethos, 18(1), 5–47. Ferguson, H. (2006). Phenomenological Sociology: Experience and Insight in Modern Society. London: Sage. Gallagher, S. (2012). Phenomenology. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave. Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In C. Geertz (Ed.), The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (pp. 3–31). New York: Basic Books.

18 Introduction Gimlin, D. (2002). Body Work: Beauty and Self-image in American Culture. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gimlin, D. (2007). What is “body work”? A review of the literature. Sociology Compass, 1(1), 353–370. Gimlin, D. (2010). Imagining the other in cosmetic surgery. Body & Society, 16(4), 57–76. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1357034X10383881. Goffette, J. (2007). La naissance de l‘anthropotechnie. Paris: Vrin. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall. Gray, C. H. (1995). The Cyborg Handbook. London: Routledge. Gray, C. H. (2000). MAN PLUS: Enhanced cyborgs and the construction of the future masculine. Science As Culture, 9(3), 277–299. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/713695253. Guérin, V. (2020). Le dépassement de soi porté par les nouvelles technologies : État de l’art. In Le soldat augmenté. Regards croisés sur l’augmentation des performances du soldat. Actes du Colloque « Le soldat augmenté : regards croisés sur l’augmentation des performances du soldat » du 15 janvier 2019 à l’école militaire de Paris, organisé par le CREC Saint-Cyr et la Fondation pour l’innovation politique, avec le soutien de la DGA et de l’Agence de l’innovation de défense (pp. 32–41). Fondation pour l’innovation politique. http://www​.fondapol​.org/ Gugutzer, R. (2002). Leib, Körper und Identität: Eine phänomenologisch-soziologische Untersuchung zur personalen Identität. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Gugutzer, R. (2012). Verkörperungen des Sozialen: Neophänomenologische Grundlagen und Soziologische Analysen. Bielefeld: Transcript. Haraway, D. J. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In D. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149–182). New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. J. (2008). When Species Meet. Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press. Husserl, E. (1973 [1928]). Cartesianische meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Husserliana I. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Hutnyk, J. (2006). Culture. Theory, Culture and Society, 23(2–3), 351–358. Kang, M. (2011). Sublime Dreams of Living Machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1988). The Micro-Social Order: Towards a Reconception. In Fielding, N. G. (Ed.), Actions and Structure (pp. 21–53). Thousand Oaks; London: Sage. La Mettrie, J. O. (1927). Man a Machine G. C. Bussey (Trans.). Chicago: Open Court. Loh, J. (2019). Roboterethik. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (1985). The Social Shaping of Technology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press. MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (1999). Introduction Essay: The Social Shaping of Technology. Buckingham: Open University Press. Macnaghten, P. (2006). Nature. Theory, Culture and Society, 23(2–3), 347–349. Malafouris, L. (2013). How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mauss, M. (1973 [1935]). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2(1), 70–88. McLuhan, M. (1995 [1964]). Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. London: Routledge.

I ntroduction 

19

Mead, G. H. ([1934] 1962). Mind, Self and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. C. W. Morris (Ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012 [1945]). Phenomenology of Perception. London; New York: Routledge. Mesko, B. (2016). Paralyzed people walk again: A Dutch story. Retrieved from http:// medicalfuturist​.com​/2016​/01​/21​/paralyzed​-people​-walk​-again​-a​-dutch​-story/ (accessed 27/05/2016). Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to Phenomenology. London: Routledge. Newen, A., De Bruin, L., & Gallagher, S. (Eds.). The Oxford handbook of 4E Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ogien, R. (1999). Sociologie de la déviance. Paris: Armand Colin. Prentice, R. (2005). The anatomy of a surgical simulation: The mutual articulation of bodies in and through the machine. Social Studies of Science, 35(6), 837–866. Prentice, R. (2013). Bodies in Formation. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Rabier, C. (2013). Introduction: The crafting of medicine in the early industrial age. Technology and Culture, 54(3), 437–459. Salerno, R. (2006). Sociology Noir. Jefferson; North Carolina; London: Macferland. Sandel, M. J. (2004). The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Sandel, M. J. (2007). Designer babies: The problem with genetic engineering. Tikkun, 22(5), 40–85. Schulze, B. (2006). Körperbewegung als Formbildung. Ansätze einer systemtheoretischen Bewegungskonzeption. In R. Gugutzer (Ed.), Body Turn: Perspektiven der Soziologie des Körpers (pp. 81–93). Bielefeld: Transcript. Schutz, A. (1967). Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2011). The Primacy of Movement. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Shilling, C. (1993). Afterword: Body work and the sociological tradition. Sociology of Health and Illness, 33(2), 336–340. Shilling, C. (2005). The Body in Technology, Culture and Society. London; Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Sloterdijk, P. (1999). Regeln für den Menschenpark. Ein Antwortschrieben zu Heideggers Brief über den Huanismus. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Spreen, D. (2015). Upgradekultur: Der Körper in der Enhancement-Gesellschaft. Bielefeld: Transcript. Terry, J., & Urla, J. (1995). Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Differences in Science and Popular Culture. Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Thomas, I. W. ([1907] 1974). Sex and society: Studies in the social psychology of sex. New York: Arno Press. Thomas, I. W. ([1923] 1967). The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis. Evanston: Harper Torchbooks. Tsakiris, M., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Gallagher, S. (2007). On agency and body-ownership: Phenomenological and neurocognitive reflections. Consciousness and Cognition, 16(3), 645–660. Turkle, S. (1984). The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster.

20 Introduction Turkle, S. (2005). The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. Cambridge, MA; London: The MIT Press. Turkle, S. (2011). The tethered self: Technology reinvents intimacy and solitude. Continuing Higher Education Review, 75, 28–31. Turkle, S. (2017). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from the Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books. Turkle, S., Taggart, W., Kidd, C. D., & Dasté, O. (2006). Relational artifacts with children and elders: The complexities of cybercompanionship. Connection Science, 18(4), 347– 361. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/09540090600868912. Varela, F., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (2016). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press. Voskuhl, A. (2013). Androids in the Enlightenment: Mechanics, Artisans, and Cultures of the Self. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Wacquant, L. (2015). For a sociology of flesh and blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38(1), 1–11. Wagner, H. R. (1986). Alfred Schutz. An Intellectual Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Westermann, B. (2012). Anthropomorphe Maschinen: Grenzgänge zwischen Biologie und Technik seit dem 18. Jahrhundert. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink. Williams, S. J., & Bendelow, G. (1998). The Lived Body: Sociological Themes, Embodied Issues. London: Routledge. Winance, M. (2019). Don’t touch/push me! From disruption to intimacy in relations with one’s wheelchair: An analysis of relational modalities between persons and objects. Sociological Review, 67(2), 428–443. Wirth, L. (1928). The Ghetto. New Brunswick; London: Transaction Publishers. Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-person Perspective. Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Zahavi, D. (2012). Empathy and mirroring: Husserl and Gallese. Phaenomenologica, 201, 217–254. Zahavi, D. (Eds.) (2019a). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zahavi, D. (2019b). Phenomenology: The Basics. London: Routledge.

Websites: https://exoskeletonreport​.com​/2020​/04​/8​-videos​-of​-real​-life​-exoskeletons​-with​-super​-high​ -production​-value/ (accessed 10/05/2020). https://northsearegion​.eu​/exskallerate/ (accessed 10/05/2020). https://www​.bbc​.com​/news​/technology​-24474336 (accessed 10/04/2020). https://www​.exhauss​.com/ (accessed 10/05/2020). https://www​.hansonrobotics​.com​/sophia/ (accessed 04/04/2020). https://www​.shivaexo​.fr​/en​/shiva​-exo​-2/ (accessed 10/05/2020).

Part I

Technological objects facing embodied subjects



Chapter 2

Among bodies, exoskeletons and sites

The “Hows” and “Whats” of fieldworking with exoskeletons and their bodies At my first encounter with an exoskeleton at a 2016 trade show for medical technologies in Germany, one of the first things that surprised me was its bulk. These objects are far away from transforming bodies into superheroes or cyborgs, which is what I expected to encounter. Even more than the bulkiness, my attention was drawn to its slowness compared to human natural pace. The person who wore the exoskeleton and who was in his 40s, had suffered a spinal cord injury due to an accident. When he put the device on, his movements were very slow. He utilized crutches in order to balance the weight of the body, and this element required a constant effort to stabilize both the corporeal weight and the robot carrying the body. At a certain point the man started to walk into the exhibition room, but he was unable to cross the threshold of the door, which caused him to fall on the ground with the robot. Unsurprisingly, this event caused a lot of agitation in the room. It was then that I understood that we are far away – very far away – from any Iron Man pictures, and that we are faced with a technological gadget in its very first stages of development. Some years before my attendance at this event, a friend of mine with cerebral palsy (one of the impairments for which exoskeletons may be used) informed me about a project of the Japanese company Cyberdyne, whose exoskeleton design surprised me at the time in particular by its futuristic appearance.1 It was at this point when I first started to consider what bodies exoskeletons produce. However, it was not until I met one of the most preeminent specialists in robotics, Professor Robert Riener, at a conference in Zurich that same year (2016), that my questions started to emerge regarding how these new technologies reframe human bodies and their abilities and capabilities. The fieldwork took place over a few years, starting in 2014, the last collected data being in November 2019. Data include narrative interviews; one group interview; expert interviews, which were the most numerous among the interviews I conducted; participant observation in labs, centers or institutes doing research on exoskeletons or developing exoskeletons; participation at trade fairs with exoskeletons and medical technologies; as well as attendance at various conferences in

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-3

24  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

engineering sciences, mainly robotics, and the competition Cybathlon organized in 2016 in Zurich. In this regard, my study followed the principles of triangulation, a classical one in social sciences (Denzin 1978, 1989; Flick 2019; Knoblauch 2010). I may define my empirical experience as being strongly contextual, situational and “site-uational,” as well as ethnographically strongly focused. I also needed to familiarize myself with some concepts used in robotics to understand how specialists conceive of the technology they develop. My intention was not “to go native.” Quite on the contrary. I enjoyed remaining a “foreigner” in the field, because, in the case of my research this provided me more objectification possibilities. I felt fine not to be “at home,” a methodological aspect which is imperative to note, given the importance of the distinction between “home” and research field, which for ethnographers is crucial (Amit 2000; Caputo 2000; Hirschauer & Amann 1997). I was interested in understanding how these various technologies change the human body and not focusing on a specific product. Therefore, I refrained from using any video material even if labs, robotic centers or other companies provided them on their internet sites to present their products. Additionally, I would also mention the plethora of commercial videos featuring exoskeletons that are available on the platform YouTube. Despite the richness that this type of empirical material may elicit, I contend that nothing replaces direct experience: the feeling of touching an exoskeleton, talking with its designer or user or even using it. This is probably why the phenomenological tradition still matters in social sciences, as one of its specificities is to stress the uniqueness of human experience. Exoskeletons are the guarded intellectual property of labs, centers and institutes. For reasons of anonymity, no lab or center that I visited and featured videos of their projects on their websites will be named. I will refer only to the countries of these centers, since there are national parameters or limitations on the introduction of exoskeletons to commercial markets. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in three countries, France, Germany and Switzerland,2 recurring to what has been known for several decades as a “multi-sited ethnography” (Hannerz 2003; Marcus 1995, 1998) and, perhaps more accurately, to an “oblique” one, since what I did in my fieldwork was definitely “traversing and being positioned at the boundaries” (Røyrvik 2013: 73). I was aided in understanding how bodies and machines co-construct and co-condition one another from my position as an outsider and benefited from remaining a foreigner. I held fast to my disciplinary identity as a sociologist; my colleagues in engineering sciences, ergonomics or physiotherapy respected this boundary and helped me find a common language, which brought me near to their understandings of corporeality. I had the chance to participate in a test for an exoskeleton for rehabilitation purposes, for which I was the testing person. I also had short trials of exoskeletons in some clinics or labs and also at trade shows. These scattered autoethnographic experiences brought me closer to my object of study, to how bodies redefine their deviance and how and if they may be extended. In this sense, I argue that my research, instead of being a strong “objective” rendering of the facts and phenomena which contributed to the bodies I was searching for, could rather be considered as an “interrelated rendering” of my object of study.

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  25

I was interested in creating bridges among the various epistemologies which responded to the “deviant” and “extended” bodies and which continuously informed one another. Some notes on my participation in testing exoskeletons helped me to create increased nearness to both users, since I could speak from “inside” the object (albeit seldom) but also to experts, because I could ask about functions of the exoskeleton and how it was designed to modify the movement of the human body. I attempted to understand how precisely exoskeletons change corporeal parameters of ability, inability, and, more generally, of capability. I interviewed exoskeleton users from France, Germany and Switzerland, as well as from the USA. The experts who were interviewed come as well from France, Germany and Switzerland but also from Canada and the Netherlands. I participated in international conferences in engineering sciences and trade shows in medical technologies and with exoskeletons in Germany and France. I did my first interviews between 2014 and 2016, and exclusively with persons having motility impairments: spinal cord injury and cerebral palsy. These first interviews were biographical and were conducted with adults ranging in age from their mid-twenties to their late fifties. They were originally from the USA, UK, France and Germany. Among these interviewees, only those with spinal cord injury (SCI) used exoskeletons. It was at this stage of my research that I started to question whether one may really speak of augmentation with respect to the use and application of these technologies. All in all, from 2014 to 2019, I conducted 46 interviews, among which narrative interviews numbered 12 and 1 group interview. The one group interview was focused on the use of exoskeletons for military applications and was conducted with military staff. Among the 12 individual interviewees, only 1 person was ablebodied and he used an exoskeleton for plastering. All the other 11 interviewees had various motility impairments caused by cerebral palsy, stroke or spinal cord injury. The additional expert interviews were comprised not only by engineers but also by physiotherapists, ergonomists, and specialists in sports science.3 The comparison between persons with impairments and able persons who use the exoskeleton in a working or military environment provided me with essential details in my attempt to conceptualize the two categories at the core of my study, the “deviant” and “extended body,” and reinforce the deconstruction of the category of corporeal “enhancement.” I understand the use of exoskeletons for military purposes in terms of a use within a working environment, as soldiers and military staff using this technology are paid for those activities they are expected to perform while using exoskeletons. If the users offer information about techno-bodies from their living with the machine, experts offer another type of knowledge, which is that of the technological object and its intended use. They also provide consistent material to analyze the production of new forms of corporeality in relation to the change of bodily deviance. The categories of body, disability or motility with which engineers, ergonomists or physiotherapists operate are elaborated upon objectification parameters that are problem-solving oriented, having a specific praxis relevance (Bogner, Littig & Menz 2014). Experts forge additionally a complementary view of the body qua objective

26  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

body and inform how the “extended” body emerges, while providing a specific “context knowledge” (Meuser & Nagel 2006: 76) which the disabled or the abled persons using exoskeletons lack in their natural attitude. The higher proportion of expert interviews within this study shows an important parameter about how human bodies respond to these new technologies. More concretely, the fact that experts have more to say about the use and application of exoskeletons points out that the current state of research on exoskeletons is not sufficiently developed for users’ needs, whether they be for concrete home use with respect to rehabilitation, for regular use in industrial environments, or for military tasks. One has more chances to find exoskeletons in labs and research centers or research institutes rather than on the street, in factories or on the battlefield. Lately, however, some companies from the Netherlands, such as Laevo4 and Skelex,5 but also from Germany as Ottobock6 are well known for the implementation of their products in industrial environment. This is also the case with the French company Exhauss.7 And yet, despite some success stories, exoskeletons are not widespread enough. I completed fieldwork on seven sites from France, Germany and Switzerland. My stays were comprised of various time intervals, the longest being three weeks and the shortest one day. I was able to visit a military site, as well as two sites of a railway company. Due to two notable interviews (expert and narrative), I gained significant knowledge about the use of an exoskeleton from a company that builds decorations. In the lab where I had spent three weeks, I had the opportunity to return to observe tests with a patient, which were one day each. I was encouraged to do so by the patient himself, whom I had met before these tests and with whom I had conducted an interview in a different clinic I visited. He came regularly to do exercises with an exoskeleton for walking in this clinic. The existence of some models of exoskeletons in the three countries shows that there is a lot of transfer regarding the implementation of this technology and this tendency is growing. Very often, the worlds which are apart (Marcus 1998: 187) and which the use and application of exoskeletons differentiate meet at conferences, trade shows and congresses. My intention in this research was not to “simply describe a number of discrete sites, but to learn about the relationships, connections, associations and circulations between sites” (Sørensen 2008: 315). I wanted to understand the transformation of corporeality in its interaction with an object, which is a very recent technological production and this brought me on many journeys. In this sense, the type of ethnography I came to practice was a multi-sited one. In his elaboration of the principles of multi-sited ethnography, George E. Marcus (1995, 1998) portrays the researcher as (1) following people, (2) following the thing, (3) following the metaphor, (4) following the plot, story or allegory, (5) following the life or biography and (6) the conflict (Marcus 1995). I had the impression for a while that I was following the object and not the body or, more appropriately, the bodies using the object(s), as I was following users. Yet, when considering the variety and multiplicity of fieldwork experiences, one understands

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  27

that the body that is perceived or felt as deviant or extended is so perceived or felt partly due to the presence of the object. In the end, the two terms disappeared somehow to give place to their co-constituting relation. I am not sure that the category of “techno-body” (Andrieu 2010) that fascinated me at the start of this research proved itself to have any empirical coverage, but, for a small interval of time, bodies responded to their deviances through machines. It was this partial response that framed forms of objectification, recovery or the resurgence of new types of body work, phenomena that I will discuss further in Chapters 4 and 5. My object of study imposed on me a specific temporality, which was a fragmentary one, and challenged me to find bridges between how bodies use these new technologies, how they adapt to them and work with them, and what cultures, practices and self-perceptions are invented together with exoskeletal devices. My time in the field was very clearly defined, and I had to quickly capture the data because much would otherwise be forgotten. The challenge was to observe the shift of the object “exoskeleton” at the various research sites, and to ascertain what consequences this shift would have for how the body of the user would further be defined and experienced. To observe how objects shift from one status to another is already a classical approach in ethnography (Appadurai 1986; Niewöhner & Scheffer 2008). Yet, exoskeletons are not jewelry or commodities. Their close connection to the human body engages specific transformations of this very locus of human subjectivity and it was these mutations that I wanted to understand. In line with the principles evoked by George E. Marcus (1995, 1998) in his characterization of multi-sited ethnography that I mentioned earlier, I was a ”follower.” I was not interested in intricate description of sites and how exoskeletons transformed bodies at each specific site. What I wanted to understand, rather, was the relation and active circulation between these sites and how, despite being developed for a specific need of the human body (walking, lifting), the exoskeleton will impact the conception of that very body, its abilities and capabilities. Much in this experience was about comparing bodies in their attempts to overcome or deal with deviance and “normality.” My object of study was, as George E. Marcus justly noted, “ultimately mobile and multiply situated” (1995: 102). Consequently, I had to follow it. Thus, I came to follow people and things because they are the carriers of metaphors, plots, lives or conflicts. More than anything, people are (at least up to date) embodied and what I was following was their bodies. I constructed my field gradually. Most of the site selections were also influenced, as Ulf Hannerz (2003) evokes, “by chance.” Meeting people led me to other people and to new contexts and sites, engaging me further in a form of “snowball sampling” (Bryant 2017: 250). Meeting people also led me to know places, contexts and various situations. My approach was not an ethnological ethnography but a sociological ethnography, and, more specifically, one which was inspired by Hubert Knoblauch’s method, known as “focused ethnography” (Knoblauch 2001). This type of fieldwork was strictly defined by temporal limits. If sometimes I received more freedom regarding interviews, in that many of my interviewees offered me a second interview or were willing to answer additional questions by

28  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

e-mail after the initial interview, the onsite observations were strictly delimited in time. Since the length of my stays at a particular lab, center or military site could vary from one day up to three weeks, I prefer to speak of a “mesoethnographic” approach, a perspective which espouses the intention to develop a “middle range theory” (Merton [1949] 1968) and which is guided by the grounded theory method (Bryant & Charmaz 2007: 608; Bryant 2017: 255) that I used in my analyses. These stays also confirmed for me the importance of the physical place in the construction of, and, I would add, feeling the situation. According to Clifford Geertz, “the locus of the study is not the object of the study” (1973: 22); I was aware that I was studying in a site and not the site. Yet my object of study gained its objectivity precisely because of the site, and due to what transpired during a specific interval there, according to what experts and test persons invited to participate in tests or training sessions with the exoskeleton occasioned. This may sound challenging when considering Geertz’s above-mentioned idea. However, the physical space of a lab highly influences the forging of exoskeletons and what changes they affect on human bodies. It is this characteristic, at least for the time being, that makes exoskeletons as technological objects strongly connected to a specific site or lifeworld, very often a lab, clinic or industrial environment. They may also be connected to military tasks performed in a particular moment, but with regard to their use in military applications, the location of their “usability” is very different than that of a clinic or a factory because the latter are mostly closed locations. In this third case, the technological object is indeed more strongly related to the task to be performed and its successful realization than to the site as such. Consequently, the body-exoskeleton couple knows a clear differentiation in terms of context, situated-ness and usability. Globally, to come back to Marcus’s earlier typology, my general impression during my ethnographic fieldwork was that I was following sites in which bodies met exoskeletons. Technological objects and their mono-usage One of the major observations I did in my field was that what these machines do in clinics for example, is, though for a short time – usually 30–45 minutes – to bring human beings who live with great pains and physical limitations to a brief moment of ability and self-acceptance. Whether on a building site, in a warehouse or on the battlefield, exoskeletons help human bodies conduct their tasks with less pain. In this sense, they are similar to planes, cars, irons or scalpels: they are strongly task-focused interval gadgets and thus characterized by mono-usage. An exoskeleton may be used, for example, in a lab, factory, or on a battlefield for only one task: walking, rehabilitating diminished arm movement for stroke or spinal cord injury patients, lifting weight or carrying weight. Consequently, negotiations may strongly vary in their content and function and depend on the corporeal practices which the person wearing the exoskeleton is expected to or needs to accomplish. The role of the context of use in framing my object of study was therefore fundamental, although contexts may be strongly related. There are as many clinics as

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  29

there are car factories or logistics centers. I understand a context as entailing various situations, but still determined by the possibilities it offers to act. It is easy to understand that the context of a clinic for rehabilitation is fundamentally different from that of an experimental lab or that of a car factory. I favor an empirical methodological approach that I name strong contextualism, which is highly endorsed precisely by the very restrained use of the exoskeletons and consequently by the bodies that exoskeletons produce contextually, not only situationally.8 Much in this research was about temporal constraints of use. Surprisingly for a sociologist, even if tests were to have taken place, cancellations of last minute happened for various reasons, occasionally for reasons of infrastructural order such as room reservation. For these motives, to which I would add the multiplicity of labs and centers I wanted to visit and which often imposed on me a strict “site management” (Sørensen 2008: 322), the time I could spend onsite was very often clearly controlled and decided. In a way, the temporality of my research, although one corresponding to a sociological perspective, started to mirror that of the engineers in robotics and of other experts such as ergonomists or physiotherapists. I learned to enter a new world in which bodies had another meaning than that of my sociological one. One of the conclusions of this fieldwork experience was that I did not “study locality in order to map global systems” (Rajan 2006: 30), despite the fact that exoskeletons are currently being developed in many countries in the world. Given the fragmentation of the field and of the cases observed (corporeal ability and corporeal deficiency are two different experiential universes), I would qualify my study as an “oblique” one (Røyrvik 2013). The ethnographic experience also led me to deconstruct many of the prejudices I had about the world of engineers. At the conference La santé connectée, une totale mutation? organized in Strasbourg, France, on October 5–6, 2018, Michel Hasselman, professor emeritus of intensive care at the Medical Faculty, University of Strasbourg, affirmed that medicine is not an exact science.9 Being in the lab with engineers, one also understands the degree to which any scientific project dealing with the human body is, in some way, inexact. Whereas machines may have parameters and usually surprise less (although they certainly may), by contrast, human bodies, may they be able or impaired, present surprises frequently. Certainly, Marcel Mauss’s category of “techniques of the body,” so often quoted in various sociological studies on the body and corporeality, makes its way into the lab or onto building sites, but its variability is so strong that it is difficult to speak of common reactions. This is perhaps where the phenomenological heritage becomes relevant in a sociological fieldwork – almost every human body that was mentioned, described or analyzed in this research (including my own) reacted in a different manner to the use of the exoskeleton. It is even more challenging to observe how experts try to contribute to ameliorate the translation between the parameters of the human body and those of the exoskeletons, in a process through which one material form (exoskeletons) aims to follow another one (human bodies). One of the surprising discoveries from my research was that exoskeletons wait for human bodies to correct them because exoskeletons reflect these human bodies.

30  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

They are conceived starting from human bodies to respond to human bodies. And this process is far from continuous. Unlike other technologies that are also steadily in progress, exoskeletons have not yet proven their worth as technologies which can be adequately trusted. One of the challenges faced by engineers is the parameter of safety, of creating a technological gadget that does not expose the user to danger. Of course, technologies may fail to mandate a generally safe experience for various reasons. Yet, if one drives a car, uses a washing machine or a hair dryer, these objects, with few exceptions, do not surprise their users. The situation is different for exoskeletons, especially since the needs and contexts of use are various and expose the user to specific knowledge. As every user is different and since the exoskeleton is very close to the human body – literally attached to it like clothes are – many problems may occur. The models are therefore constantly in progress. In this line of thought, speaking of saturation, which is one of the main categories granting objectivity when working empirically with qualitative material and using the principles of the grounded theory method (GTM), which I did, raised some essential questions about how I perceive the consistency of my object of study. One of the criteria in this process of epistemological stability was not only the plausibility of my data but also my consideration of the fieldwork in terms of “snapshots” (Sørensen 2008: 317), which I had to then further superpose. This feature of indeterminacy impacts also the conception of the body which is formed by the object. This was much encouraged by my various stays in labs or sites where exoskeletons were tested and used. These stays could substantially vary in content and use. For example, in the course of one week in June 2019, I was in a lab where exoskeletons for rehabilitation were developed, then interviewed a specialist in ergonomics leading a program for the development of an exoskeleton intended to be used by a railway company, and, finally, I visited a military site, where exoskeletons were tested to conduct interviews with soldiers who had taken part in the tests. I had to take notes fast, train my vocabulary and perception, and be able to quickly switch from one corporeal world that exoskeletons framed to another, worlds which somehow, despite being connected by the same technological object, are strongly apart. In the end, the general outcome looked more like a patchwork of snapshots than a unitary image. I had to find a way to cope with this empirical “dissonance” (Sørensen 2008: 329) and capture the unity which further created each and every one of the three corporeal worlds I encountered: that of the impaired bodies, the bodies at work and that of the bodies at fight. Phenomenology as methodology: Empathy and sympathy The specific attention given to a phenomenological analysis of the life-world (Dahlberg & Dahlberg 2019; Honer 1999, 2011) is not new in the history of sociology. Alfred Schutz was the scholar whose work first developed such an interest, the resources of which are represented by the categorical developments in Edmund Husserl’s works (Husserl [1936] 1970; Welton 1999; Zahavi 2003).

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  31

Schutz introduced the phenomenological philosophical terminology especially into the field of social theory, the body playing a secondary role. This aspect has been already criticized in sociological studies on the body (Gugutzer 2012). Yet, more globally considered, one of the achievements of the phenomenological paradigm held as methodologically valuable for an empirical approach is that, as George Psathas notes, phenomenology does not divide or separate the knowing subject from the object of study in order to concentrate on one or the other. The world is not filled with objects that have appearances independent of humans who experience them, nor does subjective experience exist independently of the objects, events, and activities experienced. There is no pure subjective subject or pure objective object. (Psathas 1989: 15) Phenomenology is not limited to a discourse (mainly of philosophical provenience) about the transcendental status of the subject; it is a multiperspectival, categorical and methodological tradition that represents a valuable resource for analyzing various themes and topics. If one wishes to adhere to it, transcendental consciousness and the various forms of phenomenological reduction described by Edmund Husserl in his classical writings (Husserl [1913] 1976; [1928] 1950) represent one choice among many in this rich tradition. The plethora of empirical studies and topics of research that are informed by the phenomenological discourse in the past few decades speak for themselves about the epistemological transformations that have taken place within this paradigm. It is almost obvious that due to the variety of empirical studies that phenomenology has resourced (Dant 2005; Prentice 2013; Prinz 2014; Williams 1998), reductionisms to “transcendentalism” do not find any plausible argument in the contemporary landscape of this tradition.10 What is however necessary to draw attention to is that phenomenology may very well serve to individualize forms of experientiality, which are in part subjective. In this sense, it provided me many resources to sharpen the focus of my fieldwork categories. Narrative interviews and several of my own autoethnographic experiences can very well mirror phenomenological principles. I would add also that what one understands in the phenomenological discourse as “objective body” (Körper), the famous category with which natural sciences are supposed to operate in their protocols, tests and measurements, may not ultimately be that objective. The result of tests may reduce parameters of corporeality. However, the perception of experts is multidimensional. They may entail contradictions and, similar to social scientists, they depend on processes of interpretation. The “objective” body I was looking for in the discourses of the experts I encountered contributed to clarify an important aspect of my research: (1) whether and at what levels corporeality may be extended (if at all) impacting how deviance may be further conceived and (2) whether and with what consequences one can speak of augmentation.

32  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

Generally, our being with objects challenges the manners in which we act, the quality of our performances, our intercorporeal relations and very often the intersubjective ones. Technological objects enter the same categories influencing how we feel our bodies. In particular, the research setting imposes specific “resonant felt bodies” (resonante Leiber) (Gugutzer 2017b), which as a researcher one needs to pursue, observe and embody into one’s own experiential field. In this vein, my predilection for the phenomenological paradigm does not encourage an interest for the subjective “givingness-forms of the consciousness” (Gegebenheiten des Bewusstseins) (Hitzler 2006: 134) but of how bodies that became impaired or bodies which are able and had limitations due to what working contexts requested from them11 felt these circumstances and how they responded to the technological object, which was intended to intervene upon one of the most fundamental experiential corporeal characteristics: our motility. These aspects were mentioned in interviews, often observed in the labs, clinics, trial centers, trade shows and also experienced on my own body. Narrative interviews, like any research experience, were not limited to only the discourse I was recording or of which I was taking notes. They reflected the peculiarities of the corporeal experience. They were accompanied by corporeal atmospheres (Hauskeller 1995) and by specific affectivity responses (affektives Betroffensein) (Gugutzer 2017a: 149), which were shaped sometimes by very strong reactions like crying, anger, various forms of irritation, disappointment or disenchantment in the interviewees.12 Each and every embodied subjectivity I had the chance to meet and engage with provided me rich details in my research and influenced my study by their various experiences. If in the tradition of narrative practice in sociology some predilections, paralleling the GTM orientation developed by Barney Glaser, may favor as little interference of the researcher in the collected narrative as possible (Schütze 1983, 1987), as far as my data is concerned, my interviewees constructed with me those bodies I wanted to know about. When I told them that I myself had participated in trials or tests of exoskeletons, the interviewees wanted to know about my corporeal experience in return and felt even more confident in sharing theirs. In doing so, I was using my own corporeal history to try to connect with the narratives of my interviewees. My own body became an instrument13 to collect and share data. It became a possibility to have access to the experience of my interviewees, to understand the changes in their corporeality, and the differences with my own experiences. Sharing the experience of the technological object became, in the end, a possibility of sharing subjective aspects of corporeality. My own body became a tool through which I could observe similarities and variances between what it is like to walk, transport weight and move with an exoskeletal device. Much in a body is about engaging, about forms of openness and closure and about the possibility of affirming or opposing intercorporeal or intersubjective engagement. Much in research is also about disclosing subjectivity forms one notices in their embodiment. Sociological research experiences demand specific resources in order to capture the variety of corporeal resonances occurring in the field. Being engaged for a very determined interval (which is that of the interview

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  33

or of the observation on a site) exposes in part a reorganization of one’s “situated knowledge(s)” (Haraway 1991). One is both contributing to construct the field but is also, in return, constructed by the field. In this sense, to recall a terminological differentiation discussed by Robert Gugutzer in one of his articles where he defends the program of what he names a “neophenomenological sociology” between the category of “patheur” and that of “actor,”14 the research situation makes us both. All the involved parties (researcher and researched) co-construct each other. What we experience within our empirical research is based on experiential interchange and exchange, but not on an “interchangeability of standpoints,” by which “I and my fellow man would have typically the same experiences of the common world if we changed places,” as Alfred Schutz would note (Schutz [1955] 1962: 316). It is precisely on forms of corporeal dissymmetry that my categories took shape. In such a dynamic, both senses and “reason” play a crucial role. To recall once more the GTM dictum, one gets much of the “sense” of “what is going on” due to one’s senses – vision, hearing, sometimes touch and even smell. In addition to the experiential diversity of the narrative interviews, complemented by that referred to and explained by experts in expert interviews, I gathered many details through several autoethnographic experiences. They helped me to understand the complexity of the elements, which made bodies be such multifaceted objects of sociological study. For example, in order to realize what exoskeletons were supposed to do, I had to “bracket” expectations and “record” the feelings and states I was experiencing, and then compare these with those related to, shown or observed by other persons who used the same technological object. I had to learn how to feel rather than to reason with what I was experiencing. Or, to enlarge my reasoning while considering “feeling.” And this is a lesson that one learns from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. One understands empirically that bodies are not closed; they do not enclose subjects and separate them from objects. They are open entities, in a constant exchange with the surrounding environment (Krueger & Legrand 2009). Despite many methodological studies defending autoethnography in the qualitative methodological arena (Denzin 2013; Ellis 2004, 2009; Ellis, Adams & Bochner 2010; Jones 2005; Jones, Adams & Ellis 2013), this type of empirical experience is generally regarded with suspicion, since anything which winks at the “subject” may destabilize the object.15 Much of what is expected from the researcher is to control herself in the field while constantly being reflexive (Ploder & Stadlbauer 2017: 423); what she must do is to “strip her subjectivity away.” The researcher’s reflexivity should be a guarantee for the non-contamination of the object, more plainly put, for the objectivity of the object. My understanding of the field contradicts this idea. I consider therefore that resources related to the spheres of “subjectivity and selfhood” (Zahavi 2005), which may include those of the researcher in the research situation (hence, I use the term “autoethnographic elements”), are important tools in understanding how both able and impaired bodies in their relation to and concrete practical experiences with exoskeletal devices change their being categorized as “deviant” or “extended.” Sometimes, forms of what I would term “politics of the body,” which

34  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

may be correlated with one of the core ideas in autoethnographic scholarship that stresses the “making of the personal political” (Jones 2005), emerged sporadically in my field. These concerned decisions about how much time a user (more specifically one who is impaired) should spend to train with an exoskeleton and what type of movements she/he should train. I could experience a diffuse understanding about what it is to be decided upon one’s body while myself being the subject of a test. Yet, this is a very different experience than that related by interviewees and observed in their use of the exoskeleton, in which sometimes the weight of the “objective” body would be heavier than that of the “lived” phenomenological body. This imbalance of knowledge and experience draws attention to forms of conflict that may develop within the limited space and time of a training session with an exoskeleton and that have concrete phenomenological consequences on the manner in which the user feels her body and her powerless position in front of the knowledge expertise. The phenomenological background indeed allows a reconsideration of what bodies as “other” require in particular contexts and how various material relations to the same object (the exoskeleton) formulate intercorporeal tensions between the person who is supposed to benefit from the technology and the expert who “decides” who the technology should serve. The phenomenological experiences that were captured, whether they were accounting for the subjectivity of others or my own, provided me substantial details to gradually elaborate an “epistemology of practice” (Spry 2018: 1114). In order to “disturb” less, one needs to train empathic and sympathetic capacities, which represent very important “techniques of the body” when doing empirical fieldwork. Empathy and sympathy are phenomenological concepts which can be very well correlated with the idea of not only corporeal resonance but also that of narrative resonance.16 There is a wide literature regarding their various developments especially in the philosophical phenomenological background where they were extensively discussed (Gurwitsch [1932] 1979; Husserl [1952] 1989; Krueger 2016; Scheler [1923] 2008; Stein 1989; Schutz 1967; Svenaeus 2016, 2017; Zahavi 2009, 2014), but they had perhaps an even more important role in research in developmental psychology (Stern 1985; Rochat 2001) and studies in philosophy of mind inspired by recent neuroscientific developments (Goldman 2006; Stueber 2006). Yet my interest in these concepts refers to their empirical and methodological implications in sociological research and, more specifically, to how they may change the researcher’s sensitivity to the field and thus contribute to nuance ethical considerations of the research process. Additionally, my use of both categories overlooks their understanding in terms of “methods of ingression” that, at least regarding the “use” of empathy as a tool in clinical research, referred to how researchers used their “feeling into” to have direct access to the experiences of other human subjects (Stark & Campbell 2018: 798). My aim was not to feel into but to use my sensitivity (Pink 2009) to understand the bodies which were in front of me and their experiences with that particular technological object, which is the exoskeleton. One should, however, not omit the classical phenomenological details on the categories of empathy and sympathy because, despite their general conception in

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  35

the frame of a theory of intersubjectivity, they draw attention to interesting details that may be valuable when doing empirical research. One primarily needs to make a clear distinction between these two categories: whereas empathy refers in the phenomenological philosophical perspective to “a basic perceptually based understanding of others, sympathy adds an emotional response” (Zahavi 2014: 115). Following Dan Zahavi’s argument, empathy is therefore our general manner of experiencing other human beings qua embodied subjects, whereas sympathy introduces the nuances, which may be emotionally colored. In my use of these two categories, I refrain from any discussions and debates regarding how we experience other minds, since for the purpose of the present study this would lead the discussion astray.17 When I refer to empathy and sympathy, I do not mean the focus of a mental perspective on other minds (Stueber 2006) but on our own embodiment. The phenomenological perspective I defend goes beyond the dualism mind/ body. In this sense, the embodied and enacted orientation in phenomenology that I endorse provides the reconciliatory terminology to bridge such historical epistemological disagreements. Considering both empathy and sympathy in a sociological study that is phenomenologically inspired is almost a methodological duty. More than for everyday experiences in which the other is sufficiently typified and belongs to the assumed material presences in our lives, the research situation confronts us precisely with a specific form of alterity, which sometimes may be completely radical. First of all, the structure of my fieldwork represented a collection of exceptional sites. This experience exposed me as a researcher both to a variety of corporeal responses and, in turn, to the persons I got in contact with and who shaped my study. To this I would add that the interactions and discussions we had took place in very special contexts, far from everydayness. Laboratories developing projects in robotics, clinics, industrial sites or military sites have little to do with environments such as supermarkets, post offices or beaches. The latter do indeed represent special chronotopes, yet one does not need special permission to enter a supermarket, to post a letter or to lie in the sun to get a suntan. One may certainly need permission under certain circumstances, since any social conduct is prone to change and behavioral control coming from institutional authority. Many of our routines, to recall Erving Goffman, “that allow the individual unthinking, competent performance were attained through an acquisition process whose early stages were negotiated in cold sweat” (Goffman 1972: 293). However, the general attitude regarding these spaces and places assigns them as belonging more to our everyday accessible lifeworlds than labs or military sites. As a consequence, the strong specificity of the sites influenced the otherness I encountered on these sites and the intersubjective forms I developed during the research process. My reactions and descriptions of various experiences were quite specific and strongly circumscribed to those bodies and only those. To hold an ethical stance required attending to these peculiarities. Specific sensitivity which require empathy and sympathy is fundamental for the construction of the field; I needed to learn how to quickly change my responsivity toward the persons whose corporeal worlds I was learning about. Especially in

36  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

narrative interviews, which were almost all (in the case of both impaired persons and those who were able) testifying about forms of pain, I had to learn to give time, to listen and withstand the experiential gaps which had forged the bodies of the interviewees in front of me. In his study, Das leibliche Selbst (2013), Bernhard Waldenfels makes a categorical distinction when he analyzes the manners in which we respond corporeally to other human beings. With respect to behavior, he evokes the concepts of “sensorium,” which, as he notes, refers to the “field of noticing” (Bereich des Bemerkens) and “motorium,” which refers to the “field of moving and effectuating” (Bereich des Bewegens und Bewirkens). The third category which completes the distinction is that of “responsorium” (Waldenfels 2013: 373). Research situations which may bring us to exceptional environments and sites are corporeally rooted in how we generate responses, and thus in how we empathize and sympathize with our subjects. The need to corporeally respond urged me to find means to connect with these bodies, which seemed to be “silent archives of experience” (Knorr-Cetina 1989: 100), and to capture in some cases their “pathographies.” In the disability studies literature, the term “pathography” refers, as Anne Hunsaker Hawkins defines it, to “a form of autobiography or biography that describes personal experiences of illness, treatment and sometimes death. […] In some sense,” argues Hawkins, “the pathography is our modern adventure story. Life becomes filled with risk and danger as the ill person is transported out of the familiar everyday world into the realm of a body that no longer functions.” (Hunsaker Hawkins 1999: 1) I understand “pathography” related to the aforementioned category, proposed by Robert Gugutzer in sociology, to namely be that of “patheur”18 and which stresses at a more general level the characteristic of our bodies being affected, of catching, absorbing and being impacted not only by illness, disease or malfunction but also by the presence of other human beings, by the atmosphere which emerges between these human beings and the researchers (Gugutzer 2017b: 387) and to which researchers inevitably contribute. Interestingly, the research situation is not only a collection of “types” and “typifications” of behavior, language, expression and impression codes, to recall some classical concepts in the phenomenology of Alfred Schutz (Schutz 1967: 196) and some from the Goffmanian terminology, which referred to manners of everyday predictability. It is very much about trying to capture what one feels and about responsive capacities. Much about how bodies emerge is to be found in moments of silence, emotional outbursts such as irritation or crying, and these resources formulate a new understanding of what corporeal knowledge may mean, a “felt corporeal knowledge” (leibliche Erkenntnis), as Robert Gugutzer names it (2017b: 387). To consider empathy and sympathy as “tools” for understanding one’s object of study has obvious consequences for the production of the knowledge which is aimed at. More explicitly it focuses forms of knowledge residing “in” the body (Hirschauer 2008) and not outside of it,19 and

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  37

with them the acknowledgment of a “contingent vulnerability” (Frank 1995: 165) and thus ultimately an ethical stance. Needing a “proper body” when doing research on bodies and embodiment: Re-conceptualizing methodological situationism In a discussion I had with Robert Gugutzer in 2015, I told him that I thought that in a research situation one needs a “proper” body. He asked me, “Then why do we need that as sociologists?” This remained an open question throughout my fieldwork journey. It helped me to think especially on how the methodological conception of sociological situationism could be reset, and to place a stronger focus on the role of corporeality when considering ethical aspects. If the predilection for situationism in sociology has a long tradition dating back to W.I. Thomas’s writings, the sociologist who directly inquired into the status of the “situation” qua sociological analytical unit is undoubtedly Erving Goffman (1967). However, what has been termed “methodological situationism” is a term coined by Karin Knorr-Cetina (1988). Recently, “methodological situationism” was further elaborated through phenomenological lenses by Robert Gugutzer (2017a). These three sociological perspectives are different from one another, although Goffman seems to have inspired both of the other two which were elaborated upon later. The definition of methodological situationism provided by Knorr-Cetina, and which is related to the defense of a micro-sociology, is resumed in the following passage: To understand social life, we must find our feet in what people do and say in actual social situations. Radical micro-sociology implies that social objects, and particularly macro-social phenomena, are unknown and unknowable unless they can be grounded in knowledge derived from the analysis of microsocial situations. […] methodological situationism [is] the principle which demands that descriptively adequate accounts of large-scale social phenomena be grounded in statements about actual social behaviour in concrete situations. (1988: 22) My interest was not to understand the “large-scale social phenomena” in their complexity. Such an epistemological aim would go far beyond my research project. My aim was to understand how various forms of corporeality emerge in their sociological and phenomenological consistency with respect to the use and application of a specific technological object, namely the exoskeleton. Certainly, the bodies and the technology belong to wider social scales; they differ in practice and representations from one site to another and from one scientific culture to another. Yet, due to the fact that this type of object is not (for the time being) a widespread technology, that it can be used only for short periods of time, for very specific tasks or (in)abilities of the human body, I conceive its impact as being strongly (and perhaps coercively sometimes) to situate all the bodies gravitating around it in a very specific

38  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

chronotope. Therefore, being faithful to George E. Marcus’s research principle of following my object of study (Marcus 1995, 1998), I likewise had to follow the variety of situations which contributed to articulate it and especially their nuances. And I also had to learn and invent my own corporeality with each and every situation and context I was observing for my research. Shortly put, I had to develop a “proper body” in order to understand my fieldwork. Facing the many aspects and presentations of corporealities (including my own) I was experiencing in my research helped me to frame a possible answer to the question “what bodies are produced by the use and application of these devices?” This question has deep ethical implications, as any technological invention impacts in a more or less direct manner human corporeality. Inevitably, the “proper body” one needs as a researcher is related to empathic and sympathetic experiential moments in research. In this sense, the phenomenological instrumentarium remains a helpful one as it draws attention to forms of sensitivity one needs to cultivate and not only to reflexive ones, which are a necessary condition in all type of research. Yet, similarly to the parcours of my interviewees, I also had to learn to cultivate and develop this “proper body.” Hence, I was very sensitive to the idea of the researcher’s body as a tool (Gugutzer 2017b: 388; Knorr-Cetina 1999: 97; Müller 2018) in doing and building up her object of research. I particularly needed to understand the various dissymmetries with respect to the bodies of the persons I was observing and interviewing, and this involved a special sensitivity to bodily limits and very often to pain. To do so, I needed to develop a specific “choreography” in order to pursue the varieties and differences of corporeal and experiential nature which built up my research object, to acknowledge enough nearness and distance, and to a certain extent, be “wrapped up in bounded locales” (Knorr-Cetina 1995: 151). Not harming involves, additionally, not disturbing, adapting and allowing the research object to “feel free.” Above all, having and being a “proper” body means building trust. Additionally, having a “proper body” involves adaptability in order to understand the experiential difference, respect it for its being “different” and learn from this difference. It means also to learn to migrate from one form of interaction to another and to assume the difference of the bodies one wants to understand. There is no doubt that the face-to-face relationship is fundamental in engaging both researchers and researched in a variety of forms of “corporeal understanding” (Abraham 2002: 191; Gugutzer 2006). This facilitates a form of knowledge which is unmediated. However, if one wishes to pursue the complexity of how pain is felt, how work constraints are lived and how much danger the body of a person working in the military area faces, other levels of analysis are needed, which engages in the deconstruction and reorganization of experiential resources, an education, or perhaps even a form of “domestication” (Oudshoorn 2020) one receives from the field. In this sense, the field forges us and imposes us to respect its own forms of resonance. Much has to do with feeling (Spüren) (Gugutzer 2017b) and feeling-with or co-feeling (Mitfühlen)20 rather than thinking-with. It is a pedagogy of the flesh, to stay with a classical Merleau-Pontyan concept (Merleau-Ponty 1968: 139–140). Feeling is inevitably accompanied by doing, in the sense that although a “guest,” I

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  39

was asked to help with small tasks, such as, for instance, when a patient who was supposed to train with the exoskeleton needed help, I could help to stabilize him while standing up. The field engaged me. I was not only a participating observer; I was participating to my own observation. I was factually doing it. In this sense, I started to cross over my label as “sociologist” and occasionally enter other tasks (which are very corporeal) and which belong, for instance, to physiotherapists, just to name a category. My body migrated toward another practical and praxis field than just pure observation. It was co-producing the field with those other bodies which were supposed to constitute my object. Under these circumstances of being corporeally engaged by my field, I responded by developing the “proper” body. Perhaps, more than just corporeally, I was engaged in an intercorporeal manner, since I had to respond to various forms of bodies and objects and respect their limitations.21 Feeling what was happening around was much about feeling-with and thus educating my senses and attention in order to capture as much as possible from the richness of the field. In this sense, the numerous situations and their bodies propelled me to become a different felt body according to their heterogeneity. Licenses granted by situations meant often licenses granted by those bodies I was observing and wanting to understand, those bodies which constantly remained “other” bodies and which I had to discover behind the spoken words and related stories.22 Much during my fieldwork was about such forms of being bodily engaged. My field asked from me “proper” responses and thus a “situated understanding” (Butnaru 2015) of “what was going on.” As such, my empirical experience was marked by fragmentations and the weight these fragments had in their empathic and sympathetic texture. One thing which became obvious in my three identified “corporeal worlds” was that what I gleaned from the human beings I met and interacted with were only “fragments” of them (Simmel 1971: 23). Many of these surprised, unsettled and pushed me to have and be a “proper” body. Notes 1 Retrieved from https://www​.cyberdyne​.jp​/english​/products​/LowerLimb​_medical​.html (accessed 09/07/2019). 2 In case this information is needed, I can provide evidence for all my sources. 3 When quoting the informants who are anonymized, I will use codes which refer to the following criteria: type of expertise or “corporeal” field, an ordinal numeral, indicating the place of the interview in the series to which it belongs and the country from which the expert comes. For example, the code “Eng3GE” refers to the third engineer that I interviewed and who comes from Germany, while the code Work1FR, MiL4FR or RehaM9FR refer to narrative interviews carried with a person having worked with an exoskeleton, having had the experience of a military exoskeleton for combat operations or having a motor impairment and having used an exoskeleton. With respect to the codes used for impaired persons, I equally noted the sex of the person in the code. For example, RehaM9FR refers to the ninth narrative interview with a person who is male from France. Having used the software Maxqda to code my interviews, I will mention the number of the paragraph which I quote, after the code designating the interviewee.

40  Technological objects facing embodied subjects 4 Retrieved from https://laevo​-exoskeletons​.com​/home (accessed 12/07/2020). 5 Retrieved from https://www​.skelex​.com/ (accessed 12/07/2020). 6 Retrieved from https://paexo​.com/​?lang​=en (accessed 18/10/2020). 7 Retrieved from https://www​.exhauss​.com/ (accessed 12/07/2020). 8 I discussed the difference between situation and context in Chapter 1 of this study. 9 Hasselmann, M. (2018). Table ronde, La santé connectée, une totale mutation? Retrieved from http://eurocos​.u​-strasbg​.fr​/WP​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2018​/10​/EC​_ PROGRAMME​_2018​_A4​_Formation​.pdf (accessed 11/07/2020). 10 Dan Zahavi, who is one of the main figures of the phenomenological tradition in philosophy, fought very often in his writings against such simplified views in many of his texts (Zahavi 1999; 2001; 2005; Zahavi & Overgaard 2009). 11 I consider the military field as being a “working” field, since soldiers are paid for their activities. This is also a view that engineers working to provide help for military forces endorse. See, for instance, Hichert et al. (2020). Exoskeletons for Military Logistics and Maintenance. Paper Presented in the Special Session WeR13. Exoskeletons for Military Applications. ICNR 2020, WEROB2020 and WearRacon Europe, 13-16/10/2020. Retrieved from http://www​.2020​.werob​.org​/special​-sessions/ (accessed 16/10/2020). 12 For a discussion of the “affective turn,” see Clough (2007). 13 Karin Knorr-Cetina, in her well-known study, Epistemic Cultures: How the Science Makes Knowledge (1999), establishes a categorical differentiation to characterize the body of the scientist (in her examples, natural sciences). Thus she evokes three types of body: the sensory body, the acting body and the experienced body. Interestingly, she also refers tangentially in this categorical discussion to the work of Maurice MerleauPonty (Knorr-Cetina 2012: 94). It is perhaps the “sensory body” which entails the highest (if there is a gradual understanding) “phenomenological” purport with respect to the research situation. She affirms thus that “the sensory body refers to the use of sensory organs as instruments of inquiry. […] it is the sensory body as a primary research tool” (Knorr-Cetina 2012: 95). These ideas are a very powerful résumé of why phenomenological methodology may be a crucial contribution to any type of research. 14 Robert Gugutzer considers that the category of “patheur” (in German “Patheur”) “represents an understanding of action in antirationalist and antiteleological terms” (Gugutzer 2017a: 150, my transl. D.B.). My view is that we experience a variety of intentionality forms. We may be aware of some of them, but of many we are unaware or diffusely aware, and our bodies are containing all these possibilities. I remain convinced that in a sociological research situation one needs to stay open to surprise (Taddei 2020). Bodies are very good at doing it. 15 See the critics against autoethnography addressed by Delamont, S. (2007). Arguments Against Auto-Ethnography. Qualitative Researcher, 4: 2–4; And Geimer, A. (2011). Performance Ethnography und Autoethnography: Trend, Turn oder Schisma in der qualitativen Forschung? Zeitschrift für Qualitative Forschung, 12(2), 299–320. 16 Arthur Frank, in his classical study, The Wounded Storyteller (1995), notes very justly when discussing the engagement one has with a story, in my case, that would be the various narratives I collected, that when being a listener, “the other’s self-story does not become my own, but I develop sufficient resonance so that I can feel its nuances and anticipate changes in plot” (Frank 1995: 158). Much in our empathic and sympathetic engagements in the fieldwork have to do with anticipations. 17 The philosophical phenomenological debates against the well-known theory of “other minds” with its two branches, “simulation theory” (ST) and “theory theory” (TT) were numerous. For extensive discussions, see Gallagher (2005), Gallagher and Zahavi

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  41 (2008) and Zahavi (2005; 2007; 2008). However, for the present study, they remain strongly theoretically focused and far from concrete ethical aspects. 18 Robert Gugutzer conceptualizes this category in sociology starting from the neophenomenological work of the philosopher Hermann Schmitz and from Jürgen Hasse. See Gugutzer (2017a: 150; 2017b). 19 In a well-known article, Körper macht Wissen: für eine Somatisierung des Körperbegriffs (2008), Stefan Hirschauer differentiates between three types of knowledge (Wissen) related to the body: knowledge “of” the body, which characterizes the scientific stance, knowledge which resides inside the body, which is also what the phenomenological orientation of Merleau-Ponty defends, and knowledge which goes “through” the body, and thus which takes the body as a medium” and refers to manners in which we corporeally communicate and to communication forms. Certainly, these three categories of knowledge refer to various epistemologies, although they remain all actual, since being social beings, we communicate and may know many things “of” our bodies because we are them, even though we may not be trained physicians or biologists. The third category, which is what phenomenologists are interested in, is perhaps the most challenging because it faces researchers precisely with the “ineffable” (Stark & Campbell 2018) and “elusive” (Crossley 1995) character of corporeality. 20 In a presentation of my project, the results of which represent the basis of this study and which took place in the research colloquium led by Christian Meyer at the University of Konstanz on April 30, 2019, Christian Meyer suggested me this category regarding my fieldwork. 21 Robert Gugutzer describes this experience of research in terms of “ordering situational chaos” (2017b: 385; my transl. D.B.). 22 Regarding the tacit dimension characterizing social aspects of our being bodies, having them and acting them, see Hirschauer (2001).

References Abraham, A. (2002). Der Körper im biographischen Kontext: Ein wissenssoziologischer Beitrag. Wiesbaden: Westdt. Verlag. Amit, V. (2000). Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World. London; New York: Routledge. Andrieu, B. (2010). Se ‘transcoporer’: Vers une autotransformation de l’humain? Pensée du Midi, 30(1), 34–41. Appadurai, A. (1986). The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bogner, A., Littig, B., & Menz, W. (2014). Interviews mit Experten: Eine praxisorientierte Einführung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Bryant, A. (2017). Grounded Theory and Grounded Theorizing: Pragmatism in Research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bryant, A., & Charmaz, K. (2007). The Sage Handbook of Grounded Theory. Los Angeles; London: Sage. Butnaru, D. (2015). Einfühlungsnarrative und Soziologie des Spürens als Möglichkeiten für “passende Körper”. Paper presented at the conference: Der Körper als Subjekt qualitativer Sozialforschung, Frankfurt a. M. 6-7.03.2015. Caputo, V. (2000). At ‘home’ and ‘away’: Reconfiguring the field for late twentieth-century anthropology. In V. Amit (Ed.), Constructing the Field: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World (pp. 19–31). London; New York: Routledge.

42  Technological objects facing embodied subjects Clough, P. T. (2007). Introduction. In Clough, P. T. & Halley, J. (Eds.), The Affective Turn: Theorizing the Social (pp. 1–33). Durham; London: Duke University Press. Crossley, N. (1995). Merleau-Ponty, the Elusive Body and Carnal Sociology. Body & Society, 1(1): 43–63. Dahlberg, H., & Dahlberg, K. (2019). Open and reflective life world research: A Third Way. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(5), 458–464. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1077800419836696. Dant, T. (2005). Materiality and Society. Maidenhead; New York: Open University Press. Denzin, N. K. (1978). The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Denzin, N. K. (1989). Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park; London: Sage. Denzin, N. K. (2013). Interpretative Autoethnography (2nd ed.). Los Angeles; London: Sage. Ellis, C. (2004). The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethnography. Walnut Creek; New York; Oxford: AltaMira Press. Ellis, C. (2009). Revision: Autoethnographic Reflections on Life and Work. Walnut Creek,CA: Left Coast Press. Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2010). Autoethnografie. In G. Mey & K. Mruck (Eds.), Handbuch Qualitative Forschung in der Psychologie (pp. 345–357). Wiesbaden: VS. Flick, U. (2019). From intuition to reflexive construction: Research design and triangulation in grounded theory research. In A. Bryant & K. Charmaz (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Current Developments in Grounded Theory (2nd ed., pp. 125–144). Los Angeles; London: Sage. Frank, A. W. (1995). The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Geertz, C. (1973). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In C. Geertz (Ed.), The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (pp. 3–31). New York: Basic Books. Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-face Interaction. Garden City: Doubleday. Goffman, E. (1972). Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Goldman, A. I. (2006). Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. Gugutzer, R. (2006). Leibliches Verstehen: Zur sozialen Relevanz des Spürens. In K.-S. Rehberg (Eds.), Soziale Ungleichheit, kulturelle Unterschiede: Verhandlungen des 32. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in München 2004 (pp. 4536– 4546). Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Gugutzer, R. (2012). Verkörperungen des Sozialen: Neophänomenologische Grundlagen und Soziologische Analysen. Bielefeld: Transcript. Gugutzer, R. (2017a). Leib und Situation: Zum Theorie- und Forschungsprogramm der Neophänomenologischen Soziologie. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 3(3), 147–166. Gugutzer, R. (2017b). Resonante Leiber, stumme Körper? Hartmut Rosas Resonanztheorie aus Sicht der verkörperten Soziologie. In C. H. Peters & P. Schulze (Eds.), Resonanzen und Dissonanzen: Hartmut Rosas kritische Theorie in der Diskussion (pp. 69–86). Bielefeld: Transcript. Gurwitsch, A. ([1932] 1979). Human Encounters in the Social World. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Hannerz, U. (2003). Being there . . . and there . . . and there! Reflections on multi-site ethnography. Ethnography, 4(2), 201–216.

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  43 Haraway, D. J. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In D. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149–182). New York: Routledge. Hasselmann, M. (2018). Table Ronde. La Santé Connectée, une Totale Mutation ? Retrieved from http://eurocos​.u​-strasbg​.fr​/WP​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2018​/10​/EC​_PROGRAMME​ _2018​_A4​_Formation​.pdf (accessed 11/07/2020). Hauskeller, M. (1995). Atmosphären erleben: Philosophische Untersuchungen zur Sinneswahrnehmung. Berlin: Akademie. Hichert, M., Güttes, M., Bäuerle, I., Ziegenspeck, N., Bölke, N. & Schiebl, J. (2020). Exoskeletons for Military Logistics and Maintenance. [Paper presentation]. Paper 27. Session WeR13 Exoskeletons for Military Applications. International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe. 14-16.10.2020. Hirschauer, S. (2001). Ethnografisches Schreiben und die Schweigsamkeit des Sozialen: Zu einer Methodologie der Beschreibung. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 30(6): 429–451. Hirschauer, S. (2008). Körper macht Wissen: Für eine Somatisierung des Wissensbegriffs. In K.-S. Rehberg (Ed.), Die Natur der Gesellschaft: Verhandlungen des 33. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Kassel 2006 (pp. 974–984). Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag. Hirschauer, S., & Amann, K. (1997). Die Befremdung der eigenen Kultur: Zur ethnographischen Herausforderung soziologischer Empirie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Hitzler, R. (2006). Phänomenologie. In R. Bohnsack, W. Marotzki & M. Meuser (Hrsg.), Hauptbegriffe Qualitativer Sozialforschung (pp. 133–135). Opladen & Farmington: Barbara Budrich. Honer, A. (1999). Bausteine zu einer lebensweltorientierten Wissenssoziologie. In R. Hitzler, J. Reichertz & N. Schröer (Eds.), Hermeneutische Wissenssoziologie: Standpunkte zur Theorie der Interpretation (pp. 51–67). Konstanz: UVK. Honer, A. (2011). Kleine Leiblichkeiten: Erkundungen in Lebenswelten. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Hunsaker Hawkins, A. (1999). Reconstructing Illness. Studies in Pathography. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Husserl, E. ([1913] 1976). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. Husserliana III. The Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. ([1928] 1950). Cartesianische meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Husserliana I. The Haag: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. ([1936] 1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Husserl, E. ([1952] 1989). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Jones, S. H. (2005). Autoethnography: Making the personal political. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (3rd ed., pp. 763–792). London: Sage. Jones, S. H., Adams, T. E., & Ellis, C. (2013). Handbook of Autoethnography. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Knoblauch, H. (2001). Fokussierte Ethnographie: Soziologie, Ethnologie und die neue Welle der Ethnographie. Sozialer Sinn, 2(1), 123–141.

44  Technological objects facing embodied subjects Knoblauch, H. (2010). Subjekt, Interaktion und Institution Vorschläge zur Triangulation in Theorie und Methodologie. In A. Honer, M. Meuser & M. Pfadenhauer (Eds.), Fragile Sozialität: Inszenierungen, Sinnwelten, Existenzbastler (pp. 115–128). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Knorr Cetina, K. (1988). The micro-social order: Towards a reconception. In N. G. Fielding (Ed.), Actions and Structure (pp. 21–53). Thousand Oaks; London: Sage. Knorr Cetina, K. (1989). Spielarten des konstruktivismus: Einige Notizen und Anmerkungen. Soziale Welt, 40(1–2), 86–96. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1995). Laboratory Studies: The Cultural Approach to the Study of Science. In Jasanoff, S., Markle, G. E. & Petersen, J. C. et al. (Eds.), Handbook of Science and Technology Studies (pp. 140–166). Thousand Oaks; London: Sage. Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic Cultures: How the Science Makes Knowledge. Cambridge; London: Harvard University Press. Krueger, J. (2016). The affective ‘we’: Self-regulation and shared emotions. In T. Szanto & D. Moran (Eds.), The Phenomenology of Sociality: Discovering the ‘We’ (pp. 263–277). London; New York: Routledge. Krueger, J., & Legrand, D. (2009). The open body. In A. Carassa, F. Morganti & G. Riva (Eds.), Enacting Intersubjectivity: Paving the Way for a Dialogue Between Cognitive Science, Social Cognition, and Neuroscience (pp. 109–128). Lugano: Universita della Svizzera Italiana. Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: The emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24(1), 95–117. Marcus, G. E. (1998). Ethnography through Thick and Thin. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Merton, R. K. ([1949] 1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Meuser, M., & Nagel, U. (2006). Experteninterview. In R. Bohnsack, W. Marotzki & M. Meuser (Hrsg.), Hauptbegriffe qualitativer Sozialforschung. (pp. 57–58). Opladen & Farmington Hills: Budrich. Müller, S. M. (2018). Distributed corporeality: Anatomy, knowledge and the technological reconfiguration of bodies in ballet. Social Studies of Science, 48(6), 869–890. Niewöhner, J., & Scheffer, T. (2008). Thick comparison: How ethnography produces comparability. Comparative Sociology, 7(3), 273–285. Oudshoorn, N. (2020). Resilient Cyborgs: Living and Dying with Pacemakers and Defibrillators. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pink, S. (2009). Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles, London; New Delhi: Sage. Ploder, A., & Stadlbauer, J. (2017). Starke Reflexivität: Autoethnografie und ethnopsychoanalyse im Gespräch. In J. Bonz, K. Eisch-Angus & M. Hamm et al. (Eds.), Ethnografie und Deutung: Gruppensuperversion als Methode reflexiven Forschens (pp. 421–438). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Prentice, R. (2013). Bodies in Formation. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Prinz, S. (2014). Die Praxis des Sehens: Über das Zusammenspiel von Körpern, Artefakten und visueller Ordnung. Bielefeld: Transcript. Psathas, G. (1989). Self-presentation. In E. F. Kaelin & C. O. Schrag (Eds.), American Phenomenology: Origins and Developments. Analecta Husserliana (The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, Vol. 26). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

A mong bodies, exoskeletons and sites  45 Rajan, K. S. (2006). Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. Durham: Duke University Press. Rochat, P. (2001). The Infant’s World. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Røyrvik, E. A. (2013). Oblique ethnography: Engaging collaborative complicity among globalized corporate managers. In Organisational Anthropology: Doing Ethnography in and Among Complex Organisations (pp. 72–88). Pluto Press: Garsten, Nyqvist. https:// doi​.org​/10​.2307​/j​.ctt183gzs7. Scheler, M. ([1923] 2008). The nature of sympathy. P. Heath (Trans.). New York: Routledge. Schutz, A. ([1955] 1962). Symbol, reality and society. In A. Schutz (Ed.), Collected Papers I (pp. 287–356). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, A. (1967). The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Schütze, F. (1983). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. Neue Praxis. Kritische Zeitschrift für Sozialarbeit und Sozialpädagogik, 3, 283–293. Schütze, F. (1987). Das narrative Interview in Interaktionsfeldstudien: Erzähltheoretische Grundlagen. Teil 1., Merkmale von Alltagserzählungen und was wir mit ihrer Hilfe erkennen können. Hagen: Fernuniv. Hagen. Simmel, G. (1971). On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sørensen, E. (2008). Multi-Sited Comparison of‚ Doing Regulation’. Comparative Sociology, 7(3), 311–337. https://doi​.org​/10​.1163​/156913308X306645. Spry, T. (2018). Autoethnography and the other: Performative embodiment and a bid for utopia. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (5th ed., pp. 627–649). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Stark, L., & Campbell, N. D. (2018). The ineffable: A framework for the study of methods through the case of mid-century mind-brain sciences. Social Studies of Science, 48(6), 789–820. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0306312718816807. Stein, E. (1989). On the Problem of Empathy (The Collected Works of Edith Stein; Vol.3). W. Stein (Trans.). Washington: ICS Publications. Stern, D. N. (1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books. Stueber, K. R. (2006). Rediscovering Empathy: Agency, Folk, Psychology, and the Human Science. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Svenaeus, F. (2016). The phenomenology of empathy: A Steinian emotional account. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 15(2), 227–245. Svenaeus, F. (2017). Phenomenological Bioethics: Medical Technologies, Human Suffering, and the Meaning of Being Alive. London: Routledge. Taddei, R. (2020). 13th CIFAS Summer School in Ethnographic Research Methods, Columbia University, 20-31. July. Waldenfels, B. (2013). Das leibliche Selbst: Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des Leibes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Welton, D. (1999). The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology (Studies in Continental Thought). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Williams, G. (1998). The sociology of disability: Towards a materialist phenomenology. In T. Shakespeare (Ed.), The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspective (pp. 234–244). London: Cassell. Zahavi, D. (1999). Self-Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation. Evanston; Northwestern University Press.

46  Technological objects facing embodied subjects Zahavi, D. (2001). Beyond Empathy: Phenomenological Approaches to Intersubjectivity. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(5–7): 151–167. Zahavi, D. (2003). Husserl’s Phenomenology. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-person Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Zahavi, D. (2009). Empathy, embodiment and interpersonal understanding: From lips to Schutz. Inquiry, 53(3), 285–306. Zahavi, D. (2014). Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zahavi, D. & Overgaard, S. (2009). Phenomenological Sociology: The Subjectivity of Everyday Life. In Jacobsen, M. H. (Ed.), Encountering the Everyday: Introduction to the Sociology of the Unnoticed (pp. 93–115). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Websites: https://laevo​-exoskeletons​.com​/home (accessed 12/07/2020). https://www​.cyberdyne​.jp​/english​/products​/LowerLimb​_medical​.html (accessed 09/07/2019). https://www​.exhauss​.com/ (accessed 12/07/2020). https://www​.skelex​.com/ (accessed 12/07/2020).

Chapter 3

Where exoskeletons aim to enter Realms of human bodies

Novel corporeal extensions and materialities: Bodies as media Before considering what exoskeletons do to the bodies they accompany, I will evoke several aspects necessary to understand how bodies acquire their status of being “media” and focus on the categories of embodiment and incorporation. Embodiment was used in some sociological perspectives that usually conceive of the human body as a material to be transformed by social factors (Synnott 1993). Recently, due to the great number of studies in neuroscience (Berthoz 1997; Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998), embodiment has been appropriated by discourses relying on results coming from this discipline and imported into sociology. Some authors though prefer to use the term “incorporation” to describe our relationships with various forms of material culture and argue that the term “embodiment” reintroduces the mind/body separation or other forms of categorical dualism such as subjectivity and objectivity, culture and nature, or subject and environment (Nourrit & Rosselin-Bareille 2017). In my view, embodying or incorporating something evokes a transitive relation regardless of the terminology. One may differentiate between embodiment and extension (De Preester & Tsakiris 2009) for analytical purposes, and especially for the specific field of the phenomenology of the body. However, in a broader understanding of social and cultural phenomena, these terminological distinctions may create more confusion than help to objectify the analyzed reality. I concur with Thomas Csordas’s view that “the paradoxical truth, in fact, appears to be that if there is an essential characteristic of embodiment, it is indeterminacy” (Csordas 1994: 5). And much of what exoskeletons do together with the bodies of their users revolves around this feature. As a proponent of a paradigm of embodiment (though in the field of anthropology), Csordas uses the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty in order to defend his grounding of analysis of culture in our corporeality. According to Csordas, the distinction between the body as “an empirical thing or analytic theme, and embodiment as the existential ground of culture and self is critical” (1994: 6). While revisiting Marcel Mauss’s essay “Techniques of the Body,” Csordas defends a view in which culture is grounded in the human body. He

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-4

48  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

describes our embodiment as “a valuable starting point for rethinking the nature of culture and our existential situation as human beings” (ibid. 6). Interestingly, if the human body is presented under multiple perspectives, embodiment is the condition sine qua non to observe and inquire into this multiplicity. To be a body implies inextricably to be embodied and to be able to objectify how we live; our bodies are preceded by our being embodied (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012; Csordas 1993) and it is “in” our embodiment that exoskeletons intervene and in doing so question its consistency, although temporarily. They resonate with a view that the anthropologist Emily Martin expressed already some decades ago. As she notes, “we are experiencing not so much the end of the body as the ending of one organizational scheme for bodies and persons and the beginning of another” (1992: 134). In these representations of the “end of the body,” technology has doubtlessly played a crucial role. For example, reproductive technologies, often connected to genetics, are the target of criticism from scholars in sociology and anthropology (Martin 2001; Parry 1989; Wehling 2014). Such conflicting visions about the transformations of our corporeality also brought with them various fears, such as that we might be drawn “in the direction of animals and automatons” (Feher & Naddaff 1989: 14). In this sense, to stay with Csordas’ view: “the new body that has begun to be identified can no longer be considered as a brute fact of nature” (1994: 1). In particular, that many interventions into the body’s biological texture prove that embodiment may be negotiable. If for years these negotiations, many of which are possible only because of technology, have been performed outside of the body (encouraging corporeality extension), now, due to recent technological progress, they can occur inside the body proper. The representations and knowledge of what we are and how our natural biological bodies function have changed, which is why speaking of a “universalized natural body” as “the gold standard of hegemonic social discourse” (Haraway 1990: 146) becomes highly questionable. Corporeal extensions experienced in contemporary societies are not merely functional. They are highly political and especially economic, while encouraging an explicit logic of the “entrepreneurial self” (Bröckling 2007). Proximity technologies, among which I name smartphones, laptops and also exoskeletons, challenge other fields than corporeality proper, raising numerous questions about extension and enhancement, and inextricably, about the maleability of our corporeal boundaries. One of the central questions revolving around these technologies’ contextual use is whether extension corresponds to enhancement. Often exoskeletons were associated with such transformations. If the answer regarding enhancement is affirmative, our lives at present are nothing special when compared to former epochs in the history of the mankind. In this sense, exoskeletons complete the broad panoply of technological productions. One potential difference is in the scale at which these technologies are used and the extent to which they transform our bodies into media. Due to the weight and presence that some of them may have, the question of what constitutes the medium and for what it exists may be raised. I argue that if technologies may be added to bodies, impacting their experiential

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  49

content, sometimes bodies may also be added to technologies, a perspective that took shape during my journey with exoskeletons and their bodies. When considering the collaboration between bodies and technologies or the technological production of bodies and selves, which is a phenomenon with a relatively short history, the understanding of the body as medium changes. This may lead to the conception of a “protean selfhood” (Butnaru 2020), the malleability of which is granted precisely due to the various possibilities of technological and scientific intervention. Some examples, such as transplant and cosmetic surgery, which have been regularly cited in various studies (Shildrick 2015; Holliday, Jones & Bell 2019) permit consideration of “the body more of a site of alternatives that it ever has previously been in human history,” increasing the individuals’ physical capital (Shilling 2005: 189). I add to Shilling’s conception of the body as a “site of alternatives” the idea of the body as a site of experimentation. Projects happening in the field of genetics (Baldi 2001) have definitely challenged much more than those carried out in robotics, because genetics directly modifies our being, the very characteristics of life itself. Hence the growing conception of society in terms of biosociality, in which the distinction between health and illness acquires new dimensions (Wehling et al. 2007) while corporeality is taken as its material basis. If in a certain order, society would come after nature, in the sense that the body has always been a given, what some current technological advances change at present is precisely this relation to givenness and to its reception. To quote Buchanan’s (2000) ­description of challenges in the genetic age, no one knows the limits of our future powers to shape human lives – or when these limits will be reached. Some expect that at the most we will be able to reduce the incidence of serious genetic diseases and perhaps ensure that more people are at the higher end of the distribution of normal traits. More people may have long and healthy lives, and perhaps some will have a better memory and other intellectual powers. Others foresee not only greater numbers of people functioning at high levels, but the attainment of levels previously unheard of: lives measured in centuries, people of superhuman intelligence, humans endowed with new traits presently undreamt of. One thing however is certain: whatever the limits of our technical abilities turn out to be, coping with these new powers will tax our wisdom to the outmost. (2000: 1) Whereas genetic engineering grasps at the core of our biological structures, robotics envelops us or introduces new forms of partnership and co-living or co-working. In a sense, what robots do is to shift conceptions of corporeality and agency from one’s own, where the appropriation of intention is (except in pathological cases) a subjective one, to that of another, yet not in terms of another subjectivity, but in terms of objective agentivity. Interestingly, some projects focusing on the development of autonomous robots try to advance for example that robots have

50  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

an “identity,” when considering how robots “learn” to perform certain tasks and describe them as “artificial agents that construct their identity and their knowledge about the world by means of continuous interaction in the environment” (Lanillos, Dean-Leon & Cheng 2017: 72), and therefore exist as agents. However, what the two examples of biotechnological projects show is that our corporeal boundaries have become an obvious challenge for contemporary societies. And this is where exoskeletons attempt to make their mark as well. By composing with the body schemas and the body images of their users, they reveal the plasticity of human bodies. The preoccupation with boundaries in terms of limited possibilities to act and interact is not new; what is surprising now is the impact that technological objects have started to have in changing these possibilities, although some sociologists warned already that “the boundaries between the human organism and machinery may have weakened, but the question of whether there will ever be a complete ‘coupling’ of the two remains unanswered” (Shilling 2005: 196). Experiments are usually carried out under specific and sometimes very controlled conditions. Their results may vary significantly from situations in which the developed technology is intended to be applied. Because their use is limited in both space and time, exoskeletons elucidate this idea. Unlike laptops, smartphones, glasses or even cars, exoskeletons are a technology that imposes limitations due to their lack of portability. It is one thing to wear a pair of glasses all day long, and another to work with a robot weighing up to thirty kilograms. In this context, achieving corporeal extension or embodiment of technology is particularly difficult. Even cars or airplanes offer differing possibilities of embodiment for the persons who are driving or flying them. Due to sitting, the kinesthetic repertoire activated while being accompanied by these huge gadgets influence the effort of incorporation and the coordination mechanisms which are involved; they are thus less constraining than in a situation in which one uses an exoskeleton. Due to its “wear-ability” and to the very specific contexts in which they are used – clinical environments have obvious different uses than industrial or military environments – they may extend the body in some capacities, but may also limit it in other ways. If one agrees with Simmel’s view that the body is engaged in a process of transcending or “reaching beyond itself” (Simmel [1918] 1971: 356, 364), this is certainly a temporally determined state, and this shall certainly not exclude the quality of human embodiment from being a medium for various social, technological, political and symbolic productions. But they all demonstrate their efficiency in a specific temporal interval. Exceptional bodies The capitalization of corporeality has been often associated with structures of labor; yet, emergent practices related to the body such as fitness, body building, dietary techniques, the much discussed development of cosmetic surgery (Blum 2003; Davis 1995; Doyle & Roen 2008; Gimlin 2010), as well as regenerative medicine

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  51

(Lafontaine 2009) propagate the image of a healthy young body (Featherstone & Wernick 1995) and reorient the inquiry on the contemporary social reinvention of corporeality. The production of “body images,” which as Featherstone notes in his essay Body, Image and Affect in Consumer Culture (2010), may be conceived in terms of a more visual sense of the image others have of oneself, based upon a person’s appearance: the “look” one has for others. This can be referred to as “mirror-image”, in which the body’s visual appearance is central […]. (Featherstone 2010: 194) These new techniques of the body, many of which are technologically assisted or produced, have to do with an individual’s quest for corporeal exception, and thus the voluntary creation of an exceptional body. Interestingly, instead of the production of “normalcy,” what is sought are practices aiming at an acknowledgment of bodily exceptionality, with the caveat that the human body is healthy. In some cases, exception means “out of order,” an expression that may be taken literally from a sociological point of view; being “out of order” qualifies exceptional bodies in terms of dis-ordered, and technologies and techniques of the body are used to correct the exception. In my experience of bodies accompanied by exoskeletal devices, dis-order refers to the sequential experience of motor types characterizing cases of impairment, or forms of augmented capacities for specific tasks where bodies of workers or of soldiers are healthy, but asked to operate under strenuous conditions. Some of the studies exploring these new forms of challenging ordered corporeality considered extreme forms of body management such as anorexia (Ferredey 2012; Gugutzer 2012; Warin 2010), bulimia or body modifications such as scarifications, piercings and tattoos. Among the latter, some may be in spectacular form (Liotard 2015, 2016). These cultures are often defined starting from health or the conception of a healthy body (medicine having played a crucial role in their emergence), but many of them are experimental or consumeristic in their content. What is interesting to observe in these developments is that what prevails is not the search for “normalcy” which may be connected with forms of invisibility and taken-for-granted-ness. Rather, the quest for personal expression has become prevalent, a tendency which prompts some sociologists of the body to speak of “reflexive body techniques” (Crossley 2004) or of “reflexive embodiment” (Crossley 2001, 2006). A distinction needs to be drawn, however, when considering exceptional bodies or exceptional states in which a certain body may find itself in one’s personal history with respect to how “reflexive body techniques” contribute to the active production or maintenance of one’s being a body. In cases of disease and illness, which I observed and further discuss with respect to the usage and application of exoskeletons, reflexivity needs a gradual construction. Such a process differentiates it for example from reflexive body techniques which exist in sports practice (classical competition-oriented sport or adventure sport) and fitness. In the first situation,

52  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

the aim is to cope with one’s exceptional body, in the sense that disease and illness are characterized by various forms of impediments and impossibilities. One’s own exceptionality is lived against one’s wish; what is sought for is to recover corporeal models from the past. More specifically, the body of the present is not something wanted, craved, or something which holds a positive value “in the eye of the beholder.” On the contrary, it is precisely because the body is negatively connoted that it is exceptional. Sometimes, though, technologies may interfere in order to readjust or contextually correct this image, and even though in these cases they are visible and thus noticed by other persons, they may also function as exceptionality markers. What I mean by “marker” in this context is that technology is associated with a very specific usage or task, and only that task, which is what entitles my previously mentioned category of “mono-usage” applied to exoskeletons. Unlike some examples mentioned before, namely cars and planes (technologies that, in current societies, are not perceived to be exceptional), exoskeletons are not ordinary objects. They may become so in the future, but in the current state of research and implementation, they are not. Hence, common perception of them advances the idea of an exceptional body; in one case, the body that exoskeletons envelop has become exceptional due to violent, unchosen changes such as the experience of an accident or neurological damage. In the case of workers in industry or soldiers during military operations, the body’s perception becomes exceptional due to the association of this type of technology with characters from science fiction imaginary. The search for exceptionality such as that in cosmetic surgery or regenerative surgery earlier evoked redraw social phenomena that have always been in the cultural and social history of our bodies. Here one may evoke Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “struggle for distinction” (Bourdieu 1984). As a social phenomenon, corporeal distinction had been discussed by other sociologists, such as Norbert Elias in a famous text on how civilizing processes impacted the formation and transformation of corporeality (Elias 2000 [1939]). Earlier, at the advent of the twentieth century, Georg Simmel analyzed distinction in relation to fashion ([1904] 1972: 294 ff.). Many of these “distinction” practices sought endurance (Weber 1978), a quality perpetuated into contemporary cultures of corporeal management and highly sustained by the presence of technologies. Exceptional bodies are those that manage to integrate such control that they become “perfect” (Featherstone 1982). In a certain sense, in their quest for improvement and enhancement, such bodies start to become their own productions. These projects fundamentally change the understanding of corporeal normalcy and exceptionality, in that they introduce a specific “culture of life,” as Karin Knorr-Cetina names it (Knorr-Cetina 2005). Such a move, she argues, “implies changes in regard to the source and defining concepts – the human versus life – of our collective imagination” (2005: S80). Partly connected to these ideas, the paradigm of posthumanism (Bostrom & Savulescu 2009; Besnier 2010) has sparked many debates, especially that the predilection for enhancement is overtly stated by some of its promoters, Ray Kurzweil being one of the most well-known. In such a context, the definition of corporeal exceptionality is shifting toward a new model

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  53

of corporeality. In this new model, the body is techno-scientifically sculpted, but also measured and surveilled in order to make it sometimes “better than well.” One of the misconceptions characterizing exoskeleton is their association with this kind of social and cultural imaginary. Perhaps more than in previous epochs, bodies are currently confronted with concrete processes referring to their “production” rather than their “reproduction.” Engineering bodies has become the present reality of many medical areas and exoskeletons obviously participate in one of these. While the association between the image of a surgeon and that of an engineer (the former having the main task of repairing the body) (Turner 1991: 267) dates back to the epoch of Henri de Mondeville, one of the surgeons of King Philip the Fair (Phillipe Le Bel) and the first to author a text on surgery, the current state of this specialization in the medical field has been highly reformulated. On one hand, it is due to surgery that parts of the body can be healed, transplanted, cut, sewn but also changed, as is the case with cosmetic surgery. In this scenario, surgery interferes in the temporality of the body and blocks it, the final aim being the production of a timeless corporeality. We find ourselves in an epoch in which medical science seems to lead a battle not only against decay, illness and finally death, but also against time. Exceptional bodies are bodies which escape time (Besnier 2010: 183). Recently though, surgery knows another challenge: that of robotics, a field producing material entities which interface with human bodies, especially in their attempts to copy and sometimes replace them. In some cases, the intervention of medicine beyond its original curative purposes is part of a project of a “flexible” character, as described by Richard Sennett (Sennett 1998). This follows the developments of some sociological studies such as Mike Featherstone’s (2001, 2007), which show how our bodies and our constant chase to become exceptional are now forged by consumerism. Accordingly, corporeal exception follows the same pattern. Changes from disability to ability, or from ability to above-average ability are products among others, following the rules of purchase. The oft-discussed examples of Oscar Pistorius (Westermann 2012) or Aimée Mullins (Sobchack 2006; Dolezal 2020) reveal how bodies and their abilities are produced in conjunction with a technological and medical imaginary, how slippery their materiality has become and how semantically negotiable they are. As Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s well-known study of freak shows illustrates (Garland-Thomson 1997), to capitalize extraordinary bodies is not a new phenomenon, as the guiding principle of freak shows is mainly lucrativity. In current societies, however, the phenomenon of displaying exceptional bodies indicates, in some cases, that these bodies have gained new abilities by their uses of various machines. It is because of these re-conceptualizations and shifts between bodies and technological artifacts that understandings of disability change into contextually more-ability. On another level, examples such as the ones mentioned previously, which mostly come from the field of prosthetics, also demonstrate the political dimension that medicine has with respect to our everyday lives. Bryan S. Turner asserts that

54  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

the growing importance of preventive medicine and the use of the concept of “life-style” to regulate employees in order to manage corporate insurance demands have meant that there is a major intervention of medical ideas and practice into everyday reality. (Turner 1992: 18) This is not to say that to repair bodies that are in pain or have restricted access to various social activities due to their functional limitations should be questioned. The role of medicine is quite clear here. What has changed is that medicine regulates the body beyond “repairing” the exceptionality of disease, as it interferes in spheres, which seek to explore other boundaries of our corporeality, and which enter Knorr-Cetina’s category of “culture of life.” This introduces a new aspect in the conception of “exceptional” bodies, since such alterations challenge bodily ideals and possibilities, while forcing new sociological categories into the analytic discourse of social sciences. Inquiring on how exoskeletons change bodies helps demystify some aspects in this huge construction site known as the human body, and draws attention to mutations of exceptionality operated by technological means, their contextual appropriation, deconstruction and semantic negotiation. Phenomenology again? Living bodies and their multiple realities Phenomenology is one of the dominant philosophical traditions of the 20th century. Epistemologically, it has delivered a targeted criticism of reductionism, objectivism and scientism, and argued at length for a rehabilitation of the life-world. By presenting a detailed account of human existence, where the subject is understood as an embodied and socially and culturally embedded being-in-the-world, phenomenology has provided crucial inputs to a whole range of empirical disciplines, including psychiatry, sociology, psychology, literary studies, anthropology, and architecture. (Zahavi 2019: 1–2) Contemporary conceptualizations of the body and corporeality in relation to phenomenology and other concrete applications, in particular the medical field and, more generally, disability studies, have endorsed the heritage of phenomenology and demonstrated its generativity in research on applied phenomena. Phenomenological vocabulary analyzing corporeality uses categories such as “own body” or “corporeality” in the plural less frequently than sociologists and anthropologists do; the philosophical interest lies in highlighting general features rather than particularities or specificities. These specificities represent the positive contribution that social studies have when compared to philosophical inquiry. Due to terminological consensus on the use of such a category as the “own body,”

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  55

instead of “own bodies,” I subscribe to the singular terminology for reasons of coherence with the discourse of this paradigm in the following chapters. Yet, as my empirical findings show, one can never speak of an “own body” in general,1 since every human body and every experience of it is unique and irreversible. The phenomenological heritage as such does not support the existence of a “one” body either; precisely, if the phenomenological findings are important, it is because they highlight our becoming, our situated experientiality2 and our transitoriness with respect to our intersubjective relations and interactions with one another. Mostly, when we experience things, we experience them as being our experience – except, sometimes, forms of psychiatric illness (Fuchs 2015; Ratcliffe 2017). This mineness is reflected both by the content of experiences (when I smell a flower, it is I who smells it or when I experience a headache, it is I who experiences the pain) and by the fact that these experiences are happening because I am corporeally situated. I am a body, among many other bodies and things. As Dan Zahavi notes, if I wish to catch a Frisbee, I do not first have to search for the hand, since it is always with me. Whereas I can approach or move away from any object in the world, the body itself is always present as my very perspective on the world. That is, rather than being simply yet another perspectivally given object, the body itself […] is precisely that which allows me to perceive objects perspectivally […]. The body is present not as a permanent perceptual object, but as myself. […] I am it. (Zahavi 2005: 205) All these details were extensively developed in various classical studies in phenomenology. Some of the first theoretical descriptions of the body’s importance in phenomenology were in Edmund Husserl’s writings ([1928] 1973, [1907] 1973, 1952). Husserl first defined the body in terms of “own body”/“lived body” or first perspective body (Leib), while differentiating it from a body which is objectified, that in the perspective of natural sciences: the body as object (Körper). The discussion of these two phenomenological categories was revived in various studies and debates also partly because of the dichotomy between body and mind, but also because in some sociological projects using the phenomenological vocabulary or perspectives from philosophical anthropology, as that of Helmuth Plessner (Lindemann 2005; Turner 1992), there was an obvious interest in the revival of what the Leib as an analytical category could contribute to sociological research. Some recent studies in sociology of the body explicitly focus the “own body” (Leib) and its relation to situation (Gugutzer 2017a), for example. One of the central aspects discussed by Husserl relevant for the present inquiry is that the “own” body represents a guarantee for the unity of experience, characterized in relation to space. Husserl defines the “own body” in terms of a zero point (Nullpunkt). In his view, the body is the instance which marks the division between a “here” as ultimate “here” and a “there” (Husserl [1928] 1973: § 41). It is the body which represents the boundary of my experiences and those experiences

56  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

belonging to some other persons or other living beings, although it is also the body which allows me to join and resonate with experiences of other human beings. More specifically, the body is the locus of what Dan Zahavi names “perspectival ownership.” In Zahavi’s view, “perspectival ownership” is the mark of our subjective experience: “there is subjectivity of experience and experiential selfhood, not only when I realize that I am perceiving a candle, but whenever there is perspectival ownership, whenever there is first-personal presence or manifestation of experience” (Zahavi 2009: 562). Yet, the body is not a perspectivally given object; it is precisely that which allows me to perceive and act starting from it. The Husserlian phenomenology of the body provides an essential categorical instrumentarium because it advances a first premise for a theory of a bodybased meaning construction. In particular, Husserl’s discussion of the sphere of “I can,” which is identified at the level of living body in the sense of a potentiality of experience, has nourished current phenomenological studies defending the enactivist orientation (Gallagher 2017), but is also present in some developments in the writings of Alfred Schutz (Schutz 1970). One may also add the first epistemological attempt to theorize a specific form of intentionality, which takes into account the role of corporeality. This is named by Husserl operative intentionality (fungierende Intentionalität). Operative intentionality functions at a “prenoetic” level: that is, below conscious activity. In this line of thought, phenomenologists argue that before categorical thinking, much happens at the level of our embodied presence. We know and experience other human beings around us because we are embodied. It is also our embodied condition that allows us to engage in various forms of practice, entitling the body to be labeled as a “practical” one (Crossley 1995: 53–54). If considering the potential of the Merleau-Pontyan perspective, one might theorize what I name a “stock-of-doing-at-hand.” Endorsing such a view is Merleau-Ponty’s defense of the concept of “praktognosia,” an idea that considers our capacities to move, our knowing how to move and how to respond in specific contexts ([1945] 2012: 141). Due to our bodies’ flexible boundaries and correlatively to our body schemas, we may work and integrate objects in our doings and experiences. The body schema allows us to be ecological beings and, therefore, to extend beyond our skins and limbs. In a sense, it is due to the body schema that the body leaves its sphere of “own-ness” and enters that of the living. Body schema is a characteristic of our bodies that shows our plasticity and our capacities to adapt and respond to the external environment. In the classical phenomenological conception of MerleauPonty, the body schema is defined as “a manner of expressing that my body is in and toward the world” ([1945] 2012: 103). It is a system of equivalences, [an] immediately given invariant by which different motor tasks are instantly transposable. This is to say that the body schema is not merely an experience of my body, but rather an experience of my body in the world, and that it gives a motor sense to the verbal instructions. (ibid. 142)

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  57

A complementary concept phenomenologically relevant for the present study, and which is often discussed in relation to the body schema, is that of body image. Similarly to the body schema, the body image is not a new category, having already been discussed in the work of the Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst, Paul Schilder (1886–1940), whose work was known to Merleau-Ponty. As Cassandra Crawford notes in her discussion of Schilder’s study with respect to how the body image functions, the body image was foundationally relational in that interaction with objects and others influenced evaluative judgments about the body, its parts, and its capacities, all of which affected and were affected by sensation, movement, and perception. (2014: 117) Exoskeletons affect perception, self-presentation (Goffman 1959) and face-to-face relations (Schutz [1932] 1967: §19), having therefore a strong impact on how individuals are perceived, and thus on their body image. Whereas the body image is a negotiation between oneself and the gaze of other human beings, the body schema refers more strongly to one’s own capabilities. The body schema entails a stronger personal and subjective component than the body image. The latter includes three intentional elements, which are the subject’s perceptual experience of her body, her conceptual understanding, and her emotional attitude toward her body (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 146). Bodily extensions, to which exoskeletons aim to contribute, are grounded in our body schemas. This thesis is defended in the enactive perspective in phenomenology by Shaun Gallagher. Body schemas are responsible for both our intercorporeal relations with other human beings, as well as with inanimate objects. In order to exemplify how our bodies take advantage of their bodily schematic properties to integrate objects, Gallagher refers to an experiment with a robot arm carried out at NASA. Reinforcing the Merleau-Pontyan perspective on incorporation, in which the objects discussed as an example for how the human body incorporates are the blind man’s cane, the hat worn by a woman and the automobile ([1945] 2012: 144–145), and relying on a study carried by Cole, Sacks and Waterman (2000), Gallagher explains that the persons involved in this experiment controlled robotic arms by means of virtual reality goggles and special gloves. The movement performed by the human being was correlated with that of a robotic arm and led to a similar move of the arms. This experience resulted in the agent’s feeling of embodying the robot. In this line of thought, as Gallagher notes, “one might say that the robotic arms become extensions of the agent’s body schema – part of the lived and experienced body-as-subject” (Gallagher 2012: 146). Interestingly, this experiment is also important for the discussion of such categories as sense-of-agency and sense-of-ownership, which are central for the enactive perspective3 defended by Gallagher. These two categories are modified in our use of various technologies. In some cases, such as the aforementioned example of the NASA robot, the sense-of-ownership (SO), or the sense that my experiences

58  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

are mine, the sense that I am the one who moves or undergoes an experience, may extend beyond the biological boundaries of the body. This is also the case with other objects or technological gadgets. It is the moment when one speaks of the transparency of the object, of forgetting that the object is something foreign to one’s own body. When using an exoskeleton, however, one’s sense-of-ownership is challenged, because the robot moves the body and, in most cases, in an untransparent manner. Unlike the robotic arm in the NASA experiment, exoskeletons only collaborate with the human body, helping it to walk and perform tasks, yet mostly without being embodied in the body schema. In this sense, I prefer to speak of extension when referring to this type of technology and its uses. In both types of exoskeletal application – rehabilitation or assistance of both impaired and healthy bodies – the technology modifies the corporeal depository of the concerned person, here “I can.” “I can” is a traditional phenomenological category discussed by both Husserl ([1928] 1973: §44) and Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012: 139). Later on, Drew Leder elaborates further this category in a direction similar to the well-known definition of “techniques of the body” proposed by Marcel Mauss, and who also associates it with the process of incorporation. While referring to learning how to swim, Leder claims that skill acquisition is accomplished via a process [termed] incorporation. […] A skill is finally and fully learned when something that once was extrinsic, grasped only through explicit rules or examples, now comes to pervade my own corporeality. […] A skill has been incorporated into my bodily “I can”. (Leder 1990: 31) Bodies are hence conceived as collections of skills which they activate contextually. “I can” – and this is the conception transferred further in enactivism – refers also to what “I can” do with various things or objects which belong to my environment. It refers both to the development of a corporeal literacy separated from the objects, but also of a literacy developed and often maintained through constant use, with these objects as such. Bodies acquire habits also from other bodies through socialization and learning while being engaged in various forms of doing in multiple contexts and settings (Alkemeyer 2004; Meyer & von Wedelstaedt 2017). This happens from the beginning of our lives: “Infants see meaning in the reaching, grasping, pointing, and gesturing of the other’s hands, just as they see their own possibilities for action in the actions of and with others” (Gallagher 2017: 185). Meaning is thus achieved due to our possibilities to extend our bodies, to be engaged in co-relations and not only in relations. And sometimes the presence and use of specific technologies reinvests levels of corporeality and the “multiple realities” (Schutz [1945] 1962) they produce. To analyze how such current technologies as exoskeletons forge human bodies while relying on categories from the phenomenological tradition cannot omit the postphenomenological orientation, a new branch of the phenomenological paradigm, developed by Don Ihde starting from the end of the 1970s. Its main intention

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  59

was to break from the hermeneutic tradition in phenomenology and to seek instead doing phenomenology, and thus detaching itself from any accusations of being a philosophy of consciousness (Ihde 2003: 9; Langsdorf 2006: 38). Similar to the enactive orientation described before, postphenomenology is also inspired by pragmatism, in particular by the writings of John Dewey (Ihde 2009). Pragmatism would help to save phenomenology from being labeled in terms of a transcendental subjectivist philosophy, while highlighting the relationality between our bodies, embodied minds and the multiplicity of objects and technological forms which have contributed to shape our lifeworlds. The originality of this new development in the phenomenological paradigm resides, similarly to the “body turn” in social sciences, in a reversal of interest, from such topics as consciousness, self and intentionality (which are mostly mind-related) to materiality, a realm where both bodies and technological artifacts meet. As in sociology, which for many decades was interested in the role of the actor, action, class or social conflicts, topics in relation to which bodies were given a secondary role (if at all), postphenomenology had to face the strong tradition in the history of philosophy in which the mind prevails over matter. As Don Ihde mentions in this line of thought, the dominant temperament in philosophy, from Classical Greece on, favored the ideal, the abstract, and often shunned the material, or in the case of the long meditations on body and mind, ranked materiality as inferior. Thus with respect to science and technology, technology was almost always secondary, epiphenomenal, or “applied”. (Ihde 2015: xi) Technologies extensively developed with the advent of Industrial Revolution and, later on, due to the two World Wars. These massive changes reoriented the inquiry both in the social sciences and philosophy. The latter especially started to develop an explicit predilection for empirical phenomena, in which technology plays a crucial role because its increasing proximity to us strongly impacts experience and our embodied condition. It is in such a context that Ihde, while relying on the conceptual heritage of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger, theorizes an “interrelational ontology” (2009: 23; 2015: xii). For sure, such a concept parallels some findings from Bruno Latour’s actor–network theory, a perspective also considered in the more recent proposition of material engagement theory (MET),4 elaborated by Lambros Malafouris (2013). Postphenomenology’s originality relies in the fact that it defends the perspective according to which technologies do not only shape scientific fields. Especially at present, technologies exit such restricted fields and extend into our environments, impacting strongly the constitution of our experiences as well as our possibilities to engage concretely with human fellows. Certainly the range of technologies has become huge and those I named “proximity technologies” have a stronger impact on human embodiment than others; but they also may have a stronger impact depending on the functional expectations they may fulfill. It is certainly a very

60  Technological objects facing embodied subjects

different experience to have vision modified when doing research in astronomy and to have vision modified in the sense of functionally ameliorated when one has problems to see and thus uses glasses. Alike, the motility experience is very different depending on whether or not it is enhanced when using transportation technologies such as planes and bullet trains, or if it is modified by an exoskeleton when a person who had a spinal cord injury spent ten years in a wheelchair. The categorical importance that postphenomenology entails for the present study relies in its interest first in the conception and the role of the body in our experiences, but especially in the consideration of technologies in our forging of our experiential background. Technologies can be the means by which “consciousness itself” is mediated. They may occupy the “of” and not just be some object domain (ibid.). The introduction of the “of” has significant consequences as well for the conception of embodiment, in that if we experience something or we have an experience of something, the existence of the relation between our body and an object leads to a relative conception of our embodiment (Ihde 2002: 137–138). Ihde understands this relativism in terms of our bodies being forged back by technologies, a conception which finds a consistent ground in sociology. Gadgets transform corporeal and thus experiential impossibilities into possibilities. Interestingly, since our adaptability is not infinite, in order to achieve a sufficient symmetry in our bodies–technologies relation, technologies need to adapt, copy and respond to what our bodies are and can or cannot do. One response may be the customization which is proposed with respect to many technologies, be they for everyday use or for rehabilitation or assistance.5 Along with these forms of “responding” to human bodies, one can postulate the correlation and constant negotiation of our experience, and hence defend new intentional forms. Among these, a new category proposed by Peter-Paul Verbeek (2008), “cyborg intentionality,” offers a fresh perspective on reframing both the phenomenological vocabulary and the postphenomenological one. Following this reasoning, one may conclude that bodies are incessantly engaged in transactional processes, which in a sense makes them be constantly “in the making”; however, with respect to conceptions of intentionality, the terminology used in the philosophical studies may not always pertinently describe realties preoccupying sociological research. Terms such as “hybridity” and “cyborg” may not always respect the empirical constraints which characterize de facto various forms of human–machine interactions, as examples from robotics reveal. Yet regarding the feature of plasticity, which exemplifies human bodies and embodied minds as being entities “in progress,” partly due to their being accompanied by technological objects, this is an obvious fact and shifts the focus from body-technology interactions to body-technology transactions, a view promoted both by MET (Malafouris 2018), as well as by Gallagher’s enactive orientation in phenomenology (Gallagher 2017: 51; 58). Both views draw on John Dewey’s perspective on the “transactional” sense of “situation” (Dewey 1989). In this shift, the constant dynamics of the body-environment are the core. If, according to Lambros Malafouris’s defense of the category of metaplasticity, one may conceive of the minds as minding in

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  61

order to describe their constant change (Malafouris 2018), then one could argue in the same vein, while also highlighting the role technologies play in this constant transformation, that bodies never stop “bodying.” The strong focus on materiality and its role in shaping our minds makes MET mind-oriented rather than body-oriented. Certainly, to highlight that “with thinging the focus falls on process ontologies and ecologies […] rather than on static decontextualized objects, tools or other material structures” (Malafouris 2018) shifts the attention toward the active aspect which characterizes the relation between our embodied condition and the plethora of objects and technologies around us. Yet, objects and technologies respond to contexts and shape bodies and are in return being shaped by bodies which use them. They mark usages and the quality of a human being of being a “user,” hence of developing and having specific skills with respect to that object or technology. Things in their role as technologies do not only influence thinking, which would bring back the categorical separation between body and mind, even if one speaks of an embodied mind. They influence how we engage with one another and thus our concrete responses and our intersubjective experientiality. In this line of thought, I would rather privilege doing and being engaged by doing with things, rather than “thinking about” when considering “thinking with and through” as the MET perspective defends (Malafouris 2018). In my view, the reality of our embodiment is defined by our praxis and practices possibilities, which allow to sanction the human body as the body “social” (Turner 1984). I see the interaction with the exoskeleton as a form of strong embodiment, or even re-embodiment, in the sense of a strong situating of the human body. I claim that as long as we dwell inside the boundaries of our physical bodies, no matter the condition, we remain embodied. That embodiment is negotiated with objects surrounding us, among which technologies hold an essential role, is evident. Some of these may come close or closer to us – and exoskeletons are an example among many others – whereas some other ensembles are more distant and more easily detachable. Interestingly, in these debates regarding how technological gadgets shape our bodies and how they address our needs, the intention of the specialists responsible for the development of these objects is only briefly mentioned. My intention is to bring a corrective in this respect and reveal the contribution of experts in forging “own bodies” of users. Encountering exoskeletons and their bodies and attempting to understand their phenomenological potential led me to conclude that these “multiple realities,” to recall the title of a well-known essay by Alfred Schutz ([1945] 1962), entitle to speak of phenomenologies, rather than one unitary epistemological tradition. Notes 1 I would like to thank Christian Meyer for his valuable suggestion (private conversation on 11/02/2020), since he advised me to avoid monobloc categories and rather consider the plurality of aspects characterizing the phenomenon I investigated. 2 I am not using this concept in the sense of Monika Fludernik’s definition in her narratological approach: “the quasi-mimetic evocation of real-life experience” (Fludernik

62  Technological objects facing embodied subjects 1996: 12). In my use, experientiality concerns the unmediated character of experience, which is what the phenomenological paradigm defends. 3 As Gallagher claims, enactive phenomenology is “a version of phenomenology that emphasizes action-oriented perception” (2012: 76). See also Alva Noe (2004), who is another defender of the enactivist approach (sensorimotor approach) and in whose view perception is something we do. “What we perceive,” claims Noe, “is determined by what we do or what we know how to do; it is determined by what we are ready to do” (2004: 1). 4 MET relies partially on concepts from the two phenomenological orientations: enactivism (the perspective developed by Shaun Gallagher) and Don Ihde’s postphenomenology. 5 Katherine Ott discusses in an introductory essay to the collective volume Artificial Parts, Practical Lives (2002) the distinction between “assistive” and “prosthetic” technology. She argues, for example, that the line between these categories is “more like a hyphen,” in the sense that “assistive technology is a variation of traditional prostheses; both assist with independent living and access to life- and work-related activities. Since all useful technology is assistive, it is peculiar that we stipulate that some devices are assistive while others need no qualification” (Ott, Serlin & Mihm 2002: 21).

References Alkemeyer, T. (2004). Bewegung und Gesellschaft: Zur ‘Verkörperung’ des Sozialen und zur Formung des Selbst in Sport und populärer Kultur. In G. Klein (Ed.), Bewegung: Sozial- und kulturwissenschaftliche Konzepte (pp. 43–78). Bielefeld: Transcript. Baldi, P. (2001). The Shattered Self. Cambridge MA; London: MIT Press. Berthoz, A. (1997). Le sens du mouvement. Paris: Odile Jacob. Besnier, J.-M. (2010). Demain les posthumains. Paris: Fayard. Blum, V. (2003). Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Bostrom, N., & Savulescu, J. (2009). Human enhancement ethics: The state of the debate. In N. Bostrom & J. Savulescu (Eds.), Human Enhancement (pp. 1–22). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bröckling, U. (2007). Das unternehmerische Selbst. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Buchanan, A. E. (2000). From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butnaru, D. (2020). The protean self. In D. Butnaru (Ed.), Medial Bodies Between Fiction and Faction: Reinventing Corporeality (pp. 147–163). Bielefeld: Transcript. Cole, J., Sacks, O., & Waterman, I. (2000). On the immunity principle: A view from a robot. Trends in Cognitive Science, 4(5), 167. Crawford, C. S. (2014). Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology. New York; London: New York University Press. Crossley, N. (1995). Merleau-Ponty, the elusive body and carnal sociology. Body & Society, 1(1), 43–63. Crossley, N. (2001). The Social Body: Habit, Identity and Desire. London: Sage. Crossley, N. (2004). The circuit Trainer’s habitus: Reflexive body techniques and the sociality of the workout. Body & Society, 10(1), 37–69.

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  63 Crossley, N. (2006). Reflexive Embodiment in Contemporary Society. New York: Open University Press. Csordas, T. J. (1993). Somatic modes of attention. Cultural Anthropology, 8(2), 135–156. Csordas, T. J. (Ed.) (1994). Embodiment and Experience. The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, K. (1995). Reshaping the Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery. London: Routledge. De Preester, H., & Tsakiris, M. (2009). Body-extension versus body-incorporation: Is there a need for a body-model? Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 307–319. Dewey, J. (1989). Experience and Nature. New York: Dover. Dolezal, L. (2020). Disability as malleability: The prosthetic metaphor, Merleau-Ponty and the case of Aimee Mullins. In D. Butnaru (Ed.), Medial Bodies. Between Fiction and Faction: Reinventing Corporeality (pp. 125–146). Bielefeld: Transcript. Doyle, J., & Roen, K. (2008). Surgery and embodiment: Carving out subjects. Body & Society, 14(1), 1–7. Elias, N. ([1939] 2000). The Civilizing Process: The History of Manners and State Formation of Civilization. Oxford: Blackwell. Featherstone, M. (1982). The body in consumer culture. Theory, Culture and Society, 1(2), 18–33. Featherstone, M. (2001). Consumer culture. In N. J. Smelser & P. B. Baltes (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (pp. 2662–2669). Oxford: Elsevier. Featherstone, M. (2007). Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London; New Delhi; Singapore: Sage. Featherstone, M. (2010). Body, image and affect in consumer culture. Body & Society, 16(1), 193–221. Featherstone, M., & Wernick, A. (Ed.) (1995). Images of Ageing. London: Sage. Feher, M., & Naddaff, T. (1989). Fragments for a history of the human body. New York: Zone. Ferreday, D. (2012). Anorexia and abjection: A review essay. Body & Society, 18(2), 139–155. Fludernik, M. (1996). Towards a ‘Natural’ Narratology. London; New York: Routledge. Fuchs, T. (2015). Pathologies of intersubjectivity in autism and schizophrenia. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 22(1–2), 191–214. Gallagher, S. (2012). Phenomenology. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave. Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2008). The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction of Mind and Cognitive Science. New York: Routledge. Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Gimlin, D. (2010). Imagining the other in cosmetic surgery. Body & Society, 16(4), 57–76. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1357034X10383881. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Gugutzer, R. (2012). Verkörperungen des Sozialen: Neophänomenologische Grundlagen und Soziologische Analysen. Bielefeld: Transcript. Gugutzer, R. (2017). Leib und Situation: Zum Theorie- und Forschungsprogramm der Neophänomenologischen Soziologie. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 3(3), 147–166.

64  Technological objects facing embodied subjects Haraway, D. J. (1990). Investment strategies for the evolving portfolio of primate females. In M. Jacobus, E. Fox Keller & S. Shuttleworth (Eds.), Body/Politics: Women and the Discourses of Science (pp. 139–162). New York; London: Routledge. Holliday, R., Jones, M., & Bell, D. (2019). Beautyscapes: Mapping Cosmetic Surgery Tourism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Husserl, E. ([1907] 1973). Ding und Raum: Vorlesungen 1907. Husserliana XVI. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. ([1928] 1973). Cartesianische meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. Husserliana I. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. ([1952] 1989). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ihde, D. (2002). Bodies in technology. In Electronic Mediations (Vol. 5). Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press. Ihde, D. (2003). Postphenomenology: Again ? In Working Papers from Centre for STS Studies Department of Information & Media Studies (pp. 1–30). Aarhus: Center for STS-Studies. Ihde, D. (2009). Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: Suny Press. Ihde, D. (2015). Preface: Positioning postphenomenology. In R. Rosenberger & P. Verbeek (Eds.), Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human-technology Relations (pp. vii–xvi). Lanham; New York: Lexington. Knorr-Cetina, K. (2005). The rise of a culture of life: The biological sciences are encouraging the move away from the ideals of the enlightenment towards an idea of individual perfectibility and enhancement. EMBO Reports, 6(1), 76–80. Lafontaine, C. (2009). Regenerative Medicine’s immortal body: From the fight against ageing to the extension of longevity. Body & Society, 15(4), 53–71. Langsdorf, L. (2006). The primacy of listening: Toward a metaphysics of communicative interaction. In E. Sellinger (Ed.), Postphenomenology: A Critical Companion to Ihde (pp. 37–48). New York: University of New York Press. Lanillos, P., Dean-Leon, E., & Cheng, G. (2017). Enactive self: A study of engineering perspectives to obtain the sensorimotor self through enaction. In 2017 Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and Epigenetic Robotics (ICDLEpiRob) (pp. 72–78). Lisbon; Portugal. Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lindemann, G. (2005). Verkörperung des Sozialen. In M. Schröer (Ed.), Soziologie des Körpers (pp. 114–138). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Liotard, P. (2015). “Darc Tattoo” un corps marqué du rock: Dialogue-s avec Daniel Darc. Corps, 13(1), 57–64. Liotard, P. (2016). Verna’s starred Body. Notes on the utopian body of the artist as work site. In J.-L. Verna, Vous [N’êtes pas un peu beaucoup maquillé ? Non (pp. 154–155). Vitry-sur-Seine: MacVal. Malafouris, L. (2013). How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge: MIT Press. Malafouris, L. (2018). Mind and material engagement. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Science, 18(1), 1–17. Martin, E. (1992). The end of the body? American Ethnologist, 19(1), 121–140.

W here exoskeletons aim to enter  65 Martin, E. (2001). The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. Boston: Beacon Press. Mauss, M. (1973). Techniques of the body. Economy and Society, 2(1), 70–88. Merleau-Ponty, M. ([1945] 2012). Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Meyer, C., & von Wedelstaedt, U. (Ed.) (2017). Moving Bodies in Interaction: Interacting Bodies in Motion: Intercorporeality, Interkinaesthesia and Enaction in Sports. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Nourrit, D., & Rosselin-Bareille, C. (2017). Incorporer des objets: Apprendre, se transformer, devenir expert. Socio-Anthropologie, 35(35), 93–110. Ott, K., Serlin, D., & Mihm, S. (2002). Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics. New York; London: New York University Press. Parry, J. (1989). The end of the body. In M. Feher, R. Naddaff & N. Tazi (Eds.), Fragments for a History of the Human Body (pp. 490–517). New York: Zone. Ramachandran, V. S., & Blakeslee, S. (1988). Phantoms in the Brain: Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind. London: Fourth Estate. Ratcliffe, M. (2017). Real Hallucinations: Psychiatric Illness, Intentionality and the Interpersonal World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Schutz, A. ([1945] 1962). On multiple realities. In A. Schutz (Ed.), Collected Papers I (pp. 207–259). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, A. (1967). Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Schutz, A. (1970). Reflections on the Problem of Relevance. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. Sennett, R. (1998). The Corrosion of Character. The Personal Consequences of Work in New Capitalism. New York: Norton. Shildrick, M. (2015). Staying alive: Affect, identity and anxiety in organ transplantation. Body & Society, 21(3), 20–41. Shilling, C. (2005). The Body in Culture, Technology and Society. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Simmel, G. ([1904] 1972). Fashion. In D. Levine (Ed.), Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (pp. 294–323). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Simmel, G. ([1918] 1971). The stranger. In D. Levine (Ed.), Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (pp. 143–149). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sobchak, V. (2006). A leg to stand on: Prosthetics, metaphor, and materiality. In M. Smith & J. Morra (Eds.), The Prosthetic Impulse (pp. 17–41). Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press. Synnott, A. (1993). The Body Social. London; New York: Routledge. Turner, B. S. (1984). The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage. Turner, B. S. (1991). Missing bodies: Towards a sociology of embodiment. Sociology of Health and Illness, 13(2), 265–272. Turner, B. S. (1992). Regulating Bodies: Essays in Medical Sociology. London: Routledge. Verbeek, P. P. (2008). Cyborg intentionality: Rethinking the phenomenology of human– technology relations. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 7(3), 387–395. Warin, M. (2010). Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia. New Brunswick, New Jersey, London: Rutgers University Press. Weber, M. (1978). Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretative Sociology. G. Roth & C. Wittich (Eds.). Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press.

66  Technological objects facing embodied subjects Wehling, P. (2014). Warum immer besser werden? Blinde Flecken des bioethischen Diskurses über Neuroenhancement. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 11(2), 81–90. Wehling, P., Viehöver, W., Keller, R., & Lau, C. (2007). Zwischen Biologisierung des Sozialen und Neuer Biosozialität: Dynamiken der biopolitischen Grenzüberschreitung. In BJfS, 17(4), 547–567. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s11609​-007​-0045​-5. Westermann, B. (2012). Anthropomorphe Maschinen: Grenzgänge zwischen Biologie und Technik seit dem 18. Jahrhundert. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink. Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective. Cambridge: MIT Press. Zahavi, D. (2009). Is the self a social construct? Inquiry, 52(6), 551–573. Zahavi, D. (Eds.) (2019). The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part II

Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Introduction To problematize the “deviant” and “extended” becoming of human bodies inexorably traverses the technological object which renders them so, in my example, that of the exoskeleton. My understanding of the corporeal transformations I will analyze further below is seen through the lens of how technology acts and transforms specific forms of corporeality at particular sites and times. I choose to speak of the corporeal worlds that exoskeletons produce, not of “arenas” and “social worlds,” categories used in GTM, nor lifeworld(s) (Husserl [1954] 1970) or “multiple realities” (Schutz [1945] 1962), which are well-known phenomenological categories. This is because my fieldwork has shown that, due to the diversity of areas in which it is developed and used, a technological object reinvests the abilities and capabilities of bodies in a very specific manner, as well as many forms and conceptions of knowledge and expertise. Exoskeletons facilitate the emergence of a particular corporeal world, inventing it very much through strongly defined repertoires of practice. This specification should be easy to understand, since exoskeletons are made to respond to strictly defined functions of the body, such as walking, carrying heavy loads or performing another strenuous activity, which, for instance, requires movements above one’s head, as is often the case in industrial environments. As Lucy Suchman notes in her discussion of the anthropologist Alfred Gell’s concept of the “enchanted” object, “the efficacy of artifacts is at once directly tied to their particular materialities and contexts, and not reducible in any determinate way to the object ‘in itself’” (2005: 380). Exoskeletons are fascinating technological objects because they not only contextualize corporeal worlds: they actually create1 them. It is in their brief attachment to human bodies that they change the very texture of the experience of one’s corporeality, and with it the possibilities of acting, interacting and feeling one’s body. Resulting from recent acts of invention, they also invent the bodies they envelop. In this context, a central problem becomes understanding the levels at which forms of corporeal deviance slip into extension or are influenced by technological extension and how their new features emerge.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-5

68  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

One detail which became globally obvious through my fieldwork is that these corporeal worlds, and consequently the sites that contribute to their topographies, inform each other. Exoskeletons traverse from one corporeal world to another, bringing together the varieties and specificities of the bodies using them, but one can also understand them as objects which are a “research site,” to retain a concept of Lucy Suchman’s (2005: 388). Due to their concomitant concentrations of levels of knowledge, levels which gravitate more or less explicitly around the body for which the machine is conceived, exoskeletons in themselves absorb corporealities and are at the root of the corporeal world one encounters when observing and analyzing them. I would add, however, that despite the variety and specificity of all the human bodies I was trying to understand, some corporeal experiences seemed similar, their congruence providing the groundwork for the conception of the exoskeleton. They mostly refer to coping with corporeal limitations in the forms of either a lack or dysfunction, or a need related to the requirements of a specific site or context. What the technological object does is to fill in the blank; the corporeal worlds which emerge are related to pursuit of the parameters of bodily completion or improvement. If there was a difference which resided in the bodies that I attempted to understand, individualizing some worlds from others, the most obvious was the distinction between the abled and the impaired. These two categories mark a strong contrast between how bodies are understood and perceived and, last but not least, accepted and actually lived. It is in the in-between of these two categories, where different populations of bodies dwell, that corporeal deviance finds its conceptual roots. The first categorization of “deviance” in terms of nonconformity with what one profanely understands as a “healthy” body is identified at the level of this separation. Bodies sanction it. And yet, if one follows Arthur Frank’s reflections in his well-known study The Wounded Storyteller (1995), due to our inherent vulnerability (Turner 2006), able bodies are not inevitably separated from those with impairments, illnesses or disease. In this line of thought, Gareth Williams noted some time ago that “someone who is able-bodied is only temporarily so. Disability is therefore a category theoretically open to everyone, and, as populations age, one that becomes a more likely endpoint for any given individual” (1998: 43). Evoking disability and potentially becoming disabled is perhaps an aspect where the porosity of corporeal worlds becomes sizable. And it is also in this porosity that the use and application of such technological objects as exoskeletons become manifest: our not being enough of our bodies. My further categorical separation between “impaired” and “able” is used only for a very specific contextual account. I consider that not only those bodies that recover from illness, as Frank mentions in his study, but also (in line with Williams’s views quoted above) what we commonly term “able bodies” are on “permanent visa status, that visa requiring periodic renewal” (1995: 9). The visa sanctions our belonging to the world of the healthy, and such technological objects as exoskeletons may occasionally intervene in granting “visas.” Despite operating within a delimitation that

E xoskeletons and their corporeal worlds  69

occurs among corporeal worlds at first glance, and which is justified mainly by functionality parameters, exoskeletons and their correlated bodies are constantly connected. Bodies may be separated, but where they meet is in the delimited chronotope of using the machine. The three corporeal worlds and, consequently, the bodies that construct them are characterized by some similar processes in which the technological object engages them. Among these similar processes that emerged in my fieldwork, and that make visible the transfer relationship among and between the corporeal worlds, three had more prominence. First, exoskeletons engage the phenomenological “own” body in forms of apprenticeship (Coy 1989). One learns new bodies while using the technological gadget. This feature is stronger in the case of those persons with impairments. Thus, the “apprenticeship” to become one’s body after having a stroke or an accident leading to spinal cord injury and paraplegia or quadriplegia requires more time and is very different in feeling and effects from individual to individual. The technological object plays a crucial role not only in terms of recovery but also in forms of the discovery of one’s “own body,” as I will show in the following chapters. Related to the process of corporeal “apprenticeship” is the notion of a corporeal “rite of passage.” This is the second feature characterizing the formation of the three corporeal worlds in which exoskeletons are used. The “rite of passage” is a classic concept introduced by the ethnologist Arnold van Gennep to describe the process of an individual passing from one group to another (van Gennep [1908] 1960). In general, the social world confronts us with many of these rites. Such passages, often accompanied by “domestication procedures” (Oudshoorn 2020), may be identified when one learns or starts to learn to use various types of technological object. Exoskeletons are very particular in this respect because they may mark transitions and passages from forms of corporeal impairment to temporary forms of ability, or from forms of ability to temporary forms of corporeal upgrading. The third characteristic uniting the corporeal worlds shaped by exoskeletal devices, one that prolongs the first two, is the socialization to technology. This third feature engages one’s body beyond the technological object: exoskeletons are strongly contextual and are conceived for activities and environments which are intensely impregnated by social marks. It also connects the “own” subjective body to the many forms of “objective” bodies that may be defined by scientific attitudes, values and practices. Clinics and hospitals, labs, industrial sites and military sites are socially marked infrastructures where various cultures of doing and being demand forms of corporeal socialization. Exoskeletons contribute to the emergence and constant configuration of these forms. They make bodies available to act for specific requirements, while changing their beings, perceived as negatively “deviant” or “unable” into positive categories of ability and capability. In doing so, they engage bodies in transitions and shifts due to their general temporary effect and the affect of corporeality, leading simultaneously to new “techniques of the body” and contextual and precisely defined forms of socialization.

70  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Note 1 It may seem from this idea that I am investing the object “exoskeleton” with agency. In a sense, these objects invent bodies, still they are themselves invented. They are the result of many research hours, tests and efforts to understand how human bodies respond and function in specific environments. Many experts are engaged in these processes; a large amount of responsibility is on the shoulders of engineers, who, as Theodore Von Karman claims, “create the world that never was” (Von Karman in Bucciarelli, 2003: 1). Certainly my fieldwork showed that engineers are far from being only the creators of objects. They are certainly the creators of worlds and, more specifically, corporeal worlds. In their attempts to invent exoskeletons, they also correlatively invent human bodies that accompany and are accompanied by these technologies.

Chapter 4

Impaired bodies

Motility impairments as a source of corporeal alterity: The case of SCI and CVA Both spinal cord injury (SCI) and cerebrovascular accidents (CVA), more commonly known as strokes, are neurological affections. Both occur at differing degrees and may result in various forms of paralysis, with stroke sometimes affecting the ability to speak. As its name suggests, a spinal cord injury is a lesion of the spinal cord. This situation has various possible consequences, the most important one being that impaired persons may be divided between those who have a “complete spinal injury,” which refers to no function below the concerned lesion of the spinal cord, and an “incomplete” spinal cord injury, which refers to a lesion that allows the existence of some residual functions. However, this classification can be very complicated for the proper description of one’s bodily condition. As one of the interviewees explained to me (RehaM5CH), one may be considered as having a “complete” SCI even if one still has sensations in some parts of the legs, as in his case. The danger in SCI is that people also lose their ability to feel, something which I was allowed to experience during the interviews. Some of the interviewees allowed me to touch their legs, whereas some simply explained how their sensations and perceptions shifted after their injury. Many SCI patients also have various degrees of spasticity, which show residual motor functions.​ The second category of persons, namely those with an “incomplete” SCI, are the targets of rehabilitation programs with exoskeletons, the intention being to build upon the body’s undamaged resources. This feature, namely using the body’s existing functions, brings together the two types of public for whom exoskeletons are designed. More explicitly, this implies that, if any human–machine interaction is to be conceived and is to lead to successful outcomes, the basis on which it should be planned and developed is an actual corporeal potential. The plasticity of the body and of the brain are called forth. Experts in engineering (Riener 2017, 2019) often evoke the role of neuroplasticity, but this is also a characteristic highlighted by physiotherapists. As one of my interviewees, a physiotherapist working with exoskeletons, stressed,

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-6

72  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Figure 4.1 Rehabilitation exoskeleton. Credits: Myoswiss, Switzerland.

the more one waits, the more difficult it is to recover neurological functions. The first months are crucial for rehabilitation. It is at this point that the brain has maximal neuroplastic capacity. Certainly the brain always has it, but it is shortly after the injury that neuroplasticity is at its maximum. But we know today that this lasts all our lives. For instance, when we learn a foreign language, we act on our neuroplasticity. We know that it is always there, but what we also know is that after the lesion, the first months are crucial. (Physio2CH: 436; my transl. from French) Especially in CVA, the effects directly concern specific areas of the brain, and in order to achieve progress in rehabilitation, the non-damaged parts of the brain are deployed in training with the robot. Without the mobilization of the brain’s healthy cells, progress in rehabilitation may certainly be very difficult. Of the interviewees with a spinal cord injury, two had the lesion at the level of their cervical segments, meaning that they were paralyzed from the chest down. The others who were interviewed had the lesion at the level of their lumbar segments, which gave them more freedom to act; they had autonomy in their arms and trunk, and some of them could even stand up for a very short period of time, though with the support of crutches or bars. Usually, injury to the thoracic, lumbar and sacral parts of the spinal cord results in losing the ability to move one’s legs, while the movement of the arms is less impacted. Among the SCI interviewees, only one was female, her lesion being caused by an accident with a firearm. The other interviewees1 had had either a car, a

I mpaired bodies 

73

snowboard or a motorcycle accident. The most common origin of lesion in the spinal cord injury cases I observed was an accident. This type of change has more brutal consequences and presents more challenges for reinventing one’s own body than in the case of persons who have tumors, for example, or lesions produced by viruses, as was the case for one of the interviewees. If the changes are gradual, the observed impact on the body follows a different temporality than when they are sudden. Such gradual changes have been extensively described in one of the best known pathographies, Robert Murphy’s The Body Silent (1990), as well as in what are known as illness narratives, authored by various other writers (Couser 1997; Frank 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995; Hyden 1997; Kleinman 1988; Wendell 1996). In these writings, one can observe the changes in one’s body at length, in the sense of recording the possibilities and impossibilities of doing and interacting. When the injury in the spinal cord occurs unexpectedly – and this is also the case for CVA – the perception of the change in one’s body is much more radical. Therefore, the contrast between the corporeal “before” and the corporeal “after” becomes clearer and more obvious. In this context of a noticeable and sudden split between two realities within one’s own body, I choose to speak of an “ontological caesura.” This is where exoskeletons attempt to create bridges. They interfere in the material corporeal reality and correlatively in the concrete history of one’s biography in which a present body is opposed to a body from the past, a body in the mode of a “was,” a body highly marked by what it “cannot” do anymore versus what it “could do.” Unlike persons who experience SCI, those who experience CVA usually have half of the body affected, meaning that they cannot use an arm and a leg, for instance. They are hemiplegic. By contrast, in the case of persons with SCI, the severity of the injury is connected to the level in the spinal cord where the injury occurs (cervical, thoracic, lumbar or sacral). In the case of persons with CVA, variations in the impairment are connected to the degree and severity of the damaged parts of the brain. The more cells that are destroyed in the brain, the more difficult the recovery will be. One difference between the two cases of neurological impairment that plays a crucial role is that whereas in SCI surgery may be needed to stabilize the damage to the spinal cord, the vertebrae, or other bodily organs that were damaged in accidents, in CVA the rapid intervention of medical staff may actually decide whether the patient lives or dies. The more rapid the medical intervention to stop the bleeding in the brain, the fewer cells are destroyed and the greater the possibility of recovering former normal functions. As one of the experts explained to me, these functions are not only motor but also cognitive. As she noted, they [the patients with CVA] do not understand when I say, “move your arm forward!” They answer me back, “what should I do? I don’t understand.” So shortly after the CVA occurred not only do they have this motor problems, but also real comprehension problems, “cognitive problems.” (my transl. from German) (Neuro1GE: 24)

74  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

In this sense, CVA may cause a greater handicap than SCI, although both lead to severe and radical changes in one’s body and thus in one’s life. Whereas those interviewees who had experienced SCI were relatively young, in their twenties and forties at the time of our discussion, those who are affected by stroke belong to another age group. I was able to interact with three of them in a clinic, but only one person agreed to talk with me at length in the form of an interview. What my fieldwork taught me was that negotiating interactions with human beings who are constantly in physical and often psychological pain has much to do with their availability and their capacity to face their own pain. I was aware that I was engaging them in a journey which recalled a split in their life, and it was obvious why some directly refused to be interviewed. As a sociologist, I was asking them to rewind, not only to recall a journey made by their bodies that transformed them from able into impaired. To produce such a narrative, in particular in front of a person who is totally unknown and who one may see only once, could be a very violent experience: this is one of the main obstacles that a researcher who works with forms of pain faces. SCI and CVA are both radical events, and the narratives that shape them emerge from this experiential radicalism. Unlike facts, which may have an iterative character, events are marked by a form of exceptionality. The challenge is that, in attempting to understand the impact of technological gadgets on such lives, it is first necessary to comprehend how these lives were transformed in the first place following their various accidents. Collecting, which implies listening and simultaneously eliciting such narratives of bodies that were strongly challenged, implies first entering into the lives of those who are those bodies. Sometimes, however, the gates remained closed. Arthur Frank, whose work I mentioned earlier and who is a major reference in the field of illness narratives,2 and not only in the sociology of the body, distinguishes three different types of illness narrative: restitution stories, chaos stories and quest stories. As he notes, restitution stories attempt to outdistance mortality by rendering illness transitory. Chaos stories are sucked into the undertow of illness and the disasters that attend it. Quest stories meet suffering head on; they accept illness and seek to use it. Illness is the occasion of a journey that becomes a quest. What is quested for may never be wholly clear, but the quest is defined by the ill person’s belief that something is to be gained through the experience. […] Though both restitution and chaos remain background voices when the quest is foreground, the quest narrative speaks from ill person’s perspective and holds chaos at bay. (1990: 115) The stories I collected may be associated with all these categories, with the distinction that what Frank understands by “restitution,” namely a remedy, was difficult to locate. I thought at times that exoskeletons worked as remedies and compared them to drugs. Yet seeing those who use them actually using them, understanding them

I mpaired bodies 

75

as “drugs” which “heal” or drugs which “enhance,” seemed to capture too little of the reality of the bodies in the exoskeletons. Many of my interviewees were building their quest narrative in a more articulate manner, i.e., with the exoskeleton. People with SCI or CVA were helped to “keep chaos at bay” by means of this magical and mesmerizing object that entered their lives once a week and brought them, if only for a short interval, to forms of bodies that they used to be and know, but were now missing. Exoskeletons function in the rehabilitation environment by briefly neutralizing the factor of “impairment” and, while used sometimes outside labs and clinics, which is currently still rare, they recategorize the wider area of “disability.”3 They level SCI and CVA. However, the alteration is not radical and fundamental, for to achieve concrete and durable changes, one needs to use the robot regularly and intensely. Nonetheless they do intervene where the “deviance” of impairment is visible, changing its perception for a brief time. In ordinary life, functions such as standing up, sitting down or walking are usually ignored and remain so until they are missed. The development of exoskeletons in rehabilitation stems from our bodies having the status of an exception; in being so, they highlight the categorization of those bodies which they accompany as “deviant,” but also, due to their externality and clothing-like character, as “extended.” Objectifying one’s “own body”: The “body present” The first feature that one notices in a rehabilitative environment when seeing a person in a wheelchair and then “harnessed” to an exoskeleton is that that the present body is actually a body that was, in the very first moments after the lived accident (including the cerebrovascular moment) not something else, but someone else. The present body, the body of impairment, is a body of constraints. I found it possible to elaborate the correlation between “presence” and various forms of pain in the very first narrative interviews of my study, carried out between 2014 and 2016. Three of them were conducted with individuals with cerebral palsy who did not use exoskeletons, but were explicitly in favor of their use. Yet the wider range of concerned persons who benefit from this type of rehabilitation have spinal cord injuries and strokes. The bodies that are present are those bodies for which the impairment or illness is strong enough to challenge a variety of parameters characterizing what is commonly understood as “natural attitude” (Schutz 1967: 81, 98). In this sense, forms of motility impairment such as SCI and CVA are strong “biographical disruptions” (Bury 1982, 1997), impacting various levels and practices in one’s everyday life through the changes they provoke in the materiality of the body. Phenomenologically, they have an effect on both the manner in which the body, and also the surrounding world, with all the complexities of its levels are experienced. They are of phenomenological relevance precisely because they intervene there, whereas most of the time our experiential reality remains unquestioned: our bodies. As Juliet Corbin and Anselm Strauss mentioned in one of their studies, “to be disabled means your body has failed you” (1991: 138). It means that

76  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

one is confronted by the “sick role” (Parsons 1951) – sometimes in its irremediable understanding. If as in stroke, the “sick role” has more possibilities to be renegotiated, and thus progress may be made toward perhaps not a full recovery, but a substantial one, spinal cord injury remains a much greater challenge. Especially in cases where SCI is complete, the chances of recovery are relatively small, though due to recent progress in neurorobotics and neuroprosthetics supported by surgical interventions, some patients with severe forms have been able to walk again.4 One of the characteristics that renders one’s own body with SCI or CVA “present” is pain. It is pain that brings forth the category of a “body present” rather than of a “body absent.” Pain is also challenging because it is a subjective experience that is difficult to describe (Scarry 1985). It literally transforms the reality of one’s own body, placing it constantly in focus. One of my interviewees told me that at one point he had such strong pains in his legs that he thought of having them amputated (RehaM6GE: 288). Another interviewee with CVA explained that his sensations changed: “I am very sensitive to cold and warm. Now that it snowed this winter, we went out. And then, some snowflakes fell on my hand. That was terribly painful. I screamed with pain” (RehaM8GE: 508; my transl. from German). Touch is one of the most important features in experiencing ourselves and the external world, the role of the skin being crucial in such a process. Merleau-Ponty has already noted this feature in his discussion of the concept of “double sensation” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012). Ashley Montagu notes that the skin “is the sense which became differentiated into the others, a fact that seems to be recognized in the age-old evaluation of touch as ‘the mother of the senses’” (1986: 3). Both CVA and especially SCI modify sensory perception, exposing the body to either the dangers of further injury because it doesn’t feel pain anymore or, as the previous excerpt shows, forms of extreme pain in situations which had nothing exceptional about them before the lesion occurred. The “body present” may, with respect to the example of touch, define itself as a site which oscillates strongly between hypersensitivity or sometimes an almost complete recession of sensation. It is characterized by a lack of transparency, entering the territory of a non-self, and thus, as Lisa Blackman notes, “being experienced as a stranger to itself” (Blackman 2010: 5). It is due to such “surprises” in the “body present” that sometimes, as some engineers in robotics and physiotherapists stressed in interviews (Eng10CH; Eng11CH; Physio1GE; Physio2CH), the use of exoskeletons or other rehabilitative devices may be dangerous. Contrary to the promise of such technologies, not all bodies are suitable for exoskeletons, because instead of helping the person and his or her remaining functions, such gadgets may do more harm than good if they force a movement that the impaired body cannot bear, or give rise to additional scars in bodies that already have them due to constantly sitting or lying down. These harms are sometimes not felt by the impaired person. The contribution to a phenomenology of the body that is interested in how own bodies may become present and how their experiences change in intensity and content may be partly associated with the idea of the Schutzian social science, the aim of which was to question “what is unquestioned,” what is “taken as self-evident”

I mpaired bodies 

77

(Schutz & Luckmann 1973). By this I am not referring, as Schutz does, to the structures of the lifeworld. My use of taken-for-grantedness refers to the potential offered by our corporeality to anchor us in the lifeworld, a relation which is inconceivable without our bodies (Merleau-Ponty ([1945] 2012). Besides the deep importance of our bodies, I would also add more specifically that of movement. Due to our ability to move and sense, we experience our bodies both as being them and as having them, as some contemporary views in the sociology of the body have stressed (Crossley 2001; Gugutzer 2006; Lindemann 2005, Sahinol 2016). Complementarily, neurology has long since demonstrated (Penfield & Rasmussen 1951) that sensory and motor functions are deeply connected. It is these experiential lines that emerge with more presence when motility impairments occur and own bodies prove to be an essential element in supporting this conception. Although stressing the potential of an “own body,” it is not my intention to deny the complex details about the ways in which motility impairments change human beings’ lives, nor to argue that other levels of analysis such as social barriers or environment (Oliver 1990, 2004) should be neglected. Nor do I wish to endorse an approach in which impairment is associated with a personal tragedy, although some of my interviewees sometimes reflected aspects of this by referring to periods of depression or actually starting to cry in front of me during the interview (RehaM8GE). Perhaps it was in these reactions that I realized another type of “presence” of one’s new body, one that was heavier: such a condition characterized by the impossibility to walk, work at the same rhythm as before the injury in the spinal cord occurred, doing things with one’s children and grandchildren like playing football – all these everyday activities, which encompassed the taken-for-granted aspect of one’s life, did not exist anymore. Their impossibility or sheer difficulty marked the “body present,” which imposed a necessary reappraisal in order to live one’s body in a relatively radical manner compared to how it was lived before. As one of my interviewees noted when I asked him whether he noticed any progress due to his use of the exoskeleton, the “body present” satisfied very little: “my reference is still today what I could do well. And this progress, the steps of it, which become better peu à peu, I find this is very slow” (RehaM8GE: 203; my transl. from German). In this vein, much in the “body present” is about a body denying possibilities. “Before my CVA,” says RehaM8GE, my musculature was relatively good. My arms and legs were well-muscled. I moved a lot. I was good at tests. I could do a lot. I could do difficult things without any problem. […] and I miss this. I miss the environment, I miss the people. (RehaM8GE: 311; 313, my transl. from German) When characterizing the “body present” with respect to the cases I have analyzed, a further differentiation regarding the constitution of this presence became evident in the field. Unlike congenital motility impairments that display their own “normality” (one of my interviewees with cerebral palsy told me at the beginning of

78  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

my study that, since he was born with such a bodily condition, he doesn’t know what “normal” is), impairments incurred later in life divide the body. If one distinguishes between congenital situations and the acquired motility impairments that occurred due to accidents or forms of illness, the nuances in how the body is present may vary significantly. The first aspect of this difference is that a person with a congenital impairment has no other lived body with which to compare when asked to characterize or describe the feeling of being disabled. Notably, the situation for a person with cerebral palsy does not involve any accommodation to one’s disabled body, since that is how the person has always been. As one of my interviewees explained to me at the beginning of my study, “I couldn’t say that I want to be able-bodied ’cos I don't know what that’s like. I never was that. […] you can’t miss what you’ve never had” (RehaM1UK: 199). This detail surprised me at the time. Meeting later other persons who experienced SCI and CVA, this aspect became a crucial parameter in differentiating impaired own bodies that experience the able healthy body model as completely foreign and impaired own bodies having become so due to accidents or diseases. For these bodies, ability meant being engaged in many possibilities of being and doing, which either disappeared completely after the impairment occurred or had to be negotiated and reinvented anew. This second category of persons were longing for the “absent body,” a concept defined by Drew Leder (1990). As Leder notes, “at moments of breakdown I experience to my body, not simply from it. My body demands a direct and focal thematization.” In this context, Leder mentions the term “dys-appearance,” which implies that “the body appears as thematic focus, but precisely as in dys state—dys is from the Greek prefix signifying ‘bad,’ ‘hard,’ or ‘ill’” (Leder 1990: 83–84). “Dys-appearance” is actually another synonym for presence. Experiencing strong discontinuities in one’s experiential life makes us aware of our corporeality and introduces the perception of a fraction in one’s own body and with it various levels of “presence.” Dysfunctions in all their varieties make the body “present,” connecting it to forms of “uncanniness” (Svenaeus 2013, 2018) and making it feel “alien” (Waldenfels 2004, 2011) or to forms of “dys-appeareance” (Leder 1990). If the body “uncanny” or the body “alien” provide descriptions of the body which imply a form of distancing, in the sense that what was once homelike and consequently known becomes “stranger,” “dys-appearance,” the category defined by Drew Leder (1990), provides another level of thinking about how some bodies and their more or less permanent states of being affected by impairment become present. This is an aspect which is perhaps more noticeable, for example, when motility impairments or forms and varieties of illness and disease hinder those concerned in performing acts that are expected to be easily accomplished in various social contexts. But it may also occur when one wishes to do things for oneself, like, for instance, eating, washing or applying one’s own makeup, as one of my female interviewees affirmed (RehaF2FR) – activities which the changed body’s repertoire will not allow. These may require the presence and assistance of a caregiver in some cases. Here, therefore, presence is associated with a deep focus on “not being able to.” SCI and CVA represent conditions which favor such a corporeal perception, due

I mpaired bodies 

79

to one’s attention being constantly drawn to one’s own body. The “deviant body” as defined by its strong focus, by constant attention and by not being able to do or perform things contributes to reinforcing presence. Any form of opposition coming from the inside (including types of pain, for instance, and not only the impossibility to perform movements) or from the environment where one lives reveals a variety of somatic dissonances. As Jonathan Cole pointed out in his discussion of 12 narratives of persons having experienced SCI, 10 of whom were tetraplegics, whereas we might normally walk from one place to another admiring the view, chatting, or looking at the girls while thinking about the next thing to do, when movement becomes problematic it requires our constant attention and so roots us in the present. Our lives may become a succession of difficult presents rather than a mix of past, present, and future. (Cole 2004: 144) The “body present” denotes a constant fragility and highlights the necessity of considering a material approach and of reorienting the phenomenological discourse with more strength toward its very source: embodied experience. The corporeal histories of people with impairments are aware of a very clear separation that is reflected in their embodiment. It is these two bodies – the “before” body and the “after” body – that exoskeletons sometimes join. My use of “fractioning” is different from Cassandra Crawford’s (2014), who has made an extensive analysis of phantom limbs (Crawford 2014: 106–107). In my narrative interviews, all the bodies were intact, except that of one person, who had his spinal cord injury in a motorcycle accident, after which one of his legs was amputated below the knee. He was my only interviewee, who, besides using an exoskeleton and a wheelchair, also had a leg prosthesis. Despite a common link between prosthetics and exoskeletons – the replacement of missing limbs and thereby function – there is a crucial difference between these two examples that contribute to shaping current human–machine co-relations. Prosthetics mostly involves the incorporation of a foreign object into the human body. Exoskeletons belong to the field of orthotics due to a form of externality which characterizes them and makes them similar to eyeglasses, contact lenses or wheelchairs (the latter were the most acceptable alternative for moving outside the home for almost all my interviewees with motility impairments at the time of the fieldwork). Most of the existing exoskeletons used in clinics are therefore noninvasive technologies. There are some ongoing projects which aim to connect the robot directly to the brain, such as those being investigated at the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) in Grenoble, France. Yet for the time being, they concern only a very small number of patients.5 In my own study, the object was the production of deviant and extended bodies due to the addition of a technological object to a body that does not miss limbs or organs itself, but their respective functions. Following these thoughts, one can note the contribution of an exoskeleton in rendering a “body present” due to its externality. As opposed to the aforementioned example of eyeglasses that are widely

80  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

used, thus transforming them into an “everyday” object, exoskeletons are very recent technologies in rehabilitation. Since they are bulky, the user is immediately noticed. Therefore, the exoskeleton is unable to achieve an “absent” body that fits the everyday life environment. Much of the “body present” of motility impairment is concerned with its being accompanied by various forms of technological companions and their being more or less discreet. Wheelchairs, crutches, or canes (for those persons with more residual functions) are among the panoply of objects that may accompany motility deficiencies. The majority of persons with motility impairments use wheelchairs. Fewer individuals use only crutches, if the condition of the body allows it. Exoskeletons are used the least since they demand simultaneously a technological literacy, but also a specific body, as one of my interviewees using an exoskeleton explained to me. In his view, ideally, the target for exoskeletons is a young population, people who are not in the wheelchair for a long time, who didn’t develop bad habits. Because after a few years in a wheelchair, one develops bad habits. For instance, bones which are stiff, no possibility to move, to lie down completely. So, for some people verticalization is not possible anymore, and thus there is an incompatibility with the machine. (RehaM9FR: 211; my transl. from French) The existence of an impairment becomes a visible imprint, the “stigma” that makes a person “a tainted, discounted one” (Goffman 1963: 3). Unlike diseases and illnesses that are not visible at first sight, motility impairments are immediately perceived. “Own bodies” with motility deficiencies are immediately identified as something that contradicts the order of being healthy, helping reinforce further forms of “disciplinary regimes” (Foucault 1977). They are constraining not only in their material changes, which require various forms of medical treatment, physiotherapy and dependence on caregivers, but also wherever technology becomes their addendum. Technology makes visible the boundary between the “kingdom of the well” and that of the “sick” (Sontag 1978: 3). Discovering an “other” in the self: New corporeal potentialities The “body present” is related to various steps of corporeal understanding concerning what one has become after a neurological affection. Restrictions of movement drastically change our perception of the environment in which we live, two of the most important parameters being space and time. They also change our relations with other human beings, sometimes depriving the impaired of much of their former social lives. What a person first needs to objectify, having materially become someone else, is her new embodied condition and what motility possibilities her new body offers her. In other words, she needs to objectify her new bodily capital

I mpaired bodies 

81

before engaging in any further process of rehabilitation and the possibly recovery of her body’s former functions. More concisely, before concretely starting the process of “recovering,” one needs to engage in “discovering” one’s own body. This process is often marked by painful stages and helps reinforce the perception of one’s body as “present.” One of the first limitations that was noted in the first stage after their accidents,6 according to the interviewees, is that one cannot stand up and walk in the case of SCI, but also that, depending on the gravity of the lesion, one loses much of one’s autonomy in daily living. CVA may even lead to difficulties in talking, resulting in the patient sometimes needing speech and language therapy, as one of the interviewees experienced. Unlike incomplete SCI patients, who may be able to recover functions with a lot of physiotherapy, the chances of recovering former functions in the body in the case of CVA are different. Some patients with CVA, but by no means all, may come close to what they were and could do before the accident occurred, although cases and bodies certainly differ. In these processes of the discovery of one’s new body, in which the first moments are experienced as an “other,” an important role is played by the experts. Discovering one’s body implies being able to communicate with doctors and physiotherapists, and sometimes with family members in the event the person does not live alone, which may be the case. In this respect, one’s own body is one of crossed levels of knowledge. There is no doubt that, after experiencing an accident resulting in one’s inability to perform a variety of movements and actions, one will crave what one was before: an autonomous and independent subject capable of affirming, in an instance, multiple forms of agency and intentionality. Much about discovering one’s own body of impairment involves engaging in a process of objectifying one’s autonomous possibilities, and thus engaging the body in an economy of its own potential. When trying to trace back to the event which led to their actual bodies, interviewees are engaged in a form of what Rachel Prentice names “sensory education” (2013: 57). Similar to the work of medical doctors and physiotherapists, who pool their efforts to decode what impaired bodies are trying to “tell,” those with motility impairment are engaged in a constant sensory journey in which they are constantly updating what their present condition allows them to be and to do; by so doing, they learn their new bodies and the constraints they impose. Much about this process of updating concerns very factual possibilities or impossibilities that the damaged body concedes. One of the elements that plays a crucial role in fixing the boundary between the two bodies is pain. Pain is not only a characteristic that renders the body present, as I explained earlier: it is also the mark which consecrates the “after” body as the one that has become precisely so “after” the lesion in the cord or brain occurred. Pain is also the mark of what one “can,” “still can,” “no longer can” or “can otherwise” do; it is what those with impairment try to ameliorate during their use of the exoskeleton in the clinics or hospitals where they go weekly. In the phenomenological constitution of the motility-impaired body, pain is most often the first index that one’s own body has become an “other.” As one of the interviewees recalled, among the first memories surrounding the new body after the accident was pain.

82  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Therefore, pain is especially the mark of one’s becoming the “other” body. In the process of discovering the “other” in the self,7 pain acts as a first stage in a “rite of passage,” often before becoming chronic. When I asked him if he was conscious of what was happening, interviewee RehaM9FR described the first stages after the accident to me in the following words: I knew that my back hurt. I knew that I had a pain in my back and that I couldn’t stand up. The first thing I remember was pain. Then I learnt that what happened was that I broke my sternum and I had the T12 vertebra broken, which further compressed the spinal cord. So ever since, I am an incomplete paraplegic. (RehaM9FR: 51, 52, 55; my transl. from French) To recall a category proposed by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson in her classic study Extraordinary Bodies (1997) – namely the “spectacle of otherness” (1997: 129), which she describes with respect to bodies that are considered inferior and thus labeled as having less value within a corporeal hierarchy, where “normality” or “normalcy” (Davis 1995) hold the privileged position – the first experiential negotiations that individuals with motility impairments perform is internally. There was a “body one” to which they were accustomed and which, due to the sudden occurrence of the impairment, changed radically.8 Hence, one needs to elaborate a very subjective “corporeal understanding” (Abraham 2002), one which is turned toward one’s own bodily history in order to cope with what is missing in the “body present.” In this vein, Kathy Charmaz proposes the idea of a “loss of self” (Charmaz 1983) with respect to persons who are chronically ill. As she notes, a narrow medicalized view of suffering, as solely defined as physical discomfort, ignores or minimizes the broader significance of the suffering experienced by debilitated chronically ill adults. The nature of that suffering is, I contend, the loss of self felt by many persons with chronic illnesses. (Charmaz 1983: 168) In my fieldwork, despite the fact that all interviewees had difficulties in accommodating their new bodies and impairment conditions, no selves were lost. A substantial amount of work was invested in discovering what the new bodies had become, what one could still do, and how one could best lead one’s life and improve it. Whereas doubtlessly much of their motivation for building up their embodied selves came from the intersubjective environment – family and physiotherapists are among the most important resources for both discovering and “recovering” the other in the self – one’s new corporeal condition is simultaneously invented with and by the magic object, as I call the exoskeleton. These new aspects in their embodied selves engage a plurality of instances which “co-work” to reinvent fragmented biographies. Many therapy hours and the joint work of experts are essential steps in shaping the present of these bodies with their motility impairments.

I mpaired bodies 

83

In this context, if one evokes such sociological concepts as “career” (Hughes 1984; Goffman 1961; Pavalko, Harding & Pescosolido 2007), “negotiation” or “trajectory”9 (Glaser & Strauss 1968; Corbin & Strauss 1985; Strauss 1991), one discovers that the dynamics characterizing bodies that have become impaired are not only deeply marked by temporal aspects. Phenomenologically translated, negotiation regarding one’s corporeal availability confronts two levels of experience which refer to huge changes inside one’s objective anatomical body and one’s felt body, the “own body.” In this line of thought, before negotiating any external “arrangements,” bodies need first and foremost to understand and objectify what they have become, how they can continue to live in the context of their changed materialities and what discovering these new materialities which they are will require. Initial negotiations begin at a very subjective level. One needs to understand the impact that a car accident or the obstruction of a blood vessel in the brain has on one’s experience of the body. RehaM3GE described his very first experience of SCI in the following terms: It was really very, very difficult, I must say. One realizes all of a sudden that one is paralyzed, and that one can never walk again. And, yes, this was in itself the first ground where one feels that one’s world fell apart. Because […] why? I was so young. I could do so much still. And my wife was then pregnant. And yeah […] how should it go further? And then, first, one had to hear one’s own thoughts. And then further on, one had to start fighting. (RehaM3GE: 108; my transl. from German) By highlighting the idea of negotiation, which in the first stage is very individual, I do not mean to “descend into the vortex of subjectivity” (Williams 1998: 242) and thus ignore the other challenges that bodies with motility impairments directly face and concretely contend with. Nonetheless I consider that this type of deficiency, which is different from many other forms of severe illness – cancer and VIH (Epstein 1996) are among the most widely studied and have become classical examples in the field of disability studies – severs one’s biography in a clear material manner. What accidents do is to mark a specific point in one’s own personal history, and especially in one’s own anatomical and physiological condition. And discoveries of one’s new embodied self certainly start after that. First, one encounters the new body and must understand what this body offers. One discovers one’s “sense of agency” and a “sense of ownership” anew or, in other words, what residual resources of these two forms of sense exist in one’s new body. According to Shaun Gallagher, the sense of agency refers to “the pre-reflective experience that I am the one who is causing or generating a movement or action or thought process,” whereas the sense of ownership refers to “the pre-reflective experience that I am the one who is moving or undergoing an experience” (Gallagher 2012: 132). SCI and CVA change the perception of these “senses” and engage the impaired in processes of discovery and negotiation related to what their bodies have become and what new corporeal limits they experience. It is on the basis of these discoveries, which shortly after the accidents are very difficult to endure, that the new own body

84  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

gains a profile. Some, if not most of those with neurological impairments need to undergo surgery quickly after their accident happen, and then spend many days in hospitals and clinics; these spaces are also markers for what the new own bodies have become, along with the first moments during which the sense of self seems to be deeply destabilized. To evoke once more the experience of RehaM3GE, who became a paraplegic after experiencing a car accident, One can notice, something like after twelve days of being in coma, that the muscles are completely weak. You cannot hold a fork. You have to learn everything again. First, one is being fed, and then I had to do it by myself. I had to learn it with a lot of training. So, to hold a fork and bring it to the mouth. And I have to say this was then very, very difficult. (RehaM3GE:110; my transl. from German) Before being confronted with how other persons perceive them, including the expert perceptions of doctors, physiotherapists or engineers, the first experiential process in which persons with SCI and CVA are strongly engaged is to contrast their body “present” with their body “past”. Every day with these new bodies requires the development of a new sensory repertoire. One learns to train one’s focus to what the body shows. There is a hierarchy that starts inside one’s phenomenology of the body before being acknowledged by the social perception and limits of interaction with one’s fellows. One gradually discovers someone else inside oneself by comparing acts, facts, performances and reactions with a former corporeal norm of one’s body. That is how the “biographical disruption” first becomes corporeally assigned. As one of my interviewees with a severe form of SCI recounted to me, before the accident I used to do a lot of sport. I was training my strength every day. Endurance training. And this is what I miss the most. […] I miss the most to move freely, I miss the movement, the intentional movement of my hands and legs. And the freedom from pain. (RehaM7GE: 314–325; my transl. from German) Very different from the approach defended by Faircloth et al. (2004) in a study in which the “biographic disruption” with respect to persons who have experienced a stroke is criticized and replaced by the category of “biographical flow,” in my fieldwork the “disruption” is highly present. It was striking to observe the interviewees and listen to their recounting the violence of their corporeal accidents. The brute fact that people were not able to stand up or walk, move their arms in order to feed themselves or write, take a shower autonomously, or even speak (since one of the interviewees needed speech therapy), do not have a social life anymore or see their lives heavily reduced provides obvious details which mark one’s biography and turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. The common point where all these experiences about “disruptions” converge is in their drawing attention to our common

I mpaired bodies 

85

“ontological insecurity,” to quote Bryan S. Turner, who notes that “while humans may not share a common culture, they are bound together by the risks and perturbations that arise from their vulnerability” (2006: 9). Exoskeletons enter vulnerability levels. In her study of what she terms “resilient cyborgs,” in which she analyzes the use of pacemakers and ICDs – technologies that are, unlike exoskeletons, invasive – Nelly Oudshoorn notes the following: “the information included in industry and hospital websites, or leaflets specially developed for people who will receive an internal heart device, presents pacemakers and defibrillators as efficient tools that will solve their heart problems” (2020: 37). Much about exoskeletons is also related to the promises they make. In a sense, they are an impetus in helping people discover what they still can and are, and sometimes what they weren’t for many years, since some persons have spent many years sitting in a wheelchair or in bed before having an opportunity to train in a clinic or hospital with exoskeletal devices. Exoskeletons may indeed be engaged in corporeal discoveries. It may seem unusual to speak of “discovery” in a case where someone loses the ability to walk, the sense of touch or motility. One doesn’t discover what one used to be. And yet, as one of the engineers I interviewed explained to me, this may indeed be the case. Persons who have been in wheelchairs for many years, and thus having gained a corporeal “normality” other than what is qualified as “health” or the “healthy” one, discover their bodies anew due to the exoskeleton. For some of them, their first experience of being verticalized after spending many years lying down is indeed equivalent to a breakthrough. The female engineer who inspired me to think of how exoskeletons help in corporeal discoveries of one’s own body explained that, during a study with an exoskeleton in which she had been engaged some years previously, she had a patient with SCI who hadn’t walked for 13 years. The engineer said, She (the patient) when I put her on the [Exo1] she cried out of joy! And she told me to take a video for the children. So, it was really touching! And she’s not the first person to react like this. Many people actually, even if they know they cannot walk anymore, they require training with the [Exo1] just for their well-being. Because psychologically, it’s good for them just to have this hour, when they can stand upright. (Eng10CH: 165) It is important for this category of persons to discover that their bodies haven’t completely abandoned them. In his discussion of chronic illness, for instance, Gareth Williams notes that, “while the experience of ‘adaptation’ to a limb amputation or some other trauma-induced impairment clearly has its own dynamics, influenced by personal, situational and treatment factors, chronic illness adds a new dimension of enormous variability and unpredictability” (1998: 239). One might think that SCIs and CVAs, with their quality of trauma-induced impairments, would refer to conditions of the body which are less variable or

86  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

unpredictable. What the experiences of those with SCI and CVA show is precisely how much they may be at the mercy of contingency. Accordingly, various negotiations with one’s “altered sense of selfhood, one that has been savaged by the partial destruction of the body” (Murphy 1990: 90), along with the accompanying caregivers (who may often be family members), and especially with technology, are a very important step in preparing the further phases through which the injured body may actually discover that it can do things and that, despite affected senses of agency and ownership, other resources may be mobilized to invent one’s life. As one of my interviewees with SCI affirmed, “I’ve always told people that at some point I will be walking again. It's a question of when and of the technologies. I mean, one possibility is I get walking again like this [using the exoskeleton]” (RehaM5CH: 767). And yet, the challenge is that, when a patient really starts to be interested in this type of technology and wants to use it concretely, the discovery is made that exoskeletons are not for all types of body. Facing the machine sometimes involves facing the fact that one’s own body cannot cooperate with it. Unsurprisingly, like numerous other technological gadgets, exoskeletons offer not only possibilities enabling temporarily lost capacities: they also impose their own rules and limitations. As a consequence, as soon as the technological object enters the scene of one’s own body, the process of negotiation I previously referred to encompasses a further step. It refers not only to discovering what one still is or can be from one’s former body, but also whether one’s new body is or is not a body for the exoskeleton. What is meant by a body “for” the exoskeleton involves a body being anatomically capable to fit the robot. Unlike prostheses, which also need “fitting” or “accommodation between users and technologies” (Rabier 2013: 437), exoskeletons engage their users in training processes, the ultimate aim of which is a relatively autonomous use of the machine. Among the SCI and CVA community, despite the parameters of customization that robots have, and which are meant to ensure the use of the robot by a variety of persons, not all bodies are fit for training. One’s new corporeal potential needs to be “enough” in order to work with the robot; otherwise, instead of helping the impaired body, the machine may rather work against it, and cause further harm. For instance, putting too much pressure on shoulders or wrists, as both RehaM5CH and RehaM9FR described, presents a risk of further injury. Discovering what the new body of SCI and CVA offers is consequently strongly connected to its possibilities of recovery or further adjustment and invention. In this complex human–machine co-relation, both deviance and extension gain further meanings, reinvesting not only contemporary understandings of what certain forms of impairment, thought irremediable until not so long ago, may mean. On a larger scale we see how, despite their “being made for a certain purpose” (RehaM5CH: 817), functions and properties inside our bodies may transfer and reinvent themselves, surprising often their inhabitants. It is to this larger conception of corporeality and because they are engaged in a process of “medicalization” (Conrad 2007) that exoskeletons take part in not only discoveries, but also recoveries of motility impairments.10

I mpaired bodies 

87

Recovering the other in the self In her now classical study, Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time (1991), Kathy Charmaz defines illness as an interruption in one’s life course and implies that such a definition has as a consequence recovery (1991: 13–16). Illness11 construed as a physiological affection or dysfunction thereby becomes the mobility for recovery, engaging the ill or impaired person in a “trajectory” (Pescosolido 2013). The aim is usually to attain the equilibrium experienced before the illness occurred. In this sense, illness is conceived as a temporal interval with a beginning and hopefully also an end. Unlike the conception of “illness,” SCI and CVA are not corporeal conditions in which recovery has the same weight. If progress is made, the aim is often to ameliorate the “body present,” but that hardly means recovering a formerly healthy body. Before getting to use an exoskeleton, much is recovered due to rehabilitation. It is first the role of rehabilitation to endow the impaired body with what I call a new “deposit” of corporeal habits, and second to maintain it, since, perhaps similar to chronic illness, in the condition of SCI and CVA, things acquired may be quickly lost if the person with impairment does not remain engaged in constant physiotherapeutic activity. As a consequence, other experts join the intersubjective landscape gravitating around exoskeletons, namely the physiotherapists. They represent one of the (sometimes several) human prostheses accompanying persons with SCI and CVA in their new corporeal journey and are responsible for many hours of rehabilitation and reeducation. Similar to other experts who concretely develop technologies, physiotherapists help forge what Adams, Murphy and Clarke (2009: 248) call “anticipatory regimes,” in which, as in stem cell research or various other biotechnologies involving genetics, these experts, who literally sculpt embodied impairments, adhere to the principle of “acting now to protect the future.” Rehabilitation is a condition for improving one’s corporeal habits and developing one’s autonomy as much as possible. Before a person starts to use an exoskeleton, if she is allowed to, it is actually a necessary condition to stabilize some functions in the body. Usually this starts when the person with the impairment is still in the hospital. For example, RehaM9FR described to me the first steps of his SCI “trajectory”: I got surgery in the hours following my accident. Then, I woke up after the surgery and they brought me in intensive care. And I remained there four days, after which I came back to my hospital room. So from the day of the accident until the day when I went out I stayed nine days in the hospital. And then I spent time in a rehabilitation center. I started the rehabilitation for my legs, for my body. I did physiotherapy. (RehaM9FR: 61; my transl. from French) The kind of exercises I did were stretching, cycling with both legs and arms, exercises for stability, exercises for equilibrium, and then all types of

88  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

movements, various forms of leg-stretching so that the physiotherapist could see what muscles were functional or not and whether one may rehabilitate them. (RehaM9FR: 113; my transl. from French) Before using an exoskeleton, there is a concrete need to map the body, to turn it almost constantly into what Thomas Csordas calls an “analytic body,” that is, a body “that invites a discrete focus on perception, practice, parts, processes, or products” (1994: 4). One needs to carefully consider one’s new limits, although they may seem to change sometimes and thus surprise the person with an impairment. Much about living with SCI and CVA is also a matter of understanding the “surprises” the new bodily condition comes up with and how one may best deal with them. These “surprises” may sometimes lead one to acknowledge various degrees of difficulty in performing certain actions and tasks; controlling one’s own body then becomes an important topic related to the process of rehabilitation. As Charmaz and Rosenfeld remark, exerting bodily control is a continuous and complex process. Ordinarily we become so adept at bodily control that we conduct it on a tacit, unconscious, or barely conscious level. Much depends on its artful and successful execution. (Charmaz and Rosenfeld 2006: 41) Rehabilitation and reeducation involve discovering new forms of control grounded in the body’s materiality. Bodily control is certainly not a recent topic with respect to the sociology of health and illness (Foucault 1975; Lupton 2012), nor with regard to sociology in general (Elias 1978). Its loss, regardless of the variety of forms, has always been socially stigmatized. Yet, since what is aimed at in rehabilitation is autonomy of movements and performed actions, the form of control that concerns the rehabilitative process is related to intentionality, and more precisely to what Merleau-Ponty terms “motor intentionality.”12 This, as he defines it, is not an intentionality related to the pure sphere of consciousness, but “an anticipation or a grasp of the result assured by the body itself as a motor power, a ‘motor project’ (Bewegungsentwurf)” ([1945] 2012: 113). Decisively, if motor intentionality provides a first basis of interaction and action in the surrounding environment, this is not to be understood as something separated from it. The enactive approach in phenomenology, mentioned earlier, would complete this view: “in cases of interaction, one’s intentions are not just formed in one’s individual body as the result of an isolated subjective process, but depend in a dynamic way on the other’s elicitations and responses” (Gallagher 2012: 199–200). It is this complex motor deposit that rehabilitation aims to update, change by engaging one’s impaired body in constant practice and sometimes upgrade. More generally, what rehabilitation aims at is a mutation inside the impaired body and with it the establishment of a new “somatic culture” (Détrez 2002: 146), according to which some bodies become

I mpaired bodies 

89

open possibilities. This is a condition to which technologies such as exoskeletons may profoundly contribute. If practiced very intensely, physiotherapy may sometimes even help to reach what one mostly thinks is impossible: standing up and walking autonomously. This last possibility is rare, yet it exists. One of the control engineers (Eng11CH) I interviewed referred to Dale Hull, an American MD who had a SCI due to an accident and became a paraplegic. Hull is known for managing to cross this exact gap – commonly thought impossible – the gap from paraplegia to standing up and walking without help. After listening to one of Hull’s conferences,13 which my fellow colleague engineer recommended to me, I understood that one essential parameter in recovering some parts of what one used to be is the patient’s motivation. Physiotherapists and robotic devices are certainly crucial in recoveries, yet the success of these processes also depends on the patient herself or himself. As I wrote in my field notes, while considering Hull’s experience, as well as my own observation of those many steps and procedures which constitute the expertise involved in recovery (sites CHS1, CHS2 and CHS3), We want to help but at what costs? In what worlds? Who can afford rehabilitative robotics? One speaks about improvement – but these injuries take so much time; they take so much soul. Hull mentions the paralysis of the heart, that emotional paralysis which is even worse than the biological paralysis. He made me think of [person from military staff] who said that augmentation happens inside, not outside. The real thing comes always from what we are inside ourselves, not the carapace which is outside. The exoskeleton is the outside, and one can take it away. That is why I think, if operations are possible, they should be performed. There, where one can trim inside the body, where the trimming knowledge exists […]. There is this moment when robotics can only accompany; it can only supplement something, but it remains always the outside (despite wearables, flexibility and all the things coming near or nearer to the body); it is the OUTSIDE not the inside. (February 2019, Field notes: 737) In my observations and my various interviews, rehabilitation becomes a second rhythm of life for many persons with SCI and CVA, and for many of them it is still not enough. Nearly all interviewees referred to this in both narrative and expert interviews, namely that “not enough” was the time dedicated to exercising. And exercising or “training,” as some of them described it, is not the only activity in which the physiotherapist plays a crucial role: they are also heavily involved when the exoskeleton enters the process of rehabilitation and thus contribute actively to produce changes in one’s biological body. They transform a “traumatic memory” (Fuchs 2012) by actively engaging the body in doing, while simultaneously encouraging an “economy of hope.”14 In discussing another idea of “making” in the sense of “discursive construction,” Donna Haraway notes that “bodies […] are not born; they are made” (1999: 207). I will take her statement literally. What one notices

90  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

in the bodies of persons with heavy motor impairments like those resulting from spinal cord injury and stroke is that they need constant making. This is not to say that able bodies or health in general is achieved once and for all. Recent studies of medicalization confirm the blurred line between health and illness (Conrad 1992, 2000; Crawford 1980), as well as the growing power of medicine (Turner 1995). A large part of the rehabilitation process is about a concrete “making,” a bodily practice which is very material and phenomenological in its conception, in the sense that what is sought is the development of new forms of agentivity. These may be derived from one’s past lived body, but also may, in a sense, be newly invented with the technological apparatus that includes not only the exoskeleton, but also the staff in physiotherapy and their body knowledge, the doctors’ medical knowledge and the engineers’ knowledge in robotics. These “dynamic processes through which different bodies are performed ‘in practice’ via heterogeneous arrangements” (Winance, Barbot & Parizot 2018: 55) cause material changes in the body schemas of persons with impairments, but also, when progress is visible, they affect changes in their body image, that is, in the perceptions of them held by other persons. In this line of thought, rehabilitation is related to a variety of forms of impression management (Goffman 1963). When seeing an exoskeleton for the first time, one of the first thoughts one may develop is that what these technologies do is restore function; persons with impairments who never had the experience of using such technology have great hopes in this respect. Exoskeletons are thus associated with the possibility of putting an end to one’s impaired condition and profoundly changing one’s disability. In some cases, they may, but this is not a general rule. As Deborah Lupton notes, a disabled body is commonly a source of anxiety. In her view, a body that does not function “normally” or appear “normal,” or that is confined to a wheelchair or bed, is both visually and conceptually out of place, as evidenced by the lack of public facilities for people with disabilities or the elderly. (Lupton 2012: 39) Exoskeletons interfere precisely at this level. Actually, their impact on the everyday lives of the impaired is double: if regularly used, they additionally contribute to obvious improvements which correspond to various anatomic functions in the body that are radically affected by the lack of verticalization and the forms of movement that able bodies can perform. For example, exoskeletons help blood circulation or bladder functions. They may strengthen muscles and bones, but also help persons with SCI and CVA have fewer infections or scars, the latter developing due to their sustained sedentary conditions. In this regard, they have a clear impact on both classical phenomenological categories describing the human body – the body as represented, described and measured in the scientific fields, known as the “objective body” – and the felt body, one’s subjective experience of the various limitations that the injuries have caused.

I mpaired bodies 

91

If one understands the body as a deposit of habits, in line with both the phenomenological tradition and the sociology of the body,15 this is where exoskeletons intervene. However, their real contribution to an impaired body is not to “recover” it. They may temporarily “recover” one’s body image in the social view. As Jonathan Cole pointed out, using the wheelchair as an example to describe the reaction of a man whose wife became paralyzed after a spinal cord injury, this type of object, namely the wheelchair, is a symbol of new needs and status (2004: 172). This is mainly a negatively connoted status, that of the “deviant,” confirming what Erving Goffman called “spoiled identity” or “stigma” (Goffman 1963). What exoskeletons change and thus help “recover” is more a “body social” (Synnott 1993) than a body present. They bring back a very important function for maintaining our social relations and interactions: standing up. As one of my interviewees explained to me when I asked him how his social life changed after his spinal cord injury, one of the examples he brought up to describe the change to not being able to stand up was networking events. He answered, To be honest, I don’t enjoy networking events and all that stuff anymore as much. I used to love them. But the problem is you come to a networking event and it’s always these standing dinners and kind of stuff, and they’re all talking up there and I’m like: “Hey, guys!” (laughs). I hardly understand what they’re saying. It really pisses me off. You don’t see what’s going on, you don’t […] Yeah, it’s not fun. So, I stopped doing that. […] Ask a short person how they feel when they go to networking events. They’re going to hate it (laughs). No one pays attention to you. No one listens to you, no one talks to you. So, it’s not that much fun. (RehaM5CH: 855) These gadgets actually reformulate for clearly delimited time intervals how one feels one’s (likely) inability to walk. Unlike wheelchairs, which immediately signal one’s inability to walk or one’s altered mobility, exoskeletons are ability markers. They engage their users in processes of “management of the human form,” rather than being “bodily invasions” (Turner 1992: 47), and are thus a challenge for hybridization. Hybridization is a category that is highly discussed in recent work in STS (Besmer 2012; Dalibert 2016; Oudshoorn 2015, 2020), often removing the materiality of medical technology from its factual limits, while favoring an excessively “metaphorical” understanding of the de facto representation of some of these technologies and what they do to human bodies. The association between a human body and an exoskeleton acknowledges, for the time being, at least, two separate materialities and corporealities. They may be connected for short intervals, but this type of “assemblage” (Shildrick & Steinberg 2015) is far from contributing to any viable “cyborg” project. While describing Donna Haraway’s concept of the “cyborg” in a very recent study, Nelly Oudshoorn affirms that, according to Haraway:

92  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

by the late twentieth century, humans had become so thoroughly and radically merged and fused with technologies that the boundaries between the human and the technological are no longer impermeable. The cyborg implies a very specific configuration of user-technology relations in which the user emerges as a hybrid of machine and organisms in fiction and as lived experience. (Oudshoorn 2020: 7) The use of exoskeletons, much exalted and associated with the production of cyborg and human–machine hybrid forms, openly contradicts such a view. This holds true for when they are conceived for persons with impairments, as well as for the able-bodied. In the best-case scenario, the use of these technologies helps human beings who are impaired to better live with this impairment. Despite providing better conditions for one’s everyday life, this effect does not create any viable melting of corporeal realities. That is why I prefer to speak of co-relation and companionship rather than hybridization and cyborgization. Unlike technologies that are implanted in one’s body, such as the variety of existing prosthetic devices, as well as pacemakers and transplanted organs, the specificity of exoskeletons is that they are “bounded by a temporality of use” (Oudshoorn 2015: 58), a condition that creates many impediments to “recovery” processes. As many of my expert interviewees remarked, exoskeletons are conceived as “tools,” and this conceptualization implies that they are needed only temporarily for a specific task or action, and that they are also characterized by a specific form of externality. The time of use usually refers to the time one spends in a clinic or hospital or, more rarely, to the time when one participates in experiments. Due to these short intervals when patients have access to these objects, the progress in one’s own body is very slow; many persons with impairments rely heavily on physiotherapy, and very often on one’s personal commitment to exercises and the help of one’s family. In this sense, exoskeletons belong to a “recovery” network, in that they aid temporary forms of ability and also how “own bodies” with motility impairments are lived. Exoskeletons as ability markers for impaired bodies Motto: The world is built for people who can walk

(Eng13CH: 48).

In the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned three processes which strongly mark the emergence of corporeal worlds in the rehabilitative environment and in which exoskeletons play a decisive role. I referred to forms of apprenticeship, rites of passage and the socialization to technologies, the latter gradually affecting not only specific fields and contexts in our social lives, among which medicine and work environments are clear examples undergoing visible transformations. What is just as obvious is that, at a more general level, everyday life starts to be inconceivable without certain types of gadgets that function with software. Smartphones,

I mpaired bodies 

93

notebooks and tablets are perhaps among the most current examples. Additionally, trains, planes and some types of car function with software programs, the human factor becoming an “accompaniment.” Regarding this feature, exoskeletons for rehabilitation join the larger family of technological apparatuses. They impact abilities, though perhaps not directly cognitive abilities, as is the case with smartphones; exoskeletons may yet cognitively affect motility impairments, but indirectly. Obviously they reformulate not only the conception of impairment and of living of an impairment, but also the notion of corporeal ability, since when one is verticalized, despite walking with an exoskeleton, the unmediated perception and direct experience of a body using an exoskeleton will not necessarily inform an external viewer that the body in the machine is an impaired one. As one of the interviewees using an exoskeleton recounted, While I am using the exoskeleton, when I am confronted with the eye of the other, well, I don’t feel impaired. Even the people who look at me don’t believe that I am impaired when I am inside the exoskeleton. For most people, if a person is not using a wheelchair, she is not a paraplegic. This is how I see things. When they see me standing, they ask me every time if I really am a paraplegic. And for them this is not usual. It is not normal for them to see a person who is usually in a wheelchair standing up and using crutches. (RehaM9FR: 145, 147; my transl. from French) It is only when receiving the details about both bodies and machines that the line between ability qua health and impairment may be drawn. Consequently, at first sight exoskeletons introduce an ambivalence about bodies. Unlike wheelchairs, the mark exoskeletons set is not that of disability but of ability. Walking is the standard for human bodies. But in order to be able to walk, those with impairments need to traverse many levels of certification: the medical doctors need to analyze the type of lesion and the possibilities inside one’s own body for further interaction with the machine; physiotherapists need to adjust their techniques and knowledge to understand anew and monitor changes in the bodies of persons with impairments; and, last but not least, engineers are constantly solicited and engaged in a continuous process of developing these technologies, tailoring them to the needs of the bodies they are trying to help and to accompany. Hence, in order to reach the exoskeleton, many passages need to be negotiated, lived and overcome. One needs to discover one’s body with the specialists in order to be able to discover it with the machine, and thus in a sense, one finds oneself in a constant process of corporeal construction and socialization. As Oudshoorn and Pinch note, “there may be one dominant use of a technology, or a prescribed use, or a use that confirms the manufacturer’s warranty, but there is no one essential use that can be deduced from the artifact itself” (2003: 1–2). The construction of these magic objects is highly dependent on what the human body lacks: since their role is to compensate and respond as much as possible to this lack; the use must find its place inside this lack. In the case of bodies with motility impairments, the technology has the role of “filling in,”

94  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

completing and thus engaging one’s body both in a new shape (exoskeletons are visible and attached to the human body), but also in new feelings of what one is (the phenomenological sense of ownership) and what one may be able to perform intentionally (the sense of agency). All the exoskeleton types I could see, learn about and also use myself, and which are being currently developed for rehabilitation purposes, are mostly active structures. This aspect involves that they function with power. For example, exoskeletons that are being developed for legs and walking practice have a small integrated computer placed on the user’s back. The “walking” exoskeletons may have a weight ranging from 5 kilograms, which are the lightest to wear, to almost 30 kilograms for those designed to work with crutches, and up to 60 kilograms for those that function without crutches, as they require more force to stabilize the body and allow greater degrees of freedom. Some exoskeletons for rehabilitation may be active but remain static, meaning that the patient uses them like a fitness device. They may be both for legs and for arms. They also have a computer that helps to create a profile of the user to monitor improvements and observe whether the patient’s general condition is making any progress at all. Some of them may be correlated with video games and may thus engage the person in practicing movements related to virtual reality. Up to the date of my observations, integral exoskeletons existed only as works in progress. One of the main challenges for the experts involved in the development of this technology is the complexity of the human body. Hence, current research is concentrated either on developing exoskeletons for the upper part of the human body, which is more complicated to build because the anatomy of the human arm is extremely complex, or exoskeletons for the legs. These may vary greatly with respect to the rehabilitation field in both weight and purpose. These differences result in a wide range of possible improvements: they may give users not only the possibility of walking again, but also the potential for walking longer distances or walking with a purpose, such as shopping or eating in a restaurant, activities which expose the user to social perceptions and social estimations of success in performing those activities. Since the use of an exoskeleton is relatively difficult when it comes to allowing access to different social contexts, some models are so conceived in order to be used to complement wheelchairs on a modular basis: one can take the exoskeleton apart so that it can be transported while using the wheelchair. Other projects focus on developing very light exoskeletons that the patient may “wear” or “get dressed with,” like clothes. They may be either for legs or for the upper part of the body, and thus conceived to give support for the arms. The “ability” they produce or the help they provide is strictly connected to a certain body part. If exoskeletons were to be qualified “ability markers,” this would refer to the compartmentalization of the human body. In this sense, they mark a segment of ability, and along with this, very circumscribed segments of actions. Picking up an object, like a cup or a glass of water, is a possible action if the exoskeleton is made for the upper part of the body. As one of the engineers in robotics exemplified in one of the interviews (Eng16FR: 88), if used for the mobility of one’s legs and thus for walking outside

I mpaired bodies 

95

one’s home or the setting of a clinic, such as going to a shop to buy bread, the ability exoskeletons mark is related to a more complex setting. Therefore, the levels of impression management one needs to control while wearing the robot are more intricate than those required in confined spaces. Exoskeletons belong to a constellation of practices which involve rediscovering one’s own body, whether alone, with close persons such as family members or with experts; they engage their users in innovative forms of technological socialization and bodily apprenticeship, as they require skills and specific interactions. Yet, where they surprise the most is in their reinvention of lost capabilities, despite this being highly circumstantial. This dynamic involves further understanding of what and how one can perform some movements that are bound to acts and activities, of what forms of subjective experiences emerge due to these discoveries, but also of the precise parameters, contexts and situations in which these corporeal potentialities are released and correlated. To sketch these transformations, in what follows I will refer to four aspects which became clear in the field, and which delineate the temporal and temporary transformation of “deviant” bodies into “extended” ones. I will hence refer to how new aspects of “I can” are mobilized to cope with what “I cannot” anymore and thus reconsider the classical phenomenological notion of “subjectivity” while relating it to the examples of SCI and CVA. I then describe how new corporeal resources are produced, what forms of body work are engaged by “training” with exoskeletons, and thus what bodies are “reachable.” I consider in a next step how some bodies resist technologies due to the physical limits to which these devices cannot respond while reconceptualizing the notions of subjectivity and selfhood. Finally, I explain how the very recent notion of the “quantified self” enters my analyzed field. Understanding what “I still can”: Residual subjectivities Exoskeletons are usually used for rehabilitation purposes only by persons who have incomplete injuries, in the case of SCI. For strokes, they can frequently be used by a large variety of patients. For both types of user, one of the fundamental parameters in the interaction with the robot is that the person has some functions remaining in her body. This means that there is an active part of the body that may be mobilized for future use of the technology and thus for creating further forms of ability. The exoskeleton needs a base to work with, a body whose functions have not been completely destroyed, a residuum of capabilities upon which new forms of “I can” may be further forged with dual forms of assistance: on the one hand with the help of the technology, and on the other hand with the help of various forms of external expert knowledge, as well as the knowledge that patients develop of their new bodies. The latter may also be qualified as “expert” (Oudshoorn 2015: 69; Gimlin 2010: 58), since it is the patients who feel and know best what their bodies are and how they may further mobilize their corporeal resources in order to recreate experience.

96  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

In the history of the phenomenological paradigm, it is in Husserl’s writings that a first categorical distinction between “I can” and “I cannot” (Husserl [1952] 1989: 270–271) was made. This distinction is crucial when describing a motility-impaired body assisted by exoskeletons because it draws attention to an experiential asymmetry which technology reformulates. The “I cannot” of motility deficiency is the pretext for the reinvention and design of the assisted “I can”; it therefore sets the conditions for “a doing as an overcoming of resistance” (Husserl [1952] 1989: 270). The category of “I can” is also theorized and deeply connected to the body’s ability to create meaning in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception ([1945] 2012). Merleau-Ponty reinforces the position of the body as one’s “own body” and defines it as a permanent field in which we are situated. This feeling of being situated becomes strongly changed after surviving a spinal cord injury or a stroke, since the situation is also related to possibilities to act and interact that no longer exist and that need to be reinvented anew. What Merleau-Ponty stresses is the “body possible” rather than the “body impossible” ([1945] 2012: 142), as it is the body that is a source of further experiences. This, surprisingly, is the view that one encounters in a lab or a rehabilitation clinic. It is upon the resources of the body that teams of medical doctors, engineers and physiotherapists draw in order to offer both discovery and sometimes, albeit rarely, partial recovery for damaged bodies. I previously evoked the importance of the “body memory,” although in a specialized form, that of a “traumatic memory,” a concept discussed by Thomas Fuchs. What is first challenged in both spinal cord injury and stroke is one’s body memory; it is this memory that provides further resources to rebuild experiential patterns. Before proceeding to divide the “body memory” into six categories,16 Fuchs stresses the importance of the “body memory” in general. According to him, the memory of the body is something different from conscious recollection. As he notes, Through repetition and exercise, a habit develops. Well-practiced patterns of movement and perception become embodied as skills or capacities that we apply in our everyday lives as a matter of course – the upright gait, the abilities to speak, read, or write, and the handling of instruments such as a bicycle, a keyboard, or a piano. […] body memory denotes the totality of these bodily capacities, habits, and dispositions as they have developed in the course of one’s life. (Fuchs 2012: 10) Since human beings’ experiences cover a wide range, the first target in rehabilitation refers to the various patterns of sensation, perception and correlatively movement, since movement is embedded in the manners in which we sense, perceive and, on a more elaborate scale, do things. One trains one’s corporeal senses through explorations of the surrounding environment and action. As Alva Noë notes, “perceiving is a way of acting. Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us. It is something we do” (Noë 2004: 1). The conception and development of technologies starts from what bodies still sense and can, that is, from forms of corporeal

I mpaired bodies 

97

residuum, and aims at what bodies may further do. In this sense, one may indeed understand such technologies as exoskeletons to be conceived as prolongations of bodies, and hence extensions of the qualities of sensing and acting. Due to their capacity to stimulate what was not damaged in the brain circuits or at the level of the cord, exoskeletons engage bodies in processes in which they succeed to do and be parts of what they were and could, though mostly for only short periods of time. One of the ideas that engineers in robotics and physiotherapists mention is that many persons with severe impairments may never fully recover their former capacities. Yet, before this observation becomes a real fact, preparatory stages of evaluation are needed in order to understand more precisely what bodies have managed to preserve after the lesions occurred. Medical doctors play a crucial role in this process because it is they who are the first to conceive of one’s residual potential. In this sense, doctors perform a function of selecting bodies, according to what these bodies may potentially achieve due to the training with exoskeletons. In this evaluation and selection process, which may create conflicts between what patients feel and are, and the expert knowledge that labels them as belonging to one category or another, the medical eye separates what bodies can or cannot be and what they irremediably cannot be anymore. In the event that training with an exoskeleton is identified as being suitable, the goal is for one’s own body to recover some patterns and that at least some former functions start to be reactivated. As one of the engineers explained to me while discussing the example of stroke, A part of the walking schema, which is carved in the superior part of the brain, in the cerebrum, which is twisted, needs to be reconnected further down, to areas in the cerebellum. The idea is thus to create experiences, exercises which make the person recreate these walking patterns, but at a different place. Because the initial part of the brain is destroyed, it needs to reconnect to present schemas, which still exist, yet in another area. And to achieve this, one needs to bring the person into the nearest possible state to natural walking. Thus, one needs to draw on auditory or visual feedback, various sensations, disequilibriums, sensations of the internal ear which reconnects the person as quickly as possible to former sensations. (Eng16FR: 44; my transl. from French) What from the outside seems to be just “walking” or “moving one’s arm” depends on a complex accumulation of anatomical functions that further need to be acknowledged and properly invested so that one’s own body may indeed manage to achieve visible progress. A variety of perceptual and sensitive shifts need to be described, inventoried and categorized so that the robot may respond to the patient’s motility needs. Much in these inventories is decisively concerned with the human brain and its neuroplastic characteristics. The essence of rehabilitation programs with robots is based on this specific property of the brain – its capacity to reinvest what it experientially “saved” from a damaged area into a healthy one (Spampinato, Celnik & Rothwell 2020).

98  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

And yet restoring order and predictability into damaged bodies and brains remains an obvious challenge for all the parties involved in this process. Far from the idea of “the transformation of the human subject into an object, a repository, or else collision site, for various types of detectable and usable information” (Montgomery 1991: 383), the process of discovering what bodies still can, thereby isolating a variety of residual forms in the human body, draws on more subtle and diverse areas of competence. For the cases of stroke that I could observe and learn about, practicing walking patterns or arm movement patterns was far from being an isolated individual journey. In this sense, practicing with a robot, which all experts and patients refer to as “training,” is inscribed in an intercorporeal network of “situated knowledges” (Haraway 1991). It is this network that helps identify each and every individual impaired body as a specific site, this contributing to its reinvention at a variety of levels. The portrait of one’s “I still can” starts indeed with an anatomical inventory; yet since selves and situations are never separated, the “I still can” extends further while encompassing these two elements. And, due to the presence of technology, it openly transgresses the proper sphere of one’s privacy, exposing the body to a diversity of expert glances. One of the challenges faced by both experts taking part in the various rehabilitation phases, as well as for those with motor impairments themselves, is the high degree of variation between bodies, and hence of the possibilities to recover or rehabilitate damaged functions. At first glance, to underline the parameter “variety” seems to be a general first-perception datum. Yet, the principle of using and developing a specific technology relies on the common denominator of bodily features, and this seems to enter into contradiction precisely with the differences that make a specific body be that body and, in addition, to be a specific body with different effects, despite the identification of a similar cause such as damage to the brain or cord. One of the persons with a spinal cord injury I interviewed specifically addressed this issue, drawing attention to the fact that, despite the various views of experts, what one may be faced with as a patient – what one knows about how and what one still can – remains a very subjective enterprise. This subtle difference may sometimes be a source of numerous misunderstandings and conflicts about what therapeutic choice functions the best. As this patient noted, There are not enough studies in spinal cord injury. The reason is that every single patient is different. In order to do a study in order to say, “Hey, I got it,” you have to have a population which is consistent. But there are no ten guys who are the same. I don't know a single guy out there who has exactly the same symptoms, the same breaks, the same things as me. So, you have no one to relate to. So, everything is experimental, because there are no studies. You have kind of got to try it. There are some gut feelings, there are some thoughts, there are some people who have some experience. But here is no proof. […] I always tell people to go for what they feel the best with, because every doctor

I mpaired bodies 

99

will tell you something different. But if you feel, personally, like a therapy is helping you, then just go for it. (RehaM5CH: 535–537) The emotional reactions and personal motivations in engaging with the proposed rehabilitation possibilities are also a parameter which can influence how one’s residual corporeal heritage becomes actualized. As was often stressed, the lack of constant repetition and training may contribute to little progress being made in one’s bodily condition. This is a fact acknowledged by both experts and users, a common idea which protects the mobilization of one’s residual functions in the body in order, if not to recover, then at least to help the changed body avoid developing a worse condition. As Robert Riener,17 an expert in robotics, explained: The longer you train, the faster you move, the more repetitions you can do. And this number of repetitions is an important variable or parameter in the gait training, or in the physiotherapeutic training at all. But this is not all. It is also the physical effort. You must be active. If you sleep while training, there is less effect. Or maybe there is almost no effect. You need to be active. The muscles must be active. It takes place to get training, because it’s mainly efferent feedback which is produced through the continuous stimulation of the foot and the skin, but also through the internal receptors and the tendons in the muscles. And this efferent feedback triggers signals in the spinal cord, depending on the lesion, which further produces neuroplastic effects. Recuperating traces of a “former” body which was healthy while simultaneously still subsisting in one’s damaged body is a task that involves many layers of learning, levels of practice and also a certain readiness to be surprised. Understanding what one still can and what various forms of “I can” mean in the context of severe impairments is often correlated with how one becomes a body (Bourdieu 1977: 87), an “other” one, while building upon what seems to be the same. This process directly reformulates one’s physical capital, which is mobilized in order to achieve a “legitimate body” (Bourdieu 1978; Shilling 1993: 144–145) as sanctioned by the objective stance of the experts. They occupy a privileged position, acting as guarantors of the “I can,” but they are also those who redefine the borders of what is natural and proper for one’s body – in a sense, its very phenomenology. As Chris Shilling notes, body experts are all involved in educating bodies and labelling as legitimate or deviant particular ways of managing and experiencing our bodies. This affects the recognition we have of our own body practices, and the body practices of others, as right and proper or in need of control and correction (Shilling 1993: 145) – a transformation further leading to forms of the re-capitalization of one’s experiential subjective resources. Accordingly, the isolation of one’s residual skills and

100  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

capacities that needs to be mobilized in the further carving of one’s own motility baggage is constantly submitted to the eye of the expert and monitored, engaging one’s corporeal skills in a constant process of objectification and translation. It is with the knowledge and expertise of the specialists that bodies with motility impairments are, in a sense, transformed into tools for reaching ability, being “continually refitted” (Wacquant 1998: 322–333), and also discovered anew. If one understands this process in terms of recreating one’s physical capital, then certainly what is aimed at is the gain in materiality, conceived in the sense of the transformation of one’s capabilities and autonomy. It is a phenomenological gain, in that what all persons with a spinal cord injury or who have experienced stroke are attempting to achieve is “feeling better” or “feeling well” by reducing the variety of pains, infections or motility and correlative activity limitations in their everyday lives. In capitalizing what one “still can,” the aim is to reach a better life condition, which is directly influenced by the changes that are happening in one’s body. And it is in this course of simultaneously reinvesting one’s anatomy, concrete skills, and practice by means of “iterated temporal cycles” (Wacquant 1998: 333) that exoskeletons emerge as ability markers. While there are obvious limitations to the “training” with exoskeletal devices, what both categories of actors, namely experts and patients, involved in the production and development of deviant and extended bodies with exoskeletons acknowledge is that abilities develop from both the repetition and intensity with which one trains one’s impaired body. In the beginning, I was surprised to hear most engineers speak of “training” when they referred to the activity of patients using exoskeletons, since this word might be expected to characterize rather a practice session for purposes of sports or fitness. Having previously evoked some concepts of Loic Wacquant (1998), the association between producing skills in a damaged body and producing skills in an above-average or a healthy body, such as that of an athlete engaged in competitions, may have some similarities. This refers more specifically to the creation proper of specific forms of bodily capital, although they are clearly separated by a corporeal norm which sanctions the goal to be attained. In the case of exoskeletons, this involves, if not recovering, then at least coming close to or maintaining the parameters that characterized one’s healthy body, the body one used to be. In the second category is the example of boxers analyzed by Wacquant in a number of his writings (Wacquant 1998; 1995a, b), who seek to attain an ideal body, conceived of as a body to be achieved; or, to reconceptualize a well-known category elaborated by Max Weber, “in order to motive,” one may also theorize an “in-order-to body” grounded in what one “still can.” Despite the will and wish to inscribe oneself in these logics of training – the purpose of which is to engage the person with impairment in the production of an “in-order-to body” – when entering a clinic where patients spend usually between half an hour up to 45 minutes, the obviousness of the temporal limits cannot be questioned. For many patients, one of the first obstacles to their better capitalization of what they “still can” is the allocated “training” time, which is too restricted in comparison to what their bodies need in order to refit. As one of my interviewees openly confirmed,

I mpaired bodies 

101

The problem is that you get half an hour to forty minutes of training. Let’s say, training in total is maybe an hour per week. That’s all you get. It’s nothing. The problem in [country name], well also in many places, is that there is just not enough intensive therapy. So, you get this one hour per week, and of course it’s going to take a long time [to recover]. And the intensity isn’t there. That’s what needs to be changed. (RehaM5CH: 313; 315) Yet before reaching this step of regular training, the bodies of persons with spinal cord injury and stroke undergo many other phases of preparation and certification. To be able to use an exoskeleton engages one’s body in a variety of labeling processes, which all need to converge in what one’s body actually still can. One of the “rites of passage” that describes the various interactions between the users of exoskeletons and these technologies is identified at this preliminary stage, in which one’s “I still can” in terms of motility reserve is listed in view of the further possibilities that one’s own body may achieve. Again, the eye of the expert allows or does not allow, it categorizes, analyzes and finally grants the possibility of recovery or training. The “power to define” (Shilling 1993: 140), resulting in the decision of an expert, which in my analyzed example may be very critical for one’s further state of health,18 was pointed out with reference to other situations, as expertise covers a wide range of social practices. Its strength relies especially on its capacity to establish the “legitimate body” (Bourdieu 1978) I previously evoked. Yet, unlike other examples, such as access to a certain type of education or profession, where apprenticeship is generally understood as a “means of imparting specialized knowledge to a new generation of practitioners” (Coy 1989: xi), to have access to “train” with an exoskeleton is determined by the very materiality of one’s body. What one’s body “still can” therefore acts as a form of license or permit. Just as not everyone has a license to drive a car or fly a plane, although other competences and skills are required in these examples, not all types of bodies are “licensed” by experts to use exoskeletons. As one of the interviewees with spinal cord injury related to me with respect to his being granted a “license” to use the exoskeleton by a company selling medical devices, What they initially sought was a young person, who was available and who was dynamic. And this means no complications, no scars, no problems. It was a profile which needed to respect certain criteria. […] Ideally the target for exoskeletons is a young population, people who haven’t spent too much time in the wheelchair, who haven’t developed bad habits. […] So there is a category of persons for whom verticalization is not possible anymore. And these criteria create incompatibilities in the use of the exoskeleton. (RehaM9FR: 127, 129, 211) In the beginning, one is rather surprised to discover such criteria; however, due to the high variety and variability of bodily dispositions one encounters as both an

102  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

expert from outside, as medical doctors, physiotherapists or engineers in robotics are, or an expert from inside, since no one knows one’s condition better than oneself, these differences are real. Evaluating and appreciating what one still can fixes the further steps for one’s body work, for how one’s body may reinvent itself with the exoskeleton, albeit temporarily. The production of new corporeal habits: Body work In a classic study of atherosclerosis, Annemarie Mol (2002) postulates the idea of a “multiple body,” the reason for this pluralistic conception of the body being the manners in which specialists in medicine and patients enact the disease. Bodies are made multiple due to practices which unfold them as such, and consequently to various levels of what Debra Gimlin (2002) defines as “body work,” though she uses this term in the context of cosmetic surgery. In my empirical fieldwork, I rarely encountered “multiple bodies” in one body. I experienced bodies in pain in a variety of contexts, bodies which, besides their challenged anatomy, were accompanied by the perspectives of various specialists. The latter diligently tried to find solutions for these bodies in pain, mostly together with their inhabitants. However, as previously mentioned, as far as the development of exoskeletons is concerned, viable solutions for all persons with motility impairments do not exist at present. What exoskeletons do to impaired bodies is to engage them in steady transformation and maintenance, a process which I associate, although with a different categorical content, with “body work.” “Body work” covers many levels. Debra Gimlin, in one of the reviews of literature on this concept, distinguished four categories to which the concept of “body work” refers to in current sociological studies. According to her, body work refers to: (a) body/appearance work, (b) body work/labor, (c) body/emotion management and (d) body-making through work (Gimlin 2007: 353). Most of this classification refers to the area of work, in the sense of employment, and thus to how bodies are shaped by such environments, as well as how they shape them in their turn. My use of this concept in this part of my study comes somewhat close to the notion of “appearance” work; a widely discussed case to exemplify this category is the phenomenon of cosmetic surgery (Gimlin 2002, 2007; Jones 2008), or in a similar vein, those of the bodybuilding and fitness cultures (Monaghan 2001; Monaghan & Atkinson 2014). Body work in rehabilitative environments is intrinsically related to identity work, and its course engages a multiplicity of instances in reasserting the familiar by re-embodying the body in a set of skills affected by the injuries. In cosmetic surgery or fitness, the work on the body is related to personal choices which may be very explicit, although in some societies, such as Korea or Finland, persons engaging in such activities seek to respond to social norms regarding body images that are very recent (Kinnunen 2010; Yeon Leem 2017). By contrast, rehabilitation with an exoskeleton is not necessarily a choice: many persons with neurological impairments have restricted access to this type of care or no access at all.

I mpaired bodies 

103

There are obvious levels of choice and reflexivity which forge the multiplicity of stages and intervals that help articulate the “body work” with respect to rehabilitation practices. By outlining these aspects, however, I do not mean to suggest, in line with Giddens (1991), that the body is engaged in a reflexive project of selfidentity. Rather, what the terrain of my observations shows is that body work qua “embodied identity work” (Gimlin 2010: 60) is involved in a constant process of negotiation on a multiplicity of levels of reflexivity. In my observed cases, “body work” is characterized by a very temporarily stability, if achieved at all. The value of this type of “work” therefore resides in the variety of processes which are carried out in order to change what “doesn’t work” in one’s body into temporary forms of well-being, where well-being refers to both the physiological and the psychological aspects of those with motility impairments. In a classic study, Rubbish Theory (1979), Michael Thompson draws a categorical distinction between “transient” objects and “durable” objects. As he notes, Objects in the transient category decrease in value over time and have finite life-spans. Objects in the durable category increase in value over time and have (ideally) infinite life-spans. […] categories are not free just to float about. They are closely tied to the social situation that they render meaningful. (Thompson 1979: 7) Thompson’s differentiation underlines some aspects sought in the “body work” that patients carry out regularly in clinics or labs. Sociologically, the transient character of our bodies has been already acknowledged. More specifically, it is Pierre Bourdieu who discusses the “transient” character of the physical capital, a form of corporeal capital, which may sometimes be reified and transformed into economic capital. As he notes, physical capital exists for a short while, perishing when human beings die or age, whereas economic capital has a longer subsistence (Bourdieu 1978, 1986). The transient aspect of our physical capital is also obvious when we are confronted by illness and disease, sudden forms of impairment caused by accidents or corporeal use, the latter occurring sometimes in working environments, as I shall show in detail in the following chapter. Spinal cord injuries and strokes belong to the category of “accidents.” To come back to Thompson’s distinction between transient and durable objects, one may note that, unlike objects, human bodies are constantly denied “durability,” an infinite life span. What they may acquire, though, is a set of skills that need to be continuously reenacted. This makes it more likely that they last for a specific temporal interval in one’s life. The body work conducted by persons with motility impairments must therefore be understood as interval work or interval efficiency, which entitles the categorization of these type of bodies as “sites of risk” (Lane 2008). In order to reach an optimal level of efficacy, many actors and agency levels in a rehabilitative environment are involved in one’s body work with an exoskeleton. Despite the intersubjective network and the intertwining of various competences, stocks of expert knowledge and skills, much of the success of this “work” relies

104  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

on one’s own body. As Bourdieu notes when referring to how physical capital is produced, “the work of acquisition is work on oneself (self-improvement), an effort that presupposes a personal cost […], an investment, above all of time” (1986: 18). Whereas for healthy persons such investments have a certain predictability, for persons with impairments there are numerous hazards that may interfere with acquisition, especially with the preservation of what one achieves from one training session to another. Unlike some examples used in Bourdieusian writings, such as the sportsmen who belong to the working classes and manage to transgress their social class due to their physical capital, thus converting their physical capital into another form of capital, which is economic, the “career” (Goffman 1961) of a person with a spinal cord injury or stroke involves other levels of capitalization.19 What is aimed at is an improvement in one’s physical capital in order to ensure temporary forms of everyday well-being. What happens in a lab or a clinic and that characterizes the process of “body work” may, as Gimlin notes, be associated with “activities intended to disavow deviance and to bestow on the actor an appearance of conformity” (2002: 6), although all the involved parties striving for “the appearance of conformity” mostly achieve rather the appearance, and very seldom actual conformity, if at all. Body work in a lab or clinic means that the main goal is to mobilize what one still can, to preserve it, and possibly to improve it. Consequently, the careers of patients with spinal cord injuries and strokes are not characterized by a duality of the involved instances, as in the example of mental illness in the Goffmanian perspective. For Goffman, a (mental) illness career is a phenomenon that emerges between individuals and institutions. In the case of persons with spinal cord injuries and strokes, there is more variation with regard to the performers contributing to the “career” construction. What the careers of the observed persons with motility impairments indicate is how their body work invents and negotiates itself constantly. As a result of these processes, their conception of self is also impacted. Thus, one may further agree with Gimlin that “body work is in fact work on the self” (2002: 6). One of the central purposes of body work in careers of spinal cord injury and stroke is to ensure more “durability” with regard to some of the corporeal gains obtained in the clinics or labs. Further, these gains may lead to a more concrete impact on their forms of impairment. The first and most important aspect in body work is an individual’s “sense of agency” (Gallagher 2012). Accordingly, the intervention of exoskeletons concerns the very core of one’s subjective experience. The primary aim is that one regains the feeling that one is in control of one’s movements, although this feeling may be contested, felt as reduced, is often misunderstood or may be felt as inadequate for the intentional action one wishes to further perform and accomplish. While some patients who had been very active in their lives prior their injuries (in the cord or brain) may sometimes feel dissatisfied by the slow progress they had managed to achieve, others tried to understand that engaging their bodies in steady work might indeed bring improvements, though the pathway to reach these improvements is challenging and full of unwanted or unplanned events, and sometimes disappointments. As I noted in some of my field notes, while assisting a patient’s very first trial with a soft exoskeleton,

I mpaired bodies 

105

The female physiotherapist who accompanied patient RehaM6GE in the training room said that one needed to learn to work and walk with an exoskeleton. This is a learning process. To encourage RehaM6GE, who seemed to be uncomfortable when being in the suit, she speaks of other patients who felt awkward in the beginning of their training, yet who after some time started to work better. This encouraged some of them so much that they wanted to participate in a marathon. RehaM6GE says he also wants to participate in a marathon […]. He said this twice. But in the end of the training, he felt less comfortable about this idea, because he had too many expectations from the machine. One could see his disappointment on his face. However, he named a few times one aspect: motivation. And he said he was willing to try the exosuit again and clearly stated that he wanted to come back to the lab for new trainings. (July 2019, Field notes: 900) In light of such claims, it is obvious that engaging oneself in a journey of becoming some other body exposes oneself to a variety of challenges. The body work attempted by patients with spinal cord injuries and strokes therefore refers mostly to the creation of temporary equilibriums, which are very fragile and require the combination and collaboration of various forms of expertise. As one physiotherapist explained to me, one of the reasons why acquired skills that ensure such equilibriums are temporary is that – despite the fact that the brain may save a motility pattern which replaces a damaged one, as it happens in the case of a stroke – the regular repetition of a specific gesture or movement needs to be practiced. The aim of such a “training” is obviously the re-acquisition of former motility patterns that the person used to know. Their partial recovery is meant to ensure some autonomy in one’s everyday life. In order to respond to such demands, one of the exoskeletons designed to treat strokes had a special function: We have a teach-in and replay mode, which means that a physiotherapist can define a specific movement trajectory in the software of the robot. An example would be to hold a glass and then bring it to the mouth. Normally, the physiotherapist prepares the movements with the patient. So it is the therapist who directs the movements to be practiced. And what is defined by the physiotherapist is further taken over by the exoskeleton. The advantage is that these movements can be practiced with a high frequency. What is important in rehabilitation of stroke is regular repetition. This is a decisive factor: repetitive exercise. (Physio1GE: 39; my transl. from German) At first sight, what the physiotherapist is describing here may seem an easy task. And yet, the task of mobilizing what one still can in order to recreate basic motility patterns is strongly challenged, in particular by the severity of the injuries. During training sessions, what used to be ordinary becomes a form of the extraordinary.

106  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

The corporeal categories describing one’s actual impaired body are inverted due to the impairment. Therefore, the aim of the body work is to recalibrate the asymmetry inscribed in one’s remaining motility repertoire for a determined time. And much that is achieved with the help of the machine is also based on the competence of the physiotherapist. In light of such ideas, body work involves an engagement with new forms not only of motility, but also morphing, as any ability needs to be regained through constant practice. Achieving this covers a wide range of bodily skills and is developed together with experts, physiotherapists and medical doctors playing a crucial role, but they may also be maintained and explored privately by the person herself. Exoskeletons may help improve some bodily acquisitions, though much that is achieved in the closed space of a rehabilitation clinic is complemented by the work of physiotherapists. In this sense, the body work is directly related to a human– human–machine interaction, and not only to human–machine interaction. Physiotherapists are experts who work very closely with patients with spinal cord injuries and strokes. They act like a “human prosthesis.” While contributing to the “body work” of their patients, they may use both conventional therapy, which means working without an exoskeleton, and robotic therapy. One advantage of the second technique is that the contribution to the body work of the patient is less exhausting for the physiotherapist, and she is thus able to help more persons. Lifting and manipulating human bodies with impairments for hours is very strenuous for those who help these bodies to live better with their deficiencies. As one of the engineers in robotics explained to me, deploying the exoskeleton in this type of rehabilitation will create crucial shifts both for the conception of therapy, which defines a form of body work, and for the position and role physiotherapists have in this process. In his view, There is a shift in the workload for the therapist in the long run. And that is indeed going towards machines. But therapists nowadays are still needed as users of the machines, as those who can rate the quality, and also as those who can decide about the process of therapy and rehabilitation. So, therapists are those persons who have to use the machines in the right way, (Eng1CH: 67) the right way implying that improvements in one’s body are visible and continue to persist. Physiotherapists contribute specifically to the body work in that they are the ones who are responsible for the types of exercises and movements a person with impairment not only trains in, but more especially can do. This position in relation to the “body work” places them in a privileged political relationship to the patients because they have an active role in forging the bodies with impairments. Making these decisions requires that they also have the competence to literally observe what a person with motility deficiency can stand in terms of effort. Thus, much of what physiotherapists mold addresses the category of “I still can.” Their decisions

I mpaired bodies 

107

regarding how the general condition of bodies with impairment may improve frequently involve besides physiological parameters also psychological ones. Regardless of whether patients have a chronic condition or a condition that can improve, their exercises with the robot offers them the possibility to redraw some corporeal limits and their own body feeling. However, before putting anything into practice, these limits need to be properly acknowledged by the physiotherapist in advance, which means that the physiotherapist needs specific qualities of “sensing” what impaired bodies need to best achieve progress. In light of these thoughts, the body work that takes place in a rehabilitation center needs to be pursued by other means than linguistic ones. Physiotherapists need to develop a particular sensitivity in order to help their patients. The body work of the patients extends to the work of feeling and guessing on the part of the physiotherapist. For example, one of the physiotherapists I interviewed gave me the following details in relation to patient care: It’s very important to know your patient, especially when verbal communication is impossible. You need to observe her or his expression, and this is what informs you what to do. Sometimes, even if they can speak, they won’t tell you if something is wrong. Because they are so enthusiastic to walk again. They want to try the exoskeleton, even if it hurts them. They think that this is how it should work. But if you know your patient, you can see if something goes wrong and then control the process. You need to explain to the patient that you have to do your best that she or he are comfortable when they walk. Specific attention is needed for persons who have sensory deficiencies, and thus who don’t feel when something is wrong. This is the case with spinal cord injuries. […] You need to know your patient well, so the communication is not only verbal. (Physio2CH: 382–384; my transl. from French) What body work primarily seeks to do is to reassert forms of familiarity with a body which has become an “other.” It is a way of appropriating one’s identity. Despite what one erroneously might suppose, that the bodies of persons with motility impairments are controlled by a variety of decisions, much of what happens in the production of these new forms of corporeality accompanied by technologies, shows that the body is not an object or matter to be acted upon. In this line of thought, one could argue with Budgeon (2003) that bodies then can be thought not as objects, upon which culture writes meanings on but as events that are continually in the process of becoming – as multiplicities that are never just found but are made and remade. (Budgeon 2003: 50) It is in observing the transitory character of the achievements one manages to acquire while “training” with an exoskeleton that the body work overcomes the

108  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

first layer of “reflexive body techniques” (Crossley 2005) and leaves place to their being “events” (Budgeon 2003). In so being, they surprise the actors and levels of experience that are engaged in their contextual shaping in clinics and labs. For some patients doing “body work,” it also involved informing themselves about the development of these technologies. The expertise from inside, regarding one’s own body, was accompanied for some interviewees by their explicit understanding of technical expertise. This second form of expertise may refer either to the field of anatomy and physiology – since some patients started, for instance, to describe their lesion to me using anatomical terminology – or to various aspects of the technology they had started to use (this was relevant not only to exoskeletons but also to types of wheelchairs). The expert knowledge regarding exoskeletons is imperative for their access, and especially for those that are designed predominantly for home use, some of which include crutches. Therefore, patients need to develop a specific literacy regarding the machine. If one regularly uses an exoskeleton with crutches or an exosuit, it is crucial that one understands how the technology functions to be able to control the robot in the long run and thus to produce successful collaboration with it. This type of human–machine interaction, which is associated with the more general process of body work, is therefore based on a conglomerate of gradually built forms of expertise. As one of my interviewees, who frequently uses an exoskeleton with crutches, explained to me, As far as I am concerned, before being able to use the exoskeleton on my own, I had to follow a training course. This takes six weeks, one hour per day, which makes all in all thirty hours. I did this in a rehabilitation center with a physiotherapist in order to be able to use the exoskeleton. (RehaM9FR: 171, 177; my transl. from French) Far from the picture of a variety of elements coming together, creating order and a rather predictable course, the “body work” with an exoskeleton exposes oneself to difficulties in attempting to reach an imagined “other” body: the body that one is not anymore, but that one may tangentially hope to become. For some interviewees, this imagined other body to be reached by body work is surprisingly not exemplified by the ability to walk: I think the holy grail, in a sense, you could say, there is one: is to do what you love again. Right? Or actually not necessarily what you love because you might not be able to do that, but to find something that you love. And if for [some] that is walking, that's great. For me, walking would be great! I mean, I do everything to walk again, but it won’t define my life. Since my accident, I have done more things in a wheelchair than most average people do without a wheelchair. I mean, diving, climbing, going to the mountains, skiing, mountain biking, traveling around the world. Most people don't do that in a normal lifetime. So, I mean, yes, there are many days when I say: “Life is shit” and

I mpaired bodies 

109

when I’m sad. But this is not to define that my life isn’t working anymore and that I need to walk for my life so that my life works. (RehaM5CH: 888) Body work implies inventing with what one’s new body allows one to; it is a steady process of understanding and objectification of one’s needs, though in the sense of a reflexive process. It means constantly and actively engaging one’s phenomenological resources and mobilizing them to produce changes and alterations in order to alleviate some forms of suffering that are obvious in the lives of persons with spinal cord injuries and strokes. To conceptualize the “body work” with and around exoskeletons demands a sustained reflection on the variety of agencies that are involved in its maintenance and fabrication. It is perhaps a conceptual impetus to portray the dynamics of these new technologies and their potential for rescuing corporealities that were thought to have been condemned to silence and invisibility. Bodies defying technologies: Subjectivity and selfhood In the previous subchapters much about the production of bodies involved a clear focus on what still undamaged anatomical functions and parts of one’s body can allow one to reinvent and maintain oneself in collaboration with the exoskeleton. Some observations in the field point though to a further aspect, which heavily influences the “body work” and complements the previously developed category of “residual subjectivity.” What is attempted as a solution for people’s impairments caused by strokes or spinal cord injuries is strongly contingent on the reactions of the said persons to their concrete work with the exoskeleton. Precisely due to this contingency and individual mark, much of what is encountered in rehabilitative environments has a subjective dimension.20 Each and every person with an impairment has different reactions to their injuries, which often make the process of recovery difficult, since any success achieved with one person’s body may not apply to someone else. Also, having made progress with certain exercises does not guarantee that these achievements or gains are permanent. To achieve a masterful human–machine interaction, thus leading to “proficiency,” a steady review of what one’s body “can” or “cannot” and “still can” or “cannot anymore” is needed. As I further describe, though these constant updates regarding the status of one’s corporeal stocks are supported by the regular monitoring of recorded data during training sessions with the exoskeleton and thus help delineate aspects of what is currently defined as a “quantified self” (Lupton 2016a, 2017; Duttweiler & Passoth 2016). What actually reinforces and concretely contributes to the possibility of a successful use of exoskeletons is how one’s body responds to the machine. Accordingly, the companionship between body and technology relies on heavy expectations, among which are the successful negotiation of the two materialities involved in this process: bodies and robots. However, this is not always achievable, since many bodies resist working with the machine, which is reliant on a variety of causes. The most often cause invoked by both categories

110  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

of interviewees, users and experts, was the specificity of one’s body. Not only does the great diversity of injury profiles play a crucial role in the constitution of levels of “resistance” to the exoskeleton, so does the more general state of the person’s injured body. In addition, a crucial element which needs consideration beyond the variety of bodies is one’s biography. Bodies are lived biographies; what they have become at a certain moment is based on former experiences. It is in the understanding of these transformations that the two perspectives on the body emerge, the one seeking to understand its “objective” and measurable aspects associated with the natural science perspective, the other acknowledging the specificity and peculiarity of each person’s experience, which is defended in some sociological orientations. Garreth Williams, for instance, one of the defenders of the phenomenological stance in the sociology of health and illness, notes in distinguishing the sociological perspective from the biomedical model of analyzing disability that, whereas the latter tends to focus on disease or dysfunction, the former “focuses on illness as something whose meaning and reality vary depending on the biography of a particular individual and the circumstances in which they find themselves” (Williams 1998: 238). It is to this variation that exoskeletons need to respond, and this often remains a clear challenge. It is also this variation that the sociological perspective needs to consider, while giving enough credit for both the unity of experiences and their differences (Williams 1998: 243). If bodies define technologies, it is because they belong to a wide range of corporeal landscapes, but what is perhaps the most challenging aspect refers to their continuous changing. This diversity of profiles, motivation levels and more globally embodied biographies thus constitute a constant defiance for all the parties involved in the production of extended bodies in the rehabilitation environment. While giving me details about a test in which his role was to analyze biosignals,21 one of the engineers explained the following to me: Well, if the gathering of data by means of biosignals works is still an open question. One may think, for instance, of a processing chain, and then predict movements based on EEG. In the test I took part in, this worked without any problems for seven of the test persons. In the case of an eighth person, it didn’t work at all. I have no idea what happened. Maybe one needs a different processing. But this confirms one thing in the end: that all people are different. Certainly, we all have two legs and two arms. We have a nose, two eyes and two ears. And yet, we all look different. And it is the same thing regarding the brain or other organs. (Eng3GE: 123; my transl. from German) Due to this diversity of corporealities, the difficulties in predicting how bodies respond to exoskeleton use are a reality of the technological development, and reveals bodies once more to be “sites of risk” (Lane 2008). This concerns both the experts who are engaged in helping those with impairments to recover and

I mpaired bodies 

111

discover their capabilities through the technologies they develop and the persons with impairments themselves. Many parameters cannot be taken into account in tests, and this may sometimes influence the data, showing further how persons with impairments and exoskeletons interact. When I asked him whether repeating gestures and movements with an exoskeleton on a daily basis may lead to improvements, another expert, a control engineer, explained to me the following: What we are not controlling, for example, is the heartbeat of the persons. So, they could be bored. They might not be performing at their best. There is a lot of variability in each study. In our study, we didn’t record the heartbeat. It’s too much information. It’s too invasive. You cannot put a lot of measuring sensors around the whole body. It would take too much. It would cost the therapy time. There would be more set-up time to measure everything. So we’re not doing it. There is a compromise between the data you have and the uncertainties you may have. And in addition, everybody is doing it differently. Every study does it differently. Every scientist does it differently. And this leads, maybe, to this huge spread in the literature that some people say that to do many repetitions with an exoskeleton brings something, but maybe it does not. (Eng11CH: 353) Despite their positive perception related to the rehabilitative environment, exoskeletons do not always cooperate with human bodies as they are expected to, nor do human bodies respond to exoskeletons in the way they are expected to. Both entities that are engaged in the production of the human–machine interaction in a rehabilitative environment and for rehabilitation purposes may sometimes resist one another. Accordingly, what is understood as an “objective body” is a categorical tool that helps to ensure a minimal coherence in the scientific process of planning and testing rehabilitative technologies. Yet, as the above discussion of the tests shows, this ideal-type body does not exist in real life. Each and every person who participates in a test has specific values, including a specific walking gait (if the test subjects are able and thus can walk). One of the most obvious aspects of how unpredictable bodies are emerges clearly in tests. The accuracy refers to aspects of corporeality, to very specific functions and to types of movement or types of intention related to movement. More than the “body multiple,” what is present in labs or clinics are sequences of individual bodies that are targeted, analyzed, observed and measured. Actually “the” body that is needed for the development of the exoskeleton includes a variety of profiles and aspects which individualize the person for what she or he is. Since the machine cannot (at least for the time being) be customized for each and every person, much of the variation and subtle differences in what bodies are in their real existence cannot be taken into account. Furthermore, since exoskeletons are designed using a functional approach within the rehabilitative environment, they mainly target one segment of the body that is described by a missing function, such as walking or arm movements. Hence, they

112  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

cannot fully respond to the diversity of profiles, bodies and forms of impairment. In this order of ideas, the often criticized notion of “subject,” the very category of the classical phenomenological discourse, which in the present study should be understood as an “embodied subject” or “embodied self,” is remarkably present, challenging processes of how bodies are scientifically translated, characterized and correlated with those technologies that are developed with the purpose of complementing some of their missing functions. This asymmetry is recognized currently by the engineers themselves, who openly acknowledge that “one size does not fit all” (Goffredo 2020). The process on which the work between the human body and the technology is based relies on continuous adaptations by both user and robot. In this process, the “size” is only one parameter for how these technologies need to be tailored in order to respond to the specific needs of persons with neurological impairments. The material composition of the exoskeleton is just as important, in the sense that, like clothes, exoskeletons have to “fit” their users. These constraints motivate experts to constantly seek new solutions, so that, on the one hand, the technologies they develop may be available to as many patients as possible, and on the other, that patients develop forms of confidence and acceptability of these innovations. Regarding these developments, one of the concepts that has been advanced recently in this area is that of “feel-good robotics” (Beckerle et al. 2018). The target of such projects is to analyze the resources leading to the embodiment of technologies, a goal which still remains a big challenge for the multiple networks involved in the production, reproduction and invention of forms of corporeality, which impact the self-perception of the persons with neurological impairments. As some experts in engineering science conceive it, “embodiment is caused by multisensory integration of vision, touch and proprioception” (Beckerle 2020: slide 7). And to mobilize all these levels in order to ensure the “symbiosis” with an exoskeleton remains a current challenge (Lotti et al. 2020) acknowledged by the variety of actors involved in this emerging techno-corporeal rehabilitative culture. There is obviously a positive reception of exoskeletons in both the world of the users – whose bodies in need are the very reason for the development of these technologies – and in that of the experts, some of whom may directly accompany the users. Physiotherapists, medical doctors and engineers, responsible for guaranteeing the safety of devices and their possibly and hopefully unproblematic functioning, still need to face the complexity of variables which help forge this contemporary “techno-geography of resilience” (Oudshoorn 2020: 119). As one of the engineers noted in an interview, drawing attention to the element of “surprise” in the process of developing exoskeletons and the difficulties of their adjustment to human bodies, “we don’t know what we don’t know” (Eng7CA: 113). And much about this “not knowing” is related to the specificity of one’s corporeality and of one’s reactions to certain parameters that are different from one person to another. It has been acknowledged for a long time that users play a crucial part in conceiving technologies (Pinch and Bijker 1984). Yet, in the case of some technologies, which are extremely close to one’s body and conceived to

I mpaired bodies 

113

work tightly with it, this statement exposes forms of intimacy that do not characterize other devices. As I noted in the beginning of my study, exoskeletons are a proximity technology; their nearness to the human body has multiple consequences for how the levels of interaction between body and machine are articulated. When bodies resist, this has obvious consequences for the “body work,” and more globally for one’s ability to live with impairments and their possible reeducation or recovery. The consideration of bodily resistance thus involves a variety of aspects, which all need to be brought together for the betterment of the persons whose bodies are at the core of rehabilitative robotics projects. In order to achieve further progress, many of these projects consider actively integrating an increasingly user-centered perspective, meaning that instead of forcing bodies into technologies, one projects to tailor technologies so that they may suit bodies as much as possible. In this more user-centered process the rate of success is though variable, since as Matthew Marino22 recently noted, “estimating the range for users to learn is difficult. It depends on the device, use case and the individual’s physical and cognitive capabilities.” Hence corporeal resistance to the new practices inventoried by exoskeletons is a constant element that must be taken into account, in particular by the experts who design and also co-use the exoskeleton, as it is in the case of physiotherapists, for example. Consideration of this element involves the simultaneous questioning of new phenomenological levels in which experience and intentionality, despite their specificities, are strongly contaminated by forms of otherness, whether in the form of technological objects or of expert practices and epistemologies. Mapping the body: Facing the quantified self? Being provided with computers, active exoskeletons may record values of use. In a rehabilitative environment, this situation is encountered relatively often, whereas exoskeletons for able bodies are most often passive systems. One of the motivations for this conception in the field of rehabilitation relies on the fact that health professionals who accompany patients in their training sessions may better monitor whether progress is made or not, and consequently decide what types of exercise need to be pursued so that persons with impairments improve their motility capital. They thus belong, along with other technologies such as smartphones, to the family of gadgets which may allow tracking. What is meant by recent definitions of this activity, namely self-tracking, which is also related to the concept of self, involves the conscious decision of the user to track his or her experiences. These decisions, as Gary Wolf notes, may be motivated by emotions about eating, grief following the death of a close relative, heartbeat disorders and even cognitive decline (Wolf 2016: 67–68). The focus on “self” in “self-tracking” is further related to the category of the “quantified self” (Abrugar 2014) and represents, according to Deborah Lupton, a leading figure in sociological research on this topic,

114  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

the apotheosis of self-reflexivity in its intense focus on the self and using data about the self to make choices about future behaviours. In relation to health matters, self-tracking offers users of such technologies a strategy by which they feel as if they can gather data upon their health indicators as a means of avoiding illness and disease. (Lupton 2013: 397) Lupton further argues that while many people engage in self-tracking using non-digital forms of recording their details, such as pen-and-paper or even just relying on their memories […], a vast array of digital technologies have come onto the market that can be used for highly detailed and often automated self-monitoring. (2017: 1) Among these technologies, she also mentions “wearables” or technologies that help to monitor bodily movements. Exoskeletons are part of this latter category. Nevertheless, unlike other technologies allowing datafication, dataveillance and the distribution of modes of watching (Lupton 2018: 54), exoskeletons are still scarcely available on the market due to their high costs of production and many other parameters that are still challenging for their designers, one of the most crucial being safety. This situation therefore restricts their use and differentiates their “wearability” from the sizeable number of portable gadgets which led to the emergence of what is currently known as mHealth (Donner 2012). This category mainly refers to computer tablets, smartphones and wearable patches and bands, but also, more recently, to digital wrist watches, which are used by most users to connect to the internet. The restricted use of exoskeletons has obvious consequences for their inclusion in the instrumentarium associated with the practices that define self-tracking and their contribution to the more general culture of the “quantified self” just mentioned. Ideally, persons who have experienced strokes or spinal cord injuries and who own an exoskeleton may decide for themselves how much they need to walk or exercise for their arm or finger movements. This position is similar to those of persons with other dysfunctions in their bodies and who monitor them in order to guarantee a certain stability of their condition, as well as resembling the autonomy of their decisions on their bodies (Sharon 2015). However, it is relatively rare for persons with a spinal cord injury or stroke to own their exoskeletons and thus engage in behavior comparable with those who manage and control their heart rate or blood glucose level. Due to this rarity, exoskeletons may be associated with the category of “charismatic technologies,” which, as Morgan Ames defines them, designates those technologies that derive their “power experientially and symbolically through the possibility or promise of action: what is important is not what the object is but what it promises to do” (Ames 2015: 2). Exoskeletons do promise a lot at first sight, although these promises

I mpaired bodies 

115

remain far from one’s desired and previously performed everyday life practices and activities, although some of these may sometimes be partially recuperated. As a result, not only are exoskeletons charismatic technologies in the sense described above but also exceptional technologies, since they are delimited by specific spatial environments and are also due to restricted training time, by temporal intervals. What I mean by “exceptional” refers to the fact that the use of such technologies is currently separated from everyday life. Technologies generally have prescriptions (Akrich 1992). One does not use a car in order to cook or to iron, but mostly to drive from point A to point B. Following the general characteristics of technological objects, exoskeletons are also conceived to be mono-usage objects and task-oriented. In addition, besides their monotasking, their exceptionality is characterized by their restricted usage within a specific space, their being related to forms of knowledge about bodies and particular practices. Labs or clinics are highly specified practice spaces. They are accompanied and forged by experts, who play a crucial role in demarcating exoskeletons and the bodies they accompany from everyday technologies which aid self-tracking. The activity of tracking is limited to an institutional and expert space. Accordingly, despite being used for medical purposes, exoskeletons are far from being associated with current practices of health-monitoring, as is the case, for example, with certain apps that inform their users about diabetic measurements. Insulin pumps, which are a very recent technology, are widely designed to integrate and function with smartphone apps, profoundly transforming the life of those with diabetes and their management of this type of dysfunction.23 Some exoskeletons have apps, but at present they are only used in lab settings. They definitely monitor and register parameters of movement, yet this type of information is far from being under the control of their user. One of the exoskeleton prototypes I saw and briefly trained with in a lab during my fieldwork was explicitly designed to include apps. The training movements that patients could perform were intended for arms and finger training, mainly for persons with strokes. One of the examples that experts often referred to when describing the types of everyday activity for which the device was supposed to help was grasping a glass or a cup to bring it to the mouth. This gadget had a double practical aim: on the one hand, it should be able to help the physiotherapist train various movement patterns which are defined with respect to activities one usually does in one’s everyday life. The advantage was that a certain movement pattern was recorded and then repeated a number of times so that the pathway circuits in the brain could be regularly activated and the movement recognized. On the other hand, using apps indeed target the personal decision of the person with impairment, meaning that, in the event of the exoskeleton being used at home, the patient may decide herself to record a certain pattern and practice it on her own and for a period of time she decides. In this second case, exoskeletons indeed may join the gadgets aiding what has been termed as “personalized healthcare” (Sharon 2016), thus allowing their users to control how much they want to use them and for what types of exercise. Due to the current state of the field, which restricts access to these technologies for home use, patients have little opportunity to choose the types of movement or

116  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

activities they should practice. Consequently, what is recorded by the computers that are integrated into the exoskeletons is defined by something other than the personal choice of the patient. Some interviewees clearly acknowledge a political aspect in their regular exercising with exoskeletons, and connected with it an economic one, since the time for training is reimbursed by insurances. As RehaM5CH explained to me, insurances tend to have like a catalogue of good therapies or not so good therapies. And they’re not very flexible. Insurance and the health-care system isn’t built on the patient’s decision. They are built on a doctor’s decision. […] But doctors’ decisions work if there are enough studies to serve a proof. And enough proof and enough data, or statistics in this field [spinal cord injury], there are not. There is not enough data, not enough studies. So, a doctor’s decision for you works when it is about bladder infections and transfers or operations. But when it’s about walking again, they have no idea. And the patient should have much more to say about where it goes with the therapies. (RehaM5CH: 535) Unlike smartphones, smart wristwatches and their apps, which are characterized by a stronger autonomy of use, the datafication performed by exoskeletons happens in a relatively controlled environment, with users having little influence on what is collected about their bodies, in what manner or for what purposes such data may be eventually used. Exoskeletons do generate detailed information about their users’ bodies, and more specifically about particular functions of one’s body which were affected following spinal cord injury or stroke, such as the ability to walk. In this respect, given the strong focus on a specific dysfunction, they may be compared to other tracking devices, such as the insulin pump mentioned earlier. It is clear that exoskeletons allow data to be gathered about bodies since they record values of the bodily experience. This is in evidence so long as one invokes active systems. However, this does not exclude training in labs or clinics with passive systems, which exists, also including tracking. In this case, tracking is not accomplished by a computer integrated into the exoskeleton, but in the form of reports by health professionals. The recorded values are crucial in monitoring the changes or achieved results due to training and thus building up the patient’s profile. Walking, arm movement and finger movements are among the most common activities to be defined by experts, recorded and then stored. Corporeal quantification exists; although as with other functions of the body that may be monitored outside labs or clinics with portable gadgets, this is strictly limited to a segment of one’s corporeal functions. Such a logic of segmenting the body starts with their tests and inclusion in various experiments in the lab. The sequencing process is further reflected in the “script”24 for the use of the exoskeleton, although one needs to understand the “script” as being constantly defined according to the actual impact exoskeletons have on their users’ bodies. As Mussa-Ivaldi recently noted, “experiment is a sequence of trials”

I mpaired bodies 

117

(Mussa-Ivaldi 2020). Very often, what is targeted in experiments reflects values that describe a singular function of the body and that only. This procedure is also justified in part by the huge amount of data human bodies produce and that are difficult to monitor in the limited time available for the development of specific projects. During a test in which I was allowed to take part – in the sense that the values of my body were used for the conception of an exoskeleton – one of the experts commented on the use of my own body: the intention was to contain the data gathered in the test. Because forty-five minutes of your being tested generated probably five or six gigabytes of data. So, it’s like a cinema movie. And, analyzing takes a lot of time anyway. And, to start adding questionnaires or adding, for example, heart-rate measurements, that would just generate more data. And sometimes it’s better to keep focused on the actual question you’re trying to answer, and not just measure all the functions in your body. […] We could have put fourteen EMG electrodes on you. Then, we would have had further few gigabytes of data. But at this point, we wanted to really analyze only your whole body metabolic. That was the focus of the study. (Eng9CH: 150) What the previous passage suggests is that exoskeletons are technological objects that divide the phenomenon of tracking and movement tracking into two distinct levels: first, recording the values of able bodies; and second, the final aim, namely actually to record and observe the values of impaired bodies, since the ultimate users are, in the case of exoskeletons for rehabilitation, persons with impairments. With regard to the first aspect, in so far as the exoskeletons’ conception in labs is concerned, experts mainly track the movements of healthy persons, implying the use of EMG or sometimes EEG, then collect data about specific movements, or sometimes analyze such parameters as the metabolic cost, which I previously mentioned. These data are needed to elaborate an algorithm, which is further implemented in the robot. Before the final stages of the design process, real users, namely persons with motility impairments, are sometimes invited to help with the conception of the device by informing the experts who conceive the robot about further criteria for possible adjustments. Interestingly, in the process of quantification, which assigns values to bodies with impairments, the first stage actually includes the quantification of bodies that are able, and thus healthy. Therefore, corporeal “ability” is needed to develop algorithms for the robot and thus forms of normalization that are intended to further shape the missing skills of bodies with motility deficiencies. Able bodies’ data “serve” as background models for bodies that are injured. Mine was one of them. The exoskeleton for which I agreed to be a test subject was meant for home use, and its design was conceived so as to allow the user more flexibility. One of

118  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

the characteristics of this device was its weight, which was light. The device was composed of fabrics and other lighter materials, such as carbon fiber or 3D printed parts. The integrated computer had as its main function the adjustment of forces that were needed to give support to the user’s body. Since persons with incomplete spinal cord injuries or strokes have various residual motor functions, the role of the software is crucial because it represents one of the basics in ensuring successful interaction between the human impaired body and the machine. At the moment when I lived this experience, I thought of a quote by Theodore von Karman, an aerospace engineer, cited by Louis L. Bucciarelli in his Engineering Philosophy (2003). Von Karman said that “scientists discover the world that exists; engineers create the world that never was” (Von Karman in Bucciarelli 2003: 1). The bodies that are solicited to frame the machine indeed contribute to a very innovative device, making such a capability as walking for a person with spinal cord injury possible. The “never was” in von Karman’s statement became a concrete “is,” an alteration which decisively impacts the multiplicity of conceptions about health, disability and what we may do to our bodies and how they respond to such doings. Among the reasons given for why able bodies are used to capture these values is safety, since in case the existing values of the algorithm lead to movements that are unnatural, able bodies may warn where impaired bodies cannot feel what is wrong with the robot, and thus prevent damage. They act as “corporeal sentinels.” As one of the interviewees with a spinal cord injury involved in a research program for exoskeletons recounted, If a normal person can get in the exoskeleton, then it’ll just move their legs. But if the exoskeleton does something wrong, then the normal person could also move their legs to prevent it. Or they could also feel that the machine is doing something weird that it shouldn’t be doing. (RehaM2USA: 177) Able bodies’ values are brought together in order to “build” an ideal body that is implemented in the software of the machine and which needs to be “wide” enough to cover a multiplicity of needs and impairment profiles. Since the values usually come from a variety of persons – the greater the variety, the better for the conception of the robot – the ideal-type body integrated into the software is deeply intercorporeal in its content. What the machine comprises is a fractal accumulation of movement patterns, whether walking, arm movements or sometimes, when the exoskeleton is more complex, finger movements. However, with respect to the bodies that gravitate around exoskeletons and their processes of quantification, an important feature needs to be highlighted. In their test and conception phases, exoskeletons “collect” data from healthy bodies. In the next stage, when they receive certification and approval to be used in labs, they will collect data from bodies with impairments. They are thus shaped by corporeal parameters, which are then used to shape other corporeal parameters, while attempting to adjust the latter to the former. In this line of thinking, my argument follows the phenomenological proposal

I mpaired bodies 

119

defended by Peter-Paul Verbeek, for whom human beings are not the only entities to decide what technologies shall do, but are also, in their turn, mediated by technologies (Verbeek 2005). Exoskeletons are a clear proof of this. They are bodily based in their conception and intended use and are thus “corporeal projects,” while at the same time actively forming bodies. Interestingly, in being technological projects, exoskeletons resemble 3D printing, in that what they attempt to capture is a replication of a property in the human body, namely movement. The quantification of corporeal movement, involving the measuring and recording of able bodies, serves the purpose of replicating the recorded values in the robot. And this refers not only to movements which are reflexes but also to intentional movements, those movements which belong to the phenomenological “sense of agency” (Gallagher 2012) and which require specific techniques of management. By developing such technologies, the aim is to allow human intention to come as close as possible to what human beings used to do and be. What becomes phenomenologically relevant in this process is the reinvestment of one’s experiential potentiality, in which exoskeletons strive to become trusted ability companions. Notably, mapping and quantifying selves should be understood as processes that are subordinated to this logic. And this is where the experts intervene. They define corporeal boundaries, revise deviance and extension and translate them into new categories of practice. They have a crucial role in reconceptualizing such challenging categories as “intentionality,” “agency” and, more globally, sensory experience, which they orient from the subjective and personal toward a conception including the technological gadget, as well as the multiple bodies on which its articulation is currently based. Notes 1 I met one individual who had SCI and was using an exoskeleton at a trade fair. We had a long discussion about his situation, yet it was informal and less structured than the interviews I conducted with the others who had impairments. His condition resulted from a motorcycle accident. 2 Apart from Frank, another classical reference I mentioned is Kleinman, A. (1988), The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. New York: Basic Books. 3 In the field of disability studies, there is a well-known categorical distinction between “impairment” and “disability,” where the former refers to the medical condition (biological or physiological dysfunction or malfunction), the latter to the variety of social contexts and situations in which individuals with impairments are disadvantaged. See Barnes and Mercer (2010: 11) and Thomas (2007: 10). 4 See, for instance, the recent projects of Prof. Grégoire Courtine at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), https://www​.epfl​.ch​/labs​/courtine​-lab/ (accessed 27/09/2020). 5 Retrieved from https://www​.clinatec​.fr​/recherche​/nos​-projets​/le​-projet​-bci/ (accessed 25/09/2020). 6 I use the term “accident” both for the event causing the injury in one’s spinal cord and for the resulting lesion caused in the brain, known medically as a “cerebrovascular accident” (CVA).

120  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds 7 In philosophical phenomenology and other disciplines, there are a variety of definitions and understandings of the notion of “self.” In the present study I understand this notion following Dan Zahavi’s definition, namely as referring to the very first personal givenness of what we experience (Zahavi 2005: 106) and in the sense that I am the subject of my experiences. This first conception is elaborated on further by Shaun Gallagher, who adds two crucial properties characterizing the self, namely the sense of ownership (SO), which goes in the same direction as Zahavi’s definition, and the sense of agency (SA), or the idea that I am the one who controls my actions. I am the person who generates an action or a specific movement (Gallagher 2014: 14). Both SA and SO are pre-reflective forms of self-awareness, which, as Gallagher notes, “is an awareness I have before I do any reflecting on my experience; it’s an implicit, firstorder awareness rather than an explicit or higher-order form of self-consciousness. Phenomenologists claim that an explicit reflective self-consciousness is possible only because there is an ongoing pre-reflective self-awareness built into experience” (2012: 127). 8 The category of “body one” is developed by Don Ihde and refers to that form of corporeality without which we would not exist (Ihde 2002: 17). Nothing can be experienced without “body one.” 9 Corbin and Strauss (1985) chose to introduce the concept of “illness trajectory,” which in their view “refers not merely to (1) the course of an illness, but (2) to all the related work, as well as (3) the impact on both the workers and their relationships that (4) then further affect the management of that course of illness and the fate of the person who has it.” As they further argue, “the concept gets us focused analytically on the social context for work as well as on the social relationships affecting the work” (1985: 225). Later in the same essay, Corbin and Strauss note the ambivalence of “illness trajectory,” in the sense that what may belong to the “illness” field (the example they give is that of injection with insulin) interferes with everyday practice or the life rules of a person who takes this type of treatment (Corbin & Strauss 1985: 226). In my study, since I am interested in how bodies transform their “deviance” while becoming “extended,” my definition of “trajectory” covers other levels of practice. This is first of all because my interest does not lie in “illness,” but in the body and its changed “trajectory” due to an accident, or as I will further show, due to the demands and duties one is bound to perform in a paid working environment. 10 According to Peter Conrad, medicalization is understood as “a process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness and disorders” (2007: 4). Among the many examples he quotes in his study are alcoholism, ADHD, the menopause or erectile dysfunction. My understanding of exoskeletons as contributing to “medicalization” refers to their technological redefinition and reorientation from the initial field for which they were conceived and developed, namely from the military field to medicine and more specifically the field of rehabilitation. 11 I do not draw a distinction between “illness” and “disease,” like some authors do in disability studies (Williams 1998: 241). 12 Merleau-Ponty draws a distinction between a healthy person and a person with impairment, which is explained as follows: “for the normal person every movement is indissolubly movement and consciousness of movement. This can be expressed by saying that, for the normal person, every movement has a background, and that the movement and its background are ‘moments of a single whole.’ The background of the movement is not a representation associated or linked externally to the movement itself; it is immanent in the movement, it animates it and guides it along at each moment. For the subject, the beginning of kinetic movement is, like perception, an original manner of relating to an object” ([1945] 2012: 113).

I mpaired bodies 

121

13 Dale Hull, “Pleased but not satisfied,” Rehabweek 2017: https://www​.youtube​.com​/ watch​?v​=Cbj​_dsIfyi8 (accessed 01/10/2020). 14 I am deliberately transforming the concept ‘political economy of “hope,”’ which was defined by Rose and Novas (2005: 442), while bracketing the “political.” In their essay, they relate the “political economy of hope” to the emergence of biological citizenship. As they note, “biology is no longer blind destiny, or even a foreseen but implacable fate. It is knowable, mutable, improvable, eminently manipulable” (ibid.). Since in my study I am less interested in highlighting the political aspects and even less the idea of “manipulation,” I focus only on the “economy.” This is also motivated by the fact that including such a topic will distance the argument of my study from the phenomenological background. 15 I discussed these perspectives in detail in the second and third chapters of this study. For a recent discussion of the “habit” and for a definition of “habitual identity” in phenomenology and its relation to the lived body, see Wehrle (2020). 16 The six types of memory discussed by Fuchs are procedural memory, situational memory, intercorporeal memory, incorporative memory, pain memory and traumatic memory (Fuchs 2012). 17 Robert Riener (2017). Walking and its Rehabilitation. Conference held at Universitätsklinikum Freiburg / BrainLinks-BrainTools, on 12/07/2017. 18 See also Måseide, P. (2006). Possibly Abusive, Often Benign, and Always Necessary: On Power and Domination in Medical Practice. Sociology of Health & Illness, 13(4): 545–61. 19 Interestingly, Pierre Bourdieu relates the category of physical capital to that of cultural capital (Bourdieu 1986), referring to it as “the embodied state” of the cultural capital. My use of this term refers to the process of accumulation and granting of value to those “body technologies” (Wesely 2003), which in the present examples of spinal cord injury and stroke help enhance or maintain what bodies still are and thus to an active work of what I have previously called “residual subjectivity.” 20 I have chosen to invoke the title of Dan Zahavi’s well-known work, Subjectivity and Selfhood (Zahavi 2005), in order to make a clear reference to the variety of experiential responses and corporeal resistances that may emerge during the application and use of exoskeletal devices. However, my use of these categories does not follow a philosophical theoretical orientation, as it is explicitly the case in Zahavi’s study. 21 Biosignals refer to bioelectrical signals emitted by the muscles of the human body or the electrical activity of the brain. The activity of the muscles of the arms or legs is recorded by means of electromyograms (EMG), and the electrical activity of the brain is recorded by means of electroencephalograms (EEG). 22 Matthew Marino (2020). Chat Discussion for the Session WeR15: Benchmarking Wearable Robots. 14.10.2020. International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe. 14-16.10.2020. 23 One example of insulin pumps which function with apps is DanaR: https://androidaps​ .readthedocs​.io​/en​/latest​/EN​/Configuration​/DanaRS​-Insulin​-Pump​.html (accessed 23/10/2020). 24 The “script” approach was developed in actor-network theory (ANT) and is associated with the work of Madeleine Akrich (1992). In this view, experts have a privileged position, in that they shape worlds. Their representations of users are at the core of technological projects. As Akrich notes, “designers thus define actors with specific tastes, competences, motives, aspirations, political prejudices, and the rest, and they assume that morality, technology, science, and economy will evolve in particular ways. A large part of the work of innovators is that of ‘inscribing’ this vision of (or prediction about) the world in the technical content of the new object. I will call the

122  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds end product of this work a ‘script’ or a ‘scenario.’ […] The notion of de-scription is […] is the inventory and analysis of the mechanisms that allow the relation between a form and a meaning constituted by and constitutive of the technical object to come into being” (1992: 208–209). Whereas the exchange described in the “script” perspective points to essential characteristics in the development of any type of technological object, I find that the role of the actors involved is in constant negotiation, and that users have a crucial role in defining a variety of parameters that establish the technological object as an efficient companion for one’s body. A predominant amount of work in the development of exoskeletal devices starts with users’ bodies and their needs, and consequently is strongly “practice” rather than “representation” oriented.

References Abraham, A. (2002). Der Körper im biographischen Kontext: Ein wissenssoziologischer Beitrag. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Abrugar, V. (2014). Quantified self: How self-tracking technology can improve your life. Retrieved from http://blog​.goalmap​.com​/quantified​-self​-how​-self​-tracking​-technology​ -can​-improve​-your​-life/ (accessed 25/10/2020). Adams, V., Murphy, M., & Clarke, A. (2009). Anticipation: Technoscience, life, affect, temporality. Subjectivity, 28(1), 246–265. https://doi​.org​/10​.1057​/sub​.2009​.18 Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W.E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology (pp. 205–224). Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Ames, M. (2015). Charismatic technology. Aarhus Series on Human Centered Computing, 1(1), 12. Barnes, C., & Mercer, G. (2010). Exploring Disability. Cambridge; Malden: Polity Press. Beckerle, P. (2020). Wearable robots benchmarking: Comprehending and considering user experience. Paper presented at International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe, 14–16/10/2020. Beckerle, P., Kõiva, R., Kirchner, E. A., Bekrater-Bodmann, R., Dosen, S., Christ, O., … & Lenggenhager, B. (2018). Feel-good robotics: Requirements on touch for embodiment in assistive robotics. Frontiers in Neurorobotics, 12, 84. Besmer, K. (2012). Embodying a translation technology: The cochlear implant and cyborg intentionality. Techne: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 16(3), 296–316. Blackman, L. (2010). Bodily integrity. Body & Society, 16(3), 1–9. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1978). Sport and social class. Social Science Information, 17(6), 819–840. Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. Richardson (Ed.), Handbook for Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education (pp. 241–258). Westport: Greenwood. Bucciarelli, L. (2003). Engineering Philosophy. Delft: DUP Satellite Press. Budgeon, S. (2003). Identity as an embodied event. Body & Society, 9(1), 35–55. Bury, M. (1982). Chronic illness as biographical disruption. Sociology of Health and Illness, 4(2), 167–182. Bury, M. (1997). Health and Illness in a Changing Society. London: Psychology Press. Charmaz, K. (1983). Loss of the self: A fundamental form of suffering in the chronically ill. Sociology of Health and Illness, 5(2), 168–195.

I mpaired bodies 

123

Charmaz, K. (1991). Good Days, Bad Days: The Self in Chronic Illness and Time. New Brunswick; NJ: Rutgers University Press. Charmaz, K., & Rosenfeld, D. (2006). Reflections of the Body, images of the self. In P. Vanini & D. Waskul (Eds.), Body/embodiment: Symbolic Interaction and the Sociology of the Body (pp. 35–50). New York: Routledge. Cole, J. (2004). Still Lives: Narratives of Spinal Cord Injury. Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press. Conrad, P. (1992). Medicalization and social control. Annual Review of Sociology, 18(1), 209–232. Conrad, P. (2000). Medicalization, genetics, and human problems. In C. Bird, P. Conrad, & A. Fremont (Eds.), The Handbook of Medical Sociology (5th ed., pp. 322–333). Upper Saddle River: Prentice-Hall. Conrad, P. (2007). The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (1985). Managing chronic illness at home: Three lines of work. Qualitative Sociology, 8(3), 224–247. Corbin, J., & Strauss, A. (1991). Experiencing body failure and a disrupted self-image. In A. Strauss (Ed.), Creating Sociological Awareness: Collective Images and Symbolic Representations (pp. 341–360). New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Couser, G. T. (1997). Recovering Bodies: Illness, Disability, and Life Writing. Madison; London: University of Wisconsin Press. Coy, M. W. (1989). Apprenticeship: From Theory to Method and Back Again. New York: Suny Press. Crawford, C. S. (2014). Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology. New York; London: New York University Press. Crawford, R. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services, 10(3), 365–388. Crossley, N. (2001). The Social Body. Habit, Identity and Desire. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Crossley, N. (2005). Mapping reflexive body techniques: On body modification and maintenance. Body & Society, 11(1), 1–35. Csordas, T. J. (1994). Embodiment and Experience. The Existential Ground of Culture and Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dalibert, L. (2016). Living with spinal cord stimulation: Doing embodiment and incorporation. Science, Technology and Human Values, 41(4), 635–659. Davis, L. (1995). Enforcing Normalcy: Deafness, Disability and the Body. London: Verso. Détrez, C. (2002). La construction sociale du corps. Paris: Seuil. Donner, J. (2012). Health in Practice: Mobile Technology for Health Promotion in the Developing World. London: Bloomsbury. Duttweiler, S., Gugutzer, R., Passoth, J. H., & Strübing, J. (2016). Leben nach zahlen: Selftracking als Optimierungsprojekt. Bielefeld: Transcript. Elias, N. (1978). The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell. Epstein, S. (1996). Impure Science: Aids, Activism and the Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press. Faircloth, C. A., Boylstein, C., Rittman, M., Young, M. E., & Gubrium, J. (2004). Sudden illness and biographical flow in narratives of stroke recovery. Sociology of Health and Illness, 26(2), 242–261.

124  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds Foucault, M. (1975). The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. New York: Vintage Books. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Tavistock. Frank, A. W. (1991). Postmodern sociology/ postmodern review. Symbolic Interaction, 14(1), 93–100. Frank, A. W. (1993). The rhetoric of self-change: Illness experience as narrative. Sociological Quarterly, 24(1), 39–52. Frank, A. W. (1994). Reclaiming an orphan genre: The first-person narrative of illness. Literature and Medicine, 13(1), 1–21. Frank, A. W. (1995). The Wounded Storyteller. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fuchs, T. (2012). The phenomenology of body memory. In S. Koch, T. Fuchs, M. Summa, & C. Müller (Eds.), Body Memory, Metaphor and Movement (pp. 9–22). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Johns Hopkins University Press. Gallagher, S. (2012). Phenomenology. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave. Gallagher, S. (2014). Phenomenology and embodied cognition. In S. Lawrence (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition (pp. 9–18). New York: Routledge. Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gimlin, D. (2002). Body Work: Beauty and Self-image in American Culture. Berkeley; Los Angeles: University of California Press. Gimlin, D. (2007). What is “body work”? A review of the literature. Sociology Compass, 1(1), 353–370. Gimlin, D. (2010). Imagining the other in cosmetic surgery. Body & Society, 16(4), 57–76. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/1357034X10383881. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. (1968). Time for Dying. Chicago: Aldine. Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the Social Situations of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, NJ: Anchor Books. Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Goffredo, M. (2020). One size does not fit all: New approaches for a patient-tailored rehabilitation process. In International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe, 14–16/10/2020. Gugutzer, R. (2006). Der Body Turn in der Soziologie. Eine programmatische Einleitung. In R. Gugutzer (Ed.), Body Turn: Perspektive der Soziologie, des Körpers und des Sportes (pp. 9–54). Bielefeld: Transcript. Haraway, D. J. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In Haraway, D. (Ed.), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149–82). New York: Routledge. Haraway, D. J. (1999). The biopolitics of postmodern bodies: Determinations of self in immune system discourse. In J. Price & M. Shildrick (Eds.), Feminist Theory and the Body (pp. 203–214). New York: Routledge. Hughes, E. C. (1984). The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers. Piscataway: Transaction Publishers. Husserl, E. ([1952] 1989). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

I mpaired bodies 

125

Husserl, E. ([1954] 1970). Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie. Eine Einleitung in die phänomenologische Philosophie. Husserliana VI. W. Biemel (Ed.). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Hyden, L. C. (1997). Illness and narrative. Sociology of Health and Illness, 19, 48–69. Ihde, D. (2002). Bodies in technology. In Electronic Mediations (Vol. 5). Minneapolis; London: University of Minnesota Press. Jones, M. (2008). Skintight: An Anatomy of Cosmetic Surgery. Oxford: Berg. Kinnunen, T. (2010). A second youth: Pursuing happiness and respectability through cosmetic surgery in Finland. Sociology of Health and Illness, 32(2), 258–271. Kleinman, A. (1988). The Illness Narratives: Suffering, Healing and the Human Condition. New York: Basic Books. Lane, K. (2008). The medical model of the Body as a site of risk: A case study of childbirth. In C. Malacrida & J. Low (Eds.), Sociology of the Body: A Reader (pp. 157–164). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lindemann, G. (2005). Verkörperung des sozialen. In M. Schroer (Ed.), Soziologie des Körpers (pp. 114–138). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Lotti, N., Missiroli, F., Xiloyannis, M., & Masia, L. (2020). A model-based control strategy for upper limb exosuits. Paper presented in Session WeR9: Soft Wearable Robots for Health and Industry at International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe, 14–16/10/2020. Lupton, D. (2012). Medicine as Culture: Illness, Disease and the Body. Thousand Oaks; New Dehli; Singapore: Sage. Lupton, D. (2013). Quantifying the body: Monitoring and measuring health in the age of health technologies. Critical Public Health, 23(4), 393–403. Lupton, D. (2016a). The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-tracking. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lupton, D. (2017). Self-tracking, health and medicine. Health Sociology Review, 26(1), 1–5. Lupton, D. (2018). Digital Health: Critical and Cross-disciplinary Perspectives. London; New York: Routledge. Marino, M. (2020). Chat discussion in session WeR15 Discussion in Session WeR15: Benchmarking wearable robots. 14.10.2020. In International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe, 14–16/10/2020. Måseide, P. (2006). Possibly abusive, often benign, and always necessary: On power and domination in medical practice. Sociology of Health and Illness, 13(4), 545–561. Merleau-Ponty, M. ([1945] 2012). Phenomenology of Perception. London; New York: Routledge. Mol, A. (2002). The Multiple Body: Ontology in Medical Practice. Durham: Duke University Press. Monaghan, L. (2001). Body-building, Drugs and Risk. London: Routledge. Monaghan, L. F., & Atkinson, M. (2014). Challenging Myths of Masculinity: Understanding Physical Cultures. London: Routledge. Montagu, A. (1986). Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin. New York: Perennial Library. Montgomery, S. (1991). Codes and combat in biomedical discourse. Science As Culture, 2(3), 341–391.

126  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds Murphy, R. F. (1990). The Body Silent: The Different World of the Disabled. New York: Norton. Mussa-Ivaldi, S. (2020). Model-based motor learning and its clinical implications. Plenary Talk held at International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe, 14–16/10/2020. Noë, A. (2004). Action in Perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Oliver, M. (1990). The Politics of Disablement. Hampshire; London: Macmillan. Oliver, M. (2004). The social model in action: If I had a hammer. In C. Barnes & G. Mercer (Eds.), Implementing the Social Model of Disability: Theory and Research (pp. 18–47). Leeds: The Disability Press. Oudshoorn, N. (2015). Sustaining cyborgs: Sensing and tuning agencies of pacemakers and implantable cardioverter defibrillators. Social Studies of Science, 45(1), 56–76. Oudshoorn, N. (2020). Resilient Cyborgs: Living and Dying with Pacemakers and Defibrillators. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Oudshoorn, N. E., & Pinch, T. (2003). Introduction: How users and non-users matter. In N. Oudshoorn & T. Pinch (Eds.), How Users Matter: The Co-construction of Users and Technology (pp. 1–25). Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Parsons, T. (1951). The Social System. London: Routledge. Pavalko, E. K., Harding, C. M., & Pescosolido, B. A. (2007). Mental illness careers in an era of change. Social Problems, 54(4), 504–522. Penfield, W., & Rasmussen, T. (1951). The Cerebral Cortex of Man: A Clinical Study of Localization of Function. New York: Macmillan. Pescosolido, B. A. (2013). Patient trajectories. In W.C. Cockerham, R. Dingwall, & S. Quah (Eds.). The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society (Vol. 5, pp. 1770–1777). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Pinch, T. J., & Bijker, W. E. (1984). The social construction of facts and artefacts: Or how the sociology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other. Social Studies of Science, 14(3), 399–441. Prentice, R. (2013). Bodies in Formation. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Rabier, C. (2013). Introduction: The crafting of medicine in the early industrial age. Technology and Culture, 54(3), 437–459. Riener, R. (2017). Walking and its rehabilitation. Presentation organized by the Cluster of Excellence BrainLinks-BrainTools, Universitätsklinikum Freiburg, 12/07/2017. Riener, R. (2019). The future of neurological rehabilitation exoskeletons. Presentation held at WearRAcon Europe, Frauenhofer IPA, Stuttgart, 19–20/11/2020. Rose, N., & Novas, C. (2005). Biological citizenship. In A. Ong & S. J. Collier (Eds.), Global Assemblages. Technology, Politics, and Ethics as Anthropological Problems (pp. 439–463). Malden; Oxford; Victoria: Blackwell. Sahinol, M. (2016). Das techno-zerebrale Subjekt: Zur Symbiose von Mensch und Maschine in den Neurowissenschaften. Bielefeld: Transcript. Scarry, E. (1985). The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schutz, A. ([1945] 1962). On multiple realities. In A. Schutz (Ed.), Collected Papers I (pp. 207–259). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Schutz, A. (1967). Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Schutz, A., & Luckmann, T. (1973). The Structures of the Lifeworld. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

I mpaired bodies 

127

Sharon, T. (2015). Healthy citizenship beyond autonomy and discipline: Tactical engagements with genetic testing. BioSocieties, 10(3), 295–316. Sharon, T. (2016). Self-tracking for health and the quantified self: Re-articulating autonomy, solidarity, and authenticity in an age of personalized healthcare. Philosophy and Technology, 30(1), 93–121. Shildrick, M., & Steinberg, D. L. (2015). Estranged bodies: Shifting paradigms and the biomedical imaginary. Body & Society, 21(3), 3–19. Shilling, C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. So, Y. L. (2017). Gangnam-style plastic surgery: The science of westernized beauty in South Korea. Medical Anthropology, 36(7), 657–671. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/01459740​.2017​ .1345904. Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as Metaphor. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Spampinato, D. A., Celnik, P. A., & Rothwell, J. C. (2020). Cerebellar–motor cortex connectivity: One or two different networks? Journal of Neuroscience, 40(21), 4230–4239. Strauss, A. (1991). Creating Sociological Awareness: Collective Images and Symbolic Representations. New Brunswick; London: Transactions of the Publishers. Suchman, L. (2005). Affiliative objects. Organization, 12(3), 379–399. Svenaeus, F. (2013). What is phenomenology of medicine? Embodiment, illness and beingin-the-world. In H. Carel & R. Cooper (Eds.), Health, Illness and Disease Philosophical Essays (pp. 97–113). Durham: Acumen Publishing. Svenaeus, F. (2018). Phenomenological Bioethics: Medical Technologies, Human Suffering, and the Meaning of Being Alive. New York: Routledge. Synnott, A. (1993). The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society. London: Routledge. Thomas, C. (2007). Sociologies of Disability and Illness: Contested Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan International Higher Education. Thompson, M. (1979). Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Turner, B. (1992). Regulating Bodies: Essays in Medical Sociology. London: Routledge. Turner, B. (1995). Medical Power and Social Knowledge (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Turner, B. S. (2006). Vulnerability and Human Rights. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Van Gennep, A. ([1908] 1960). The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Verbeek, P. P. (2005). What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Wacquant, L. (1995a). Pugs at work: Bodily capital and bodily labour among professional boxers. Body & Society, 1(1), 65–93. Wacquant, L. (1995b). The pugilistic point of view: How boxers think and feel about their trade. Theory and Society, 24(4), 489–535. Wacquant, L. (1998). The prizefighter’s three bodies. Ethnos, 63(3–4), 325–352. Waldenfels, B. (2004). Bodily experience between selfhood and otherness. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 3(3), 235–248. Waldenfels, B. (2011). Phenomenology of the Alien: Basic Concepts. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Wehrle, M. (2020). ‘Bodies (that) matter’: The role of habit formation for identity. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 20(2), 365–368. Wendell, S. (1996). The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability. New York: Routledge.

128  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds Wesely, J. K. (2003). Exotic dancing and the negotiation of identity: The multiple uses of body technologies. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 32(6), 643–669. Williams, G. (1998). The sociology of disability: Towards a materialist phenomenology. In T. Shakespeare (Ed.), The Disability Reader Social Science Perspective (pp. 234–244). London: Cassell. Winance, M., Barbot, J., & Parizot, I. (2018). From loss to repair: A study of body narratives in patient claims for medical injury. Sociology of Health and Illness, 40(1), 53–66. Wolf, G. (2016). The quantified self: Reverse engineering. In D. Nafus (Ed.), Quantified: Biosensing Technologies in Everyday Life (pp. 67–72). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-person Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Chapter 5

Able bodies

Introduction Along with other equipment that escorts human beings in situations where they need to perform and respond to specific tasks, exoskeletons may also be considered “health-keepers” and specific markers of both corporeal ability and inability. Regarding persons with motor impairments, the relationship with a “deviant” body that exoskeletons create is relatively obvious, but the situation changes when they are used by people who are able. Interestingly, if they are used outside a lab or clinic by persons with a stroke or a spinal cord injury (though this situation is rare at present), the image they convey of one’s own body is that of an “able” person. In this case, they thus advance the conception of an able body. In some cases, though, because this type of technology is associated with images from science fiction, the image they evoke is that of a character endowed with superpowers, such as Robocop or Iron Man. This second type of categorization, which is partly supported by a variety of media discourses, distorts the reality of bodies accompanied by exoskeletons. When used by people with motility impairments, exoskeletons transform the “deviance” of disability and shape an image in which the negative aspect of disability is absorbed by the spectacular aspect of the technological gadget. If it is accurate to acknowledge the positive impact exoskeletons have on bodies with motor impairments due to their transformation of corporeal deviance into partly acceptable perception, the situation is very different with respect to able bodies.​ In industrial and military environments, their main function is to prevent injuries and assist the user during the performance of very specific tasks. In the industrial environment, these tasks might include executing movements above the head, such as turning a screw in a car factory or doing plastering in the construction industry. In logistics, exoskeletons are meant to help workers carry and push heavy objects, actions that damage the back; in car factories, they target repetitive and long-lasting movements related to specific situations and tasks. They may be developed either for the upper part of the body or for the legs. In my fieldwork I have not seen any exoskeleton designed to be used for the whole body. Experts explained that taking the whole movement repertoire of a human body into account and embedding it in an exoskeleton is not possible in the current state of research.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-7

130  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Figure 5.1 Industrial exoskeleton. Credits: Laevo, Netherlands.

One of the most frequent muscular-skeletal afflictions encountered in the corporeal world of work is lower back pain (Waddell 2004). Exoskeletons have been developed to prevent such effects. Conversely, the image of endowing the person wearing the exoskeleton with super powers and thus of enhancing their corporeal capacities was reinforced due to the conceptualization and use of exoskeletons for combat purposes. Despite this initial development, which historically was the first, the need to perform activities in the military field successfully is too high, and the technology cannot presently keep up with what soldiers’ bodies require while engaging in combat activities. Exoskeletons may occasionally help in the military field with tasks similar to those performed by workers on industrial sites (Hichert et al. 2020). In their response to the health needs of able bodies, exoskeletons show how much our bodies are sites of vulnerability. As Bryan S. Turner notes, “if our embodiment is the real source of our common sociability, then changes to embodiment must have implications for vulnerability and interconnectedness” (2006: 25). I conceive of exoskeletons, which are literally attached to one’s body, as a way of finding solutions to specific forms of vulnerability. Whereas impairment is a clear example with respect to the vulnerability of our bodies, working conditions and military applications also touch on vulnerability levels.​ Examining how exoskeletons shape new forms of corporeality shows that, just as disabled bodies are confronted with rules of ability, so are able ones. Contexts of work, like contexts of combat, impose specific habits on actors, as well as

A ble bodies 

131

Figure 5.2 Military exoskeleton. Credits: Military Academy of Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan (AMSCC), France.

agency techniques. To use a recent concept coined by Fiona Kumari Campbell, they impose specific forms of “ableism.” Initially, Campbell defines ableism in relation to disability (Campbell 2001). In a more recent definition of this category, however, she touches on other dimensions than disability, and includes ability as well. In her view, ableism is deeply seeded at the level of epistemological systems of life, personhood, power and livability. Ableism is not just a matter of ignorance or negative attitudes towards disabled people; it is a trajectory of perfection, a deep way of thinking about bodies, wholeness, permeability and how certain clusters of people are en-abled via valued entitlements. Bluntly ableism functions to “inaugurat[e] the norm.” (Campbell 2019: 9) Most often, the expected images of soldiers are those demonstrating force and endurance. Yet, people working in the army are still embodied and therefore vulnerable. In spite of many hours of training and transforming their able bodies into bodies that perform better than average ones, soldiers, like workers, are exposed to extreme physical demands while performing paid tasks through which they may be injured or die. As in the case of individuals working in factories, logistics or

132  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

hospitals, exoskeletons are conceived and intended to assist soldiers’ able bodies. They therefore join the rules of “ableism” in Campbell’s terms. The production and maintenance of able bodies is inscribed in a long history of totalizing narratives about technology, according to which bodies need to be mastered, controlled and disciplined. This does not happen for the sake of attaining states characterizing a healthy body, but is imposed by work contexts.1 What a body “can” perform needs to be adjusted so that it either maintains the same level of performance, when that performance already respects the criteria of the contexts in which one acts as a worker or as a soldier, or ideally, increases performance without inflicting injury or pain. This second aspect has generated a plethora of discussions about the use of exoskeletons and their links to the broader aspects of the enhancement and augmentation of performance and skills. Because exoskeletons intervene where a worker’s or soldier’s body alone “cannot” contextually respond to the required effort and motility parameters, they have been integrated into the category of those gadgets and tools that enhance human abilities and capabilities. Yet, this aspect alone would join exoskeletons to a larger family of technological devices that have mediated our relationships with a variety of tasks and activities for thousands of years. Indirectly, exoskeletons play with the promise of freeing a body from biology, overcoming impairment and perhaps enabling different embodiments, unconstrained by the physical properties of cells, organs and anatomy, or the “normal” functions of the body. […] Technologies extend what a body can do, literally. (Fox 2012: 181) My fieldwork confirms the existence of a conception of an extended body rather than a body that incorporates exoskeletons, a perspective I will defend further when focusing on contexts in which these devices accompany able bodies. Exoskeletons may be embodied for predetermined intervals and contexts, but they are not incorporated. In spite of some claims associating the use of exoskeletons with performance augmentation and endurance of the human body,2 exoskeletons assist the body in performing a task, rather than enhance it. Corporeal assistance: Bodies at work Before detailing some categories that describe how able bodies in working environments try to collaborate with exoskeletal devices, and in accordance with my intention to deconstruct the idea that exoskeletal devices build bodies with super powers, I start this chapter with a discussion of Katherine Ott’s criticisms of the figurative use of the term “prosthesis.” This term denotes a technological object that, like an exoskeleton, is somewhere on a spectrum between disability and enhancement and, like the exoskeleton, has generated an imaginary about the production of the cyborg and bionic human beings. As a trope, it has been extensively used

A ble bodies 

133

and doubtlessly reinforced by feminist studies and the work of Donna Haraway (Haraway 1991). “Prosthesis” designates any type of entity that may prolong or mediate human functions, overcoming the rehabilitative dimension. In this conception, exoskeletons may be subordinated to the category of prostheses. The exoskeleton differs from medical prostheses, which are literally in the human body and need not fit it like an exoskeleton. Yet, if one considers bodies that are healthy, the necessity of completing them with the intention to help them perform specific tasks questions the categorization of the gadgets involved in this process. To come back to Ott’s view, set out in an introductory essay in the collection Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (2002), she states that the intention of this collection was “to provide a corrective to the vogue for prosthetics as found in psychoanalytic theory and contemporary cultural studies” (2002: 2). The vogue for prosthetics has also invaded phenomenological discourse. Many studies inspired by this paradigm used, for example, phenomenological categories from the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty such as “incorporation” and/ or “intercorporeality” in order to analyze the relation between human bodies and prostheses (Black 2014b; Dolezal 2020; Tamari 2017), while suggesting the possibility of symbiosis between body and machine. To a certain extent, some of these views encouraged the perspective which Ott wants to correct: other phenomenologists instead, such as Vivian Sobchack (2006), herself an amputee, agree in part with Ott’s perspective. Ott focuses on the defense of “a material culture approach” (Ott 2002: 3) and thus wants to rematerialize the gadgets instead of encouraging their symbolic and metaphorical conception. Moreover, the examples often addressed in studies inspired by categories from the phenomenology of the body mostly refer to the field of disability, and the combination between able bodies and tools, gadgets or machines are now correlated with studies addressing political issues, rather than concentrating on the subjectively felt experiences of users in specific contexts. Current developments in the phenomenology of the body should perhaps acknowledge this novel turn while considering more closely the empirical projects being carried out in robotics at present. This is because, to reinvoke Ott’s perspective, “it is the material ‘stuff’ that most clearly conveys ideologies of body ideals, body politics, and culture” (Ott 2002: 5) and allows the elaboration of new levels in the portrayal of phenomenologies of the body and (dis)ability. Technological advances in prosthetics during the past two decades have led to an obvious improvement in all forms of prostheses, ranging from limb prostheses to hip and eye prostheses, dental implants and artificial larynxes, to mention just a few examples. Exoskeletons belong to the category of orthotics. In the field of disability studies, they may belong, for example, in the same family of technological gadgets as wheelchairs, eyeglasses or cochlear implants. These gadgets all share the attribute of their detachability from human bodies. Unlike cochlear implants or wheelchairs, which are technologies explicitly associated with corporeal impairments, exoskeletons are peculiar because they may be designed for both impaired and able bodies. The mélange between disability, ability and above-average ability

134  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

regarding the effective use of this technology comes partly from the duplicity that characterizes this class of devices. If many technological advances address impairment and disability with the aim to repair and cure, then the emergence of what Jérôme Goffette (following Peter Sloterdijk) calls “anthropotechnie” (Goffette 2007) speaks rather of the role that technology plays in transforming average parameters characterizing human bodies as “better” or more efficient ones. Work environments, like the military field, are rich laboratories for testing such practices. Due to misinterpretations and misuses of this conception, and not only to the metaphorical invasion of figures from science fiction, exoskeletons were sometimes associated with enhancement, although their use in both of these areas implies corporeal “assistance,” at least at present and in the examples observed in my fieldwork. As a consequence, despite the obvious existence of enhancement technologies supporting forms of labor, which have long been present in human societies (starting, for example, with the simplest tools, such as stone tools) (Malafouris 2013), the transposition of the notion of “augmentation” onto exoskeletons used by workers and, as I will show, by soldiers, needs to be considered with caution. Obviously, tools and machines in all forms, not to mention the recently introduced industrial robots, have as a main function to enhance and augment the productivity and efficiency of the required tasks. However, with respect to the use and conception of exoskeletons for work environments, the situation is very different, as they are conceived as protecting the human body while performing a specific type of movement. Hence “protection” is the main function of exoskeletons. Like situations in rehabilitative environments, exoskeletons in industry respond to a motor segment of the human body. They are therefore “segmentary” technologies, assisting and accompanying human bodies for predetermined intervals of time and for clearly defined tasks. Unsurprisingly, exoskeletons are tied to a strong corporeal determinism. They are literally body-defined and bodysourced. Due to this high degree of specialization for attributes of the human body, I call exoskeletons “mono-usage” technologies. They may be used only for one motor segment and act like tools extending one’s own body. In doing so, they impact what phenomenologists call the “sense of agency” (Gallagher 2012, 2017). Occasionally, exoskeletons may be embodied, a phenomenon occurring more often with respect to able bodies than impaired ones. Yet, if embodiment exists, it only happens for short periods of time and for certain models of exoskeletons, which are usually lighter. Currently, the use of exoskeletons in work environments only responds to the needs of human bodies involved in industrial activities in limited ways. The “tooled” body: Limits and possibilities of exoskeletons in work environments The corporeal precariousness of working bodies was discussed extensively already in the works of Karl Marx and Frederic Engels and further acknowledged in a

A ble bodies 

135

variety of studies explicating changes in work environments in recent decades (Johannessen 2019, Weeks 2011). One detail that was broadly discussed was how workers’ able bodies easily become disabled and are even destroyed in the service of the accumulation of capital. Their vulnerability and limits did not at first result from missing limbs, although at the time of Marx’s writings many jobs exposed workers to accidents, and thus impairment and disease due to work circumstances. These conditions still persist in a variety of contexts and countries. To describe exposure to injury, the sociologist Ted Nichols speaks of “structures of vulnerability” (Nichols 1997, 1999). These structures characterize the bodies of those who perform industrial work, as well as other forms of physical work associated with paid labor that exposes those in charge of it to injury and sometimes death (Nichols 1999). Structures of vulnerability marked by our corporeality are the target of exoskeleton development in industry, and more recently agriculture (Sugar 2019). Another often mentioned corporeal state that exoskeletons are expected to help is aging. In a 2019 presentation, Thomas Sugar, an expert in wearable robotics, gave the following reasons why wearable robotic systems are presently needed in industrial environments: an aging workforce with a limited pool of young people to hire; the improvement of the safety of the workforce, which implies reducing healthcare costs; and the improvement of the worker’s wellness (Sugar 2019). Changes in global demographics, which include an aging workforce, are relatively new phenomena in present-day societies. Besides protecting workers bodies tout court, to opt for the development of wearable devices is envisaged as providing solutions to these wider social developments. There is an ambiguity about exoskeletons starting from their very conception though: specifically, are such technologies to be associated with the family of tools, or, if they are actuated, with that of machines? This distinction has further consequences for the category of corporeal augmentation or enhancement with respect to work environments, which are mostly populated by the able. To quote Thomas Sugar once more, there is an obvious technological “move from the military supersuits to the industrial and manufacturing workplace” (Sugar 2019). The technological shift from a single sphere of practice decisively changes the conceptions of both “extended” and “deviant” bodies. Before elaborating more concretely on how the implementation of exoskeletons impacts human bodies at work, and on whether they produce any extension or augmentation, I will pursue with a discussion on whether exoskeletons belong to the category of tools or machines. Any such categorization explicitly influences the type of relationship in which these devices engage human bodies in work environments. If one understands machines as entities that eliminate a degree of autonomy from human intention and action (Black 2014a), exoskeletons certainly do not belong to this category. This would include industrial robots, which are capable of performing tasks that are relatively independent of human intervention, the only detail showing the human presence behind the task the robot performs being that the robot first needs to be programmed by a human being. The situation for exoskeletons is obviously different. Regardless of whether they are actuated with

136  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

batteries (which is relatively seldom in industrial environments at present) or are passive – meaning that they function with springs or other structures to push or pull the workers’ bodies – exoskeletons need more than just the mere physical human bodies to function; more essentially, they require human intentionality, and this is what they are designed to accompany. When I called exoskeletons “technological companions” in the introduction to this study, following Sherry Turkle (2010), I did not specify that in the case of able bodies, they accompany a specific type of intentionality: the motor one. However, they do not create any more estrangement than other tools belonging to the industrial worlds which they have started to populate. Very often, due to the difficulty of wearing them, users have a supplementary charge of attention and obviously of weight, as the device is attached to the human body. Instead of embodying them in their body schemas, what may sometimes happen is the contrary: more attention is solicited, which is what augments the cognitive charge. Workers may thus experience a lack of focus or pain while performing certain tasks. The first time I experienced exoskeletons for industrial use was in 2018 in a research institute in France, where exoskeletons designed for use in industrial and entrepreneurial environments were tested and assessed with respect to their benefits and the risks associated with their use. It was here that I ascertained that industrial exoskeletons are tools. In observing how and why the tests were conducted, the necessity of showing the limits of and risks to the human body due to exoskeleton use in enterprises was compelling. Evaluating such devices involved carrying objects of various weights. All the exoskeletons that were tested and evaluated during my stay were designed for the upper part of the body, mainly for lifting, carrying and pushing heavy loads. Four exoskeleton models were compared and evaluated for their benefits on certain groups of muscles in the arms or back, such as the triceps, biceps or deltoids, but also the legs, on which wearing an exoskeleton imposes additional weight. I understood during this stay that the devices not only help motor effort, they also impose new constraints on the worker’s body, while modifying perceptions, sensations and especially movement. The models I observed during a test in this research institute varied in weight and composition. All in all, they were four passive exoskeletons, functioning without power. The simplest one consisted exclusively of an assemblage of strips and bands, which made it very light, as it mainly consisted of fabric and elastics. The materials in its composition made this exoskeleton very cheap in comparison with the other three tested models, which all contained metal and carbon fibers alongside various types of fabric. One could easily harness oneself to it, an essential parameter for assessing the device in work environments, as well as in rehabilitation and the military. The other two models were slightly heavier, though not above five kilograms. I was surprised that one of them had a chest pad and leg pads, and wondered if such pads might block the user’s movements. Later on, in 2019, while meeting the designer of this exoskeleton at a trade show, I was told that the pads were actually necessary to protect the user. They were sponge-like and very soft, being designed precisely to prevent abrasion injuries when carrying or pushing things.

A ble bodies 

137

Further along in my fieldwork, I was able to visit two sites of a railway company where a prototype for an exoskeleton was being tested. I also tried models of exoskeletons for industrial applications that were on show at several trade shows. During interviews with a user and a manager from a building restoration company, they both showed me how the exoskeleton is attached to the body, and I was given a detailed explanation of the decision they had made to implement this type of exoskeleton. As the informants stated, this choice was a successful step in the organization of their work tasks. The aim of the exoskeleton in this company was to complement the use of another device: a machine employed for sanding and rubbing ceilings. The exoskeleton interfered in this case with the dynamic between the human body and another device that needed to be manipulated: it is a tool used to support the use of another tool. This situation is obviously different from the use of exoskeletons in handling an overweight object, such as pushing wagons in logistics or carrying boxes or metal pieces for repairing trains or building ships. In the automotive industry, where people work above their heads for many hours (for example, driving in screws with another machine that is heavy on the arm), the situation is similar to the example in the building restoration company. Because exoskeletons are attached to bodies to help handle other tools, they are “tooling” the laboring body, while aiming at preventing occupational diseases. Some exoskeleton models are surprising because they may be very small, for example, a finger-sized model that assists in typing movements on a computer keyboard, or even one in the form of a glove, which assists in holding a heavy object, such as a hammer. Exoskeletons are hence designed to respond to a variety of body parts and body movement segments necessary for performing paid labor. If the classic Marxist conception of the human body was rather inclined to conceive of it as an appendage to the machine (Marx and Engels quoted in Synnott 1993: 24), a situation that may persist at the present day, the case of exoskeletons follows an opposite logic. Exoskeletons are obviously appendages to the human body that aim to transform movement in working cultures and contexts, but their stated aim is to protect users’ bodies from injury. Interestingly, if overwork, injury, rapid aging or premature death in sectors such as metallurgy, the building industry or logistics – contexts in which exoskeletons have increasing presence – may portray human bodies in terms of “disposable assets” (Synnott an 1993: 24), exoskeletons are developed precisely to fight this conception of a replaceable human being. One may debate the aim of designers and companies interested in the introduction of exoskeletons in their infrastructures as being only one side of a complex political narrative. Regardless of the assertions of company owners that their aim is to improve and alleviate the well-being of their employees, the aim remains the same: to ensure productivity and ultimately to increase it. Some scholars argue that this represents “a certain rhetoric with the aim of demonstrating a ‘philanthropic’ interest in well-being that is in actuality strictly linked to profit” (Miele & Tirabeni 2020: 2). Thus, behind a positive image turned toward progress and improvements in working conditions, the real intentions behind such technological implementations would seem, in the view of these authors, to be different.

138  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

The distinction between exoskeletons developed for rehabilitation and exoskeletons intended for use in industrial environments is that the latter are not conceived as substitutive technologies. More generally, there is no intention to replace the working body with exoskeletons at all. A reluctance to adopt this type of technology may come from a false perception of robotics in work environments, which associates any machine with the risk of it replacing or alienating humans (Marx 1980: 141; Shilling 2005: 75). As Elspeth Brown notes in an essay discussing the insertion into work infrastructures of Americans disabled during World War I, many of which were fitted with prostheses, “the issue was not so much one of missing limbs as of missing functions,” and providing “supplementary limbs” meant to effectively simulate missing functions such as grasp. The utility of such devices and the urgency of returning the disabled to productive employment outweighed any customary aesthetic considerations, the aim being “to restore” the armless to a place in the industrial world. (Brown 2002: 270–271) Those bodies at work for which exoskeletons are designed do not lack limbs or have damaged anatomical functions, such as war veterans seeking social integration through work in previous decades. Most of the contemporary workers are able. But despite their bodies being able, the likelihood of being injured in certain sectors currently remains high. It is this that has led to the search for a technological answer not to missing functions, but to existing functions that demonstrate a specific vulnerability from the requirements of particular work environments. One of the examples mentioned in my first expert interviews asking why bodies at work need exoskeletons was tendinitis (Ergo1FR; Ergo2FR). In this line of thought, one may agree with Chris Shilling that working bodies represent “sources of technology” (Shilling 2005: 176), meaning that if gadgets such as exoskeletons are developed, they result from human bodies’ concrete needs related to specific tasks and the risks of performing those tasks for long periods of time. As Shilling notes with respect to the conception of the human body as a source of technology in general, technologies are not necessarily “inhuman”, being imposed on us externally without regard to the realities of our bodily being, but can be seen as integrally related to people’s plans, purposes and capacities. The body, in short, remains an important source of technological development. (Shilling 2005: 177) Interestingly exoskeletons stem from the bodies of their users. In the context I observed, related to the prospect of implementing exoskeletons in industrial environments, this was obviously the case. My attempt was to understand how exoskeletons contribute, if at all, to changing the corporeality of the workers they were designed to help, exploring what scales of change were involved and how

A ble bodies 

139

efficient their implementation was for bodily needs in those specific environments. Inquiring into the efficiency of the device brought me back to the human body the device had been designed to accompany. It was difficult to imagine how passive exoskeletons could master or control human bodies, and whether, à la Marx, the human body is transformed into their appendage. This idea often promotes resistance to gadgets belonging to the family of robotics. Some of these reactions are certainly justified by managerial philosophies in the world of working bodies, such as Fordism and Taylorism, the aim of which was indeed to reduce workers to bodies performing tasks (Bahnisch 2000). According to recent studies of the category of the “quantified self,” the digitalization process in working environments is qualified as being a “neo-Taylorist” movement (O’Neil 2017). Some prototypes of exoskeletons which use tracking may indeed collect data about the bodies of their users. I saw one of them designed mainly for carrying heavy loads at a trade show. This model could record, for example, how many movements the user had to make to perform a task, and the data about the user could be stored in the Cloud, details that certainly reinforce the conception of a “quantified worker through the application of the tools” (O’Neil 2017: 601) and, by extension, of the body. This example is far from being the rule, one of the difficulties in using it being precisely the difficulty of communication between the human body and the device, or more concretely the human–machine interactional process (HMI). Inquiries regarding the explicit relation between work environments and digital technologies have been a privileged topic in a variety of recent publications in science and technology studies (Lupton 2013; Meyer et al. 2019; Wajcman 2019; Ziewitz 2016). This is because digitalization is a main element in the post-Fordist development of the world of work, forging the category of “quantified self.” Given the novelty of exoskeletons in the worlds of working bodies and the numerous questions they raise, rather than their providing viable answers to what people need while they work, exoskeletons were not thoroughly topicalized. Consequently, how exoskeletons as “tools” change both bodies and work contexts in enterprises is a current process. Surprisingly, exoskeletons may function (or not) in circumstances where they may be expected not to function (or to function); they may also surprise their designers, who actively shape them and who try to understand from practice (and not just from tests carried out in labs) how and if these gadgets may genuinely improve working conditions. In a sense, exoskeletons are one of the technologies that are particularly relevant for the phenomenological perspective I adopt in this study because they point out precisely the uniqueness of each and every human body, and especially an essential feature individuating our subjectivity: spontaneity. Exoskeletons and their working bodies find an obvious resonance in an idea of Gary Wolf. As O’Neill paraphrases Wolf, “people are not assembly lines. We cannot be tuned to a known standard, because a universal standard for human experience does not exist” (O’Neill 2017: 601). During an interview, an expert in ergonomics described the “objective body” of physiology to me. Nevertheless, behind this objectifying narrative, he disclosed the constant changes and specificities characterizing each and every individual, in

140  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

short, the phenomenological aspects of how we are our corporeality while working with specific gadgets. He explicitly acknowledged the difficulties of thinking in “universal standard” terms while closely attaching a gadget to the human body in a work environment and ignoring its being a “living” and unpredictable entity. He said: When one speaks about the physiology of exercise, this refers to a continuity between “I do nothing” and “I do something”; but the physiology never stops. It may adapt to no movement, but usually this results in a variety of problems, such as obesity, metabolic problems, sedentary situations, osteoporosis. […] When one has a break in adaptation, one goes towards injury. That means that our body is tired, and that it hasn’t had time to adapt. For example, if you carry boxes the whole day, you will probably have shoulder tendinitis, or elbow tendinitis. Because you didn’t adapt to this effort, and since it was too important, it destroys your body. (Ergo1FR: 18; 26; my transl. from French) In line with the idea of physiological adaptation, no tool or object appears to be neutral in terms of its incorrect use, its failure to be considered a “proper” tool for tasks and contexts, and not least the risk of it causing more damage to the worker than help. Unlike rehabilitation clinics and hospitals, in which corporeality and “body work” with exoskeletons pursue an altogether different pace and purpose, the variety of industrial contexts exposes both workers’ bodies and exoskeletons to other challenges, as well as to new limits and possibilities in doing or accomplishing tasks. Entering existing routines in work environments is often a challenge for both individuals and asks to reflect on a more global range of practical expertise. Interestingly, in one of the interviews I conducted with another expert in ergonomics, the exoskeleton was compared to a spanner, a tool that is considered easy to use in the industrial imaginary. This comparison was meant to stress that not all tools have the same status and complexity, as some require not only a technical literacy but also a corporeal phenomenological literacy: unlike spanners, exoskeletons require sustained “body work.” If one understands cars, trains or planes as tools, for example, as some scholars in cultural and feminist studies tend to (Woodward 1999), their drivers or pilots certainly need complex and detailed literacy about how these devices function. Regarding the corporeal relationship of their users (drivers, pilots or passengers) to these gadgets, this is much simpler than grasping an object or moving in a determined space with an exoskeleton attached to oneself. This difference, which is inscribed into one’s moving body, has consequences not only for the body of the exoskeleton’s wearer – in which the gestures and capabilities of performing a certain type of specialized movement in a required time are modified by the device – but also for the context in which both exoskeleton and worker are supposed to fulfill these tasks. As the expert in ergonomics who suggested the comparison between spanners and exoskeletons explained to me while discussing a railway company’s introduction of an exoskeleton on which he was working at the time of the interview,

A ble bodies 

141

Following various tests that we made, we realized that if we equate the use of an exoskeleton to that of a spanner, it won’t work. […] For a spanner, you have nothing to explain. The worker knows how to use it. Concerning the exoskeleton, we don’t have this maturity yet. And that’s why one needs to be vigilant. […] Because it also questions the organization of work. Following our tests, we realized that we needed to rethink how one works, and to a certain extent to rethink capabilities. One needs to rethink the work organization, which doesn’t mean that we stop working as we still do, and we start something else. It means that we need to think about how we can first optimize the use of the exoskeleton, and do the work tasks afterwards. (Ergo4FR: 6; my transl. from French) Accordingly, exoskeletons appear to illustrate how able bodies in contemporary labor contexts discover themselves anew, sometimes being engaged in very strenuous processes and procedures, while simultaneously remaining distanced from the world of the cyborg. The previously quoted ergonomist explained further with respect to the fictional conception of these devices: Actually, the exoskeleton needs to be considered as a physical assistive facility. It has nothing to do with Iron Man or Robocop. It’s just assistance. […] The central point here is that one speaks of a “protected” worker and not of an “augmented” one. We are not there to augment the person’s capacities. […] The exoskeleton remains an assistance. (Ergo4FR: 6; my transl. from French) Exoskeletons are similar to other tools that assist bodies in performing tasks, offering precise and determined possibilities to fulfill a specific activity, a perspective which sets the basis for what in the following section I will call “technological skepticism.” Creating embodiments: Some issues on technological skepticism Exoskeletons are artifacts designed to fight fatigue in industrial environments. As the historian Georges Vigarello mentions in a recent study, Histoire de la fatigue (2020), besides death and illness, fatigue is the third acknowledged limit of the human body. Interestingly, the role of exoskeletons is to interfere in this process of effort adaptation and thus prevent fatigue and more generally bodily damage that may result in illness. Exoskeletons themselves require adaptation in their quality of being “technological companions,” which is where a variety of challenges and ambivalences in their concrete applications emerge. It is in this context that I develop the notion of “technological skepticism.” In the countries and working environments I had access to during my fieldwork, exoskeletons were introduced only a few years ago. As one expert in ergonomics

142  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

recounted to me with respect to their implementation in France, exoskeletons arrived in French enterprises in 2013–2014 (Ergo2FR: 46). As he described further, the introduction of such gadgets impacted a variety of levels that in the beginning, and during trials, were not visible within the realities of the workers using the device. He continued: Sometimes the enterprise introduces something without having anticipated the impact of that gadget or measure. It may work for three, four or five years. […] When they present the system on paper, it’s all very well; but you have to see what impact this system has on people. Because you can have musculoskeletal disorders which may emerge, or augmentation of the physical charge that people carry. In the beginning, something which is introduced in the enterprise may be positive; but its medium or long-term use may destroy bodies. (Ergo2FR: 54; my transl. from French) As I explained above, I draw a conceptual distinction between “incorporation” and “embodiment,” categories that play a significant role in shaping (or in resisting shaping) bodies at work with exoskeletons. They are necessary in explaining why technological skepticism emerges contextually. Both concepts may refer to human beings having used a variety of tools and objects since the dawn of time, mostly in order to achieve a certain goal. Objects and tools are intentional in their use. They may also reveal how human bodies are shaped by social factors, contexts or, more generally, structures (Giddens 1990). What sometimes may be confusing is that often, in both socio-anthropological and phenomenological philosophical studies, these two categories are used interchangeably. Some distinctions may nonetheless be drawn between these two concepts. “Incorporation” is perhaps a more classical term that is used to denote embodiment as well, often being quoted in relation to the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who uses this concept to refer to how the human body integrates foreign objects into its body schema. In some uses in sociological theory (for example, in Chris Shilling’s perspective), “incorporation” refers to the concrete integration of “non-human material into the body” or of “machines into the body” (Shilling 2005: 174; 196), as well as associations between human and machine, as in the figure of the cyborg (Shilling 2005: 174). In this example, technological parts are not a secondary element being integrated into the biological body; rather, they are something with which the human body collaborates while forming a whole. Furthermore, it is always Chris Shilling who speaks of the “embodiment of society” (Shilling 2016), drawing attention to how social conditions shape human bodies, thus rendering the “body social” (Turner 1984). The category of “embodiment,” on the other hand, is more often associated with newer developments in the phenomenology and philosophy of mind. For example, Shaun Gallagher explicitly uses in his writings the category of “embodiment” (Gallagher 2012), as does James Mensch, who in one of his recent texts, inspired in part by the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, uses this category in the plural: “embodiments” (Mensch 2009). Perhaps a nuance in its phenomenological

A ble bodies 

143

use depends on the fact that “embodied” highlights a material aspect of our being in the world qua living subjects (actually, the very fact of our being in the world); in this sense, some phenomenologists may speak of an “embodied mind” or of an “embodied subjectivity” (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008; Zahavi 2005), thus avoiding the perspective of a “disembodied subject,” for which the classic phenomenology of subjectivity has often been criticized. In some perspectives, in joining the sociology of the body to the sociology of work, as in a study by Carol Wolkowitz (2006), the category of “embodiment” covers a plurality of angles. Wolkowitz speaks, for instance, of “experiences of embodiment” (Wolkowitz 2006: 17), which she further relates to a variety of contexts of labor and employment in order to support her defense of a “sociology of the body and embodiment” (Wolkowitz 2006: 16). Even in Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant’s definition of habitus, habitus is described as an “embodiment of social structures” (Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992: 139). In line with these theorizations, I will privilege the use of the category “embodiment”3 to describe the experiences of persons in work environments who have had the opportunity to perform tasks with an exoskeleton. Embodying an exoskeleton in an industrial environment is highly contextual, task-dependent and time management-dependent. It is especially dependent on how users are socialized to this type of technology, which in a first stage involves the presentation of and information about the device. Providing proper information about the limits and advantages of the device’s use plays an important part in its acceptance and prospective use. All these factors contribute to forging forms of practice that further shape working bodies. As each and every human body has specific capacities, the biomechanics may change from the beginning of the work period to its end. One can therefore speak of moments of embodiment that may be related to the user’s perception of movement and her feeling while wearing the device; in this respect, if the exoskeleton communicates sufficiently with the segments of movement for which the worker needs support, the interaction between the human body and the device acquires a certain fluidity or transparency. This is what ensures a successful collaboration between the two. In this first case, one may speak of embodiment in terms of the phenomenological category of “incorporation.” The gadget collaborates with the human body and follows the worker’s body schema. However, the huge variety of contexts (even with respect to the same industrial field), the variety of tasks that a person needs to complete during a full day of work, and the inflexibility of many of the materials of which some industrial exoskeletons are made may have a huge impact on this close interaction. One of the examples that was often invoked in interviews is the difference between the great number of degrees of freedom a human body has and the very few an exoskeleton may reproduce. This asymmetry impacts the embodiment possibilities of this type of technology. A further major difficulty that all parties involved in the conception of exoskeletal devices acknowledge is the difference of parameters observed in a lab during tests and the use of these gadgets in real-life environments. Diego Torricelli, an expert

144  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

in robotics and neurorehabilitation, noted in a presentation held at WearRacon Fraunhofer, Stuttgart (Torricelli 2019), that one difficulty that engineering scientists experience is the need to demonstrate that the systems they develop work outside labs. To do so, confronting measurability with replication is a necessary step; further on, in order to achieve embodiment, one needs to develop the user’s expertise. In Torricelli’s view, embodiment is related to the user’s training level. He speaks, for example, of the difference between the expert user and the novice user (Torricelli 2019). This factor characterizes both types of body for which exoskeletons are designed: impaired and able. Unlike the situation in rehabilitation, in work environments, the bodies are confronted with movement and activity rhythms that are generally unnatural for our anatomy to perform: usually, what working bodies perform in terms of tasks is “more” than what concerns the average corporeal attributes and functions. The tasks sometimes need to be performed quickly, which imposes time constraints. To these one needs to add the quantity and quality of the performance. The worker is not only expected to carry a box, push a wagon or sand a ceiling but to do so in a short amount of time and under very controlled conditions, the ultimate aim being to increase productivity. As Peter Freund noted some years ago, “work is influenced by body control in the form of body discipline.” Freund shows that work discipline may demand that the body remains stationary for long periods of time, control its physical functions, and move in a mechanical fashion. […] work discipline controls the rhythm and shape of movement for the purpose of enhancing productivity in the workplace. (Freund 1982: 100) Work discipline is a topic that sociologists of work have treated extensively while relating it to Marxian and Foucauldian theoretical orientations (Brauer 2003; Knights & Willmott 1989; McKinlay & Starkey 1998). With respect to this phenomenon, the phenomenological perspective may complete the idea of how, in their specificity, bodies develop this discipline and, with it, novel types of “body work.” As mentioned in Chapter 4 where I discussed the example of rehabilitation with reference to the classification advocated by Debra Gimlin with respect to this category (Gimlin 2007), “body work” covers a variety of aspects, among them “the production of bodies through the work they do” (Gimlin 2007: 363). Bodies at work are therefore corporeal ensembles of the movements and skills required to perform the work in question. Exoskeletons come and change precisely this existing repertoire, their ascribed role to protect acquired work expertise. To quote Peter Freund once more, “one’s working conditions can put one ‘out of touch’ with one’s body” (Freund 1982: 101). Exoskeletons intervene in these embodied techniques, which, in the long run, turn against workers’ bodies. As one user explained to me, I have been a plasterer since 2006. I do stone and marble restoration. So I need the exoskeleton mostly for restoration work, and most explicitly when I restore old buildings, or buildings with old stucco. This old stucco is usually

A ble bodies 

145

degraded or destroyed. So I have to press a lot with a machine. […] the use of this exoskeleton actually concerns what is most exhausting for us. And these are ceilings. The exoskeleton was intended and thus designed so that we can work on the ceiling. (Work1FR: 8; my transl. from French) The planned intervention of exoskeletons is often aware of the difficulties of the field and of each and every worker’s body. One of the elements supporting the idea of technological skepticism relies on individual corporeal specificities. For example, many enterprises do not provide exoskeletons for each and every worker, whereas each and every worker has a different body. Using the same device with many different body shapes may thus present a challenge. I briefly mentioned a similar problem in the rehabilitation environment, in which persons with impairments not only represent individuals with different body shapes but also individuals with a variety of different injuries. The variety of body shapes introduces a further phenomenological note into these processes that aim to adjust humans to devices and, in turn, devices to humans. Corporeal experience, despite sharing contextual and social codes and representations in work cultures, is still characterized by a minimal aspect. Dan Zahavi speaks, for example, of the “minimal self” (Zahavi 2005). This is what makes the fine-grained difference between individuals: how the subjective content of our experiences draws attention to the huge gap between the complexity of human bodies and the simplicity, reducibility and one-sidedness of functions of some gadgets or machines. Such a situation occurring both inside and outside the laboratory demands a variety of forms of negotiation between experts and users, all of which are embedded in the devices. One of the difficulties in these negotiations is the size of the exoskeletons. The state of art is that, generally, “one size does not fit all.”4 Industrial exoskeletons, some of which are tailored to similar sizing schemes as clothes (namely S, M, L), are not always sufficiently adjustable to the variety of their users’ bodies, although some exceptions may exist. In one of the enterprises where an exoskeleton was introduced and where I conducted interviews, although the model they had was adjustable and the team that used it was small, the exoskeleton was mostly used only by one person, the plasterer I previously quoted. When I asked him about the device’s potential interchangeability, he explained the following to me: Well, it takes some time to change the exoskeleton from one user to another; but different users, with different body types, may use this exoskeleton. It can be adjusted at many levels – shoulders, lumbar vertebrae, the clip for the corset belt. […] What takes the longest time is the adjustment for each individual, knowing that each time another person uses it, we have to change the settings. That’s why, three quarters of the time, it’s me who uses it. (Work1FR: 8; my transl. from French) As the quote shows, although there exists a margin of adjustability, in the end only one person on the team is engaged in a regular human–device interaction,

146  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

and thus in an acceptable form of embodiment. This brief narrative confirms that, despite stories of success, a wider range of applications and uses of exoskeletal devices in work environments has still not been attained. Working bodies are very much defined by their work practices and by the history of these practices. As with exoskeletons in rehabilitation, exoskeletons in industrial environments go through many stages: acquiring literacy with the technological object as such, with one’s own body while using the device and (but unlike rehabilitative uses) with the work environment and its specific corporeal world. The third aspect, besides performing tasks determined in space and time, involves interaction with one’s fellow workers, coordinating teamwork with them and coping with their work representations and the sedimented meanings of a specific work domain. Exoskeletons therefore mark specific body-based transactions, instituting specific “regimes of value” (Appadurai 1986:15) in the world of working bodies. In describing these challenging processes (challenging for both bodies and devices), the notion of a “rite of passage” (Van Gennep [1908] 1960) proves to be an important conceptual tool. Rites of passage in work contexts involve a variety of levels of getting accustomed to exoskeletons. The passage from working without an exoskeleton to working with one seems simple at first sight, and many models of exoskeletons are conceived to be fast and easy to “get dressed with.” Some of them may have a belt system similar to rucksacks, which relates their use to both more routine everyday practices and time management. Time management cannot be conceived in the world of work without body management (Derksen 2017). Unsurprisingly, exoskeletons need to be quick to get into in order to capitalize on the workers’ bodies more, although one of the potential outcomes of introducing exoskeletons without a thorough examination of the concrete consequences on the bodies of workers may actually be the more rapid damage to certain muscles or tendons, instead of helping them. An expert I interviewed explained the following: Well, today one of the main questions related to this topic is: “what can I do best to help the worker?” I need to lower the effort on the muscle which is exerted during work, so I help the person; he or she is less tired, but I still need to retain some nervous commands. I need to keep the brain active. So, the question we ask in our research team is: “isn’t it better to have lighter assistance to movement rather than stronger assistance?” The point is to take away a bit of the effort without completely disorganizing the manner in which the person does the movement. I keep the same movement, but it has to be softer. However, if the movement is softer, for a whole day of work, this may mean a lot. Whereas, if one wants to completely assist the movement sequence, I need not make any more effort. It is possible that the motor orders given by the brain are not the same anymore, and the way the articulation functions becomes disorganized. The person may feel better, but the point is that her body is damaged more quickly because, with complete assistance from the exoskeleton, the tendon gets damaged. […] So, on the spot, the agent will say that it is great to have an exoskeleton. But the fact is that someone may say later that: “look,

A ble bodies 

147

you destroyed your tendon in ten years with an exoskeleton, instead of twenty years without it”. […] And this will certainly increase the health costs. (Ergo1FR: 88–90) What the previous excerpt suggests is a form of technological skepticism. One needs to differentiate between what is expected of technologies and the real effects in the field, just as one needs to differentiate between the results obtained while testing devices in laboratories and what actually happens in the field, where human intentionality and spontaneity have much weight in shaping proficiency at work. In accordance with an idea advocated by Steve Woolgar, experts in mortricity encourage thinking “that we need to develop and maintain a more skeptical awareness, both of our implicit reliance on notions of technical effect and of the parameters within which the debates about the social impact of technology have been established” (Woolgar 2002: 4). The introduction of exoskeletons may indeed help a specific task (they are obviously mono-task technologies), an acknowledged fact in some sectors of activity. But this introduction in a working environment depends on levels and layers of embodiment, which do not encompass only the body of the worker or how she feels and works with the device. It extends over other fields and aspects, such as the company’s work infrastructure or the types of sites where workers are active, the actual organization of work or the “eye of the other.” All these elements influence the acceptability of exoskeletons, while challenging conceptions of embodiment and maintaining forms of technological skepticism. Resisting embodiments: No “second” skin The goal of achieving embodiment is inscribed in the very conception of exoskeletons, as they are conceived to resemble clothes. The philosophy of the “wearable” brings this technology closer to such a cultural asset. Models that are passive, and therefore lighter, follow this pattern better than those that are powered; as the latter need electricity, their conceptualization is more complex and their use requires more coordination between the human body and the device. The difference with clothes, however, is that unlike exoskeletons, they are more quickly embodied. Except when they are sophisticated pieces of fashion, or strongly forged culturally (such as the Japanese kimono), or gendered (such as tight skirts, tight dresses or high-heeled shoes, which, worn for the first time, may be experienced as uncomfortable), one usually does not need special training or repeated use in order to wear clothes. Clothes are relatively quickly absorbed into one’s body schema, an attribute emulated by experts developing exoskeletons. In order to develop an efficient system, one of the important parameters that needs to be taken into account, according to Stirling et al. (2018: 2), is “to improve system design by considering the human within the design process, rather than designing a system and then considering the effects on the human after the design is completed.” I experienced this perspective during one of my visits to a railway

148  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

company site, where the company in question was developing an exoskeleton for its own needs. This is also the case for some companies in the automotive and aeronautics industries. Achieving the embodiment of the tested exoskeleton seemed indeed to be a challenge: the five workers on the site who tried it during my visit had a variety of reactions, ranging from enthusiasm to ultimate disillusionment. Some of them were very excited by the novelty of the device and took photos of those of their colleagues who agreed to “wear” the exoskeleton. The expert who introduced the device at the beginning of the tests informed the workers that what they would experience would not completely bracket the effort they needed to provide when carrying the heavy pieces they had to move in order to repair the trains. In the case of the first person to be tested, the challenge was the weight of a window that needed replacement. In a sense, the “introduction” of the exoskeleton in the field did not announce the advent of an interaction with the human body during which no problems would occur. Rather, people were informed that what would happen had little to do with science fiction, and that new problems may arise. One of the main goals of these tests was to understand how much the exoskeleton still resists embodiment with respect to certain gestures and lesser contexts. Just as production chains are divided into a variety of sectors and tasks, so too were the railway sites I visited. They mainly served to repair deficits in damaged pieces of trains and wagons but also to check and wash the trains. The agents usually perform a variety of activities, some involving two to three persons moving very heavy pieces by carrying them. The first person to be tested had to change a train window together with two other colleagues. The way in which the whole process took place made me hypothesize that, at least for that particular exoskeleton prototype in the context of performing that task successfully, the exoskeleton could not be a “second skin.” Quite the contrary: the first person to use it got a small bruise and couldn’t put the exoskeleton on alone. As I reported in my field notes on this experience of testing, The test-worker was very open and curious about the gadget. He said that he felt the difference while lifting the window; however, since he was quite corpulent, the exoskeleton didn’t fit him properly, especially at the level of the abdomen. Some of his colleagues made jokes about this. At a certain point, when he moved, the exoskeleton hurt him on the triceps of his left arm, which should not have happened. This showed everyone that the technology was not mature enough. (July 2019, field notes: 997) During this visit to the railway company’s site, the experiences I observed contributed to disenchantment with the object, which the agents on the site jokingly associated with science-fiction characters. Familiarity with the technological object and with the changes to one’s skills must be well understood in introducing exoskeletons, especially to avoid injuries. One of the obvious stages in introducing

A ble bodies 

149

technologies that work closely with human bodies in industrial environments is being socialized into gadgets. This involves both an informational-cognitive aspect, implying a clear and detailed description of how the device should function in a specific context, and most importantly bodily knowledge in the form of practice, i.e., the building of new forms of embodied cognition. While moving (and this concerns not only segmented movements, such as changing a piece to repair brake shoes for trains in a work pit), the body changes constantly. The body schema needs to adapt. And if the device is composed of too many rigid parts that create the risk of abrasion or that block arm movements instead of supporting them, then the worker will reject it. As a consequence, the successful embodiment of exoskeletons in industrial environments remains an obvious challenge for some models, depending on the specificity of people’s bodies and working practices. Like other tools that workers use in their environments, exoskeletons shape their corporeal skills. They aim to enter a specific category of work culture and to forge it further. A material transaction in which exoskeletons need to be engaged is a necessary step to effect change from the “fear of the machine to the idea of living with machines” (Coeckelbergh 2017: 98), thus learning how to accept exoskeletons as “technological companions” in existing work techniques. To recall Matthew Marino’s view from a recent plenary talk, “users know best” (Marino 2020). I would add that they know best concerning both types of bodies for which exoskeletons are used, namely the able and the impaired because they are their bodies. Moreover, it is with their bodies that the reality of their interactions starts, whether this happens in a rehabilitation clinic, on a building site or in railway garage, or, in the case of military use, on the battlefield. If stepping, grasping, working or fighting with an exoskeleton fails, there are no bodies with exoskeletons. They are against them. Actions and tasks that workers need to perform are rarely restricted to one isolated person; workers often carry out tasks in teams, in predetermined environments. For example, train pits are very tight spaces, making the use of an exoskeleton difficult, particularly if the wearer has to replace or repair a certain part together with other colleagues. A small movement or a moment of inattention is enough for the exoskeleton to hurt other people who may be in the pit. A similar situation may occur in a car factory. Here, sometimes workers need to move fast, and if the exoskeleton is not flexible enough, or if it takes up too much space, it may cause accidents. Coordination with assembly lines may itself prove to be a challenge, partly due to the rhythm of movement the lines have. If the device is not appropriate, then neither augmentation nor assistance is provided; on the contrary, the bodies of the workers must make additional effort and may be placed at risk as a result. Besides these challenges, “body images” may have a specific weight. Being injured or physically encumbered while performing a work task is an obvious reason why exoskeletons are not embodied. However, the significance of others’ gazes is just as important in exoskeletons’ rejection or acceptance. In order to explain this phenomenon, I will briefly mention a distinction proposed by David L. Collinson

150  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

among three types of selves in work environments. The first is “conformist selves,” inspired by Michel Foucault’s theorizations on discipline and power relations. As Collinson notes, “in conformity, individuals tend to be preoccupied with themselves as valued objects in the eyes of those in authority, subordinating their own subjectivity in the process” (Collinson 2003: 536). This leads to a situation in which exoskeletons may be accepted in a working environment only because their agents are asked to do so. The second concept that Collinson proposes is inspired by Erving Goffman: the “dramaturgical self,” which denotes the fact that “individuals in surveillance-based organizations might become increasingly skilled manipulators of self, reputation and image in the eyes of ‘significant others’” (Collinson 2003: 538). Finally, the third category distinguished by Collinson is that of “resistant selves,” understood as “a primary means by which employees express their discontent about workplace processes” (ibid.: 539). In my fieldwork, what resisted exoskeletons in the process of affirming a certain work culture based on physical effort was not just the selves of workers: it was their embodied selves, and more specifically their “body images.” Interestingly, if in studies of work the category of resistance is typically associated with power relations and their resulting forms of conflict, in my fieldwork resistance stemmed from a corporeal culture of work. Some cultures of work are associated with a form of exposure to risky environments, as risk-taking has an enchanting power and ensures a positive body image. This sort of reaction has already been noted in other sociological studies of work environments. Paul Bellaby’s observations of workers in the pottery industry are an example in this sense. As he explained, I noted that men I worked with, who had long worked at the extremes of cold/ wet and hot/dry (sliphouse and kilns respectively), considered themselves to be hardened to the hazards of the work environment. […] It was as if exposure to hazards conferred immunity to accidents and disease. (Bellaby 1990: 469) Before any exoskeletal devices can be introduced to a specific work environment, it is necessary to understand that sometimes workers will risk their bodies to defend a code of values. To defend such a code ensures them a positive image, a situation similar to the world of bodies at fight. In both work and military environments, the notion of risk shows that one is capable of engaging in a task that can provide distinction.5 Risking one’s body makes a person exceptional, as it confirms her capability and proficiency when performing strenuous types of activity. Whereas in the world of wars, soldiers know from the beginning that the type of activities they are engaged in may cause them injury and possibly death, the situation of working, for example, on a railway site, in the automotive industry or in a hospital (where, as a nurse, one needs to carry the bodies of persons who are ill, and thus possibly damage one’s own body while helping others) is obviously a totally different one. To do physical work without complaining is the rule especially in those sectors where the greatest number of actors are men. One’s own male body belongs to a specific

A ble bodies 

151

body culture, and rules, among which endurance, for example, plays an important role, need to be respected. Some male users go so far as to associate using the exoskeleton with disability, which complicates the task of introducing the device on a work site. As one of the expert interviewees, a psychologist, recounted, It is especially men for whom wearing the device may be a problem. They think of it as if it were some crutches, if you wish. It means “I am not capable”, and therefore I need a device to help me do my work, whereas my younger colleagues, who are stronger, they don’t need one. This is the image that the world of workers reflects. Globally, what they think is that “I don’t have all the required physical capacities, and that’s why I need to use an exoskeleton”. (Psy1FR: 120; my transl. from French) This echoes an idea of Carol Wolkowitz, who posits that “the healthy, fit and attractive body is not only a sign of class privilege but may be becoming increasingly central to the reproduction of professional […] status” (Wolkowitz 2002: 506). Physical work is associated with masculine cultures of the body, where strength and endurance are positive values. This is reflected in the corporeal resistance. One of the agents I interviewed explicitly said that he was strong and that this is why he does the type of activity he was supposed to do (Work1FR). Therefore, the exoskeleton needs to be felt not as “helping” the body, since that would imply that the worker is weak and cannot perform his tasks properly. At another scale, this would also imply that the body is, to evoke another concept of Carol Wolkowitz, “de-territorialized” (Wolkowitz 2002: 505). I understand this not as a process in which bodies “become merely counters in the bargaining between managers and workers” (ibid.: 505). Rather, one needs to successfully explain in these work environments that exoskeletons’ role is to preserve health and act as a protection factor against further decay, while simultaneously protecting one’s skills. These aspects show that some corporeal worlds of work do not have “highly permeable boundaries” (Bellaby 1990: 48). On the contrary, they defend specific forms of habitus and skills repertoires, which turns them into the specific ensembles that they are. In the end, the exoskeleton is a technology for the workers’ bodies, and its embodiment has to do with building trust and explaining the concrete benefits of its use in the long term. Much about constructing embodiment or failing embodiment processes results not only from being literally shaped through practice with the device but also being informed about that practice, and what results are expected. Often one doesn’t know what one feels until one’s attention is drawn to that detail. Here experts play a crucial role, as they provide a different type of information about the devices. Engineers and ergonomists see the “inside” of the exoskeleton, information that needs to be imported in the world of working bodies, especially that, unlike in rehabilitation clinics, where the target is to achieve even the smallest progress in one’s own body, and thus where a stronger individual and subjective impact is at the core of the relation between the human body and the exoskeleton, work environments are highly intersubjective. The device impacts actual ways of

152  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

doing with other fellow workers, with whom one needs to coordinate activities to achieve a common performance level. Resisting the embodiment of an exoskeleton confronts the experts who develop these devices with the expectation management of their users, expectations that are strongly forged in the embedded and enacted history of their working and professional traditions. Before any further attempts are made to find practical solutions for musculoskeletal problems, as exoskeletons literally interfere in forms of body work, while attempting to become a “second skin,” these literally embodied histories of skills and practices need a deeper inquiry. Questioning augmentation, claiming assistance: Technologies for future bodies at work In order to respond to these challenging perspectives and difficulties of acceptance, one of the experts I interviewed warned how the discourse that presents the exoskeleton to the workers who are meant to use it also described the transformations that this device should produce on the agent’s own body. In his view the worker’s body is at the center of these transformations. Preserving the knowledge and techniques of quality that the workers have perfected over the years should be defended against the image of an augmented body that deforms the reality of work. He said: One point which is important is that we don’t speak of augmented agents. We are not there to augment the agent’s skills. We speak of “preserved” agents, and this is very important. We choose our words well. Why do we do this? Let’s admit that as a worker you are capable of lifting a weight of twenty kilos above your head, to repair something. You do this task every day; this is your job. I give you an exoskeleton. You still have the same weight to carry, twenty kilos. It’s easier, because you have assistance. And that’s why we speak of a “preserved worker”; because you are allowed to use less force to lift the weight. (Ergo4FR: 65) The category “augmentation” exists and is currently employed by some labs in which exoskeletons are designed, and even employed in their definition (Anam & Al-Jumaily 2012). Yet, concrete experiences in industrial environments, which some experts defend, expose the actors involved to a more cautious narrative. This is related in part to the fact that exoskeletons are hardly embodied, if at all. Their belonging to this category transforms them into technological objects which assist human bodies in segments of activities, specific movement patterns, the main stated purpose still being the prevention of injuries. Encouraging the association between exoskeletons and augmented bodies may expose both users and their employers to danger, in the sense that the expected performance cannot be realized. As one expert explained to me, The augmented human being does not exist. Sometimes, when I go to removal companies, the managers ask me: can my removers carry a piano while wearing

A ble bodies 

153

an exoskeleton? And I tell them that we have rules in France, which stipulate that if a worker carries more than fifteen kilos, it’s not possible to repeat the task. And they tell me that their removers should carry a piano [ironically]. It’s not because they have the exoskeleton on the back that everything is fine. […] The norms were made for the whole body. Because one could have said: look, for this muscle we can take four kilos. They said fifteen kilos to carry a box, because they thought about the whole body. So, today we cannot carry a piano with an exoskeleton. Except if one uses powered systems, which are stronger than our bodies, which go down to your feet and delocalize the force, meaning that the human body is not exposed to this force any longer. (Ergo1FR: 116–118; my transl. from French) Like disabled bodies, able bodies at work are engaged in capability negotiations, with the difference that in some contexts, as the expert noted in the excerpt above, they are asked to perform “more” than what human physiology and anatomy would allow without causing damage. It is not the segment of effort as such which may lead to injuries; the main factor is still mostly the durability and repeatability of the task. This is one of the reasons why designers of exoskeletons speak of assistance rather than augmentation. These devices help in maintaining the same rhythm of performing tasks, providing greater durability in this performance while ensuring the “durability” of the workers’ bodies. Many bodies are also very enduring, which is why, as I showed above, introducing a “helping” gadget may disqualify. As with the bodies of sportsmen and sportswomen, in some work environments corporeal attributes change precisely due to steady repetition of the same movements. Being such bodies specifies the workers’ “working class habitus” (Wolkowitz 2006: 107). Although these movements may be perceived as a skills repertoire and trained force at first sight, they may lead instead, after years of work, to the body’s more rapid degradation. I remember how surprised I was during an interview with the plasterer I previously quoted, who regularly used an exoskeleton. During the interview, he brought me his sanding machine, so that I might see for myself how the exoskeleton would help him in his work. He explained to me that the sanding machine weighs seven kilograms. When I took it in my hands and copied the gesture he was making while he was working, it seemed to me not very strenuous. I found the sensation to be bearable and was puzzled, asking him about this feeling. It intrigued me why his company decided to introduce the exoskeleton, with which he had already been working for a few years. One of the reasons he mentioned was the duration of the gesture to be performed in order to properly carry out his task, which confirmed one of the reasons often invoked by exoskeleton designers to assist workers’ bodies. This is fatigue. As he explained to me regarding the feeling I had about using the sanding machine, During the first or two hours of sanding, one can tolerate the weight of the sanding machine relatively well. The problem is when you work eight hours, over many days and sometimes over many weeks, [though] this latter

154  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

situation is less frequent. Usually, this type of work [ceiling sanding] takes a week to fifteen days. Not more. If one uses this type of exoskeleton, we have less pain. And we double our productivity, at least. Well, to simplify things: when we work for example with a sanding machine on high ceilings for eight hours, for the first hours, we tend to maintain a correct working posture. We use our hips to support the force in our arms. And thus, we can continue to exert a certain pressure on the ceiling in order to restore it. In order to compensate for the physical pain, we start to have working postures that are not necessarily well-adapted. Hence, we bend the back, we bow, and we use the hip’s weight a little; and finally, after a few hours of work, we have a bad working posture. So, the advantage of using this exoskeleton is that we can maintain an upright posture regarding the lumbar vertebrae, as well as the shoulders and back. (Work1FR: 8; my transl. from French) When describing the strategies his company followed in introducing the exoskeleton, the plasterer explained the following to me: Well, you know, in our type of profession, you have to bring together all the aspects which make you take such a decision. It’s not only the posture, the task, the stiffness of the stucco. It’s all of them that brought us to elaborate this exoskeleton together because it’s really an ensemble. It involves long upstream preparation to understand where the fatigue starts. (WorkFR1: 28) Assisting workers’ bodies involves actually assisting a body that is already projected in an environment. Being a worker’s body in stucco work means being interconnected through its tasks to other tasks, and also to other humans, who are in charge of further other tasks. In short, the exoskeleton is meant to assist a body that is already extended and embedded in a professional ecosystem. It has to do with needs and gaps to be filled, which surpass the individual to stretch over a whole environment. If there is an understanding of augmentation that one could derive from these facts, it is highly task-oriented, gesture-specific-oriented and strongly decided by the techniques one employs in order to maintain the same quality of work. To stay with the example of the sanding machine for stucco, which I myself briefly carried, the body’s endurance is indeed enhanced, but this happens because a certain gesture is assisted by the exoskeleton. At first sight, decoupling gestures from bodies may help as an analytical tool in the process of both designing exoskeletons and implementing their concrete use. Corporeal segmentation may help with understanding and measuring movement types in a lab. It is an epistemological procedure in order to produce knowledge about the human body. Human bodies, regardless of whether they are being tested in labs with exoskeletons or are using exoskeletons on work sites, are wholes; they work as a unity and also within a specific site. Any sense of agency in which

A ble bodies 

155

we engage includes an ecological perspective and is correlated with what Shaun Gallagher names “enactive intentionality.” As Gallagher notes, “intentionality means that we are ‘in the world’, distributed over brain-body-environment, and extended in pragmatic and communicative practices that may further supervene on the tools, technologies and institutional practices through which we engage with the world” (2017: 82). If some environments of bodies at work for which exoskeletons are designed are not radically changing, as is the case with plastering, for example, which requires fine gestures and a long period of training for the agents who perform such tasks, what changes is the manner in which enterprises try to respond to workers’ corporeal needs. Of course, the situation differs from one activity sector to another, since in such cases as logistics, employees do not necessarily need long years of training to transport boxes or other types of goods. Yet, in logistics a great number of persons develop musculoskeletal disorders. As Jonas Mast, CEO of the startup HUNIC, explained in a talk given in 2019, an agent working in logistics may carry up to 7,860 kilograms per day and makes 234 picks per hour (Mast 2019). Given such performance parameters, it is not surprising that people’s bodies need support in order to respond to the requirements of their working infrastructure. In this technological revolution, supported extensively in recent decades by developments in robotics and artificial intelligence, developments in which exoskeletons try to make their way, some views take either an alarmist or a techno-optimist stance. […] New sociomaterial configurations are either hailed as the forerunners of technologized utopia or demonized as a new level of domination by states and multinational corporations as well as an impending age of mass unemployment. What these polarizing characterizations miss, however, is the more intricate, and often ambiguous dynamics, that happen between total domination and total emancipation. (Seibt, Schaupp & Meyer 2019: 4) This is what the facts in work environments, test centers and labs show. Exoskeletons may be associated with augmentation precisely because they intervene to fill a lack, a quality that the body misses at a certain moment and for a very specific type of movement or task. But currently, they neither provide extra powers to their users, nor, including currently, are they high-performance surveillance technologies, although some may function with software. As one of the experts I interviewed noted, If there is a gain, if one wants to consider productivity, one has a gain in reducing musculoskeletal disease, fatigue and accidents. It is rather this aspect I want to highlight, rather than, now that you wear an exoskeleton you will carry more weight than before. […] It is important to note this because one can quickly cross the line. (Ergo4FR: 6; my transl. from French)

156  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Understanding assistance and partial augmentation has to do with both an actual presentation of how exoskeletons engage bodies in working and, at another level, of how they forge new technological and techno-corporeal imaginaries. As Sheila Jasanoff notes, just as imagination liberates the mind to rise beyond the constraints of the possible, so too the lens of sociotechnical imaginaries enables us, as analysts, to look for patterns and juxtapositions that cut across the conventional grid lines of disciplines (Jasanoff 2015: 321) where bodies and technologies engage in a reciprocal co-construction and the further establishment of material limits. Work sites are worlds in which such redimensioning may sometimes become possible. They may also serve as laboratories for testing bodily limits and capacities, thus allowing theorization of the potentials of how future bodies at work open up more fundamental debates about whether or not enhancement or assistance are the necessary logics for these spaces. As with technological developments that have forged what has been called in the past decade in Germany “Industrie 4.0,” exoskeletons contribute to what Uli Meyer has called “envisioned futures.” According to Meyer, the term “envisioned future” is related to a variety of other concepts from the field of STS and the sociology of technology, such as the “imaginary,” “expectations in science and technology,” “visions” and “organizing visions,” all of which “describe how stories, ideas, and visions of future technologies shape the present” (Meyer 2019: 3). Exoskeletons are technologies that besides shaping the present actually shape and reinvent the bodies of their users, but not without costs. In spite of the obvious augmentation of specific skills and improvements to gestures, the exoskeleton’s effects on the user’s body may result in deskilling. The fear of being deskilled by machines and, consequently, the idea of the disposability of workers’ bodies is not new (Malacrida & Low 2008: 219; Meyer, Schaupp & Seibt 2019). As with other tools, working with exoskeletons means gaining new skills at the cost of transforming previous ones, or deskilling. One example of these transformations, which was recounted to me by a roboticist engineer, was that of surgeons having difficulties to perform a simple operation without a sophisticated instrument (in their case, a robot). Such body–technology interchanges confirm these dynamics. This may mean becoming professional in some forms of doing, while bracketing others. Exoskeletons are technologies that create new values both for bodies and, more generally, for the worlds of work in which they are implemented. Some workers are aware of these changes, and their perceptions of exoskeletons are very pragmatic. They understand that these devices are meant neither to transform them into the superheroes of science-fiction movies, nor to show how “weak” or “incapable” they are in working on building sites as some of their colleagues, who reject the device think. Certain workers see the exoskeleton merely as a helping tool. As one worker explained,

A ble bodies 

157

I have a wife and a daughter. And I would like to stay healthy to carry my daughter on my shoulders and in my arms until my retirement, if this is possible. So, if you give me an exoskeleton, that wouldn’t bother me. If I seem weak to others, well that’s it, I seem it; I don’t care. The only thing I want is that the effort is reduced and the production multiplied. And, when I go back home in the evening, that my back hurts less. So, there are only positive aspects. I won’t refuse something only because I can do things now. Because, how long will this last? For the time being I am thirty-three years old. But think about when I am forty or fifty. I would think of those years when I went about saying “I don’t need an exoskeleton”. As may be the case, when I am fifty-five years old, I will be happy that I used an exoskeleton. Do you understand me? Slow and steady wins the race. And the mount is my body. (Work1FRA: 44; my transl. from French) A form of corporeal companionship is highlighted that is intended to persist over some life stages in a particular environment. Like the logic of rehabilitation accompanying the transformation of an “I cannot” into an “I can,” the able body is confronted with a redistribution of its capabilities by using an exoskeleton. Yet, in this case, the capabilities of which are conceived starting from models that may have been saved inside the bodies of the users themselves, or from other human bodies which are able, the bodies in working environments are accompanied by exoskeletons in order to preserve what those bodies are: besides the health of the agent, the skills and mastery of gestures she/he acquired to perform the tasks are crucial. In this case the exoskeleton acts as a protector and collector of “techniques of the body.” These represent techniques of working and the tradition of a certain profession, its concrete “physical capital” (Bourdieu 1978: 830). Using exoskeletons protects the “I can” from becoming an “I cannot,” rather than its transformation into an above-average human body; it means especially protecting forms of “physical capital” that take a long time to develop. What Chris Shilling calls “the development of bodies in ways which are recognized as possessing value in social fields” (Shilling 1993: 127) is reflected by the exoskeletons’ intervention into the world of working bodies. This process helps shape further forms of “reflexive embodiments” (Crossley 2006) that did not previously exist in the spheres of work cultures, becoming visible in the past few decades. In this vein, exoskeletons mark unprecedented forms of awareness of agents’ bodies but also of their embodied agencies. They contribute to shape new materialities of work infrastructures, categories of activity and productivity, as well as forms of ability and inability in these specific contexts. Corporeal assistance: Bodies at fight Globally, the contexts of exoskeleton use and their forging of human bodies in industrial environments may be characterized by a variety of tasks in which workers need assistance with their performance. A similar phenomenon

158  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

characterizes the use of exoskeletons for military purposes. However, many differences between the corporeal worlds of working bodies and the worlds of bodies in combat subsist. One of these refers to the clearly expressed reticence by some experts involved in research programs to develop exoskeletons for work environments to accept the category of the “augmented body” or, more generally, the “augmentation” of human capabilities with respect to work contexts. By contrast, the concept of “augmentation,” and, I would add, the more general imaginary defining an “augmented soldier,”6 which is often evoked in a variety of studies produced by both experts and active professionals, is very present in discourses and research related to the military field. For example, Garcia, Sater and Main, who describe a recent Exoskeleton for the Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA) program of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), note the following: Exoskeletons will enhance a warrior’s capabilities, allowing him to be more lethal and survivable. Current limits of human portage will be greatly extended, and the exoskeletons will provide power for communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance supportive hardware. The exoskeleton program aims to create experimental prototypes that will address, and possibly advance, a number of critical technologies. These technologies are small-scale power converters and actuation systems, controls, sensing of human motion and haptic interfaces. (Garcia, Sater & Main 2002: 44) Due to this characterization, which associates exoskeletons with the “sociotechnical imaginaries” (Jassanof & Kim 2015) of enhancing human bodies, this highly significant nuance has been imported, rightly or wrongly, into the other two fields for which exoskeletons are designed, namely rehabilitation and industry. This semantic transfer led to confusion about the purposes and effective uses of this type of technology in these two other fields, where the aims are far from those in the military domain. From the point of view of the history of development of this type of technology, it is necessary to note that, indeed, exoskeletons were initially developed for military applications with the purpose of enhancing the capabilities of human bodies. Enhancement is therefore a main characteristic targeted by the development of these types of technology in military applications. It is only in the past two decades that the domain in which exoskeletons initially emerged began to encompass rehabilitation and industry. The first projects to produce an augmented body with an exoskeletal structure began in the 1960s, initiated by the demands of the US Department of Defense. This project, developed by General Electric, was known as “Hardiman.” As Homayoon Kazerooni explains, the Hardiman was a set of overlapping exoskeletons worn by a human operator. The outer exoskeleton (the slave) followed the motions of the inner

A ble bodies 

159

exoskeleton (the master), which followed the motions of the human operator. All these studies found that duplicating all human motions and using master– slave systems were not practical. Additionally, difficulties in human sensing and system complexity kept it from walking. (Kazerooni 2008: 773) As a consequence, exoskeletons seemed rather difficult to implement due to these technical limitations. As one engineer emphasized during an expert interview, in developing these early projects, no one could actually do anything with it [with Hardiman]. It was so heavy, and so slow. I guess it was a good idea to do something like that. But at the time, the battery technology and the motor technology just weren’t there to make this type of device fit in any way, in a reasonable size, and weight frame. So, I guess, it limited people back then. It was really just simple electrical motor technology and battery technology. (Eng9CH: 65) Hearing these comments – and being able to view the videos of some of the companies and labs that are building exoskeletons for the army today, some of which explicitly evoke the often discussed project of DARPA in this technological area, named the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) – one of my first thoughts is that, today, we have managed to help soldiers’ bodies much more than we could 60 years ago. Interestingly, the name which is used to designate this type of project for military applications, and which I have previously evoked, is Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation (EHPA), in which the parameter “augmentation” is emphasized. One misleading perception is that somehow some of these projects have managed to come closer to the views of soldiers with iron suits popularized by science fiction, and that the warriors wearing them become endowed with superpowers. And yet, the reality of the fieldwork shows that, despite some clear advantages that exoskeletons bring to combat (as well as for unarmed use), they do not create corporeal revolutions. The number of studies regarding the use of robots on the battlefield has grown, one frequently analyzed example being “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAV) or “remotely piloted aircraft” (RPA), more commonly known as drones (Chamayou 2015; Gusterson 2016; Horowitz 2020; McSorley 2019; Stahl 2013; Wilcox 2015). However, given the recent development of exoskeletons and their still to be proven success, at the present time they are scarcely mentioned. What is misleading, though, is that, in contrast to the narratives of experts engaged in projects for exosuits for use in industry or rehabilitation, the descriptions of projects carried out for the military field explicitly include “augmentation,” a term which is sought and openly assumed in a variety of descriptions about bodies at war. One of the reasons for the presence of this category is that military staff

160  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

are usually trained so that their bodies may endure more, perform more or resist more in strenuous environments than the bodies of average persons. According to Captain Louis-Joseph Maynié, a tactical instructor in the French Army, soldiers do not question the need for enhancement because it is usually something obvious to them. From fiddling with military equipment to using medicine that reduces fatigue, everything that can make it easier to live in the field and make them more effective in combat is welcome. Such empirical enhancements cover areas that directly affect the soldier (e.g., individual training, personal equipment, and interactions with other soldiers). (Maynié 2021: 2) The subsequent corporeal habitus of bodies at fight is that of augmentation. Unlike those who work to earn a living, or those who have experienced a spinal cord injury or stroke and wish to walk again or hold a cup of coffee in their hands, the aims of bodies in the worlds of war are to constantly be more. Their very body building and maintenance of corporeal skills, as well as their “body pedagogics” (Shilling 2016), are inherently conceived to follow the logic of constant corporeal amelioration. This involves both cognition and physical-anatomical properties. As Gérard de Boisboissel, a research engineer at the Saint-Cyr Military Academy Research Center (CREC) in France, notes, the process of enhancing a soldier involves the action of rendering him/her more efficient during military operations by strengthening or optimizing intellectual skills (mental, psychological, cognitive to assist in decision-making help or perception) and/or physical abilities (to last), or by letting the soldier acquire new ones (like seeing at night). (de Boisboissel 2020: 7) To these, and following these mentioned by Captain Maynié, de Boisboissel adds further elements describing what defines enhancement for purposes of warfare. Among these he names technologically advanced equipment (where exoskeletons may be included), use of non-therapeutic substances, implants and even genetic therapy, which is authorized provided that the effects are controlled (ibid.) and possibly reversible. These interventions target changes that are external to one’s body – similarly to exosuits – or changes that take place within the human body, impacting the biochemistry of the brain and, more globally, our anatomical and physiological characteristics. David Malet also mentions some of these changes in a recent article on enhancement possibilities for soldiers. He discusses the example of hormone therapy, but also more globally the development of war medicine (Malet 2015: 324). However, such changes do not always produce the expected effects. Not only do they question the real impact of technologies in specific physically demanding and often dangerous circumstances in which soldiers operate, but also the status of the human

A ble bodies 

161

bodies that are modified on purpose in order to respond to what is asked of them for the successful performance of specifically dangerous tasks. For example, one of the major ethical issues resulting from the application and use of some body technologies is the irreversible effects caused by the use of some medication. Certain substances, such as Dexedrine, an amphetamine, which was already being used for military operations, may induce hallucinations, leading to aggression and even unwanted killing (Moreno 2006, quoted in Malet 2015). The situation with exoskeletons is different from that of invasive technologies because they are external to the human body. They certainly do not lead to problems like those caused by medication use, but they may create others. As far as the type of use in military applications is concerned, a distinction needs to be drawn between using exoskeletons in this type of corporeal world and bodies in work environments. Before discussing the details of how exoskeletons may concretely change bodily practices in the armed forces and whether and in what forms they are responsible for any augmentation types of human bodies, an important distinction regarding the intended use of these types of technology is needed. The most common image associated with exoskeletons was indeed that of a type of technological device that had the aim of helping soldiers be more efficient in combat. One of the uses that is explicitly invoked by both experts in engineering sciences and some individuals from military staff concerns some tasks that are similar to what certain agents working in logistics enterprises may perform. As in industry, fatigue is a central issue for bodies at fight. Warfare involves a very complex intertwining of bodies at work, which supports bodies in combat. In this sense, some bodies in the worlds of war are auxiliary bodies, helping those engaged in fighting. What I mean by “auxiliary” bodies refers to the fact that, during missions, soldiers need help in the form of a whole infrastructure that coordinates and frames their operations. And individuals from the wider network may need to lift heavy equipment or transport heavy loads for longer periods of time and for longer distances. As a consequence, some military exoskeletons have been developed for infrastructures with similar goals and functions to those in industrial environments, the term describing the concrete application of the devices being “unarmed military use” (Klabunde, Linnenberg, & Weidner 2020). The type of environment is crucial in defining the type of assistance that bodies need. The environments in which military operations are carried out are characterized by higher levels of danger than industrial environments. The first parameter is explicitly that soldiers engaged in operations may die. Whereas in work contexts, despite the obvious risks that workers may be exposed to – working in the metallurgy field or for a railway company are examples of working environments where accidents and pressures on the workers’ bodies are very high – one is not directly confronted with a risk to one’s life.7 Workers do not go into these environments knowing that they may be potentially killed. What is thus expected from exoskeletons designed for the specific corporeal worlds of bodies at war follows the difficulties of the tasks to be performed, the needs of bodies in armed forces being extreme.

162  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Partial extensions: Entering the “snail’s house” Warfare functions with “extended” bodies and exoskeletons are partial extensions; they belong to the large family of gadgets that support the infrastructure of warfare, joining the technologies that accompany military activities in the three branches of what widely defines military forces: ground, air and space,8 and naval forces. Recently, a transversal branch was included connecting these three, namely cyberspace. Just as in the worlds of working bodies, extension through technology produces new capabilities and skills. Simultaneously, there is also a shift from the role and place that the human body occupies in the more general landscape of warfare and its relationship to technological gadgets in this very specific domain. Broadly speaking, through the variety of their forms of extension, military technologies redraw and redesign landscapes of human vulnerability. Especially because technologies such as exoskeletons are being deployed to bridge the worlds of warfare with other worlds, they play a crucial role in transferring some types of vulnerability and in reinvesting some types of body phenomenology (McSorley 2014). I mentioned earlier the ideas of Arthur Frank, according to whom impaired bodies are separated from able bodies, the latter having a permanent visa status that needs constant renewal (Frank 1995: 9). In a sense, the purpose of some military technologies, among which exoskeletons are an example, serve to procure this type of renewal. Their explicit role is, on the one hand to preserve the acquired abilities of bodies in combat, allowing them to be operational in dangerous circumstances and contexts, and on the other hand to reduce their vulnerability in these very particular conditions. In the sociological literature on bodies in combat, some studies, drawing on the conceptual heritage of Elaine Scarry’s classic work The Body in Pain (1985), explicitly characterize the human body and our condition of being embodied as vulnerable (Cooper & Hurcombe 2008; MacLeish 2013; McSorley 2014, 2019). Wars are inextricably associated with injuries and death, and military technology in its variety of forms not only pursues defensive purposes; it literally implies defense against other human bodies. Technologies are the corporeal extensions that bodies at war need in order to respond to the greatest risk, which is death. Such projects are encouraged and have been developed because of the vulnerability of human bodies. One of the main aims, at least as openly stated by military and political infrastructures, is the protection of soldiers involved in ground combat. Thus, the main reason for “extensions” of warriors’ bodies being encouraged is not augmentation per se; it is augmentation related to situations of vulnerability. In the first place, military technologies that are intended to be used as “proximity technologies”9 – a category which, as I stated in the beginning of this study, also includes exoskeletons – certainly have as their main purpose the efficiency of assigned tasks on the battlefield. What they additionally imply is protecting the soldier’s life, diminishing the vulnerability of her or his body. Augmentation and/ or assistance responds to corporeal vulnerabilities.

A ble bodies 

163

If some military technologies have clearly been developed in order to assist, enhance and extend what soldiers can do and are expected to, some others, among them the previously mentioned unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) or the even more recent “unmanned ground vehicles” (UGV), stress another parameter: the separation of the human body from direct interaction with the field of combat. While considering some of these developments, Andreas Krieg and Jean-Marc Rickli correlate them with the phenomenon known as “surrogate warfare.” As the authors mention, surrogate warfare is far from being a novel military form. However, what has changed, as they note further, is that “contemporary surrogate warfare has become the norm rather than the exception in the state’s management of violence in recent decades” (Krieg & Rickli 2018: 116). “Surrogate warfare cuts the sociopolitical ties between society, state and soldier allowing the state to replace the soldier as the executive agent from the midst of society with an external agent” (ibid.: 117). My intention is not to explicitly discuss the place of states in contemporary warfare management, since this is a different topic. Nonetheless, the ideas I have already invoked are particularly important for a socio-anthropology of the body, which, while focusing on a certain type of technological development and its specific use, seeks to understand how the corporeality involved in ground warfare is potentially transformed by these applications, what body forms and body management techniques emerge due to the use of exoskeletons, and whether bodies at war are indeed extended or augmented by the technological “other” at all. In spite of being “proximity technologies,” exoskeletons are conceived as functioning in a technological network that ensures military operations. They fulfill specific functions in a constantly evolving system. Surprisingly, they emerge in a world of war in which the growing distance between soldiers’ bodies and the fields in which they need to act is increasingly encouraged. For example, the shift to techniques of training that use video games (Riverasaenz 2019; Stahl 2013) contributes to this tendency, while simultaneously building new concepts of war. Since the role of software has become crucial and has impacted the interaction with the environment in which missions are carried out, some military staff are already speaking of “army 4.0” (Costargent 2018), a concept echoing similar tendencies occurring in the world of working bodies. A maximum extension of soldiers’ bodies happens due to the connectivity between the technologies deployed during operations. In their active form, meaning that they include a computer, exoskeletons may also enter this new software-networked world of soldiers’ bodies. But the reality of this possibility, and especially the efficiency of its implementation, remain questionable for the time being, as does the reality of completely isolating human bodies from combat operations. As Kenneth MacLeish notes, “the human body is arguably the most taken for granted and the most essential piece of equipment of the day-to-day labors of war making” (MacLeish 2012: 55). Such pursuits are undoubtedly leading to changes in how war or military conflicts are perceived, defined and literally lived by the actors involved in them and who, in return, actively shape these phenomena. As General David G. Perkins of the US Army notes in a recent article,

164  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

The complexity of war on land continues to grow as the number of actors able to employ capabilities in the air, sea, space, and cyberspace domains increases. The interrelationship of military activities within domains becomes much more problematic than when forces enjoyed nearly uncontested superiority in each of them. The Army’s dominance on land has become dependent, if not contingent, on access to the air, cyber, and space domains. These domains are a challenge not just because they will be contested. They also challenge our previous views of responsibilities at echelons of command and geographical containment of actions and effects. […] Multi-domain battle is the start of this process. It is an evolving warfighting concept designed to win in an everchanging complex world, leveraging the lessons of the past with twenty-first century capabilities. (Perkins 2017: 10) It is to this new category of multi-domain battle that exoskeletons designed for combat are supposed to contribute. However, some of the technological developments that are intended to render human bodies less vulnerable in combat may sometimes serve other purposes, which some scholars, such as Joelien Pretorius, have openly criticized. In her view, an inquiry into the way in which today’s military technology serves technical (as opposed to human) values in warfare focuses first on the impact that digitization has on military culture, what it means to be a soldier and to wage warfare in the computer age. (Pretorius 2008: 302) In this process of re-focalization, one tends to miss precisely what is at the core of each and every human activity: human bodies. Hence, technological innovation cannot be separated from the human presence as long as the bodies of soldiers are still considered to have a crucial role to play in operations, which obviously they still do. Ground operations are particularly injurious and lethal. Correlatively, the long-term consequences of the implementation of these recent technologies for the human presence need to be considered as well, along with a closer evaluation of the goals and transformations of military worlds, such as the shift to “unmanned” systems rather than “manned” ones. In this line of thought, as Pretorius notes, one of the main issues remains that “technology should therefore be reined in and then applied only when it contributes to security” (Pretorius 2008: 300). Pretorius’s argument draws attention to one crucial aspect regarding the development of military technologies, more specifically the real needs of what military defense may mean and implicitly the role of soldiers’ bodies in these transformations. For, if examples such as the development of nuclear weapons, which led to arms races, caused a mutation to warfare lifeworlds, recent projects in robotics and the digital revolution to which they are correlated are causing additional mutations. Many of these concern body-based

A ble bodies 

165

worlds, worlds in which exoskeletons are also present. But another aspect is that, due to the minimization of human costs, “democracies may become more willing to engage in future wars if the human costs of doing so are minimized” (Malet 2015: 324). According to military staff, one of the openly acknowledged difficulties on missions for which exoskeletons may contribute to the “extension” of the soldiers’ bodies is represented by the quantity and variety of objects that soldiers need to carry. The worlds of combat are populated by warrior bodies carrying heavy loads and many objects. Carrying heavy loads is hardly new in the military practice. According to one of the officer cadets who took part in an exoskeleton test and to whom I spoke during a group interview, carrying a huge number of objects is a mark of soldiering. The corporeal phenomenologies of soldiers have always been involved in forms of experiential excess, and thus in processes of augmentation, which further confirms that warriors have always had “extended” bodies. What was surprising in his statement, however, was that the number of objects that need to be carried has changed little over time. He said: Since the Roman legionnaire, a soldier has always carried the same weight on average. And this is a constant in the history of military practice. On average it has been something like fifty kilograms if one takes into account all one’s military equipment. (MiL1FR: 297; my transl. from French) Interestingly, during the same group interview, a second officer cadet added to this information by mentioning the type of objects which “extend” soldiers’ bodies: armor and weapons like swords and rifles, which are explicitly needed for combat activities. One surprising element, which perhaps one would not usually count as taking part in the process to “augment” the soldierly human body, was the soldier’s boots. Due to their common everyday use, one would hardly think of boots as encumbering: they are an almost “taken-for-granted” piece of kit for the feet. Nonetheless, they may encumber one’s body just like all the other necessary gadgets and objects the infantry man usually carries while on mission. As the second officer cadet noted, this [the heavy weight of objects, D.B.] is something which is a constant presence, and it will always be the case. Because you will always want to have everything with you. Like a snail. You want to have your little house with you. (MiL2FR: 298; my transl. from French) The comparison with the snail’s house opened up the question of whether exoskeletons will be ever perceived as belonging to the repertoire of intimate tools and objects since, due to their bulk, the type of “extension” they provide to soldiers’ bodies is, at present, not necessarily what is expected. Regarding the personal equipment that infantrymen need to carry with them during operations, Captain

166  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Antoine Roussel mentions four main categories of object that are necessary in the “snail’s house”: (1) clothing and headgear; (2) major equipment related to combat such as weapons; (3) lesser equipment, including footwear and maintenance and hygiene kits; and (4) tools, food and bivouac equipment (Roussel 2021: 2). The issue at stake in operations (and this is also why it has proved difficult to implement exoskeletons for combat purposes) is not only the very physical and physiological limitations of the human bodies that carry such equipment: these exist in industrial environments as well. I briefly mentioned earlier that one of the differences in other corporeal worlds that are shaped by exoskeletons, such as industrial environments, resides in the objective locations where soldiers are active. This parameter adds supplementary difficulties to tasks that may indeed be similar to some activities carried out in industrial environments, such as carrying or lifting heavy equipment. Environmental constraints include besides the permanent danger of being killed, climatic conditions, for example. The latter alone may prove to be challenging for human bodies even when they are not actually engaged in combat. They may range from extreme heat in desert areas to extreme cold, dry or very humid environments, and wood or jungle areas. All these factors justify the physical and physiological help that soldiers need in order to be and remain operational not only for many hours during the day or night, but often for many days or weeks. Hence the need for the “snail’s house.” Decisions to “extend” human bodies by means of exoskeletal devices therefore need to take into account the complexity of all these parameters taken together. As one of the researchers I interviewed who were working as military staff explained to me, indeed, in the civilian world, an exoskeleton may work to tighten bolts, but in the military environment there are many more constraints. The environment may change from one second to the next. It’s much more complex; hence, although the exoskeleton may help in some cases, in many others it may encumber the soldier and even become a constraint. (MiL4FR: 33; my transl. from French) Obviously, exoskeletons also need to respond properly to industrial environments, where, as I explained above, if wrongly used they may cause accidents or create even more damage to human bodies. A crucial difference between the use of exoskeletons by bodies at work and by bodies in combat relies precisely in the type of contexts in which these bodies are actively engaged in activities and the array of situations accompanying them, where exoskeletons are conceived to assist. Work readiness is most often related to predictable routines and practices. It usually involves an acknowledged rhythm, precise techniques of the body in certain cases, such as the examples of plastering and decoration activities I mentioned previously, and relatively known activity time intervals. By contrast, combat readiness implies different corporeal, cognitive and psychological skills. For some units, such as special operation forces (SOF),10 the training is particularly demanding, since they

A ble bodies 

167

need to conduct special operations precisely in which the requirements are often extreme and extreme situations are non-routine. Here, not only already complete “systems of relevances” (Schutz 1970) need to be reinvented – the explicit danger of being killed individualizes the very world of bodies at war. Inspired by the phenomenological paradigm, John Hockey discusses the category of “switching on,” which he relates to the role the human sensorium plays in both in working environments (Hockey & Allen-Collinson 2009) and in the work that infantrymen carry out (Hockey 2009). Regarding the second case, Hockey explains “switching on” in terms of how to do infantry work effectively. More specifically, in Hockey’s perspective, “switching on means attending to practices which involve moving, seeing, hearing, touching and smelling in a particular occupational fashion. Switching on means maximizing an individual and collective capacity to kill the enemy” (Hockey 2009: 481). “Switching on” is what characterizes the very corporeality of soldierly missions, and it is the “switching on” that exoskeletons attempt to assist and, possibly, augment. They transform a history of embodied warfighting skills, which simultaneously impacts the body of the individual and the relation and correlation between and among the fighters who constitute a unit. This is why one of the main requirements that exoskeletons need to fulfill in order to assist human bodies in the strenuous and dangerous situations in which they are supposed to carry out military tasks is a very good interaction with these bodies proper. Perhaps better than interaction, what they need is to mirror human bodies, that is, respect the principle of biomimicry. Biomimicry is a principle that has inspired military and other projects in the development of technologies.11 The preference for developing lighter exosuits in rehabilitation contexts may find similar uses in military projects. Despite some obvious progress, to imitate human bodies and their specifics remains a challenge for some prototypes of exoskeleton. In particular, active exosuits seem to create more challenges due to the inflexibility of the materials they are made of. This is why, as in rehabilitation or industry, some experts in military exosuits are explicitly in favor of passive systems. As one of the engineers I interviewed explained to me, The body is really weird […] it contracts, it increases in circumference and length while you’re in movement. To put rigid materials on the body that’s close to you and that does not move will never work. It must be able to lengthen and adjust according to anatomies, motions. […] You must have a material that expands and contracts. You must have that. […] People work on motors without looking at the body first. Master the body first, the ergonomics; and once you’ve done that, then you start looking at the motors. (Eng7CA: 35, 37, 105) This is a challenge common to all three fields for which exoskeletons are being developed: human bodies, whether able or impaired, are all different. Their experiences change and vary, rendering them unique phenomenological ensembles. And

168  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

despite the possibilities of customization that current technologies offer, as, circumstantially, do exoskeletons, to respond to the immense diversity characterizing human corporeality and to the complexity of our “somatic modes of attention” (Csordas 1993: 137) or to actively engage in modes of augmentation is currently still a challenge for all the actors and “patheurs” (Gugutzer 2017) involved in modeling these novel bodyscapes. Another acknowledged challenge for the designers is that of extending skills and capabilities of human bodies, which, like those in the corporeal worlds of warfare, usually are more than the average ones. Both the complexity of the human bodies as such and that of the situations in which bodies at fight are engaged contradict the imaginary employed by the companies that advertise exoskeletons for use in combat. For what is sought by introducing advanced equipment in the armed forces is to augment capabilities that are already being augmented, the difficulty residing precisely in the attempt to do so. As one of the engineers who participated in a research program for combat exoskeletons recounted to me, Actually one of the things we hadn’t considered in the beginning of our research program was that military staff are athletes. We hadn’t thought of that. We were just saying “We will help them”. But we didn’t consider the type of physical level we were supposed to help. Regardless of whether it is a woman or a man, if it is someone who is tall, short, whatever, they are all athletes. So, to help an athlete do more is more complicated than helping someone who has lost 50% of her or his motor capacity. If you offer this impaired person 20% or 30%, they will be very happy. There is no doubt about this. Whereas for a soldier, it’s complicated even to bring her or him to 5% more. So, it’s really complicated. (Eng8FR: 81; my transl. from French) In this line of thought, one can agree with Malet, for whom “enhanced soldiers are at least as likely as enhanced athletes” (Malet 2015: 325), and any project (although partial) to “extend” enhancements and thus “enter the snail’s house” requires a careful assessment before it can actually be implemented. Soldierly phenomenologies of corporeal vulnerability: Embodiment variations That exoskeletons are needed in the worlds of war has become an almost obvious fact, acknowledged by both designers and users, although it is just as evident that needs and fulfilling those needs through the application and use of these technologies are still correlated in a fragile way. As in the worlds of working bodies or in rehabilitative environments, the individuality and specificity of soldiers’ bodies may represent a resource for technological innovation, helping designers to consider a variety of opportunities and qualities related to human bodies that have

A ble bodies 

169

above-average capabilities. They may thus contribute to body-based “creative transitions” (Shilling 2008: 76). Exoskeletons may indeed be considered technologies that are literally sourced from the corporeal experience of human bodies and are not only technologies about them. On the other hand, the diversity of bodies in combat represents an extreme challenge because it defies all the parties involved in these complex corporeal worlds. The difference with the worlds of impaired bodies and working bodies is that the world of bodies at fight encompasses the other two. That soldiers are likely to be injured (and killed) is the very first idea of what defines soldiering and fighting as long as armed forces engage human beings. This situation may perhaps change in the future, as the variety of projects in robotics indicates. However, except combat, working in and for the armed forces encompasses many other occupations, many of which exist in the civilian world. That is why the notion of exoskeletons in the armed forces concerns projects which are intended for both armed and unarmed activities. As one of the researchers working in a military infrastructure explained to me, Some professions in the armed forces have specific tasks which may be comparable to those in the civilian world. This does not concern all the tasks, only some of them […] For example, lifting weights, such as loading shells for battle tanks. A shell weights around thirty-five kilograms.12 And when you have to lift it, it’s not easy. So if you have an arm exoskeleton, which may help you carry such a task, then that’s great! (MiL4FR: 245; my transl. from French) Understanding bodies at war as sharing similarities with bodies at work in industrial environments expands and obviously complicates the realities and contingencies of the corporealities present in the world of the armed forces. Bodies at war therefore enlarge the wider family of “occupational bodies” that are being produced in the worlds of paid labor (Hockey 2009: 479), though in other forms. They also influence conceptions of injured bodies. Bodies at war are almost by definition bodies exposed to a variety of forms of violence, which further results in a multiplicity of forms of injury. To quote Elaine Scarry, “in participating in war, one participates not simply in an act of injuring, but in the activity of reciprocal injuring where the goal is to out-injure the opponent, while agreeing to a contest” (Scarry 1985: 63). Repairing injured bodies after such a “contest” is, at present, closely related to technological advances, a development in which medicine is correlated more and more to projects in the engineering sciences. One of the most intensively analyzed examples connecting advances in technology, impairment and military activities is the prosthesis. Before certain projects in this field were democratized, they were (and still are) carried out in relation to the military field, where they attempt to “trade” the image of human beings who are vulnerable for an image that portrays them as unassailable. In doing so, the aim is to protect “the good machine of military institutions” (MacLeish 2015: 5).

170  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

Some projects to repair the human bodies of soldiers are also imported in other fields and areas of civilian life, allowing ability possibilities to be reimagined. Certainly such projects remain related to political forms and representations of the reinvention of bodies, which seek, as Cassandra Crawford notes, “to secure the public’s confidence in the state, and to flaunt the technologic prowess of the military – its ability to destroy and to rebuild” (Crawford 2014: 206–207). As such, the corporeal phenomenologies of armed forces are deeply politicized. Exoskeletons exist at the junction between impairment and positive images of enhancement, along with other technological innovations like prostheses. The military field represents one of the catalyzers for blending the two. One of the intended aims of such a categorical shift in portraying human corporeality is liberation from “the physical constraints of disfigurement” (Crawford 2014: 206). The attempt to reinvest phenomenological categories in such a complex reality must therefore take into account the diversity of the experiential levels and instances involved in the socio-corporeal articulation of these ever-changing realities. Perhaps more obvious than in the other two corporeal worlds in which exoskeletons are implemented, the political implications have a stronger impact. Soldiers’ bodies are therefore at the juncture of a plurality of areas defining their skills, the re-skilling of one’s own body after injuries and further re-skilling due to the potential use and application of technological innovation. In addition to what the cited earlier engineer explained to me regarding the changes that human bodies undergo during a whole day in general, certain other specific nuances act to complexify the reality of bodies in combat. One of them is the possibility of their conversion into bodies at work or into impaired bodies. Interestingly, the fact that the bodies of persons who are directly engaged in operations are more exposed to injury than other bodies in the armed forces, which are kept at distance, brings the former closer to some of the perspectives that describe the difficulties experienced by people with impairments who are benefiting from rehabilitation with exoskeletons. Just as individuals with a spinal cord injury or stroke describe their bodies as being rendered unique by the type of injury they have,13 the bodies of many soldiers are also strongly individualized by their injury histories and their many traumas, parts of which may be objectively inscribed in their bodies. Bodies at war change during their careers due to their accumulation of traumatic experiences; these transformations turning them into specific corporeal sedimentations of vulnerability situations. Injuries are always situated, happening both outside (in a specific country, town or place) and within one’s own flesh. As Loic Wacquant notes in describing the general realities of our human bodies, our senses, suffering, and skills are not given at birth, generic, or constituted in a solipsistic relation to self. Rather, they are implanted, cultivated, and deployed over time through our engagement in the world, and they are gradually deposited in our body as the layered product of our varied individual and collective histories. (Wacquant 2015: 3–4)

A ble bodies 

171

The difference between and among the bodies of soldiers may consequently be the result of external circumstances. Bodies at war are a material product of warfare, which often means there are multiple facets of being injured; it also means a variety of responses to injuries. This particular relation to injuries and injuring shapes the soldier’s corporeal capital and individualizes it in relation to our general human vulnerability. Injuries are fleshy forms of memory which soldiers’ bodies keep for their lifetimes, sometimes in the form of scars or minor inabilities to properly perform a movement. Sometimes this is due to an amputated limb, but also due to psychological harm, which is extremely difficult to cure.14 These characteristics individualize specific corporeal phenomenologies, affirming an injury memory related to the memory of missions carried out in the field. Exoskeletons need to accommodate this memory, which soldiers’ bodies not only have but which they materially are. In the beginning of my fieldwork, I hardly thought that exoskeletons had anything to do with injured bodies in the military field. My initial assumption was that they help members of armed forces lift and carry more weight and for longer periods of time. They are sometimes associated with military armor, such as the project TALOS of DARPA I mentioned earlier, referred to as “smart armor” (Rubino 2016: 33). This connects the exoskeleton to other devices via software, and constantly informs the military command what is happening on the field during operations. I was therefore expecting to hear stories about an enchanting and enchanted object, which would radically transform combat and bodies in combat. The reality of my fieldwork, however, showed that what may seem to be a “simple” interaction between the human body and a technological object actually involves very difficult negotiations. As was explained to me in a group interview with three French officer cadets who had taken part in a test with a powered exoskeleton, besides the capabilities and skills one may have in the armed forces, the exoskeleton needs to respond to a sort of “corporeal patchwork,” which soldiers’ bodies gradually become over time. The phrase “corporeal patchwork” refers to the multiplicity of moments in which soldiers are injured, which are correlated with their being healed, or their recovery status.15 This alternation of being injured bodies, then (partly) healed ones, then possibly and probably injured again has obvious consequences for the concrete implementation of exoskeletons. Due to their proximity to the soldiers’ bodies, exoskeletons need to take the shape of each and every individual who wears them. They must thus respond to subjective motor parameters, including modifications to the body following injuries. This situation echoes the worlds of impaired bodies, in which no two spinal injuries or strokes are similar and no response to the exoskeleton of an impaired or injured body is like to any other. Acknowledging the reality of injuries challenges the image of bodies at war, which are often presented as being untouchable and invincible. Political infrastructures usually use images of immortal bodies. However, what the reality of soldiers’ bodies show is that exoskeletons need to preserve sheer human bodies, which are just as mortal and perishable as any other body. The explicit role of exoskeletons is to offer new forms

172  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

of embodiment while transforming vulnerabilities into capabilities. Exoskeletons in the military field shift onto the human body attributes that are common to the other two areas, namely rehabilitation and work: situationally and contextually, they redraw forms of “I cannot” into forms of “I can” while constantly aiming to remodel “kinesthetic grammars” (McSorley 2016: 8). One of the officer cadets I interviewed in France explained to me the following: What we see in the army is that the human body is overexploited. This is obvious. We know this from the moment when we enter the army. Although we all hope this won’t happen to any of us, our body will be gradually destroyed. It will become weaker; you will be injured. This is certain. It’s part of the job. We are all conscious of this. Some of us do better, but others don’t. Our bodies […] we are like movie actors in Hollywood movies. You may get sixty kilos for a movie, and then you lose weight. You are smiling [addressing me], but it is almost like this. And the technology needs to follow these changes in the body. If one takes the example of an exoskeleton which is individually tailored, my body may change in two months. Take, for example, a knight wearing armor. If you cannot get inside it, it has no value. […] Then, there is another detail we haven’t mentioned. And this is something frequent in the army and terrifies both doctors and physiotherapists. This is that often, after injuries, soldiers have compensatory movements. So one can see that you were injured. You may be still able to perform a certain movement, but you won’t do it like you used to, before the injury occurred. […] One can notice this when you shoot for example. […] And the exoskeleton needs to “understand” this. (MiL2FR: 291; 293; my transl. from French) As this excerpt cruelly highlights, warfare and its tasks happen inside human bodies, whereas exoskeletons “happen” outside them. These technologies face the challenge of being designed for highly specific dimension boundaries, often related to what is inside the soldiers’ bodies. They create boundaries that concern the lived body in its entirety, and not only the observable anatomical and physiological body that medical doctors, roboticists or physiotherapists describe, observe and often measure and regulate. One of the main challenges in implementing exoskeletons in warfare is therefore not represented by objective difficulties alone. These refer most often to the following parameters: the gadget’s autonomy in terms of its battery consumption; its flexibility and adaptability to a variety of terrains; its resistance to humidity; its potential use in wooded areas, where branches may be a problem, for example; its encumbrance due to extreme heat or cold, since metal parts may be conductive; its flexibility and malleability, which may often be a problem in using powered exoskeletons; and its required speed. The most difficult “part” in constructing exoskeletons, acknowledged by both the users I spoke with and by experts conducting projects in military technologies, always remains the human body, both in its materiality and in its “feeling like,” in other words, in its phenomenology. As officer cadet MiL2FR remarked further during our discussion:

A ble bodies 

173

I think that the most interesting “exoskeleton” is the human body; this is because it instinctively adapts to circumstances. And we spoke about this with the staff from the company who designed the exoskeleton we tested. It is extremely difficult to build up a machine, a robot, which may have the same complexity of movements that the human body has. And this was one of the problems we had during the test. There are people who walk with their legs slightly inwards or outwards; they move their arms in a specific manner [he shows me a movement]. It is this complexity which is difficult to get. The material is perhaps secondary, whether it is soft or hard. […] What we privilege is efficiency rather than comfort. (Mil2FR: 293) In a recent article, anthropologist Kenneth MacLeish describes the multiplicity of tensions that are responsible for violence and corporeal damage in military lifeworlds and notes the following: The soldier’s body is the equipment and raw material for war, the most necessary and most carefully managed component of the good machine, or even the good machine itself in its most indivisible, cellular form. The soldier is at once the agent, instrument, and object of state violence. He is coerced and empowered by discipline, made productive by being subject to countless minute and technical compulsions. […] he is the subject of extensive measures to protect and maintain life, to keep him alive and able to continue working, fighting, and killing effectively, a biopolitical subject not merely kept from dying but also made to live. (MacLeish 2014: 5–6) All of these levels converge and turn soldiers’ bodies into ever negotiable terrains of human capabilities. What is of note in the worlds of warfare is that violence to human bodies is explicitly expected, and technologies developed to closely accompany bodies in combat, like exoskeletons, need to respond to such parameters. Trying to understand why exoskeletons are being developed leads one gradually to the realization that projects extending human bodies for military purposes through technology are ineluctably connected to conceptions of fragile boundaries regarding what bodies are in general, what they should be and what they need to be while engaged by the specific tasks carried out in the worlds of war. As a research engineer told me when discussing the topic of human loss in warfare with respect to the example of the French Army, his position was at variance with the view expressed by MacLeish about how soldiers’ bodies are dealt with in the US Army (MacLeish 2014): There are moments in history when one needs to know that human lives are going to be sacrificed. But this doesn’t mean disrespecting human beings. I don’t know whether this view has changed. Much depends on who is in

174  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

command. I once read something written by a French officer during the 18th century; he said that military victory is great, but one shouldn’t forget that we need to avoid spilling human blood and should respect human beings by all means.16 (MiL4FR: 17; my transl. from French) In line with the description of the corporealities made by officer cadet MiL2FR, one could agree with Corner and Parry’s comment on Kevin McSorley’s edited volume War and the Body: Militarisation, Practice and Experience (2013) that exoskeletons may make it possible to inquire into “how not-so-stable militarised masculinities are actually felt and experienced, as somewhere between vulnerability and resilience, exhilaration and trauma” (Corner and Parry 2017: 6). More specifically, it opens up an opportunity to understand that, despite the many projects that are trying to remove human bodies from combat situations in the name of minimizing human losses, exoskeletons make bodies in combat present. They reassert their visibility and importance; they draw attention to the fact that, as long as warfare remains embodied by and in human beings, the instances deciding its exertion have a responsibility toward how these human bodies live their injuries, recover and return (if they do) to their warfare tasks. Like professionals in work environments, soldiers live corporeal grammars of doings and acting skills. And like professionals in working worlds, their bodies and their skills, their “physical capital” (Bourdieu 1978; Shilling 1993: 144), are in a process of constant evolution. The role of these novel technologies is to provide help first in guaranteeing the preservation of former bodily assemblages, and then possibly their amelioration, while adapting at best to each and every body they are supposed to accompany in concrete operations. The idea of “not-so-stable militarized masculinities” is a special aspect that exoskeletons may sometimes draw attention to, being one of the reasons why, as in some work environments characterized by masculine values, exoskeletons may be rejected.17 Although bodies at war may be often injured and repaired, they are still “dressed within” a code of invincibility and resistance, an image that exoskeletons need to confront. As one of the engineers I interviewed who was involved in a research project for an exoskeleton for the armed forces explained to me, the members of the armed forces will not openly tell you how they feel. A member of the armed forces will not tell you that they feel pain, for example. It’s a matter of pride. They want to show strength. […] For exoskeletons to be accepted, one needs these new generations, with new views of society. (Eng8FR: 81, 83) This obviously involves another type of understanding, one conceding that technologies do not work against bodies, but rather with them, and for which the gender-related aspects change.

A ble bodies 

175

It is in this multiplicity of realities, in which armed conflicts start to separate, that exoskeletons try to find their way, inventing human bodies and through them the representations and concrete parameters of further warscapes. Whether they will succeed in re-embodying soldiers’ bodies in new manners and thus expanding varieties of phenomenological corporealities, or will eventually be adopted, are still open questions. What is obvious for the time being is that they do not create hybrid killing machines, being challenged instead with basic reflexes such as merely walking. The factual body: Deconstructing Iron Man, reassessing augmentation Imagine soldiers having no physical limitations […] With the emphasis on technology in the battle space the human is rapidly becoming “the weakest link.” Soldiers having no physical, physiological, or cognitive limitations will be key to survival and operational dominance in the future […] Metabolically dominant warfighters of the future will be able to keep their cognitive abilities intact, while not sleeping for weeks […] And contemplate, for a moment, a world in which learning is as easy as eating, and the replacement of damaged body parts as convenient as a fast food drive-thru. As impossible as these visions sound or as difficult you might think the task would be, these visions are the everyday work of the Defense Sciences Office. (Goldblatt 2002, quoted in Malet 2015: 319) Reading these ideas of Dr Michael Goldblatt, former Director of Defense Sciences at DARPA, certainly unsettles one’s perceptions of the soldier’s corporeal realities. The association between soldiers’ bodies and the superheroes of popular culture is a deliberate choice, one that has a decisive impact on signification, especially when coming from political representatives. The whole discourse around and about augmentation secretly nourishes the image of an invulnerable body, which masks much of what the truth of bodies at war is, concealing their complex reality. In 2019, at WearRAcon Europe in Stuttgart, Serge Grygorowicz, CEO and technical director for R&D at RB3D, a French enterprise that collaborated with the French Army in developing an exoskeleton called Hercule18 (a device that was later redesigned for industrial use), titled the talk he gave on this occasion “From Iron Man to Reality.” During his presentation, he explained that, at the time of his talk, no exoskeleton was fulfilling the requirements soldiers need for combat. Accordingly, he called the exoskeleton a “phantasmagorical technology.” When I asked Grygorowicz to explain to me the difference between the specifics of exoskeletons for the armed forces and those for work environments, and describe the difficulties engineers face when being asked to develop these technologies for military environments, he said that in industry one usually only has one task to do. In his view, the exoskeleton is a tool, like many others. A worker will put it on, and she or he may just discard it when the task is finished. By contrast,

176  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

in the Army you cannot do that; you cannot leave the exoskeleton in the middle of the battlefield, one reason being also that an exoskeleton costs too much. One asks too much of the body of a soldier, much more than from the body of a worker, which is often destroyed by repetitive tasks. (November 2019, field notes: 1107) Hearing these comments completed what I learned from the officer cadets I interviewed in France, from other military staff from France, Germany and Switzerland and from experts in robotics, who either explicitly worked for the armed forces or knew about projects developed by them. In general, embodying technologies or objects guarantees that we can perform tasks with these technologies or objects, a condition which has been extensively analyzed and described in studies relying on concepts from phenomenology. As recent phenomenological studies claim, embodiment refers to our capacities to integrate objects into our body schemas, and thus include them in our “senses of agency” (Gallagher 2012). From the socio-anthropological perspective, embodiment is often associated with the development of techniques of the body as well as with a symbolic aspect.19 Embodying techniques of the body in the military world, and relying on steady repetition and improvement, shapes the specific forms of corporeality that constitute these bodyscapes (Hockey 2009; Lande 2007). Due to the high demands of their tasks, soldiers need to feel the technology as something foreign to their own bodies as little as possible. Indeed, for very small portions of movement and for specific activities, such as carrying loads for a few hours – an activity similar to what happens in industrial environments – exoskeletons may help soldiers’ bodies become less tired. They thus provide a protective function, rather than an explicitly augmentative one. Yet, if one needs to be operational for many hours in one day and under very demanding and suddenly changing activity conditions, whether in combat or unarmed use, they do not. In my fieldwork I learned that, before inquiring about prospective revolutionary technologies, one needs to understand the many aspects and concrete situations in which soldiers need to be active in order to respond to what it is expected from them. Above all, one needs to concede that, for the time being, bodies and machines do not overlap in terms of complexity, reactions, movement repertoires, and, crucially on the battlefield, fast decisions and thus intentional complexity. Much about what happens during operations carried out on the ground, where exoskeletons seek to find a proper use, involves rapid decisions. And rapid decisions involve rapid movements of one’s own body, which are necessary to prevent one’s own death. Soldiers need to adapt and improvise fast, requirements that the exoskeleton models proposed at present do not meet. Before implementing such gadgets, it is necessary to understand the users’ perspective, which in the military field is perhaps the most complicated. As Brian Lande notes, “what takes place in the military is an extreme form of how social life is conducted everywhere” (Lande 2007: 97). The attribute “extreme” separates the world of wars from other corporeal worlds, bringing forth forms of excess activity for which soldiers’ bodies are

A ble bodies 

177

actually trained. The variety of forms of pressure, constant physical and psychological fatigue, and quick responses in unknown and fast-changing environments (factors that imply a strong solicitation of one’s attention) were often mentioned in the various informal discussions I had with people in the orbit of or being directly a part of the worlds of war. And they impact the possibility of concretely implementing exoskeletons and currently producing any “Iron Man,” “Robocop” or (to use another cultural trope, which is also part national marker) “Captain America.” Having noted these details, my fieldwork does not completely erase the category of augmentation. On the contrary, it renders it present, yet in its factual rather than its fictional consistency. The soldiers’ experiences are not against using exoskeletons, although what they actually mean while describing their experiences of and about these sorts of device refers rather to the category of “assistance” than to “augmentation.” Basically, soldiers carry their equipment without help. Where exoskeletons may aid them is in lowering the pressure on the human body, and thus in the long term reducing damage and injury to it following these types of activities. Thus, the use of exoskeletons during operations is accepted, since nothing speaks against integrating technologies which may help soldiers’ bodies perform actions with fewer encumberments. As one of the officer cadets told me, regarding the possibilities of exoskeleton use in military environments, we thought that a precise use could be viable. In some situations, the exoskeleton can be a tool, like other “tools.” According to the situation, you may change, for example, your protective vest, you may adapt your helmet, or the weapons you are carrying. What we might possibly imagine are infantry combat in which you have an exoskeleton. If the infantrymen know they will be going up a mountain for fifteen kilometers, they may put on an exoskeleton, they may take off the battery, then the exoskeleton charges. They go up the mountain, and when they come back, there is a vehicle waiting for them at this or that hour, and they take off their exoskeleton because they don’t need it. […] The exoskeleton is a technology which may be used as a tool in specific situations. […] One may ask the question whether one day we will be able to develop a machine – I personally doubt it – capable of adapting to all the situations in which you will be. […] What we think is that the human body is still the tool for jumping out of a plane, going in water, getting down out of a mountain, arriving in a desert. I would rather trust the human body than a machine, which in theory may respond to everything, but when you happen to be in mud, it may not risk following you. (MiL2FR: 230; my transl. from French) This perspective disenchants the image of these gadgets, so often associated with fictional characters, while unconsciously seeking to propose a perspective of enhanced human bodies that are presented as indestructible. Before an exoskeleton test, the expectation of the cadets themselves was influenced by the fictional imaginary because one of them explicitly affirmed that “we imagined we would

178  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

be like Iron Man” (MiL2FR: 249; my transl. from French). Such an attitude was expressed in terms of needs by one research engineer participating in the same group interview with the cadets but also in terms of the image of a warrior who becomes invulnerable due to his armor (MiL4FR: 250). The discourse on the effective existence of such models as “Iron Man” gravitates more around possibilities than actual concrete results. Because such enhanced bodies persist in a collective imaginary, the reality of soldiers’ bodies is biased. Understanding “deviant” bodies in terms of “extended/augmented” bodies in current warscapes involved a simultaneous charting of the worlds in which these bodies were defined by the technological object with which they were supposed to collaborate. And perhaps more importantly, what was at stake was whether, for the time being, they were defined at all by the technological object that was intended to enhance some of their capabilities. Since, unlike the corporeal worlds of persons with impairments, where demands and needs are radically different, in the worlds of bodies at war, whether they are conceived for armed or unarmed purposes, exoskeletons remain a strong challenge. As was explained to me at a fair-trade show by a commercial from a company designing and marketing exoskeletons that had expertise in both industrial and military technologies, The level of exigence in the Army is very high. Because if, for example, you are on the battlefield, you don’t need to be encumbered by your exoskeleton. If you have to leave quickly for whatever reason, you won’t have even five minutes to remove your exoskeleton. This is one restriction. Second, take those exoskeletons which are not designed for the battlefield, and which are used at the back for logistics to carry ammunition boxes, for example. It’s the same problem. You still need a light machine which is easy to use, which you can easily transport in a truck, which you can put on in thirty seconds, and then take it off in thirty seconds. And although this type of use is less demanding than for the battlefield, it is still problematic. It is always the user who is at the center. We keep asking ourselves how we shouldn’t hinder the operator, while bringing him or her the maximum of assistance and comfort. And this is a challenge. (Manag3FR: 14; my transl. from French) It is a challenge reinforced by a general characteristic of the worlds of war: rapidity. Soldiers are active in a reality of “acceleration” (Rosa 2013). Still, some projects, more specifically those carried out in the United States, strive not to remove possibilities of augmentation, although augmentation as a process goes far beyond developments in robotics. As David Mallet notes in opposing the words of Dr Michael Goldblatt with which I started my discussion, while the exploits of superhero-like “metabolically dominant warfighters” may be more of a concern for moviegoers than military strategists today, biotechnologies are already being deployed to give the United States unprecedented

A ble bodies 

179

strategic military advantage, and the effort and the billions of dollars of public funds invested in the furtherance of their creation merit examination. (Malet 2015: 320) In line with these thoughts, augmentation and the search for “Iron Men” or “Robocops” remain openly acknowledged projects going beyond the example of the exoskeleton. Augmentation expectations are real, and generally the whole conception of soldiering relies on a variety of forms of augmentation: bodily, cognitive and psychological. As Kenneth MacLeish notes, the army seeks to produce “anesthetic subjects” “whose effectiveness derives specifically from their ability to ignore pain and discomfort and to make themselves ‘impervious to … sensegiving information of danger’” (MacLeish 2012: 56). However, this description really refers to an ideal-type body, since what the reality of the field, and more particularly of the battlefield, shows is that, despite hard training and above-average performance, soldiers are still injured and still die in operations. Augmentation conceived in terms of body management and, in the context of the military field, as an explicit form of body politics where bodies are disciplined and controlled (Foucault 1977) remains a highly factual parameter. In addition to the constant exercising which maintains physical and cognitive conditions above the average, and which is achieved through repetitive techniques and technologies of the body, the soldier’s body follows a constant logic of extension. This implies soldiers attaining proficiency in using a variety of weapons and thus building technological literacy. Besides the very corporeality of those who seem to be the primary reservoir for the military institution, combat relies heavily on a variety of technologies. Thus, the bodies of soldiers not only need to endure and stand, they also need to develop the competence to handle the variety of current technologies that shape the materiality and complexity of armed conflicts. It is this area that exoskeletons are designed to join. A general fact observed with respect to the realities of bodies in combat is that, as long as one remains operational as a soldier, one’s own body is constantly in the making. The purpose is both to preserve the acquired capacities and to make them better. This is in part because, if no augmentation is sought, it would be difficult to justify the development of any defense technologies, or of those types of training that mostly aim to transform soldiers’ bodies into bodies that are above average. Augmentation is a category for describing soldiers’ bodies because this is what demarcates them from civilian bodies, with some exceptions. These exceptions may include, for example, sportswomen and sportsmen or people who deliberately choose to engage in body building (Monaghan 2001) or take substances to enhance their cognitive capacities (Thoër & Robitaille 2011; Wagner 2019). Soldiers’ bodies need to endure, withstand difficult conditions and, especially, withstand exposure to constant violence and be prepared both mentally and physically to exert violence upon other bodies. Being confronted directly with death is perhaps the most extreme requirement for one’s body and also for one’s mind, since many soldiers suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These aspects separate the soldierly bodily

180  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds

capital from, for example, capital that one may identify in forms of paid labor, where there may be features in common. In some cases, for bodies at work, physical effort that is too steady may be required, thus engaging one’s body in forms of violence. One of the reasons exoskeletons are developed for the world of working bodies lies in part in this motivation. However, if bodies in enterprises are confronted with physical strain, and thus engaged in forms of violence, they remain less explicit than those forms of violence with which soldiers’ bodies are confronted. Accordingly, one of the purposes sought in the training of the armed forces is to produce bodies that have power over others through their endurance and performance, like tools. As by the officer cadets I interviewed explained to me, in armed forces the bodies of soldiers are understood as a “tool”: “when they [the army] use the expression ‘military tool,’ they mean, using inverted commas that we [the soldiers] are a ‘tool’” (MiL1FR: 300); “We are an executive tool” (MiLFR2: 303; my transl. from French), and thus combat tools. I do not use the term “alienation” with respect to the human body, as MacLeish does when discussing the impact of soldiers’ training, and thus its “tool”-ification. Despite the fact that such a goal may be put forward by a military institution, the very fact that fatigue is constantly present (to take but one frequently discussed problem for soldiers during operations) shows exactly that operational weaknesses exist. Thus, alienation is not an achieved corporeal state but is rather like the category of the “anesthetic subject” correlated with an ideal-type body. Another detail that plays a crucial role in the construction of augmentation levels for bodies at war is how soldiers’ bodies are perceived. This refers not only to how they are constantly worked upon, or transformed, while seeking to fight forms of invulnerability. Just as important is how the concrete result, and more specifically the perception of the soldier’s body by the enemy as augmented, may influence the course of combat. Armed conflicts are also carried out at perceptible levels. As military staff explained to me, discouraging one’s adversary is partly a matter of how one’s soldierly body is perceived. As in scenes of everyday life (Goffman 1959), first impressions are very important on the battlefield, and they may play a crucial role in the battle’s trajectory. Visible technologies used for combat are intended to provoke fear. To perceive “Iron Man,” the fictional super-hero, destabilizes reality, precisely because the fictional character is known to be invincible, and this perception may influence the result of the fight. In direct confrontation during ground combat, if they are eventually introduced and used, exoskeletons may have a significant impact: There is a psychological aspect regarding the use of the exoskeleton. In all cultures, the armor of the knight, regardless if it’s the Romans, or the Japanese, it was always meant to be threatening. Of course, the main function is to protect. But besides this, the person in front of me may feel afraid or feel intimidated because he sees that I have an advantage. I have a psychological advantage, which means, for example, that my sword strike is stronger. It’s the same for the exoskeleton. […] If you see an exoskeleton, the person that you see

A ble bodies 

181

resembles Robocop. I am a soldier, I am tired, and I see in front of me a sort of human-machine thing coming towards me. Psychologically, I will feel completely intimidated by that person. So if you don’t have an exoskeleton, you are at disadvantage” (MiL2FR: 309). “It has both an impact on the appearance, but also on the performance” (MiL3FR: 310). And yet, if technologies are developed for either military or civilian purposes, they implicitly shift the boundaries of both capability and incapability for their users, and in doing so they also redraw new forms of vulnerability. To the outside observer, weapons and armor signify soldiers’ invulnerability and lethal capacity. But for soldiers these objects are material, bodily environments through which they understand their vulnerability to violence just as much as their ability to produce and withstand it. (MacLeish 2012: 52) These objects change how soldiers are wounded, and sometimes killed, as Steve Kurzman noted some time ago in his discussion of the Interceptor body armor used in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by the US Army (Kurzman 2007: 169). As a consequence, augmentation is a constant process, one that remains crucial for the very conception of the military world. It may revolve on the one hand concretely around the material reality of the human body, and on the other hand around the ever-growing number of technologies. Their very possession and potential use allow military superiority, which is why, in cases of emerging technologies, a certain race may be engaged. The variety of projects and companies attempting to develop exoskeletons may be correlated with such developments. However, any concrete project that attempts to reach the efficiency of the fictional Iron Man and Robocop remains far from any current reality on the battlefield. Notes 1 I include military operations in the category of “work.” 2 This vision often characterizes images advanced in and by the armed forces. See, for example, the program “Le soldat augmenté” of the French armed forces: de Boisboissel, G. & Le Masson, J. (2017). Le programme de recherche sur le soldat augmenté. Revue Défense Nationale, H-, 17–20. https://doi​.org​/10​.3917​/rdna​.hs03​.0017 (accessed 17.01.2022). See also the description of the program on the site of the Military School Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan: https://www​.st​-cyr​.terre​.defense​.gouv​.fr​/index​.php​/crec​/Centre​ -de​-recherche​-de​-ecoles​-de​-Saint​-Cyr​-Coetquidan​/Menu​-Principal​/Programmes​/Le​ -soldat​-augmente (accessed 17.01.2022). 3 In line with this terminological choice, I will translate the French verb “incorporer,” from the interviews I conducted in French, into the English “to embody.” 4 “One size does not fit all” is part of the title of the special session 9 (SS9), organized by Michela Goffredo, biomedical engineer at Neurorehabilitation Research Laboratory, IRCCS San Raffaele Pisana, Rome (Italy), at the International Conference

182  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds on Neurorehabilitation (ICNR) 2020. Retrieved from http://www​.icnr2020​.org​/special​ -sessions​-2/ (accessed 01/12/2020). 5 I do not use this category as Pierre Bourdieu does in his classical study, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984). Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press. My understanding of distinction in my study refers to a culture of body practices, which individualizes one profession or type of labor from others. 6 Since 2015 the Centre de Recherche des Ecoles de Saint-Cyr Coëtquidan (CREC) organizes regular symposiums and conferences on the more general topic of the “enhanced soldier” (Le soldat augmenté) from an interdisciplinary perspective. See https://www​.st​-cyr​.terre​.defense​.gouv​.fr​/index​.php​/crec​/Centre​-de​-recherche​-des​ -ecoles​-de​-Saint​-Cyr​-Coetquidan​/Menu​-Principal​/Programmes​/Le​-soldat​-augmente (accessed 18/12/2020). 7 Some sociologists such as John Hockey identify the activities carried out by military staff in terms of “work” (Hockey 2009), a categorization that is not always accepted. Some experts I met and with whom I discussed the two situations of exoskeleton use for able bodies in industry and military applications explicitly rejected the association of soldiers’ tasks on the battlefield with what is traditionally understood as “paid labor” or “work.” 8 For example, the United States armed forces have had, since 2019, a new branch: the United States Space Force: https://www​.spaceforce​.mil/ (accessed 21/12/2020). A similar branch has also come into existence recently in the French armed forces, where in 2020 the former French Air Force was renamed the French Air and Space Force: https://www​.defense​.gouv​.fr​/air (accessed 21/12/2020). 9 Proximity technologies in the worlds of war cover a wide range of objects that soldiers need to carry with them during military operations, and their weight is one of the problems that exoskeletons are intended to help overcome. 10 NATO defines Special Operation Forces (SOF) as those that “are executing critical missions from direct action to situational awareness to training in today’s complex international security environment.” Retrieved from https://www​.nato​-pa​.int​/download​-file​?filename​=sites​/default​/files​/2018​-04​/2018​%20-​%20NATO​%20SPECIAL​ %20OPERATIONS​%20FORCES​%20-​%20DRAFT​%20REPORT​%20MOON​%20-​ %20064​%20DSCFC​%2018​%20E​.pdf (accessed 23/12/2020). 11 See, for example, Committee on Opportunities in Biotechnology for Future Army Applications, 2001. Retrieved from https://www​.nap​.edu​/read​/10142​/chapter​/4​#15. “As a measure of the importance of biomimesis, the Army has declared biomimetics one of its Strategic Research Objectives (primary focus areas for basic research). The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has investigated the behavior of insects and other animals in research for the Department of Defense (DOD) (Rudolph, 2000). The principles of design, biosynthesis, and structure-property correlations in ‘living’ materials and systems will be very important in determining new military applications of biotechnology. Thinking in terms of biological systems may not only provide solutions to specific problems, but may also provide clues to future opportunities” (accessed 24/12/2020). 12 The shell being referred to in this interview concerns the French armed forces’ Leclerc tank. 13 I have discussed this aspect in Chapter 4 of this study. 14 In a widely quoted study on the US Armed Forces, Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community (2013), the anthropologist Kenneth MacLeish openly discusses the difficulties regarding how many American soldiers who had been confronted with extremely violent situations had to recover both mentally and physically. Fort Hood is one of the largest military sites, which, as MacLeish describes, “may contain the greatest concentration of people directly involved in the production of

A ble bodies 

183

US military force outside of Iraq, Kuwait, and Afghanistan.” Many soldiers on operations in these countries developed, for example, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI), afflictions that raise many challenges for both soldiers and the medical staff in charge of treating them. 15 The concept of “patchwork warriors” is discussed by P. Moss and M.J. Prince (2014) in their study Weary Warriors: Power, Knowledge and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers. New York; Oxford: Berghahn. 16 Later on, MiL4FR corrected this information, specifying to me that actually, the “officer” in question was King Louis XV, who warned his son, Dauphin Louis, not to rejoice too fast after winning a battle. The quote in French goes as follows: “Voyez ce qu'il en coûte à un bon cœur de remporter des victoires. Le sang de nos ennemis est toujours le sang des hommes. La vraie gloire est de l'épargner.” 17 In a recent article, Brigadier General Linell A. Letendre (2016) mentioned the use of exoskeletons, as well as other robotic technologies, for females engaged in warfare. Such technologies, in her view, “impact on the physical requirements necessary for ground combat forces. The combination of robotic-enabled enhancements of a soldier’s physical capabilities with lighter combat gear and robotic mules will quickly level the physical capability gap between men and women” (Letendre 2016: 98). 18 See a model of the exoskeleton Hercule, which is currently being marketed only for work and industry: https://exoskeletonreport​.com​/product​/hercule/ (accessed 30/12/2020). 19 I have discussed the difference between “embodiment” and “incorporation” in the introductory chapter to this study.

References Anam, K., & Al-Jumaily, A. A. (2012). Active exoskeleton control system: State of the art. Procedia Engineering, 41, 988–994. Appadurai, A. (1986). Introduction: Commodities and the politics of value. In A. Appadurai (Ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (pp. 3–63). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bahnisch, M. (2000). Embodied work, divided labour: Subjectivity and the scientific management of the body in Frederick W. Taylor’s 1907 ‘lecture on management’. Body & Society, 6(1), 51–68. Bellaby, P. (1990). To risk or not to risk? Uses and limitations of Mary Douglas on riskacceptability for understanding health and safety at work and road accidents. Sociological Review, 38(3), 465–483. Black, D. (2014a). Embodiment and Mechanisation: Reciprocal Understandings of Body and Machine from the Renaissance to the Present. Farnham: Ashgate. Black, D. (2014b). Where bodies end and artefacts begin: Tools, machines and interfaces. Body & Society, 20(1), 31–60. Bourdieu, P. (1978). Sport and social class. Social Science Information, 17(6), 819–840. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. J. (1992). An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brauer, F. (2003). Representing ‘Le moteur humain’: Chronometry, chronophotography, ‘the art of work’ and the ‘taylored’ body. Visual Resources, 19(2), 83–105. Brown, E. (2002). The prosthetics of management: Motion study, photography, and the industrialized body in World War I America. In K. Ott, D. Serlin & S. Mihm (Eds.),

184  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (pp. 249–281). New York; London: New York University Press. Campbell, F. K. (2001). Inciting legal fictions: Disability’s date with ontology and the ableist body of the law. Griffith Law Review, 10(1), 42–62. Campbell, F. K. (2019). Precision ableism: Studies in ableism approach to developing histories of disability and Abledment. Rethinking History, 23(2), 138–156. Chamayou, G. (2015). A Theory of the Drone. New York; London: The New Press. Coeckelbergh, M. (2017). New Romantic Cyborgs: Romanticism, Information Technology, and the End of the Machine. Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Collinson, D. (2003). Identities and insecurities: Selves at work. Organization, 10(3), 527–547. Cooper, N., & Hurcombe, M. (2008). The body at War: Wounds, wounding and the wounded. Journal of War and Culture Studies, 1(2), 119–121. Corner, J., & Parry, K. (2017). The media and the military. Media, Culture and Society, 39(1), 3–10. Costargent, D. (2018). Vers une armée 4.0? Revue Defense Nationale, 5(5), 30–34. Crawford, C. S. (2014). Phantom Limb: Amputation, Embodiment, and Prosthetic Technology. New York; London: New York University Press. Crossley, N. (2006). Reflexive Embodiment in Contemporary Society. New York: Open University Press. Csordas, T. J. (1993). Somatic modes of attention. Cultural Anthropology, 8(2), 135–156. De Boisboissel, G. (2020). Definition and characterization of soldier performance enhancement. In G. De Boisboissel & M. Revue (Eds.), Enhancing Soldiers. A European Ethical Approach (pp. 7–15). Paris: CREC & Euroisme. De Boisboissel, G., & Le Masson, J. (2017). Le programme de recherche sur le soldat augmenté. Revue Défense Nationale, HS1: 17–20. Retrieved from: https://doi​.org​/10​ .3917​/rdna​.hs03​.0017 (accessed 17/01/2022). Derksen, M. (2017). Histories of Human Engineering: Tact and Technology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dolezal, L. (2020). Disability as malleability: The prosthetic metaphor, Merleau-Ponty and the case of Aimee Mullins. In D. Butnaru (Ed.), Medial Bodies. Between Fiction and Faction: Reinventing Corporeality (pp. 125–146). Bielefeld: Transcript. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Tavistock. Fox, N. J. (2012). The Body. Cambridge; Malden: Polity Press. Frank, A. W. (1995). The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Freund, P. E. S. (1982). The Civilized Body. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Gallagher, S. (2012). Phenomenology. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave. Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2008). The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction of Mind and Cognitive Science. New York: Routledge. Garcia, E., Sater, J. M., & Main, J. (2002). Exoskeletons for human performance augmentation (EHPA): A program summary. Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, 20(8), 822–826. Giddens, A. (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gimlin, D. (2007). What is “body work”? A review of the literature. Sociology Compass, 1(1), 353–370. Goffette, J. (2007). Naissance de l’anthropotechnie. Paris: Vrin.

A ble bodies 

185

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Goffredo, M. (2020). One size does not fit all: New approaches for a patient-tailored rehabilitation process. In International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe. 14–16/10/2020. Gugutzer, R. (2017). Leib und Situation: Zum Theorie- und Forschungsprogramm der Neophänomenologischen Soziologie. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 3(3), 147–166. Gusterson, H. (2016). Drone: Remote Control Warfare. London: MIT Press. Haraway, D. J. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In D. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149–182). New York: Routledge. Hichert, M., Güttes, M., Bäuerle, I., Ziegenspeck, N., Bölke, N., & Schiebl, J. (2020). Exoskeletons for military logistics and maintenance. Paper Presented in Session WeR13 Exoskeletons for Military Applications at International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR 2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe. 13–16/10/2020. Hockey, J. (2009). ‘Switch on’: Sensory work in the infantry. Work, Employment and Society, 23(3), 477–493. Hockey, J., & Allen-Collinson, J. (2009). The sensorium at work: The sensory phenomenology of the working body. Sociological Review, 57(2), 217–239. Horowitz, C. M. (2020). Do emerging military technologies matter for international politics? Annual Review of Political Science, 23(1), 385–400. Jasanoff, S. (2015). Imagined and invented worlds. In S. Jasanoff & S. H. Kim (Eds.), Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power (pp. 321–343). Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S. H. (2015). Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press. Johannessen, J. A. (2019). The Workplace of the Future: The Fourth Industrial Revolution, the Precariat and the Death of Hierarchies. London; New York: Routledge. Kazerooni, H. (2008). Exoskeletons for human performance augmentation. In B. Siciliano & O. Kathib (Eds.), Springer Handbook of Robotics (pp. 773–793). Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer. Klabunde, J., Linnenberg, C., & Weidner, R. (2020). Exoskeletons for unarmed military use: Requirements and approaches to support human movements. Using the example of protection against unknown CBRN dangers. Paper presented at International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe. 14-16/10/2020. Knights, D., & Willmott, H. (1989). Power and subjectivity at work: From degradation to subjugation in social relations. Sociology, 23(4), 535–558. Krieg, A., & Rickli, J. M. (2018). Surrogate Warfare: The Art of War in the 21st Century? Defence Studies, 18(2), 113–130. Kurzman, S. (2007). Hillbilly armor and C-legs: Technologies and bodies at War. In N. Chen & H. Moglen (Eds.), Bodies in the Making (pp. 164–178). Santa Cruz: North Atlantic. Lande, B. (2007). Breathing like a soldier: Culture incarnate. Sociological Review, 55(1), 95–108. Letendre, L. A. (2016). Women warriors: Why the robotics revolution changes the combat equation. Prism, 6(1), 90–103.

186  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds Lupton, D. (2013). Quantifying the body: Monitoring and measuring health in the age of health technologies. Critical Public Health, 23(4), 393–403. MacLeish, K. T. (2012). Armor and anesthesia: Exposure, feeling, and the soldier’s body. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 26(1), 49–68. MacLeish, K. T. (2013). Making War at Fort Hood: Life and Uncertainty in a Military Community. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. MacLeish, K. T. (2014). The ethnography of good machines. Critical Military Studies, DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2014.973680 MacLeish, K. T. (2015). The ethnography of good machines. Critical Military Studies, 1(1), 11–22. Malacrida, C., & Low, J. (Eds.) (2008). Sociology of the Body: A Reader. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Malafouris, L. (2013). How Things Shape the Mind: A Theory of Material Engagement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Malet, D. (2015). Captain America in international relations: The biotech revolution in military affairs. Defence Studies, 15(4), 320–340. Marino, M. (2020). The skillful art of fitting exoskeletons [plenary talk]. In International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2020), International Symposium on Wearable Robotics (WeRob2020) and WearRAcon Europe. 14–16/10/2020. Marx, K. (1980). Marx’s grundrisse (2nd ed.) D. McLellan (Ed.). London: Macmillan. Mast, J. (2019). Handling Loads Sustainably and Productively. Paper presented at WearRacon Europe, Fraunhofer IPA: University of Stuttgart. 19-20/11/2019. Maynié, L.-J. Capt. French Army (2021). The enhanced solider: Part 5. Enhancing the combatant: Requirements based on battlefield experience. Military Review Online. Retrieved from https://www​.armyupress​.army​.mil​/Journals​/Military​-Review​/Online​ -Exclusive​/2021​-French​-OLE​/Part​-5​-Combatant/ (accessed 22/12/2020). McKinlay, A., & Starkey, K. (1998). Managing Foucault: Foucault, management and organization theory. In A. McKinlay & K. Starkey (Eds.), Foucault, Management and Organization Theory: From Panopticon to Technologies of Self (pp. 1–13). London: Sage. McSorley, K. (2013). War and the Body: Militarisation, Practice and Experience. London; New York: Routledge. McSorley, K. (2014). Towards an embodied sociology of War. Sociological Review, 62(2_ suppl), 107–128. McSorley, K. (2016). Doing military fitness: Physical culture, civilian leisure, and militarism. Critical Military Studies, 2(1–2), 103–119. McSorley, K. (2019). Predatory war, drones and torture. Body & Society, 25(3), 73–99. Mensch, J. R. (2009). Embodiments: From the Body to the Body Politic. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Meyer, U. (2019). The emergence of an envisioned future: Sensemaking in the case of “industrie 4.0” in Germany. Futures, 109, 130–141. Meyer, U., Schaupp, S., & Seibt, D. (2019). Digitalization in Industry: Between Domination and Emancipation. London; New York: Palgrave. Miele, F., & Tirabeni, L. (2020). Digital technologies and power dynamics in the organization: A conceptual review of remote working and wearable technologies at work. Sociology Compass, 14(6), 1–13. Monaghan, L. (2001). Body-building, Drugs and Risk. London: Routledge. Moss, P., & Prince, M. J. (2014). Weary Warriors. Power, Knowledge and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers. New York & Oxford: Berghahn.

A ble bodies 

187

Nichols, T. (1997). The Sociology of Industrial Injury. London: Mansell. Nichols, T. (1999). Death and injury at work: A sociological approach. In N. Daykin & L. Doyal (Eds.), Health and Work: Critical Perspectives (pp. 86–106). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. O'Neill, C. (2017). Taylorism, the European science of work, and the quantified self at work. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 42(4), 600–621. Ott, K. (2002). The sum of its parts: An introduction to modern histories of prosthetics. In K. Ott, D. Serlin & S. Mihm (Eds.), Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (pp. 1–44). New York: New York University Press. Perkins, D. G. Gen. US Army (2017). Multi-domain battle: The Advent of twenty-first Century War. Military Review, 97(6), 8–13. Pretorius, J. (2008). The technological culture of War. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 28(4), 299–305. Riverasaenz, J. Sgt, Maj. US Army (2019). Technology and Warfare: Concepts and Integration. NCO Journal Retrieved from https://www​.armyupress​.army​.mil​/Portals​/7​/ nco​-journal​/docs​/2019​/June​/technology​-and​-warfare​.pdf (accessed 28/12/2020). Rosa, H. (2013). Beschleunigung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Roussel, A. Capt. French Army (2021). Historical study on the evolution of the Infantryman’s personal equipment. Military Review Online. Retrieved from https://www​.armyupress​ .army ​ . mil ​ / Journals ​ / Military ​ - Review ​ / Online ​ - Exclusive​ / 2021​ - French​ - OLE​ / Part​ - 3​ -Equipment/ (accessed 22.12.2020). Rubino, J.-T. Capt. (TA) French Army (2016). Le soldat augmenté: Concept et réalité opérationnelle. Défense & Sécurité Internationale, 45, 32–35. Scarry, E. (1985). The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schutz, A. (1970). Reflections on the Problem of Relevance. New Haven; London: Yale University Press. Seibt, D., Schaupp, S., & Meyer, U. (2019). Toward an analytical understanding of domination and emancipation in digitalizing industries. In U. Meyer, S. Schaupp & D. Seibt (Eds.), Digitalization in Industry (pp. 1–25). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https:// doi​.org​/10​.1007​/978​-3​-030​-28258​-5​_1. Shilling, C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. Shilling, C. (2005). The Body in Technology, Culture and Society. London: Sage. Shilling, C. (2008). Changing Bodies: Habit, Crisis and Creativity. London: Sage. Shilling, C. (2016). The rise of body studies and the embodiment of society: A review of the field. Horizons in Humanities and Social Sciences, 2(1), 1–14. Sobchak, V. (2006). A leg to stand on: Prosthetics, metaphor, and materiality. In M. Smith & J. Morra (Eds.), The Prosthetic Impulse (pp. 17–41). Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Stahl, R. (2013). What the drone saw: The cultural optics of the unmanned War. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 67(5), 659–674. Stirling, L., Siu, H. C., Jones, E., & Duda, K. (2018). Human factors considerations for enabling functional use of exosystems in operational environments. IEEE Systems Journal, 13(1), 1072–1083. https://doi​.org​/10​.1109​/JSYST​.2018​.2821689. Sugar, T. (2019). Exoskeleton research at Arizona State University. Keynote talk at WearRAcon Europe, Fraunhofer IPA & University of Stuttgart. 19–20/11/2019. Synnott, A. (1993). The Body Social: Symbolism, Self and Society. London: Routledge. Tamari, T. (2017). Body image and prosthetic aesthetics: Disability, technology and paralympic culture. Body & Society, 23(2), 25–56.

188  Exoskeletons and their corporeal worlds Thoër, C., & Robitaille, M. (2011). Utiliser des médicaments stimulants pour améliorer sa performance: Usages et discours de jeunes adultes québécois. Drogues, Santé et Société, 10(2), 143–183. Torricelli, D. (2019). Paper presented at WearRAcon Europe, Fraunhofer IPA & University of Stuttgart. 19–20/11/2019. Turkle, S. (2010). In Good company?: On the threshold of robotic companions. In Y. Wilks (Ed.), Close Engagements with Artificial Companions (pp. 3–10). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Turner, B. S. (1984). The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage. Turner, B. S. (2006). Vulnerability and Human Rights. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Van Gennep, A. ([1908] 1960). The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vigarello, G. (2020). Histoire de la fatigue: Du Moyen Âge à nos jours. Paris: Seuil. Wacquant, L. (2015). For a sociology of flesh and blood. Qualitative Sociology, 38(1), 1–11. Waddell, G. (2004). The Back Pain Revolution (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone. Wagner, G. (2019). Neuroenhancement und Authentizität. Paper presentation. Conference: Somatechnische Sozialitäten, Universität Konstanz. 28–29/11/2019. Wajcman, J. (2019). The digital architecture of time management. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 44(2), 315–337. Weeks, K. (2011). The Problem with the Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Wilcox, L. (2015). Drone warfare and the making of bodies out of place. Critical Studies on Security, 3(1), 127–131. Wolkowitz, C. (2002). The social relations of body work. Work, Employment and Society, 16(3), 497–510. Wolkowitz, C. (2006). Bodies at Work. London: Sage Woodward, K. (1999). From virtual cyborgs to biological time bombs: Technocriticism and the material body. In J. Wolmark (Ed.), Cybersexualities: A Reader in Feminist Theory, Cyborgs and Cyberspace (pp. 280–294). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Woolgar, S. (2002). Five rules of virtuality. In S. Woolgar (Ed.), Virtual Society? Technology, Cyberbole, Reality (pp. 1–22). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zahavi, D. (2005). Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-person Perspective. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Ziewitz, M. (2016). Governing algorithms: Myth, mess, and methods. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 41(1), 3–16.

Part III

What exoskeletons do to the body Advancing corporealities

Introduction That exoskeletons are making important contributions in advancing new realities of the body is an obvious detail that results from the three fields for which these devices are concretely developed. The following chapters will take you through the most important attributes joining the three corporeal worlds forged by exoskeletal devices. As Steve Woolgar, one of the defenders of the semiotic approach in STS remarked, machines attempt to configure their users (Woolgar 1991: 61), a view defended by Madeleine Akrich (Akrich 1992) as well and granting an obvious prominence to the designers and their representations of technologies, while minimizing the role users have in developing technological objects. Corporeal worlds shaped by exoskeletons are precisely corporeal because users’ experiences holding a decisive role are central. The particularity of exoskeletons is that they are centered around human bodies. Without these bodies, regardless of their abilities and the contexts where they often need to fulfill specific tasks, exoskeletons would remain unfulfilled projects. They are thus deeply correlated with contextualized corporealities and contribute to a further view of how “human agents routinely produce both themselves and their machines as part human and part machine” (Downey, Dumit, Williams 1995: 267). In each such situated and contextualized case, their role is to accompany performances. They literally shape them, while also shaping new capability repertoires. Doubtlessly, in some fields, such as rehabilitation, exoskeletons present a much wider sense of promise, a series of benefits that are definitely unprecedented within the history of conditions such as spinal cord injury and stroke. Yet, their introduction to the corporeal worlds of working bodies or in the military field is highly demystified and defetishized, which makes their current implementation to revolve around unstable realities. For such reasons, similar to the human bodies for which they are designed, exoskeletons are exposed to forms of “contextual vulnerability” (Waldby 2002: 251). Because they are directly perceived, they concretely influence cultures of bodily identification, which, as the example of the working environments shows, may be sometimes strongly defined by communities of practice. Here, body images and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-8

190  What exoskeletons do to the body

corporeal perception play a crucial role in demarcating that working community from other types of labor activities. Due to their fictional nuance, exoskeletons are characterized by forms of “material indeterminacy” (Waldby 2002: 245), which in a world increasingly transformed by robotics and artificial intelligence becomes the reality of our human bodies. In a sense, exoskeletons join the panoply of the gadgets contributing to our contemporary cults and cultures of performance which are sourced into our bodies. In the following, I look at the ways in which these current phenomena defining separate corporeal realities intersect due to the intervention of exoskeletons. Hence I propose the category to describe these devices as “intersection technologies.” Assisting specific movements of human anatomy and physiology, such as impaired walking in cases of spinal cord injury or arm and hand movements, or walking again in conditions of stroke, their complementing and “augmenting” corporeal resistance during the performance of specific tasks characterized by particular “techniques of the body” or practices repertoires as the examples of working and military fields show, are examples that confirm the belonging of exoskeletons to a variety of body images, as well as to representations and realities of capability that human bodies enact. Obviously, the aims and functions to which they need to respond are individualized by the environments of their use and their users’ bodies. Yet the common feature which traverses the three domains where exoskeletons are either already implemented or are works in progress, is that they interfere where “gaps” and impossibilities of human bodies exist. Contextually, transforming the body from outside also shapes how it is felt, and additionally, how it is related to other human bodies equally present in these contexts. Exoskeletons change thus how alterity is experienced. For example, if these devices contribute to reformulate conceptions of corporeal deviance or extension, it is because they are perceived by other human beings, and thus are sanctioned by the eye of the beholder. Impacting forms of corporeal deviance and extension by their being perceived, exoskeletons influence how bodies are further forged by practices in specific contexts. What is at stake in these transformations is how human bodies respond to these realities, are forged by them in turn and then are further concretely lived. Interestingly, the main function exoskeletons fulfill is to produce changes at an invisible level even though many prototypes of exoskeletons are clearly visible, and thus induce changes in the perception of human bodies. As a consequence, they transform the body image of their users, shaping corporeal phenomenologies, both visibly and invisibly, while specifically addressing parameters of ability, inability and capability. In the following sections, I will detail some of the processes and mechanisms contributing to the new shapes of human bodies that result due to the explicit or planned use of exoskeletons, as well as their influence on redrawing the categories of corporeal deviance and extension.

Chapter 6

New body shapes

Motto: “The exoskeleton community has just begun. It’s new.”

(Eng7CA: 117)

Challenging body images: Fictions facing facts Body images are central both sociologically and phenomenologically. Not only do they play a central role in constructing one’s identity, but they also have consequences for the concrete actions and interactions in which individuals are engaged. As a concept, the “body image” has a long history, finding itself within an interdisciplinary but also transdisciplinary junction. Often, it is the work of Paul Schilder which is quoted as pioneering the discussion of this concept. Later on, Maurice Merleau-Ponty has elaborated his own definition while discussing Schilder’s work but also the work of Henry Head. In his analysis of motility (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012: 142), the influence of Schilder and Head is particularly obvious. However, in the Merleau-Pontyan view, the body image is a category which appears to be interchangeably used with that of body schema, concepts which, in some contemporary views in phenomenology, have been clearly differentiated (Gallagher 1986, 2005; Gallagher & Zahavi 2008). According to Shaun Gallagher, for example, the body image refers to three aspects: first, “the body as it is perceived in my immediate consciousness”; second, “the body image includes my conceptual construct of the body, informed by my immediate consciousness of my body and by my intellectual understanding (mythical or scientific) of the body”; third, the body image includes “my emotional attitude and feelings about my body” (Gallagher 1986: 545–546). “Conceptual and emotional aspects of the body image are no doubt affected by various cultural and interpersonal factors, but in many respects their content originates in perceptual experience” (Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 146). What first excites one’s attention when seeing a person walking with an exoskeleton is the association with fictional characters, which are exceptional not only because of their bodies’ close relation to technological forms but primarily due to their being endowed with superpowers. Though they do not belong to our social

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-9

192  What exoskeletons do to the body

reality, lacking an accurate reference (Cohn 1999: 15), the body images of exoskeleton users are often associated with such figures, rendering exoskeletons highly appresentative objects. In phenomenology, the concept of appresentation was first defined in the writings of Edmund Husserl ([1928] 1973) and denotes a general law of how we experience either objects or other human beings.1 In Husserl’s broadly construed perspective, appresentation is a key mechanism in the realization of intersubjective relations. Husserl develops this category in correlation with another one, apperception. Apperception refers to the fact that either an object or a person is incompletely present. One can neither fully perceive all the physical dimensions of an object or a human being nor have complete access to another human being’s experienced reality (at least up to date). We experience objects and human beings first perspectivally, although we all know that even if we do not see or perceive the back of a lamp for example, it doesn’t mean that the back of that lamp does not exist. In addition to the general process of appresenting hidden parts of the body wearing the gadget, the specificity of appresentations in which exoskeletons engage first-time perceivers refers mainly to their association with fiction. This feature characterizes as well the perception of prostheses, individualizing the body image of persons wearing exoskeletons as being currently exceptional and positively “deviant.” The fictional “note” of body images that bodies using exoskeletons primarily generate is one of surprise. One of the engineer interviewees spoke of the “wow” factor when discussing the effect of perceiving exoskeletons in current society. He accounted of how the extent of the surprise on the part of the viewer is connected to the degree of impairment a human body may have. He said: I think, not only for the example of spinal cord injury, but in society in general a lot more people have problems, rather than the ones that are completely paralyzed. But there is a lot more perception or it's a lot more “wow” factor if you have somebody that is completely paralyzed who now walks, than if you have someone who can still walk and now walks better. I think the “wow” factor is different. (Eng14CH: 298) What the lay person sees is a body image embedded in a narrative, according to which the close association between the human body and a robot produces exceptionality. As one of the experts involved in marketing exoskeletons recounted to me, what people see in the exoskeleton is a bit the “cool” side of the thing. A bit of Iron Man, a bit of science fiction. […] And then another thing is that the first thing they think of, when seeing the device is to associate it with the military exoskeletons. (ManagM4FR: 159; 161; my transl. from French)

N ew body shapes  193

Hence the “wow” factor quoted above. This situation may indeed match real facts regarding the production of an exceptional corporeality, since exoskeletons are not yet spread widely. Like bionic prostheses, they reinvest the figure of the cyborg2 à tort ou à raison, while at the same time redefining that of impairment (Dolezal 2020) if one specifically considers the case of exoskeletons intended for rehabilitation. As one of the engineers, who is an expert in biosignals, explained to me, “what is good about science fiction is that it also influenced many good things. Because many things which were considered to be science-fiction twenty years ago, we have them today. Science fiction has inspired many people” (Eng3GE: 127; my transl. from German). Whereas the needs of rehabilitation and the production of body images in clinical environments obviously benefit from high acclaim and visibility, the situation in working environments and military field is very different. Difficult use leads to exoskeletons often being contested in industrial environments and within combat operations in the military community. Together these factors instigate a conflictual imaginary, in which concrete needs and (im)possibilities to fulfill them concur. As a consequence, the body images which exoskeletons advance are very fluid entities, rendering these technologies far from ordinary. Similar to other products of technological innovation, the exceptionality of which turned gradually to normalization, a process by which I mean that the use and application of a technology type have been so deeply democratized that the specific technology does not anymore appear as being something extraordinary – planes, trains or cars are among some examples – exoskeletons may indeed in the future be considered as conventional gadgets. They may disappear in the network of our social habits and practices, and perhaps more explicitly of our body habits, shifting their status from visibility, exception and surprise to invisibility and quotidian, and thus to more steady forms of technological companionship. As one of the interviewed engineers stated in an expert interview, “I think this is just something people have to get used to. I mean, in the beginning people weren't used to cars. They were really skeptical about cars. And now cars are everywhere. So, it's just a societal change” (Eng12CH: 298). The difference with cars resides in that not all the people (hopefully) have severe motility impairments, work in industrial environments which endanger their bodies (and consequently their lives), or take part in military operations exposing them to severe injuries and potentially death. Exoskeletons remain strongly contextual technologies, perhaps much more contextual than cars or eyeglasses. In contrast with cars or eyeglasses, exoskeletons mark abilities or disabilities and their afferent body images to a different degree. This is precisely because they are not only strongly related to a specific context but also (and this sharpens their quality of being mono-usage objects) they are often designed for a specific type of movement of the human body. Walking does not have the same implications as performing a repetitive movement with one’s arm while sanding a ceiling for example, just as transporting heavy loads in industrial environments has different implications than transporting loads while being engaged in a military operation. One of the features that individualizes exoskeletons and

194  What exoskeletons do to the body

influences their perception, and thus the body image they forge, is their being ability markers, yet specifically in regards to the segmentation of abilities. Bodies accompanied by this type of technology in a specific context or for a specific type of movement for a task advance one’s own corporeal limits toward further ability and capability possibilities; for these reasons, my understanding of exoskeletons to be ability markers in the first place, denotes a quality resonating with the type of body images they create. What I mean by the category of ability marker is that exoskeletons show that people wearing them either cannot do something (they cannot walk anymore or cannot hold an object in their hand; they cannot or are challenged to hold a bodily posture while performing tasks overhead; or they cannot carry heavy loads, especially relevant in industrial or military logistics) or they show that their users can do “more” than what the average human bodies are capable of in particular circumstances. Part of the ambivalence that body images of bodies wearing exoskeletons comes from is this overlapping of forms that I named “stock-of-doing-at-hand,” which include both possibilities of doing and their correlated impossibilities. In so acting, what exoskeletons produce is a revision of what Erving Goffman termed “body idiom” (Goffman 1963: 33), which features corporeal ability, inability or forms of corporeal impairment. In Goffman’s view, the “body idiom” refers to “a body symbolism, an idiom of individual appearances and gestures that tends to call forth in the actor what it calls forth in the others, the others drawn from those, and only those, who are immediately present” (Goffman 1963: 33–34). This category would challenge the phenomenological terminology in that what is usually defended in the phenomenological paradigm is the unmediated character of our everyday encounters with other human beings. Phenomenologists are proponents of direct perceptive experience, which contributes to the realization of our intersubjective relations. Alfred Schutz theorizes of the “face-to-face relationship” (Schutz [1932] 1967) as the basic form of encounter between two human beings, which indeed refers to direct perception. Belonging to a social and cultural reality, where exoskeletons have their assigned meanings, the idioms of the bodies wearing them shift. Exoskeletons forge body images that encourage to rethink corporeal dispositions, facts and acting possibilities, while simultaneously reformulating perceptive habits alongside motor habits (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012: 153). What exoskeletons also do is to reinvest contextual conceptions of “physical capital” (Bourdieu 1978: 830) while challenging the connection between real and speculative corporeal worlds. This involves reconceptualizations of bodily canons and current representations of impairment, expected working possibilities of doing or contemporary visions about bodies at combat. Interestingly, being initially conceived for the management of the body schema, exoskeletons extensively engage human bodies in the management of their forms. They are thus morphing technologies. Whether one day they will fundamentally contribute to engage this process of management of the human form in major shifts of how social conceptions about cultural and physical capitals reinvent themselves remains an open question. What my fieldwork experience confirmed is the promise that accompanies

N ew body shapes  195

these technologies. All actors involved, users or experts, conceive of exoskeletons in terms of “future technologies,” a temporal dimension which portrays them as technological horizons of possibility rather than technological horizons of mere actuality. In addition, their contribution in morphing bodies results in a visible categorical change of how the concepts of ability, inability or impairment are conceived. For example, when an impaired person walks with an exoskeleton, what people usually notice is primarily that she or he is walking, and not that she or he cannot. As one of the interviewees with spinal cord injury recounted to me: Just to give you an example: when people see me in a wheelchair, they make space in front of me. When I use the exoskeleton, people see me walk with crutches. So for them, I am like an able person who walks. So they will keep standing on my way and won’t make space. It’s crazy, but it’s true. Or if they see me for a while, they make space but only to watch me walk. But it may happen for example, when I am in fair trade shows that people just think, “well, he walks with crutches, so I won’t move out of his way”. […] People don’t see the disability anymore when I walk with [name of exoskeleton]. They see that it’s a new system which makes me walk, but they don’t think anymore that the person who is inside is disabled and that she or he cannot walk. They don’t perceive this. That’s why I think they are, I wouldn’t say indulgent, but they have less pity towards me. Well, perhaps, it’s not pity, but it’s true that when seeing a disabled person, we want to help her. […] What they see is that you are “less” handicapped, so they have less pity. (RehaM9FR: 305, 311, 317; my transl. from French) The image of the re-enabled walking impairment hides the complex and often complicated reality of exoskeleton use. It hides in particular the extensive body work impaired persons need to perform in order to develop both technological and corporeal proficiency, as well as the misunderstanding of how such technologies may help and to what extent. Although they verticalize and transform bodies that used to be visible for their disability into bodies that are visible due to their use of an extraordinary technology (the achieved visibility is of a positive nature rather than a negatively connoted one), there are many challenges that impaired persons need to face, if they are allowed to or may decide to use such a device. The morph that the exoskeleton introduces is remarkable for its spectacular and unconventional aspect. Yet the concrete implementation, the time one needs to learn to use it, work with or be able to fight with, and in particular the efficiency of its use, redefines the reality of both bodies and their cooperation with this type of gadgets. Many of these challenges are related to how one’s body image is perceived by other people. Persons with impairments usually have a positive feeling about being moved by a robot and walking with it. The emotional reactions are sometimes different if one considers the use of exoskeletons by people who are able. This is a stronger challenge in some body cultures where speed of work is needed and where

196  What exoskeletons do to the body

the space of use is populated with other machines that may endanger the user if the exoskeleton is trapped. In these corporeal worlds, technological innovation needs to be accompanied by concrete and positive outcomes; otherwise, the body image representing that corporeal culture, and impacted by the use of the exoskeleton, may not tolerate the change. One of the interviewed engineers recounted to me the following when discussing an example of the implementation of exoskeletons in car factories: I talked to a lot of people in the industry. Automobile manufactures did some testing. I spoke to them directly. What they did is that they put these bulky exoskeletons on the body of the workers. And then, who works at a manufacture? What kind of personality do you have when you do exactly the same thing day after day? What kind of personality do you have? You’re a reserved person. You’re a person that you’re comfortable in his routine. You’re comfortable doing exactly the same thing, eating exactly the same sandwich, eating exactly at that same time. You like it. And that’s fine! We don’t judge that. We accept that. That is fine. But your personality says: “I don’t want to be the blinking light, I don’t want to flash.” No. If I come along, and I give you an exoskeleton that is really big and bulky, everybody’s looking at you and talking. And you don’t like that. So, some of the car manufactures said they put some exos on. And they were getting too much attention. And they took them off. Then they put the exo back on, and then, they put covers on. But because they’re so bulky and away from the body, the coveralls had to be adjusted, they had five, six sizes bigger. The arms were very long, and then they had to adjust that. It was difficult. So, the workers said: “I don’t want to wear this exo. It’s too bulky.” (Eng7CA: 109) Not only do exoskeletons need proper methods for successful alignment with the body schema of their users, just as importantly their implementation requires reflection on body-morphing challenges that both users, managers and designers need to consider, among these a crucial one being the “body image ideal” (Weiss 1999: 21) of the specific corporeal world where the exoskeleton needs to find a way of coworking with human bodies. A “body image ideal,” as Gail Weiss notes, “functions normatively as an internalized standard against which we continually measure our present body images” (Weiss 1999: 21). Cultures of bodies at work, as well as of bodies at fight, attempt to conform to, respect and protect those body image ideals, which turn their very worlds precisely into their own. To recall Mary Douglas, “the social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived” (1973: 93). And any element disturbing the positive perception of the social body characterizing that specific culture of corporeal ability may become a challenge, as exoskeletons sometimes are. The situation is different for people with motility impairments. Although the benefits may seem small from the outside, for some belonging to this category of persons, this change in their body image is particularly significant. Often, people

N ew body shapes  197

from this category embrace fictional images of superheroes as a figurative mechanism to develop methods of positive body-morphing. One of the interviewees with a spinal cord injury explained this to me when I asked him about people’s reactions on the street while he was walking with an exoskeleton: One differentiates among three categories [of persons]: first, those who just walk on by you on the street. One doesn’t notice them, because one stands up, one can walk, one belongs to society. Everything is fine. Then, there are those interested in technics. They watch you thinking “What is this?”’ They may come and ask: “What do you have here?” and then they say “That’s great if you can walk again!” and this kind of stuff. These are really those who are technology professionals. And then, you have children, who already scream from far away: “Oh, there comes Robocop!” Children find everything cool. Then, everything which has to do with electronics and horror, they find it all cool. One has always seen this on TV, and they see something like this on the street, and they come by and yell “Here is Robocop!” That’s cool. (RehaM3GE: 305; 311; my transl. from German) Seeming to dislocate strangeness due to a form of familiarity that one may perceptively establish because of a variety of science fiction movies, exoskeletons become active producers of body images and ways of how bodies wearing them are seen. They reinvest the very living-ness of the body, and emphasize in the end that “the machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated. The machine is us, our processes, an aspect of our embodiment” (Haraway 1991: 180). Body knowledge(s): Exoskeletons as experimental environments for bodies The production of exoskeletons is deeply correlated with the production of knowledge about the human bodies these gadgets need to accompany. Interestingly, the development of the machine brings with it as well the necessity to better understand anatomic and physiological functions, metabolism and the concrete relation between human movement and the variety of spaces and contexts human bodies cross. Shaping bodies involves simultaneously shaping both situated knowledge about these bodies and new epistemic forms; it involves a constant process of definition and discovery, in which all the parties involved – users, designers and managers of the variety of infrastructures in which the gadgets accompanying bodies need to be implemented – conflate their experience and knowledge to reconceptualize and partly reinvent the role of human bodies while performing and acting through and with the devices accompanying them. In a recent study, Fischer et al. (Fischer et al. 2020) mention that in STS some scholars explicitly denounce the existence of “power imbalances between designers and users,” which in their view “refer to the subordinate position of users ‘implicated’ in design where designers often attempt to ‘configure’ the user and

198  What exoskeletons do to the body

‘inscribe’ certain user images into technology design” (Fischer et al. 2020: 222). I started the third part of this study by evoking such positions, which are classical in STS. Contrary to this idea of a “power imbalance,” wherein experts decide and users suffer the consequences of the decisions, what my fieldwork showed was that the production and active shaping of bodies with exoskeletons are strongly user-focused. Moreover, users are literally involved in the process of designing the device, which transforms exoskeletons into technological forms of open corporeality. Exoskeletons work both closely to and with human bodies; therefore, the slightest mismatch between them may concretely result in damaging the user’s body. Clearly, neither users nor experts are interested in a technological object that works against human bodies. One may develop robots for fundamental research, where the focus and scientific interest are different from those of projects for applied research. The many tests and hours in which parameters are steadily calculated, measurements repeated and values compared, all contribute to ensure safety for human bodies and show that the human body is at the core of exoskeleton research. And with the acknowledgment of this centrality and the focus on safety, it is the vulnerability factor which is explicitly emphasized. When I asked one of the interviewed control engineers to consider the difference in developing projects in robotics for fundamental research versus projects for concrete applications, as exoskeletons are, he explained the following to me: So, there is always a trend in engineering to make devices that have a use, devices that you can use. This is like a natural pressure on engineering. It is a pressure that you don't make something that nobody can use. […] Exoskeletons are devices that are in combination with people. […] We always have to think about … I told you in the beginning: We are always doing in the end studies with humans. So, we always need to think about the human. This is differentiating us from other engineers in the field. This is probably the biggest differentiation. We are always thinking about the humans. And, in fundamental research, mostly in robotic fundamental research, you don't think about the human. (Eng11CH: 303; 309) Despite the fragmentation of tasks and expertise that came along with them, the experts’ perspective was not one of “technological determinism,” as this may be the case in other labs or projects in robotics (Fischer et al. 2020: 240). Perhaps what surprised the most in their reflections and attitudes was the consciousness these people have about the limits of their epistemic worlds. Their role of being experts was far from one of domination in relation to their users; especially in the rehabilitation field, what surprised was their sensitivity for human pain, which thoroughly influences the engineers’ awareness in shaping bodies through the type of technological object they produce. Designing exoskeletons is inseparable from the design of the human body and its limits. As human bodies and exoskeletons need to mirror each other, this is a

N ew body shapes  199

major challenge for all the levels of expertise involved in their conception, for the huge variety of users and for the different contexts where exoskeletons are supposed to be technological companions. In many scientific areas concerned with the modes of our corporeal inscriptions, human bodies need to be described in order to be understood. For example, a scientific branch providing a clarifying example in this sense is anatomy. Anatomy changed how one envisions bodies because it offers complex details about the functions and processes that make our bodies the complex architectures they are (Prentice 2005, 2013). By contrast, the conception of the human body, which is “translated” in the computer program to create the algorithm for a powered exoskeleton, is highly essentialized. The more complex the device, the more difficult is the task of engineers to ensure the proper human– machine interaction. This detail surprised me during a visit of a lab where exoskeletons were tested and designed, especially that, after the “translation” of the motion characteristics of the human body into the device, the result is a “stick figure.” The stick figure is a very summarized sketch of a human body, meaning that what one actually sees in terms of image are just lines which represent the legs, arms and torso of the person who takes part in the test. Objectively and bodily, I had the experience myself of my body being transformed into such a stick figure during a test for an exosuit I was allowed to participate in. One of the striking features when seeing the stick figure is that the human body is reduced to mere lines that are connected by points where the motion captors are attached during tests. When a person walks on a treadmill during a test, she wears movement sensors and also motion markers attached to her body; these transmit the information about how she moves to produce the “stick figure.” The motion markers I saw and also wore on my own body were small white balls. They “essentialized” not only parameters about the movement of my body, energy costs and metabolism while I walked on a treadmill but also my body image, by which I mean the literal image of my shape. In my field notes when I was describing the experience of what it was like during my body being tested for contributing to design an exoskeleton, much about my own reflections regarded how body knowledge was produced. I was puzzled by the extent to which the conception of exoskeletons is related to capturing knowledge of human bodies which are able (in that specific test, my own), but also by how I received data from the persons I was observing. My attempt to understand how corporeal deviance and extension change due to the production, implementation and possible use of exoskeletons resulted in a circularity of body knowledges. As I wrote in my field notes, I felt good to know that I also produced something for them, for the engineers; that I was not only there to take knowledge from them. I felt engaged in a sort of circularity. I received data and I gave back data. It feels weird to be an object of inquiry, but at the same time one feels a sort of reward because these kinds of events are not everyday experiences. Being the object of an experiment isolates you from commonness. This is an exceptional moment

200  What exoskeletons do to the body

in which one is confronted by one’s own limits but with a very specific perspective, that of numbers and measurements. You get depersonalized. Your limit is a number, a repetition, a scale. You are being counted. Things in you are counted: breathing rhythm, metabolism. You are parametrized. You are between this and this. You are a list with numbers. You are numbers. This loss of specificity is also talked about later in an interview when Eng9CH said at a certain point that, for instance, between he and me, if someone else saw only the motion capture markers on the screen, there would not be much difference. We are both a “stick figure.” It’s only the movement which is “hunted.” Only the movement. And this may be different between us, in that we have different styles of walking; but what makes the movement exist, namely the conditions of its possibility as movement, are similar. For instance, Eng9CH spoke of basic movement: something which is differentiated among single support, double support, and swing phase. The swing phase refers to the moment when I swing forward. He explained to me that in running we fly, and that walking has more phases; it’s more connected to the ground. It is interesting to hear that when running, we fly. […] Movement analysis is already implying a focus on a general parameter that brings us together, a parameter that not only all living humans, but also living beings have. Actually, we are epiphenomena of something; we are behind movement, or behind that phenomenon, which shall be analyzed. All the construction part, all the culture aspect is an addendum. Technology reminds us in the end that in the depth of our being we are not so different from one another. Society creates differences. And through differences, it creates hierarchies. (February 2019, Field notes: 718; 722) Experiencing how a type of technology is produced is inseparable from the corporeal differences it targets, and implicitly the social norms a certain culture and its contexts of practices has about human bodies; for despite that motility brings all human bodies to a common denominator, how each and every individual moves, and more specifically in what type of environment and for what purposes they sometimes do it, remains the specificity of that singular body. Motion capture markers in their elaboration of the stick figure contribute to highlight both these traits: how much human bodies are alike and yet how different they remain. Motion capture markers do not “work” alone in their synthetization of the body for the test. Just as important in the mapping of the human bodies during tests are the many cameras which elaborate the figure and the variety of sensors attached to the body. Understanding how human movement works is connected to how it is visualized, although unlike the visioning of the body that is focused on tiny details, as in the aforementioned examples of anatomy or in physiology, the vision in engineering sciences is very phenomenological. Its focus is to retain what is essential. What is initially sought is to create types, patterns and to evacuate details. This is because the device needs to cover as much as possible the variety of the real corporealities, and thus needs to include forms of general knowledge about these

N ew body shapes  201

corporealities. Surprisingly, these logics are based on a deep material contradiction: although the device needs to respond to as many corporeal profiles as possible, one of the difficulties challenging the corporeal knowledge sedimented inside the device is the great variety of human bodies and their perpetual change. In a sense, human bodies seem infinite, unattainable. They are full of surprises (Taddei 2020) and continually interrogate exoskeleton designers. Contrary to an idea evoked by Madeleine Elish in her discussion of another much-debated technological example, namely the function of drones and their creating complexities in shifting human labor (she discusses the military field) (Elish 2017), exoskeletons are a pretext to discover the uniqueness of human bodies, how much they disclose and also their phenomenological potentials. Not only do such devices invite us to think about rebalancing sensorium and creating new bodyscapes, but perhaps in a more focused manner, they create “taskscapes” (Ingold 2000: 154). According to Tim Ingold, the category of “taskscape” contrasts that of “landscape” and denotes “a pattern of dwelling activities” (ibid.). I understand taskscape to be primarily defined by a form of doing, in which human intentionality (may this be in its cognitive or motor form) is explicitly engaged. It is this level of experience that exoskeletons aim to accompany and change while they are worn. In the corporeal worlds exoskeletons shape and by which they are shaped in return, they may act like catalyzers. What they allow is not only new possibilities for how human bodies are seen, measured and sometimes fragmented for a better understanding of their function but also for these bodies to be understood. Their contribution is in reimagining human bodies. While assisting human bodies for what they cannot or can with effort, exoskeletons formulate new logics of practice, while resituating knowledges and “technological regimes” (Rip & Kemp 1998, quoted in Feenberg 1999: 88). In the process of imagining exoskeletons and their correlated bodies, two types of knowledge and experience, sometimes confronting one another, come together: the one from the labs and their multiple tests, which is highly controlled and parametrized, and which may be “corrected” in case something wrong happens; a second one is that of the living bodies, of their acting and being in concrete activity contexts, predictable only up to a certain point, or as Alfred Schutz formulates it, “taken for granted until further notice” (Schutz [1953] 1962: 7). Like other technologies, exoskeletons work based on imagining scenarios. A view in which scientific projects are associated with the logic characterizing filmmaking was already advanced by Madeleine Akrich (1992) some decades ago. In her perspective, designers anticipate the views of the users and thus embed these views in the construction of their technological products. What the reality of tests and concrete applications in which exoskeletons try to find their way shows is that elaborating exoskeletons surpasses scripts. The realities of human bodies for which these gadgets are developed are not only different in terms of individual variations and specificities; what is just as difficult to incorporate in the design of the device is that one’s own body is constantly evolving. Devices, and thus their very imagining and conception, need to follow such meandering in which the horizons of expectations

202  What exoskeletons do to the body

are much wider than what the factual reality of the devices proposes. One may regain some lost functions through the use of the device in rehabilitative use, for example, yet this does not necessarily mean that the body develops that specific function if a person has spinal cord injury or stroke (although in some cases and for some types of injuries this is possible). What is regained and reduplicated is a temporary capability and new knowledge about one’s own body, provoked by the co-working with the device. Interestingly, walking with the exoskeletons involves precisely learning how to walk with it before anything else is achieved, and then consequently developing motility patterns and new feelings of one’s body while performing this type of motion; it may also mean learning or reinventing motility patterns in working contexts, in case the body is able, and also adjusting to the environment where people work or, for soldiers, where they carry out combat operations. Exoskeletons open possibilities for bodies that obviously need to reinvent their limits, while yet at the same time introducing forms of distrust. Nourishing spectacular imaginaries in some narratives, especially those from the media or entertainment world, and less spectacular ones in labs, clinics, hospitals or industrial and military sites, exoskeletons try to find their way in the group of those technologies attempting at being “domesticated.” According to Roger Silverstone, who theorized this concept in the field of STS, “domestication” refers to both a symbolic and a practical work through which technologies shift from being exceptional things to familiar ones, contributing to build up routine (Oudshoorn & Pinch 2003: 14). Their being experimental environments rather than homelike ones for human bodies makes exoskeletons, at least for the time being, difficult to integrate in corporeal routines and enter regimes of familiarity. Redistributing performance while building new bodies The notion of “performance”3 reminds in part of the work of Erving Goffman (Goffman 1959). Exoskeletons and the bodies that they temporarily and sequentially produce participate in performances in which individuals are attributed roles, they manage impressions and engage besides “body work” in a variety of forms of “face-work” (Dolezal 2017). Although impression management and “face-work” are important mechanisms in advancing forms of corporealities and redrawing body shapes, my use of the term “performance” refers to the idea of doing, of accomplishing and aiming to achieve a certain result, and hence enacting (Moss & Prince 2014: 65). The concern of both experts and users of exoskeletons is primarily with how successful and helpful exoskeletons are when people need to accomplish a task. What is explicitly focused on are parameters which are inside the human body; interestingly, their visibility, like the visibility of clothes or other objects which accompany us in performing and fulfilling tasks, may concretely influence interactions with other people, and hence the “performance” in the sense given by Goffman. Seeing impaired persons, workers in a car factory or in a warehouse carrying heavy loads, or more rarely soldiers on the battlefield (exoskeletons for armed forces are the most difficult projects to develop), using exoskeletons

N ew body shapes  203

doubtlessly impacts how both people’s “faces” and their “body images” are negotiated. However, unlike cosmetic surgery or body building, the target of exoskeletons is not the body image but proprioception. Exoskeletons are designed to alter our motor potential. The focus of the category of performance reflected in the co-working of bodies with exoskeletons critically refers to what those bodies can accomplish in terms of specified movements, segments of movements, or determined and defined tasks in specific environments. It may therefore refer to changes destined for the simple enactment of an activity up to its conception with the objective of constant amelioration. As I noted in my field notes, “augmentation is a discourse of performance. And performance is like anything we live in society: context based. We do not live outside contexts” (February 2019, Field notes: 785). In the discourses and facts observed about able bodies, the category of performance was understood as a parameter according to which human bodies are required to “do” or “perform” more. Exoskeletons indeed come to “fill in” where human bodies lack something, transform forms of performance and, with them, their specific “taskscapes.” In doing so, they enter the field of anthropometrics, engaging human bodies in forms of scalar categories. Building scales characterizes the history of how human bodies have been dealt with, categorized, habitualized, mastered and controlled. Generally, the history of societies was built on histories of bodily hierarchies and segmentation (Turner 1984; Shilling 1993; Foucault 1977, 1984). Although they may expand existing instruments and technologies through which human bodies are measured and surveilled, exoskeletons are not explicitly intended for such mechanisms. At least not yet. Some types of exoskeletons currently being developed may record data about the human body, and thus count as instruments of measuring specific forms of corporeal performance. In a rehabilitative environment, this logic is justified by the progress a person may make from one session to another; yet, the transmission of the data about the patient to other stakeholders obviously raises not only aversion but sometimes explicit resistance. The situation is more complicated when considering performances which should be acquired while using active exoskeletons. One of the objective strategies helping in this type of procedure is to encourage a variety of types of movement contributing to create the algorithm of the device. The more motility profiles are integrated in the algorithm, the better the matching patterns. And yet, despite the variety of motility patterns, the humanlike character of exoskeletons, by which I mean their possibilities to mirror the specific motility type or needs of their users, remains a challenge. In contrast to social robots, which physically tend to be very humanlike, exoskeletons address properties of our bodies that are inside us; the impact sought through their implementation refers to performances inscribed inside the very materiality of the human body, rather than changes impacting its surface. If exoskeletons may be recording devices, bodies too may be understood under a similar category: performances change if bodies record new capabilities, if they internalize and develop further forms of body work and thus engaging, besides a specific type of interaction with the exoskeleton, in forms of transaction.

204  What exoskeletons do to the body

Hidalgo et al. discuss the category of “algorithmic aversion” significant for the implementation of exoskeletal devices. Algorithmic aversion refers, in their view, to “a bias where people tend to reject algorithms even when they are more accurate than humans. Algorithmic aversion is also expressed by the fact that people lose trust in algorithms more easily when they make mistakes” (Hidalgo et al. 2021: 5). I would add that people lose confidence not only in algorithms but also in devices with which people intimately work, if these devices affect their performances. Trust of the machine is an important factor, and usually users trust the machine if the achieved results match their expectations. Whereas the temporality of rehabilitation and sometimes partial recovery of impaired bodies inscribe the users in forms of instrumental trust which take longer, the corporeal worlds of industrial environments and armed forces are particularly sensitive to the parameter of their efficiently and successfully performing tasks. Bodies in these worlds are first and foremost “performance” bodies. Trusting the device is hence capital for achieving the expected goals; and usually the device is trusted if the effects are quickly visible. In armed forces, the bodies of the soldiers are among the most surveilled and controlled. Unlike industrial environments, where performance surveillance has a different weight than that in the world of war, for the military field, surveillance is not unusual; quite on the contrary. Especially military projects 4.0 that seek to connect devices and human bodies are exemplary for this situation, implying increased surveillance for the efficient pursuit of operations (Schneider 2019; Singer 2009). By contrast, the implementation of exoskeletons in industrial environments, in particular those that are robotized, is regarded with caution. Measuring how much and how fast human bodies can do under controlled circumstances in the context of paid labor contributes to reinforce the comparison and competition between workers, while introducing the topic of being “judged by machines” (Hidalgo et al. 2021: 63). Being “judged” by machines in itself is not new. Yet its complexity and the variety of levels at which it may interfere create new forms of hierarchy and accelerate a newly debated phenomenon: human obsolescence. Although on a general scale, any measurement, form or assessment accomplished by technological devices may join the category of “judging” or “being judged,” the recent developments in artificial intelligence and the variety of their attendant unpredictable consequences may affect in part the conception of how and for what purposes exoskeletons are introduced. In these contexts, robotized models may, besides assisting (mostly) human bodies in charge of working, save data about the hourly or daily performance of a worker on a logistics site. This fact may lead to an obvious fear of surveillance and control. The presence of robotized exoskeletons in working environments raises questions because they may literally create a division between what human bodies can do or cannot do, how much they can do in terms of quantified acts and also how long they can do without a degradation in performance. Being a performing body with an exoskeleton generates an obvious potential for being seen as vulnerable or performing “weakly” without it. Although the needs for the implementation of exoskeletons are very clear for all the

N ew body shapes  205

actors and contexts involved in their design, the aims for introducing exoskeletons remain very different in hospitals or clinics, industrial sites or operations carried out by armed forces. And much in the external perception of these devices, which is often accompanied by reactions of anxiety, as it is the case of the working environments particularly sensitive to any project leading to the “creation of a ‘quantified’ worker” (Dyer-Witheford, Kjøjen & Steinhoff 2019: 92) is currently biased. Regardless of the fact that a person is able or not, what the device marks is the ambivalence of this person’s capacities. The perception of an exoskeleton user during his walking for demonstration purposes at a trade fair showed that although the persons who watch him were informed about the purpose of the exoskeleton as being for paraplegics, seeing the impaired person verticalized and walking with the device “erased” the perception of disability. In this case, exoskeletons blend representations about what human bodies sometimes can or cannot. Doubtlessly, the performance aimed at by a rehabilitation exoskeleton is of a different type than the one produced for working and military environments. And yet the simple presence of the device suffices to shift the conception of inability into ability, or ability into above-average ability, as well as ability into “not-enough ability.” I do not claim that the project of designing and introducing exoskeletons in either of the three areas that I could observe is necessarily an “upgrading” of what human bodies can and are. What the up-to-date facts show is rather that for the time being, if some forms of upgrading or amelioration exist, this concerns mostly the rehabilitation field. What is understood as amelioration in the rehabilitative environment has little to do with optimization projects of healthy bodies. Such regimes have betterment (Perfektionierung), improvement (Steigerung) or competition (Wettbewerb) at their core (Bröckling 2020). Walking or at least trying to with an exoskeleton in a clinic or at trade fairs obviously targets another level of performance: what human bodies are due to their physiological dispositions, a primary material “norm.” When I asked him to explain to me his differentiation between the categories of augmentation and assistance, an interviewed engineer said: You wouldn't typically say that an incomplete spinal cord injury patient has an augmentative exoskeleton, because the very typical norm we take as a reference is the prototype standard human being. And assistive devices typically mean that you do not surpass that performance level of the reference human being. Either you get closer because your own abilities are reduced for some reason, or you can reduce your abilities as a response to the exoskeleton assistance because, for example, it takes some strain off your back during overhead work in industrial applications. That would be, from my very personal point of view, my differentiation between assistance and augmentation. (Eng9CH: 42) One of the manners in which some experts circumvent the category of augmentation and with it any connotation of above-average performance is either to speak about “assistance” or, as some engineers developing exoskeletons for rehabilitative

206  What exoskeletons do to the body

environments do, of “restoration.” Later, when speaking with another engineer about how she understands “augmentation” while considering her own work of developing a rehabilitative exosuit for the upper limbs of the human body, she stated: Augmentation is to me: you're able to do something, and if you're enhanced, basically, you can do your task more efficiently or for a longer period of time or faster. Rollerblades are augmentation, for example. […] what we try to do is restore. So, you were previously able to do something, and you're not anymore. We are restoring your ability to do something. (Eng12CH: 314; 322) Being assisted makes the devices in charge of assistance enter a more humanlike category; if related to the area of assistance while performing various acts and tasks, technologies engage us more in forms of companionship. Contrastively, to evoke restauration implies that something is damaged. In this case, the targeted performance is the “before” status of one’s body, a situation in which, if there is an “ideal type” body to be attained and that capitalizes the variety of stages of body work (and sometimes also of face-work), this refers to one’s own body in its able form and to one’s former self. Corporeal performance for impaired bodies involves rating what one cannot or still can compared to what one could. One of the parameters characterizing the “ideal type” body in a rehabilitative environment refers to reaching autonomy. Performance in this context implies that a person manages to recapture motility patterns which she used to know but also be; these parameters ensure her independence in performing certain tasks, mostly daily ones. When engineers evoke autonomy, they mean the performance of a person in accomplishing activities in her daily life without needing the support of someone else. Since paraplegia does not disappear in the predominance of cases, exoskeletons operate a transfer of dependency. What I mean by transfer of dependency is that the impaired person is not in need of another human being but can rely on a technological device. The fact that a person with motor impairments caused by spinal cord injury or stroke can do things or activities with an exoskeleton is meant to discharge the work previously done by either family members or a paid caretaker. When explaining to me how autonomy is appropriated by means of using an exoskeletal device, specifically referencing an exosuit for the lower limbs, one of the interviewed engineers introduced, for example, the idea of “supporting” existing functions in the body in order to help develop autonomy. What he detailed relates to my category of “residual subjectivity.” He said: To me, the exoskeleton is really substituting something. Our approach and what we are trying to do is more: How do we support something that they already have? You know, their legs are theirs, and in a lot cases their legs do function but instead of substituting completely their legs, we just want to

N ew body shapes  207

support the remaining functions that they have. We rely on the person's bone structure; we rely on the muscles that they still have. Our approach is maybe less powerful. Our approach is not to overtake their legs completely. It's to support based on how much assistance they may need. […] The end goal is always independence. It's how you give them autonomy. To us the technology should just, ideally, not even be seen or not even be there. People should just be able to do the things they want do. For us, the technology or the solutions is just the way to get them to do those things. (Eng14CH: 122; 152) What engineers constantly do is establish levels of motor ability proficiency, and such a process aims at recrafting bodies. Experts imagine users with very factual intentions and particular praxis repertoires: the main characteristics of human bodies, whether impaired or able, and which ones potentially should wear exoskeletal devices revolve around “performance” and “performing” parameters. Performance may be categorized with respect to the example of exoskeletal design, on the one hand, as gaining or maintaining capability and, on the other hand, as maintaining forms of visibility. Gaining, maintaining, but also assisting or augmenting capabilities concerns the cases of working and military environments and thus of able bodies, while gaining and maintaining existing or acquired capabilities is relevant for both able and impaired users. This second process refers to what I term “body keeping” and “body saving” strategies, which is what needs to be imagined by designers. Exoskeletons are obviously “acting” technologies, and they demarcate forms of motor expertise. More explicitly, they bring new grammars of technological literacy while contributing to operate both motor and perceptive mutations of human bodies. They aim to enlarge possibilities of “instrumental embodiments” (Ihde 2009: 61) while reconfiguring body shapes. Their contribution to performance criteria involves sometimes the development of forms of technological compromise, in which specificities of coping with what is expected and what is de facto achieved by means of technology blend. Notes 1 Alfred Schutz imported this concept from Husserl and discussed it extensively while further elaborating his own theory of intersubjectivity and social relations. See Schutz, A (1967). The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 2 They may enter the category of what Andrew Pickering names “cyborg objects,” which in his view, along with “cyborg sciences,” destabilize the boundary between human and non-human (Pickering 1995: 5). 3 The performative approach is also associated with the work of Judith Butler, who in turn was influenced by John Austin’s theory of speech acts (Austin 1962). She develops this orientation in particular with respect to gender performances (Butler 1993; 1995). For example, she speaks of a “ritualized repetition of conventions” (Butler 1995: 31) regarding the production of gender identities. However, this is a completely different

208  What exoskeletons do to the body orientation than the one in which I am interested, and it shall not be discussed in this study.

References Akrich, M. (1992). The De-Scription of technical objects. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology (pp. 205–224). Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do Things with Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1978). Sport and social class. Social Science Information, 17(6), 819–840. Bröckling, U. (2020). Optimierung, preparedness, Priorisierung. In Soziopolis: Gesellschaft Beobachten, 13. April 2020. Retrieved from https://soziopolis​.de​/beobachten​/gesellschaft​ /artikel​/optimierung​-preparedness​-priorisierung/ (accessed 24/02/2021). Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that Matter. New York: Routledge. Butler, J. (1995). Melancholy gender/refused identification. In M. Berger, B. Wallis & S. Watson (Eds.), Constructing Masculinity (pp. 165–180). New York; London: Routledge. Cohn, D. (1999). The Distinction of Fiction. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Dolezal, L. (2017). The phenomenology of self-presentation: Describing the structures of intercorporeality with Erving Goffman. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 237–254. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s11097​-015​-9447​-6. Dolezal, L. (2020). Disability as malleability: The prosthetic metaphor, Merleau-Ponty and the case of Aimee Mullins. In D. Butnaru (Ed.), Medial Bodies. Between Fiction and Faction: Reinventing Corporeality (pp. 125–146). Bielefeld: Transcript. Douglas, M. (1973). Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Downey, G. L., Dumit, J., & Williams, S. (1995). Cyborg anthropology. Journal of the Society for Cultural Anthropology, 10(2), 264–269. Dyer-Witheford, N., Kjøsen, A. M., & Steinhoff, J. (2019). Inhuman Power: Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Capitalism. London: Pluto Press. Elish, M. C. (2017). Remote split: A history of US drone operations and the distributed labor of War. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 42(6), 1100–1131. Feenberg, A. (1999). Questioning Technology. London and New York: Routledge. Fischer, B., Peine, A., & Östlund, B. (2020). Of robots and humans: Creating user representations in practice. Social Studies of Science, 50(2), 221–244. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Tavistock. Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault Reader. Paul, R. (Ed.). New York: Pantheon Books. Gallagher, S. (1986). Body image and body schema. A conceptual clarification. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 7(4), 541–554. Gallagher, S. (2005). How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gallagher, S., & Zahavi, D. (2008). The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction of Mind and Cognitive Science. New York: Routledge. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Goffman, E. (1963). Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press. Haraway, D. J. (1991). A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In D. Haraway (Ed.), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (pp. 149–182). New York: Routledge.

N ew body shapes  209 Hidalgo, C. A., Orghiain, D., Canals, J. A., De Almeida, F., Martín, N., & Cantero, N. M. (2021). How Humans Judge Machines. Cambridge: MIT Press. Husserl, E. ([1928] 1973). Cartesianische meditationen und Pariser Vorträge. In Husserliana I. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Ihde, D. (2009). Postphenomenology and Technoscience: The Peking University Lectures. New York: Suny Press. Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment. London; New York: Routledge. Merleau-Ponty, M. ([1945] 2012). Phenomenology of Perception. London; New York: Routledge. Moss, P., & Prince, M. J. (2014). Weary Warriors. Power, Knowledge and the Invisible Wounds of Soldiers. New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books. Oudshoorn, N. E., & Pinch, T. (2003). Introduction: How users and non-users matter. In N. Oudshoorn & T. Pinch (Eds.), How Users Matter: The Co-construction of Users and Technology (pp. 1–25). Cambridge; London: MIT Press. Pickering, A. (1995). Cyborg history and the World War II regime. Perspectives on Science, 3(1), 1–48. Prentice, R. (2005). The anatomy of a surgical simulation: The mutual articulation of bodies in and through the machine. Social Studies of Science, 35(6), 837–866. Prentice, R. (2013). Bodies in Formation. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Schneider, J. (2019). The capability/vulnerability paradox and military revolutions: Implications for computing, cyber, and the onset of War. Journal of Strategic Studies, 42(6), 841–863. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/01402390​.2019​.1627209. Schutz, A. ([1932] 1967). Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Schutz, A. ([1953] 1962). Common sense and scientific interpretation of human action. In A. Schutz (Ed.), Collected Papers I (pp. 3–47). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Shilling, C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. Singer, P. W. (2009). Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. New York: Penguin. Taddei, R. (2020). Summer Course for the 13th Field School in Ethnographic Methods. New York: Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study, University of Columbia. 20–31/07/2020. Turner, B. S. (1984). The Body & Society: Explorations in Social Theory. London: Sage. Waldby, C. (2002). Biomedicine, tissue transfer and intercorporeality. Feminist Theory, 3(3), 239–254. Weiss, G. (1999). Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality. London and New York: Routledge. Woolgar, S. (1991). Configuring the user: The case of usability trials. In J. Law (Ed.), A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination (pp. 58–99). London; New York: Routledge.

Chapter 7

Reinvesting corporeal capabilities “Deviance” and “extension” redefined

Motto: “I do think, it’s just human nature to want to push the limits and capabilities” (RehaM2USA: 103).

Recontextualizing corporeal forms of “I can” My journeying with exoskeletons started with an inquiry into how human bodies change due to their application and potential use. In re-contextualizing the motility of both able and impaired persons, a variety of forms of knowledge and proficiency emerge charting novel conceptions and motility practices, or put otherwise: forms of “I can.” Fischer et al. (2020) discuss the concept of “proficiency demarcation” in relation to how engineers design social robots. As they argue, “proficiency demarcation” relies on two elements: first, “engineers created labs that were free from vignettes of real-life use scenarios, because in their understanding, real or top-notch laboratories would be purely technical environments”; second, “this purification activity implicitly encouraged the notion of users as outsiders to these environments, users who would be fairly incompetent and rather inept to provide the engineers with valuable ideas about how a robot face could look like” (Fischer et al. 2020: 229). Proficiency demarcation does not refer to any knowledge conflict between engineers and users in the process of designing exoskeletons, although tensions may occasionally arise within teams designing these devices due to various disciplinary expertise views. Two examples are the differences between neuroscientists and engineers, or between ergonomists and engineers. Unlike the status of users in the study of Fischer et al. (2020), not only do users play a central role in imagining the device, but often their very implication and reactions contribute to a better conception of it. Proficiency demarcation may be observed with respect to the user’s competence and skill to either walk with an exoskeleton1 or use it in a working environment while having visible benefits. In these cases, exoskeletons obviously interfere with what I name body boundary management, since they impact capabilities that either were not there anymore (as in motility impairments) or those that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-10

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  211

exist and need support (although temporarily). The big challenge, though, remains to invent “Iron Men.” To concretely develop efficient exoskeletons for combat purposes in armed forces remains for the time being an unfulfilled project. What is striking, however, is that it is due to the military imaginary itself that the popular image of exoskeletons has been so often associated with corporeal enhancement and not only with technologically extended bodies. Globally, the history of social and cultural forms and practices that human beings have developed is a history of extended bodies. Exoskeletons attempt to achieve (and they well may) a proper place inside this history of technologies. Where they try to find even more justification is through entering a corporeal vocabulary, besides a technological one. The association between above-average capabilities provided by the use of exoskeletons and impaired bodies has greatly fascinated, as these two body profiles conflate two images of deviance. Both mark edges of human capabilities. The fact that exoskeletons are placed between these two body boundary forms nourished a discourse of “wonder,” the “wow” factor previously discussed. Wearing an exoskeleton strongly emphasizes strangeness; it transforms one’s body into an outsider for those who perceive it, and marks an exceptional status. Especially in cases of impairment, exoskeletons revise impossibilities inscribed in human bodies thought to be irreversible and which belong to the sphere of “I cannot.” Interestingly, in this type of use, they allow another form of “strangeness,” which, conspicuously, is that of ability. If impairment may represent the current everyday life of a person after having an accident or experiencing a stroke, her partial return to ability is another corporeal shift. Such an experience embarks her into a further form of corporeal strangeness. It is specifically the fluctuation between forms of corporeal homelikeness and unhomelikeness that exoskeletons eventually mark. When he described his observations of compensation movements during a test with a person having experienced stroke, one of the interviewed engineers explained to me precisely what characterizes bodies with impairments and how they reinvent themselves with their remaining possibilities. He said: One sees often that patients with stroke have compensation movements of the shoulder. This means that one cannot make many types of movements, such as properly moving the arm forward or turning the arm. So they make compensation movements over the shoulder. But it is different when [using mirror therapy with the exoskeleton] you make a movement with the healthy arm, where you don’t have the compensation movement; and this is copied and trained with the impaired arm. One of the test persons told us that he could do the movement without compensation with his shoulder, and that for him that would be great to practice it every day. […] These are things one hears every day. Each person has their habits. […] It’s the same with these compensation movements. So, if I would train every day an hour with an exoskeleton, my condition would perhaps become better. (Eng3GE: 67; my transl. from German)

212  What exoskeletons do to the body

His ideas resonate with a reflection of Havi Carel, who lives with a chronic disease herself. In her view, what pathological cases show is that an experience of smooth interwoven experience and action is not a takenfor-granted ground, but an achievement. Because the end product seems so natural we need pathological cases which with to expose the underlying process that gives us a normal world. (Carel 2016: 105) Where exoskeletons intervene is in the negotiation of precise forms of “I can,” redrawing disabilities into partial abilities or, in case of their use by healthy persons, into circumstantial above-average abilities. Due to the alterations they provoke, exoskeletons intrude both into phenomenologies of body images and into more invisible and deeper experiential aspects of human bodies. Being visible and undemocratized, exoskeletons isolate bodies from commonality. They become marks of “deviant” or “exceptional” bodies, categories that do not, in my examples, operate differentiations between a specific group and wider social norms, as a more classical definition in social theory would advance (Giddens 2009: 939; Ogien 2002), but differentiations between and among individuals belonging to a specific category. This category is strongly corporeally individuated for cases of motility deficiencies, but also for types of paid labor and types of operations carried by armed forces. The latter, due to their being associated with accomplishing specific tasks, form subgroups inside the wider group of their professions and may be strongly delineated according to what their bodies “can” do. To evoke deviance inside particular practice cultures may, on the one hand, strengthen the place of the human body qua resource for how we act, interact and respond to defined prescriptions in specific contexts; on the other hand, it may create hierarchies and nourish new forms and representations of power and conflict relations. Engaging human bodies in “the process of piecing together multiple perspectives and points of view” (Crawford 2015: 225), exoskeletons displace realities of “I can,” while embedding them into material networks central to the very definition and conception of corporeal capability. Because they interfere both at the subjective level of one’s body schema and at the level of one’s defined and specific forms of interaction, exoskeletons are technologies of extension par excellence. In their alteration of corporeal forms of “I can,” these devices modify “somatic codes.” According to Einat Bar-On Cohen, who developed the category of “somatic codes” in relation to the practice of martial arts, and more specifically to karate, somatic codes do not designate an object that can be grasped by the senses, put to use and fixed by logic; they designate ambiguous things, notions that are neither object nor subject, and also both object and subject. Somatic codes are neither “out there” nor “in here”; they are both in the world and part of me, of my body.

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  213

In phenomenological terms those codes, like the body itself, are both on and within the horizon-of-being. They are both tools of apprehension and of action, as well as designated object. (Bar-On Cohen 2006: 75) Bar-On Cohen’s notion of code is a linguistic one, the examples that he discusses in his study being those of specific commands to perform a technique in the practice of karate. My use of “somatic code” downplays the linguistic aspect while stressing forms of doing and skills which grow due to experience. The codes exoskeletons shape result from exercising movement types with a therapist in a medical institution, performing paid labor in industry, or specific activities for both unarmed and armed use in the armed forces. Obviously, learning to walk again after having experienced an accident leading to a spinal cord injury or having experienced a stroke is different than the techniques required, for example, for sanding, moving heavy loads and lifting boxes in a warehouse or efficiently using a weapon while engaged in a combat operation. Not only do all these examples refer to different experiential needs and resources, but also to purely and simply different capabilities expected from human bodies and their motility arsenal. It is in the balance or imbalance regarding these expectations that both categories of corporeal “deviance” and “extension” are drawn. In their areas of application, exoskeletons expose the fragility of human bodies, while seeking to review external perceptions of anomaly and ambiguity. Especially in working and military environments, where persons need to fulfill tasks in teams, exoskeletons mark transitions toward unprecedented conceptions of capability and skill. That is why precisely in these environments the difficulties of their introduction are more obvious than in rehabilitation. Industrial sites and armed forces operations often involve the simultaneous collaboration of many people. Tasks are never only one’s own body tasks, but tasks performed in highly intersubjective environments. In a recent study discussing the interaction between crew members of armed forces before an Apache helicopter attack, Ulrich von Wedelstaedt theorizes the concept of “interperceptivity,” which “describes the situational melding of bodies into a ‘multi-body entity’ that coexists beyond shared perception and is able to act in complex situations” (von Wedelstaedt 2020: 120). Exoskeletons, I argue, while further developing this concept, interfere with what I call “interproprioceptivity”; what they impact in the first place are motility patterns, and these patterns need to resonate with patterns lived or imagined both by experts and by users. The first changes exoskeletons operate concern invisible characteristics of the lived bodies of users in defined contexts, but also of the persons either accompanying the users, as is mostly the case in rehabilitation, or working and acting with the users, as is the case in working and military environments. They are inextricably bound to corporeal cultures that are characterized by specific forms of knowledge and doing; hence they attempt to be embedded in a “we.” Our being bodies involves our being bodies in defined environments (Gallagher 2017: 54) but also our being engaged in intercorporeal relations. In working and military

214  What exoskeletons do to the body

environments, where persons need to fulfill tasks in teams, exoskeletons emphasize that bodies are not isolated with their tasks. Besides impacting forms of “I can” in the sense that they act as “bodyguards” for specialized gestures and working techniques while protecting an individual, they also protect working traditions. Hence, they enter worlds of “we can.” Their inclusion in these multiple forms of being bodies reveals the current difficulty these devices have to properly respond to the variety of corporeal needs, which prove themselves to be harsh instances of sifting how capabilities may or not be redimensioned and on what bases. Questioning bodily techniques and movement technologies Like other gadgets and technological devices in their incipient uses, exoskeletons first surprise due to the images and representations they convey about and around human capabilities; in particular, they are “temptation” technologies because of the promises they make. Exoskeletons place the bodies they are designed to accompany in a fluctuation between a corporeal technological certainty and a corporeal technological doubt.2 Because they are not mature enough in their development for the bodies that await them places these devices currently in a fragile position in terms of technological realities. On the other hand, being works in progress at present leaves room precisely for progress, innovation and possibilities of imagining corporeal capabilities and abilities. As exoskeletons are in progress, so are the bodies they attempt to accompany. Accordingly, the ways exoskeletons may influence both symbolic and practical incorporations into selves and identities (Hyysalo, Jensen & Oudshoorn 2016: 13–14) also become unstable. In a 2011 essay emphasizing the importance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment for sociology and anthropology, Thomas Csordas evokes a number of components that, in his view, characterize corporeality.3 He includes movement (or motility) and capacity among these. The first is understood as our ability to move, characterized by agency and intentionality, defined by style, requiring effort and encountering resistance; whereas the second is described in the following terms: We possess certain capabilities of execution and endurance and certain consequences in case of loss or loss of function of any of them, as well as for these capabilities to be enhanced or augmented by technique, tool use, technology, or drugs. (Csordas 2011: 147–148) As with any type of technology, exoskeletons affect obviously more than mere motility parameters and capabilities; broadly they belong to what I categorize as “movement technologies.” I understand this class of technologies to be those that impact how we factually move in the first place, that is, our material experience of space. I include in this category cars, trains, planes or, to stay with the field of

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  215

rehabilitation, wheelchairs. Despite the common denominator where these gadgets meet, namely motility modifications, they are fundamentally different in both design conception and corporeal impact. Additionally, the “augmentation” or “extension” parameter of human bodies and their movement capacities have a different experiential weight if one considers how human bodies are made to move by a car, a plane or an exoskeleton. What is of note in this comparison is how one relates to values of what defines “average” bodies, in the sense that (at least until now) no human being is capable of flying or engaging in a race in which she or he can attain 300 kilometers per hour, as some speed trains do. Many movement technologies that augment human bodies are perceived as “external,” and while the process of their being embodied in the body schemas of their users may indeed take place, this happens mostly in situations where the device is quite proximal in relation to the body of its user. During an expert interview with an engineer, I made the comparison between exoskeletons and movement technologies that are bigger types of objects and complex technological assemblages, such as the above-named cars or planes. I inquired into the possibility of their being embodied into our body schemas and also about the possibility of their augmenting our motility capacities. He responded the following: I think the main difference is that all these devices are relatively far away from your body. They are big structures. Like a plane, for example: you walk into the plane, you can move in the plane. Probably not so much if you’re flying economy class [laughs]. But generally, you can move. And you would never come to think of the plane as a part of your body. Maybe for fighter jet pilots it is a bit different, because they’re really intimate with their plane, but for a normal passenger airplane it’s not that. […] I think, because the machines and devices we are developing, are so much closer to your body and can probably, with a bit of a stretch, be imagined to be part of your body as a whole, then I would say they can more easily be perceived as augmentative devices because the feeling is that you have augmented yourself. And is not necessarily that you have stepped into a plane, and then flew away where everybody says: “Well, it’s not you who is doing it, but it is just the plane that flies.” And that's why I think there is a perceptual difference in the two classes of devices. (Eng9CH: 54) The expert reveals how we actually live our “habitual bodies” and our habitual postures (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012: 84), essential because they influence our relations with, but in particular our active and constant relating to, technologies, as well their contextually and situationally relating back to us. Exoskeletons still need to build up their way into the wide array of body techniques to allow significant and steady rearticulation of human bodies. Although one may associate them with forms of body maintenance, which they obviously support (may these refer to able or impaired bodies), the type of maintenance that exoskeletons provide for movement patterns of human bodies differs more in structure and content than those

216  What exoskeletons do to the body

processes and forms of body maintenance associated with, for example, cosmetic surgery, fitness or, in more extreme forms, with body building. All of these characterize current developments of “body cults” (Gugutzer 2016), which highly emphasize the individual and subjective purport in deciding how corporeality projects are carried out but also managed and traded.4 Some techniques and cultures of the body are explicitly intended to be seen and openly influence its perceived images due to various modifications, some intended to “trade” the body into an ageless location. Exoskeletons enter other areas of human corporealities and perhaps also of “trading.” Clearly, what exoskeletons mainly seek to change and assist are body maintenance regimes. They may indeed contribute to “trade” corporeality forms; still, what they first target are features inside human beings’ bodies: their very movement maps. Whereas the positive aspects of being “extended” with an exoskeleton for working purposes are acknowledged, the situation of people with impairments rather concerns possibilities of exercising and maintaining what motility skills they manage to acquire. In this second case, exoskeletons may qualify as movement-keeping or movement-saving technologies when they are used inside a clinic or rehabilitation center, but also as movement technologies for leisure purposes if the users have the chance to own one themselves. Privately owned devices offer bodily movement repertoires additional modes of practical inscription by rendering formerly-denied spaces and environments open to experience, though regular use correlated to the functional aspect of walking remains a challenge still. One of the interviewees with spinal cord injury recounted to me the following: [The exoskeleton] is not like something I want to use for regular day life because it is like an exercise machine to me. [Something] like I want to get up, and go for a walk in the exoskeleton, just like I want to ride my hand cycle. It is not like I go run my hand cycle to go get groceries. But if it gets more advanced, and it could balance itself, and it can move as fast as regular walking, then, I think, it could be very useful. Then, everyone would use it everywhere. (RehaM2USA: 159) Technologies are generally loaded with expectations, and this is one of the parameters designers often need to respond to. Inventing exoskeletons and the bodies they need to accompany enters the imaginary of the users and of their concrete manners of acting, performing, doing and, not less importantly, of trading and managing new skills and movement modes. In particular, for persons with impairments having very specific needs, the demands to correlate and manage expectations are more obvious than for people who are able. One of the engineers recounted to me the following in an interview: I think we are still quite early in the development of a lot of this [type of] technology. And one important part is also to manage expectations. To really

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  217

manage what people expect, and what is possible and feasible in a short term. It will be quite interesting to know what happens in the next few years that truly reaches the market, and what technology actually gets used. […] I mean, you still don’t see exoskeletons or these assistive devices, you don’t see them in the streets. But I think there is a lot of people interested. There is a lot of people just waiting for the right technology and the right solution that gets them to do the things they want to do. (Eng14CH: 280; 282) In keeping with this narrative, exoskeletons appear to promise the re-anchorage of deficient manners of acting and performing tasks, but also of transforming corporeal characteristics thought to be permanently unrecoverable into actual possibilities. While surfing between the possible and the feasible, exoskeletons permanently switch between forms of “I can” and “I cannot” or forms of “I no longer can,” to retain the terminology of Drew Leder (1990). In these fluctuations, exoskeletons inscribe themselves in the larger family of objects that contribute to reanchor our materiality, our representations and our perceptions of it in novel ways. As one of the users with a spinal cord injury, who is also an engineer developing these types of devices, remarked in an interview, there is always something that entices people. Not always. Some people are just content with what they have, and they don’t care too much to pursue it. But other people, they see something they want, they go get it. […] the first question you’ve got to ask is: Can we build it? And will it improve somebody’s lives? The answer is yes; we need to build it and hopefully, it works as it is supposed to. (RehaM2USA: 173; 175) Before they impact body images, exoskeletons firstly intervene into changing forms of motility-related capability due to their altering movement repertoires. As such, they are unquestionably movement technologies, and as movement technologies they engage human bodies in new experiences of their own materiality and, more specifically, in how they experience space. The highly specific focus of movement sequences may impede the process of their “domestication,” and correlatively their proper collaboration with the body schema of their users. Challenging familiarity with both human bodies and tasks, some of the difficulties of acceptance of their use stem from them being inadequately transparent technologies. In order to acquire transparency, a category which is a synonym for the phenomenological notion of embodiment in the language of engineering experts, human bodies and the gadgets they want to possibly integrate into both their body schemas and “add” to their body images need many hours of training. Yet the prospectus of “adding” technological addenda to what bodies already are is obviously different for able and impaired bodies. Whereas exoskeletons for able bodies address skills and types of movement most often related to explicitly

218  What exoskeletons do to the body

defined tasks in specific environments and contexts, the condition of impaired bodies refers to a general aspect characterizing the anatomy and physiology of what human beings have been until present. As a consequence, the forms of extension that exoskeletons produce have different impacts on the bodies of their users, and sometimes these extensions are not sufficient for the bodies’ concrete needs. In participating in the redistribution and challenging of knowledge forms, exoskeletons prove themselves to be constant sources for questioning contemporary possibilities to concretely upgrade, edit or reinvent the reality of their users’ bodies. As Anne Balsamo notes, “when discussing new technologies, it is important to try to avoid the trap of technological determinism that argues that these technologies necessarily and unilaterally expand the hegemonic control by a technoelite. Technologies have limited agency” (Balsamo 1996: 123), and such a limited intervention is clearly acknowledged in the case of exoskeletons. The limitation of agency refers to their address of very targeted attributes and functions of human bodies, segments of motility, specific gestures performed in determined environments, and contexts. Because they are highly specific for a type of movement or human limbs, they are mono-function oriented, a reason why I named them monousage objects. For example, if one examines the subject of walking speed in rehabilitation, some users prefer wheelchairs to exoskeletons because the speed of the former is higher and the usability potential, which often includes their acquiescence of bodily techniques, is also more habitualized and easier to acquire than with some currently available exoskeletal products. As one of the users with spinal cord injury explained to me, the advantage of the wheelchair is that it is stable. You see, you don’t have to balance all the time. Your hands are free, and that would be the first disadvantage of the exoskeleton. I mean, you use crutches to balance, so your hands aren’t free. The wheelchair is a little bit faster. A lot faster, depending on how fast you want to go. The exoskeleton it’s about maybe half of the regular walking speed, maybe a third of the regular walking speed. So, it’s pretty slow compared to other means of transportation. And one of the main concerns for me is […] I can feel when I have to go to the bathroom. But I don’t have much time, like I can't really hold it too long. So sometimes I need to rush to the bathroom and if I am in an exoskeleton rushing just might not be quick enough. […] [the exoskeleton] is heavy. It kind of doesn’t fit in a wheelchair, so you can need both. I like to travel, and it does seem like a lot of weight. But yeah, I would definitely like to go for a walk. Like it is the activity that I would do. But I am not going to wear it for a regular use, because it takes on my hands and it kind of gets me more disabilities. Like it makes me heavier. I have to balance it. It’s slower. So, sure people could see me eye to eye or whatever. But I might need help opening a door with an exoskeleton. I don’t know. (RehaM2USA: 155; 159)

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  219

In the view of this user, the exoskeleton model he describes still needs to develop in order to be integrated into his “habitual body” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012: 84); although people may be disabled, some bodily postures do not disappear. They may change, but they do not disappear. And if exoskeletons have difficulties in corresponding to these bodies that are highly specific due to the particularities created by their injuries, the extension of the body to respond to impairment will be accomplished by using other more convenient technologies, as these are sometimes better engaged in a techno-corporeal domestication and provide a higher probability of recapitalizing one’s own bodily techniques. Seeking to respond to forms of “deviance” by means of technological extension shows eventually that human bodies are highly unstable entities; although forms of productive cooperation between exoskeletal devices and their users’ bodies do occur, these do not characterize all the contexts of application. Such cooperation is even less common when one considers all the bodies for which exoskeletons are possibly needed. These forms of resistance and productive challenge constantly deployed by human bodies compel to rethink how current movement technologies such as exoskeletons reformulate the conceptual foundations of corporeal “deviance” and corporeal “extension.” Deviant bodies, their abilities and inabilities: Shifting corporeal norms I started my journey with an inquiry into how such categories as “deviance” and “extension” applied to corporeality change due to the application and use of exoskeletal devices. Gadgets generally fascinate because they invite a variety of forms for transgressions. Whether these forms regard concretely material qualities of our bodies or less material productions (which are nevertheless embodied) such as cognitive functions, they disturb while simultaneously encouraging us to rethink how we live our boundaries. Exoskeletons and their bodies attempt to find their way into this history of transformations. The reasons for them being designed, tested, corrected and ameliorated are polarized by specific abilities or inabilities of which human bodies are disposed. Addressing these, they contribute to our everchanging corporeality. Their blending of factual and fictional imaginaries, as well as their treatment of lacking abilities and the augmentation of some of them, exoskeletons prove themselves to be rich sources to reinvent manners of doing, and thus, practices. The types of categorical leaps in which exoskeletons engage their bodies are in some cases revolutionary (rehabilitation exoskeletons indeed operate capability leaps, which have obvious consequences for some persons concretely experiencing their motility impairments), but are less so in others, such as those used in working or military environments. Clearly, their contribution to bodies at work and to bodies at fight is noted by some of their users. The conception of augmenting bodily resistance while performing difficult tasks is acknowledged by some; however, in

220  What exoskeletons do to the body

order to evoke massive changes, exoskeletons need to currently respond to a larger number of users than the few who openly express their acceptance. Their contribution to rendering bodies “deviant” in the sense of transforming them into entities performing and being above average remains highly contextual and task specific for the time being, just as their shift of corporeal norms from average to above average remains far removed from any practice of “lived synthesis” (Crawford 2015: 228). One of their aspects that draws attention to the field of corporeal deviance remains their technological ambiguity, which is underlined by the fact that exoskeletons are not accomplished technologies. It is their strangeness and unnatural appearance that grant them and the bodies they accompany a “deviant” and exotic character while engaging our perceptions in novel interrogations about what our bodies are and may become. In the classical sociological thought, deviance has often been associated with forms of crime and criminalization. From what I have shown in my study, this meaning does not characterize the phenomena I observed. Human bodies, and more generally corporeality, cover other meanings of deviance, if this concept is still given a social and an anthropological reality. Especially, the presence of numerous forms of technological companionship may sometimes contribute to reinforce the perception of non-normalcy. It is in these displacements of bodily categories managed by technological means that such phenomena as augmentation or enhancement may precisely join the field of non-normalcy, provoking categorical confusion and opening new perspectives precisely based on “the construction of normalcy” (Davis 1997). As some users with impairments described their experiences of being perceived in public spaces while using an exoskeleton, the body image registered by the people they encounter is that of a hero from science fiction movies. In general, technology is used to ameliorate possibilities and capabilities of human bodies, although sometimes it may replace them. Exoskeletons, due to their firsthand association with science fiction, interfere with these fluctuating dualisms. They prompt ingress into new forms of ambiguity and concomitant confusion regarding to what extent and in what circumstances human beings can do and perform actions. Being exceptional objects, they bestow the same quality upon the bodies of their users. If they are able to prove their usability and their indispensability in some contexts, they will become ordinary objects like other technologies in the history of our bodies. If there is a conceptual import describing phenomena of deviance in sociology that may be applied to the facts I observed during my fieldwork, it regards the two characteristics of ambiguity and confusion, emphasized by Downes and Rock’s remark: “confusion is an important phenomenon in itself and its very existence can emphasize special properties of deviance” (Downes, Rock & McLaughlin 2011: 3). In the question of how human bodies are currently changed by exoskeletons, much of the confusion results from the confrontation between what is possible and what is feasible. It also results from the spontaneity with which human bodies respond to these devices, how the users manage to negotiate or trade their new bodies in not only their accepted system of representations, values and concrete practices, but also

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  221

in that of other people with whom they concretely interact in their everyday lives. What is feasible is influenced by the materiality of machines: not all the available models may be concretely developed, as many explorations and tests remain at experimental level, and thus only “possible”; what is feasible is also influenced by how the needs of human bodies succeed in being translated into the “doing” receipts that the devices contain. The mechanisms of this translation and often, of transaction, may not always match all the expectations of the actors involved in the production of bodies with exoskeletons. I speak of production of bodies with and by exoskeletons because the main aim behind the projects of exoskeleton development doubtlessly remain human bodies and their exceptionality. One may agree with Cassandra Crawford that “‘exceptional’ bodies have often proven to be more telling, more industrious starting points, than the ‘normative’, and have time and again been the impetus for theoretical and conceptual re-visioning” (Crawford 2015: 242). Exoskeletons especially emphasize that “the body is what it can do, not what it is” (Clough 2012: 95), and when bodies fail in types of doing, they become exceptional or deviant and thus emerge as points of inquiry into what is considered to be the “norm” or reflective of “normativity.” In the classical conceptions of deviance or anomy of Emile Durkheim ([1893] 2013) or Robert Merton (Merton [1949] 1968), deviance understood in terms of criminality is interestingly a phenomenon showing how social cohesion or how societies continue to exist (Downes, Rock & McLaughlin 2011: 10). In commenting on Durkheim’s oeuvre, Mary Douglas evokes the idea of deviance not in a norm/normative matter; her interpretation of deviance rather refers to “signs of rejection by the main society” (Douglas 1986: 98). Yet, it is a different situation to consider rejection with respect to disability than with respect to certain practices, such as the example of marijuana consumption, as considered in the analysis provided by Howard Becker in his classical study Outsiders (1963). Just as different are situations in which small details about practices and skills in work settings or military environments may quickly discredit someone’s competence and thus her or his integration in that specific group. My use of the category of deviance refers on the one hand to general deficiencies related to aspects of ability, capability and specific skills for which motility is central, as well as to above-average aspects of the same features; on the other hand, deviance related to ability, capability and skills is highly contextually determined (in working and military environments), an example that is essentially different from forms of crime and criminality, being an immigrant or having a certain religious orientation.5 These latter examples sanction deviance in other contexts. Because it is visible, corporeal deviance engages one’s own body in a specific form of transaction with other people. The contribution of phenomenology of the body is to be noted at this level because it is the subjective, the experiential detail of one’s corporeality, and one’s biography that often are resources in questioning accepted values and socially taken-for-granted norms while contributing to their productive changes. As Chris Shilling notes,

222  What exoskeletons do to the body

those stigmatized within a community because of a physical disability, for example, may critically reflect on their “spoiled identity”, discover that they are much more capable than society assumes, and reject their bodily identity in favor of a radical alternative. (Shilling 1993: 201) Put in other words, corporeal differences and forms of deviance may actively contribute to mutations in social conceptions of not only how our bodies are present, but especially of how they must be “attained, maintained and, sometimes reclaimed” (Crawford 2015: 241). In these shifts, technologies may play a crucial role, and this is where exoskeletons also inscribe themselves. That they bring ambiguity and confusion about how human bodies are both perceived but also phenomenologically lived reinforces their quality of being what I would name “deviance” markers. Although they are visible technological artifacts attached to the bodies of their users, they produce “marked bodies” in a different manner than cosmetic surgery, fashion, or current everyday activities which define aspects of the “quantified self” (Duttweiler et al. 2016; Lupton 2016). The latter are characterized by an explicit promotion of “selfsurveillance whereby the body becomes an object of intense vigilance and control” (Balsamo 1995: 216). Some of these, entering the category of “body tuning,” an activity that refers to “technological-pharmacological manipulations of the healthy body” (Gugutzer 2016: 145; my transl. from German) with the explicit purpose of augmenting its capacities and functions, retain a special position within the wider areas of enhancement technologies. Exoskeletons are intended to assist specific gestures and help in the process of rehabilitation for people with motor impairments. For these bodies, not only do they rehabilitate, but sometimes, when steady and sufficient exercise is possible, they may also re-abilitate, changing parameters of corporeal deviance. The oscillation they induce between forms of “abnormality” related to disease and illness and forms of “abnormality” related to above-average ability result in categorical approximations, and thus, in operative conceptions of corporeality. According to Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “disability signals the body that cannot be universalized” (1997: 282). The categorical fluctuations exoskeletons actually introduce demonstrate that this characterization does not apply to the impossibility of conceiving the body as a universal configuration only with respect to forms of disability; what these devices draw attention to is also ability, and therefore to the general fact that no particular type of corporeality may be considered universal. Quite on the contrary. Our corporealities constantly shift and reinvent their boundaries, and with them, us. Like exoskeletons themselves, human bodies too are works in progress, and if one stays with the categorization of deviance proposed by Downes, Rock and McLaughlin (2011), they therefore represent a constant source of ambiguity and confusion. As some of the narrative interviews showed, there are a multitude of reactions to how corporeal habits are modified by exoskeletons, and with them both the perceived but also felt boundaries of one’s body. If one understands the notion of “I

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  223

can” in terms of “I can do,” as the enactive orientation in phenomenology endorses it (Gallagher 2017: 42; 49), exoskeletons redistribute the body’s horizon of possibilities. In some fields of acting and doing, especially those regarding their use by able persons, and more specifically in some situations in industrial environments, exoskeletons clearly impact abilities, inabilities and rhythms of work. However, this is not always the case, and one needs to note as well that in some situations the body is not a site of possibilities and resists interaction (at least some forms of interaction) with gadgets while continuing to persist in defending lifestyles and already well-mastered performance techniques. Responding to human motility patterns requires a close assessment of what type of contexts these patterns need to attend to: what type of spaces, human interactions or tasks (if human bodies need to move in labor environments, for example). It especially requires an examination of what causes the inappropriate capacity of one’s own body for tasks. Besides their imperative to respond to corporeal “deviance” by possibilities of extension, which would delimit a first sphere of human abilities, in a second phase, exoskeletons need to respond to environments. As such, they join bodies to specific realities and impact the consistency of human corporeality according to the rules of these realities while expanding levels of bodily re-capitalization. In doing so, they in turn force these contexts to consider their practice regimes as well as the body cultures developed around and with those bodies that temporarily inhabit them. Such processes contribute to reorder but also renegotiate the manners in which the line between insiders and outsiders is further drawn. The active production of human motility patterns is a complex negotiation in which corporeal norms are never “normed” enough; by contrast, the process of implementing exoskeletons explicitly draws attention to how difficult it is to capture the realities of human bodies that are in perpetual redefinition. Sometimes overcoming existing motility patterns indeed reinvents one’s body and its habits while engaging the user of the gadget into forms of discovery of her or his bodily boundaries. One needs to reorder either experiences that were disordered, as is the case with impaired bodies, or reorder existing doing and acting patterns. In both cases, bodies and gadgets are reciprocally engaged in mutations, underlying novel practices of becoming that in part disenchant, yet still leave space and place for further corporeal idioms. Notes 1 Philip Beckerle explained to me the differences of use between people using prostheses and those using exoskeletons who were competing at the Cybathlon in Zurich in 2016 and expressed that some of them were “professional users” (Philip Beckerle, private conversation, November 10, 2020). 2 Havi Carel discusses the concept of “bodily certainty” and “bodily doubt” in her analysis of chronic illness. See Carel (2016: 86–105). 3 These are ten in number and include bodily form, sensory experience, movement or motility, orientation, capacity, gender, metabolism/physiology, copresence, affect and temporality. See Csordas, T. (2011). Cultural Phenomenology. Embodiment: Agency, Sexual Difference, and Illness. In Mascia-Lees, F. E. (Ed.), A Companion to the

224  What exoskeletons do to the body Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment (pp. 137– 156). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 147–148. 4 In a study analyzing techniques of beauty making, Nina Degele develops the concept of “beauty staging” (Schönheitshandeln), which she understands as a process by which human beings try to attain social acknowledgment (Degele 2004: 10; 2008: 169). Like clothes, which are embedded in their specific fluctuations and movements of staging, the world of technological gadgets is also grounded in a complexity of staging forms. Besides body images, exoskeletons, I claim, stage but also trade skills and capabilities. 5 Mary Douglas’s study How Institutions Think (1986) provides rich details about how the religious factor may be responsible for the construction of deviant or outsider positions of individuals.

References Balsamo, A. (1995). Forms of technological embodiment: Reading the body in contemporary culture. Body & Society, 1(3–4), 215–237. Balsamo, A. (1996). Technologies of the Gendered Body. Durham; London: Duke University Press. Bar-On, C. E. (2006). Kime and the moving body: Somatic codes in Japanese martial arts. Body and Society, 12(4), 73–93. Becker, H. S. (1963). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Carel, H. (2016). Phenomenology of Illness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clough, P. T. (2012). Feminist theory: Bodies, science and technology. In B. S. Turner (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Body Studies (pp. 94–105). New York: Routledge. Crawford, C. S. (2015). Body image, prosthesis, phantom limbs. Body & Society, 21(2), 221–244. Csordas, T. (2011). Cultural phenomenology. Embodiment: Agency, sexual difference, and illness. In F. E. Mascia-Lees (Ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment (pp. 137–156). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Davis, L. J. (1997). Constructing normalcy: The bell curve, the novel and the invention of the disabled body in the nineteenth century. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The Disability Studies Reader (pp. 9–28). New York: Routlegde. Degele, N. (2004). Sich schön machen: Zur Soziologie von Geschlecht und Schönheitshandeln. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Degele, N. (2008). Schöner Altern: Altershandeln zwischen Verdrängung, Resonanzen und Solidaritäten. In Buchen, S. & Maier, M. S. (Eds.), Älterwerden neu denken (pp. 165– 180). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Douglas, M. (1986). How Institutions Think. New York: Syracuse University Press. Downes, D., Rock, P., & McLaughlin, E. (2011). Understanding Deviance: A Guide to the Sociology of Crime and Rule-breaking (7th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Durkheim, E. ([1893] 2013). The Division of Labour in Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Duttweiler, S., Gugutzer, R., Passoth, J. H., & Strübing, J. (2016). Leben nach zahlen: Selftracking als Optimierungsprojekt. Bielefeld: Transcript. Fischer, B., Östlund, B., & Peine, A. (2020). Of robots and humans: Creating user representations in practice. Social Studies of Science, 50(2), 221–244.

R einvesting corporeal capabilities  225 Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Giddens, A. (2009). Sociology (6th ed.). Cambridge: Polity Press. Gugutzer, R. (2016). Körperzauber? Der Kult um den Körper in der „entzauberten Welt“. In A. Bellebaum & R. Hettlage (Eds.), Religion. Spurensuche im Alltag (pp.137–156). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Hyysalo, S., Jensen, T. E., & Oudshoorn, N. (2016). Introduction to the new production of users. In S. Hyysalo, T. E. Jensen & N. Oudshoorn (Eds.), The New Production of Users: Changing Innovation Collectives and Involvement Strategies (pp. 1–44). London: Routledge. Leder, D. (1990). The Absent Body. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lupton, D. (2016). The Quantified Self: A Sociology of Self-tracking. Cambridge: Polity Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. ([1945] 2012). Phenomenology of Perception. London; New York: Routledge. Merton, R. K. ([1949] 1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press. Ogien, A. (2002). Sociologie de la déviance. Paris: Armand Colin. Shilling, C. (1993). The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage. Von Wedelstaedt, U. (2020). The interactional accomplishment of ‘Shootables’: Visualisation and decision making before an apache helicopter attack. Ethnographic Studies, 17, 100–124.

Chapter 8

Epilogue Producing bodies while extending them

Revisiting corporeal deviance Innovative technologies challenge the ordinary in our everyday lives. Often, they also change our bodies, and with this alteration, they impact how we are them. It is precisely this attempt that troubles common views, which is why sometimes the robotic turn, to which exoskeletons and their bodies partly belong, may unsettle. In an already classical study in anthropology, Reproducing the Future (1992), Marilyn Strathern noted the following: In industrial society, human enterprise was seen to work against the givens of the natural world. At the same time, enterprise was held to evince the very creativity that was distinctive to human nature. To call something “artificial” carried a double meaning, conveying at once this intrinsic sense of human ingenuity and the further sense that human ingenuity could extend beyond the natural limits of human nature itself. (Strathern 1992: 45) At present, exoskeletons unsettle because they seem to contribute to such shifts, namely by entering fields of artificiality, to stay with Strathern’s discussion. If one considers them as a semantic trope and their association with fictional characters in popular culture and glamorous media accounts, these devices would approach the spectacular rather than the factual. One of the intentions of the present study was to redraw the lines around the concrete reality of using these artifacts from a socio-anthropological perspective. The facts I observed spoke in favor of “corporeal worlds” which are very delimited in time and space, and more specifically, which are built around a specific feature of human bodies: motility. Put differently, my observations addressed the current possibilities that these devices offer for bodies they are designed to accompany in specifically defined and often controlled conditions, and their concrete phenomenological potential. I understand the latter in terms of our corporeal experiential background. Conceiving deviance as either a lack of some human abilities due to accidents or disease or as performing more in specific contexts may appear simplistic at first

DOI: 10.4324/9781003398240-11

E pilogue 

227

sight. Yet there is a long sociological conceptual history of this split (Thompson & Gibbs 2017) and many nuances within these categories. As the fundamental trait displayed by human corporeality is constant mutability and dynamics, the social reality of human bodies is one in which they are perpetually negotiated, managed and often staged. The classical dichotomy that has crossed the history of the sociological thought, namely “normal”/“deviant,” is thus continually challenged, with current technological developments playing a decisive role in these categorical shifts. This is partly due to the fact that one of the currently observable general traits is the proximity with which technological artifacts engage us, and thus very often how we experience our corporealities through them. What the observed facts show is that the use of technologies never renders human bodies normal or deviant enough (either positively or negatively). Nor is the use of technologies conceivable without human bodies. We may be, according to the contexts and situations in which we find ourselves, temporarily able, disabled, or “above-average abled.” Despite our belonging to a variety of groups, the “kingdom of the well,” to recall Susan Sontag’s category I discussed,1 is the one most of us attempt to belong to and also remain inside; however, circumstances and contexts may change our belonging, just as the perception of us by other persons does. Besides the generality of these affirmations, belonging to clearly defined practice groups like those identified in the worlds of work or the military where people’s identities are primarily demarcated by what they can do is another form of differentiation for which human bodies are essential. This is especially the case when these specific practice forms are associated with correlative types of physical or bodily capital (Bourdieu 1984; Wacquant 1995) and body habitus (Crossley 2013) or idioms (Dolezal 2017; Goffman 1963a), which further individualize particular body cultures. Interestingly, if in the case of motility impairments, the necessity to develop and implement exoskeletons to respond to such limitations is relatively obvious, the situation for able bodies, and more specifically of able bodies engaged in paid labor or military applications, is determined by explicit and very often technical requirements. Decisive are here forms of what bodies should do and not only what they can do. Exoskeletons are slippery technological productions, embarking the bodies they either carry or by which they are worn into this slippage. Clearly, in some specific contexts and timescapes, such an attempt has very concrete consequences. The result is often a reshaping of the very materiality that the bodies wearing these gadgets are, but also a reshaping of the concrete interactions between people, many of which take on an overtly political character since various types of conflicts or further forms of hierarchy may emerge due to the use or non-use of technologies. A cautionary category employed by experts to avoid conflicts of meaning as well as anxieties about the design and use of exoskeletons is, as I have shown, “assistance.” Because the use of exoskeletons affects both images of the body, which can neither be separated from one’s “image of the self” (Selbstbild) (Gugutzer 2002: 196) and nor from motility, which is essential and becomes noticed only when it fails or is affected in some ways, they entail a highly phenomenological potential.

228  What exoskeletons do to the body

Because they interfere in these more general corporeal reservoirs, exoskeletons impact how bodies are invented, practiced and assisted contributing though to customized worlds and specific corporeal repertoires. Interestingly, while attempting to provide corrections and assistance for motility patterns, what they do in the end, to stay with Strathern’s perspective, is to activate the whole human body or, as Strathern posits, “activate the person” (Strathern 2004: 8). As such, not only do exoskeletons become motility markers but whole-body markers. Like other technological objects before them, exoskeletons underline the oscillation between what is accepted, tolerated, defined and understood as a “healthy” or “impaired” body, an “able” body when performing particular tasks in working or combat environments (and thus a skilled one) or a “not able,” less skilled or de-skilled body in the same circuits. The reality of practices exoskeletons and their bodies are involved in is characterized by complex dynamics that confront forms of scientific objectivity, socialcontextual objectivity and the specific phenomenological reality of each and every user. All these aspects play upon the ever-changing reality of what it means to be a “deviant” body and in what instances, circumstances and social contexts. While attempting to adjust corporeal deviance understood in terms of impairment in some worlds, exoskeletons endeavor to overcome average bodies’ skills in others. In this process, bodies follow the devices, which implies that any project of imagining exoskeletons is indivisible from imagining the bodies they are designed to accompany and the specific corporeal worlds they populate, may this be for longer or shorter periods of time. In these developments, exoskeletons show the constant struggle with taxonomies and therefore their protean character of human bodies and selves (Butnaru 2020). To come back to Strathern’s conception of “artificiality” I previously evoked, one of the results of my journeying with exoskeletons and their bodies was to acknowledge to what extent the artificiality of the technological object is actually a simulation of the human body. This is not to affirm that some scientific projects may endlessly manipulate human bodies; quite on the contrary. What becomes obvious from the three corporeal worlds I had the chance to observe while these worlds were being actively produced, was that such an imaginary according to which bodies are matter for technologies and may be extended, transformed and reinvented according to both needs and desires, needs correction. It is here that the phenomenological heritage is valuable because it represents an essential tool in affirming that despite the current technological progress, manners of experiencing corporeality are contingent and meanings remain sometimes highly personal; what happens for a short period in a lab under test conditions varies substantially from one’s walking with an exoskeleton in a home setting (in case one is lucky enough to own one), working with one under constraints of time and often space, or being able to fight with one in a multiplicity of (often) harsh environments. What the quest of how bodies respond to definitions of deviance shows while being extended by these magical objects is that we are a particular body in a particular context, and the skillsets one may gain are never permanently achieved. Indeed, the

E pilogue 

229

confrontation between living bodies and machines confirms that bodies are living, while machines in their attempt to copy them only “work” (Strathern 1992: 47). Yet in some circumstances, living without machines, and more generally technologies, is obviously harder, and often impossible. Bodies (still) hardly “dancing” with machines: Corporeal “surprises” The concept of “dance of agency” as developed by Andrew Pickering (Pickering 1995) is defined as a “dialectic of resistance and accommodation” (Pickering 2017: 138). Part of my interest in the enactive turn in phenomenology has to do with its explicit preference for agency, for human beings actively engaged in transactions and interactions with one another and for embodied selves. The acknowledgment of human embodiment, which represents the condition of possibility for constantly “extending” our experiential postures, opens possibilities for discussing performativity. Because we are embodied and thus in the world, “we, as minded beings, are definitely ‘out there’, dynamically coupled to artifacts, tools, technologies, social practices, and institutions” (Gallagher 2017: 59–60). It is in these possibilities that exoskeletons try to find their ways of “extending” us, and circumstantially, of reembodying and even re-situating human bodies. Perhaps one of the most striking features that these devices draw attention to is the constant readaptation of our performances. While redrawing the history of specific body practices and skills, exoskeletons endeavor to make their way into the greater family of “tools,” but also, for those that are powered, into that of “machines.” They are inevitably related to performance(s) in such a process, as well as to corporeal abilities and capabilities. The category of performance may refer to the theater metaphor used by Erving Goffman to explain how social interactions function, and this is a usage which targets a more symbolic perspective; performance, however, may also refer to situated forms of doing, implying the performance of an activity – it is being carried out and fulfilled and having concrete consequences. Exoskeletons and their bodies may challenge both these conceptions of performance, but also challenge levels of performativity. As such, they draw attention to how forms of resistance or accommodation generate further conceptions of what bodies can or cannot, and especially how they can. In this constant negotiation between agency and performance in which corporeal resistance is produced, human bodies surprise, a feature which acknowledges them still being “own bodies,” and thus stands the fact that some phenomenological concepts, despite their genealogies, nevertheless retain their actuality. I started this study with the question addressing how exoskeletal devices (in their current state) strive to reshape corporealities and their phenomenologies in social contexts. In some contexts, where bodies are able, the dance of agency is still in its incipient phases. By contrast, the responses are different in those corporeal worlds where human bodies have motility impairments, and although for a brief interval of time, which is at present that

230  What exoskeletons do to the body

of a training session in a rehabilitation clinic or lab, exoskeletons allow the bodies of their users to experience segments of ability, although this ability is “delegated” in that the motor intentionality that is engaged is transposed to the technological object. Despite this obvious achievement, embodiment, which I understand as a contextual and determined non-reflective or pre-reflective form of gadget use, is hardly achieved (if at all) for impaired persons. Constant reflexivity and the many differences and nuances of spinal cord injuries and forms of stroke impact the transparency with the device. The situation is different for able bodies, although other factors may influence the concrete “dance of agency” in the context of work and combat. What the three observed cases clearly show is that similar to other realities that are enacted in practices (Law & Lien 2012), the corporeal ones that exoskeletons let emerge are temporarily enacted, and in doing so, they allow the human bodies constructing them to be either temporarily and partly “able” for some motility segments, or temporarily “augmented” for the performance of specific tasks. I do not argue that these achievements are “precarious choreographies” (Law & Lien 2012: 365), but that they are rather “surprising,” by which I mean they are deeply influenced by the individual characteristics of their users’ bodies and their spontaneity. Not only does the exoskeleton situate one’s own body temporally and spatially, but also one’s own body, understood as a sum of experiences and specific habits, may eventually re-situate itself while using the device. And the responses and matching between these two require a steady progress. The specificity of these performative situations is that besides embarking conceptions of a material object different from the human body, the technological one, they also mobilize conceptions of corporeality. Here too the phenomenological tradition is a significant resource to analyze transfers between two conceptions of corporeality: first, the scientific one of the experts, and second, the individual one of the persons who experience directly what experts design. The “dance of agency,” which in the situations I observed is rather a dance of agencies and corporealities, is built on a constant confrontation between the notion of the objective body or the experience of the body as an object (Körper), and that of the lived one (Leib) (Husserl [1952] 1989), the body experienced from the firstperson perspective. It is while confronting the dissymmetry between these two categories describing bodies and their multiplicities of being, their possibilities of acting, enacting and actively evolving, that the thesis of corporealities which indefinitely surprise becomes plausible. If one intends to preserve this conceptual characterization of body forms, then the previously evoked “dance of agencies” may only be fulfilled as a “dance of corporealities,” by which I mean a constant shift between forms of scientific or professionally acknowledged conceptions of bodies and the “living” rather than the “lived” ones. In such a process, it is easy to observe that phenomenology cannot be currently a discourse in singular; rather, as Shaun Gallagher points out, it becomes evidently plural (Gallagher 2012). However, unlike Gallagher, who explicitly acknowledges the re-incarnation of

E pilogue 

231

phenomenology in relation to cognitive sciences (Gallagher 2012: 15), my focus was to consider some phenomenological categories in light of their contribution to specific technological transformations that have an impact on our embodied reality with respect to specific sets of practices, which individualize human bodies as experiential repertoires (Abraham 2006). In this epistemological move, my intention was to distance myself from emphasizing cognitive repertoires, and thus open the category of knowledge toward that of experience. My use of the phenomenological terminology in this study targets topics other than consciousness or experience understood in terms of consciousness of something, which is how intentionality is classically defined in this paradigm (Husserl [1913] 1983: §84). Making extensive use of the terminology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, I base my phenomenological conception in these developments, which defend an explicit correlation between “self-others-things” (Merleau-Ponty [1945] 2012: 57), a view already mobilized in social studies of science (Knorr-Cetina 1992). Among the variety of contexts of practice which further contribute to form corporeal worlds, the three which constituted the main axes of this study provide examples for the centrality of human bodies in shaping modes of doing and skilling; the type of phenomenological stance I promote thus aims to encourage a relational perspective in which bodies, gadgets, contexts, and further other people’s bodies contribute to build temporary “islands of stability” (Pickering 2017: 139). What emerged during the fieldwork experience is that what one expects to find in terms of “objectivity” in technological gadgets designed to follow the shapes and needs of human bodies is just as slippery as what is understood as the “subjective” or “individual” aspect from the point of view of the knowledge and experiential content. Körper mirrors Leib and vice versa. Objectification remains sequential and mostly lab connoted and is a necessary step in the scientific production and understanding of motility parameters. In addition, it offers common ground to establish bridges between bodies, in the sense of generalizable transfer of knowledge patterns, and on another scale, it is responsible for engendering intercorporeal models. The real practice of producing bodies while they are wearing and being worn by exoskeletons is yet full of surprises and contingencies. It is especially highly marked by what the bodies of the users have in terms of resources: how users both discover themselves and sometimes recover (as in the case of impairments) motility abilities. As such, exoskeletons need to fit both “bodies in biographical contexts” (Abraham 2002) and the biographies of those bodies. Therefore, in order to integrate such a device as an exoskeleton into everyday practices, manners of doing, knowing and, not the least, the very identities of their users, devices need to match the histories of those bodies that made them become the specific repertoires that they actually are. The “dance of agency” previously evoked fascinates in the observed examples precisely because it is a dance; exoskeletons engage the bodies of their users in a process marked simultaneously by skillsets and active movement – in short, by corporeal creativity, spontaneity and hence sometimes surprise.

232  What exoskeletons do to the body

Creating “above-average ability” or repairing it? When I started this study, many of my questions related to the development and use of exoskeletons revolved around the category of corporeal enhancement, a category frequently correlated to such currents of thought as transhumanism (Bostrom & Sandberg 2011; Kurzweil 2006). As I emphasized several times, unlike biotechnologies that act “inwards” by modifying the very insides of our bodies (Shilling 2005: 173), genetic modifications, reproductive technologies (some of which are also related to genetics) and implants or transplants being heavily quoted in a variety of studies, exoskeletons are external to human bodies. The type of debates they engender consequently enter other areas of what constitutes and (if) what type of corporeal enhancement. Unlike interventions targeting the human genome (Lock 2017), the modifications exoskeletons generate are reversible. Perhaps this is what in part disenchants their perception as augmentative devices. For if it is true that they may indeed “augment” some sequences of motility of human bodies, these forms of corporeal augmentation always remain of a very specific kind, highly contextualized and determined by a goal to be attained. However, by no means is the whole person transformed; what is transformed represents some motility sequences, which renders augmentation a temporary phenomenon. Like in the case of cars or planes, the “augmentation” exists only as long as the gadget is in use. And so is the change of experiential content targeted by the device. The non-use of the exoskeleton results in the inexistence or disappearance of the surplus of ability it produces. Hence the category “assistance,” which competes with “augmentation,” amounts to showing that in some cases, there are obvious limitations for corporeal enhancement. Assistance describes the reality of these modifications more accurately than augmentation. The type of modifications that may be characterized as forms of augmentation are far from an extreme conception of above-average capabilities. The contribution of exoskeletons in transforming “bodiliness” (Van Wolputte 2004: 252) and accompanying potentials of experience joins more common means of material extension of human bodies, which is what disenchants the science fiction perception of these devices. While contributing to enrich the vaster armamentarium of technologies that has constantly organized our practices and interactions with other people, exoskeletons redraw forms of experiential appropriation yet are restrained to specific settings. Nevertheless, what this form of technology enables is eventually “ex-centric” forms of subjectivity.2 By the term “excentricity,” I do not mean only a symbolic one. Learning to use an exoskeleton is a material process; it concretely and noticeably engages modifications of human bodies and the manners in which these bodies rearticulate themselves as practice resources. In these forms of experiential appropriation, unprecedented techniques of the body emerge and with them the concrete impact of current possibilities allowed by technological innovation. Part of the production of sequences of above-average ability or correctives of impairment needs to be understood precisely in terms of these novel forms of relations and

E pilogue 

233

correlations between bodies and these unprecedented technological companions, which invite further understandings and explorations of how we are our bodies, but also how we do them too. Different from people with impairments, to speak of “above-average ability” with respect to healthy users exposes semantic dangers. From the first movements practiced with exoskeletons, users learn that these devices are conceived to help them perform sequences of motility that they are either not able to do anymore, or ones they are able to do but that need to be performed for longer periods of time. Notably, due to changes of concrete ability and partial capability, these novel devices indeed impact working time and productivity. But the reality of their producing superpowers stops at this level. While some experts cautiously used the category “augmentation” and rather emphasized the aforementioned “assistance,” users certainly had experiences far from such prospects, some of these experiences being quite the opposite of augmentation. As a consequence, “above-average ability” remains a feature of science fiction with respect to these devices and their current use. The explicit aim of exoskeleton usage for healthy subjects is to protect bodies from further or long-term injuries due to the types of activities they perform, rather than transforming the bodies of their users into exceptionally above-average skilled ones. But if assistance is compared to how human bodies would develop or degrade without being accompanied by these devices, as is sometimes evoked by both experts and users, a specific idea of “augmenting” performance in defined settings may be defended. In this vein, exoskeletons may indeed redistribute grammars of the body while adding new motility economies to the corporeal worlds in which they seek to integrate. In such a process, they rebalance conceptions of deviance and normality, ability, inability and impairment, while fostering new imaginaries about how human bodies attempt to relate to technological devices, while still pointing to the approximations embedded in such enterprises, and their elusive character. The corporeal worlds that exoskeletons shape overlap; they are separate sometimes, but they very often interfere with one another. Many of these forms of interference stem from the categorical tensions between ability, inability or the very much craved for “above-average ability.” To follow my research object involved a perpetual exercise in debunking the subtleties that defined these deeply bodily anchored categories. It meant training visual perception and observation, and very often training the ability to listen to and resonate with those bodies, the experience of which was at the core of this study. It meant also to assume the fact that “I disturbed,” which compelled me to develop a simultaneous sensitivity to intimacies and forms of scientific practice; but perhaps, above all, it meant attempting to elaborate an original version of how our current corporealities are reframed by material and temporal boundaries emerging along with the development of these novel technological objects, and how these invite to rethink current conceptions of both what our bodies deeply are, but more intriguing, how they are it.

234  What exoskeletons do to the body

Notes 1 I discussed Sontag’s difference between the “kingdom of the well” and that of the “sick” in Chapter 4. 2 The anthropologist Steven Van Wolputte develops the category of a decentered (or excentric) subjectivity with respect to his studying the Himba/Herero population in northwest Namibia, people who practice herding. In this context, Van Wolputte proposes the concept of “bodiliness,” which he further correlates to that of decentered or ex-centric subjectivity. He notes: “As ‘bodiliness’ also implies the bodies of the animals in one’s herd, or the ancestors, selfhood in the first instance concerns a decentered (or ex-centric) subjectivity; it implies a body-self that originates in ‘outer’ fields of meaning and extends in space and place, in material culture, in animals, and in the bodies of others” (Van Wolputte 2004: 252). Despite being an obviously different case residing on a complex symbolism, I find the idea of a body extending into other bodies central and very close to the phenomenological orientation to which I align my own study. With a different status than animals or other human beings, technological objects prove themselves to offer important relational possibilities for human bodies in the sense of contributing to intersubjective relations. The introduction of a technological object, such as the exoskeletons I observed, does not affect only the user proper; the effects extend through the acts and activities of the user into the environment and sometimes, when teamwork is envisaged, into the bodies of other people. Consequently, at a different experiential level, exoskeletons interfere into contextual forms of “bodiliness” and may contribute to possibilities of corporeal augmentation, if augmentation is understood qua corporeal and even intercorporeal extension.

References Abraham, A. (2002). Der Körper im biographischen Kontext: Ein wissenssoziologischer Beitrag. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag. Abraham, A. (2006). Der Körper als Speicher von Erfahrung: Anmerkungen zu übersehenen Tiefendimensionen von Leiblichkeit und Identität. In R. Gugutzer (Ed.), Body Turn: Perspektiven der Soziologie des Körpers und des Sports (pp. 119–140). Bielefeld: Transcript. Bostrom, N., & Sandberg, A. (2011). The Future of Identity: Report Commissioned by the UK's Government Office for Science. Retrieved from www​.nickbostrom​.com (accessed on 20/05/2020). Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Butnaru, D. (2020). The protean self. In D. Butnaru (Ed.), Medial Bodies. Between Fiction and Faction: Reinventing Corporeality (pp. 147–163). Bielefeld: Transcript. Crossley, N. (2013). Habit and habitus. Body & Society, 19(2–3), 136–161. Dolezal, L. (2017). The phenomenology of self-presentation: Describing the structures of intercorporeality with Erving Goffman. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 237–254. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s11097​-015​-9447​-6. Gallagher, S. (2012). Phenomenology. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Gallagher, S. (2017). Enactivist Interventions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goffman, E. (1963). Behaviour in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: Free Press. Gugutzer, R. (2002). Leib, Körper und Identität. Eine phänomenologisch-soziologische Untersuchung zur personalen Identität. Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag.

E pilogue 

235

Husserl, E. ([1913] 1983). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book. The Hague; Boston; Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff. Husserl, E. ([1952] 1989). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution. Husserliana IV. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Knorr-Cetina, K. (1992). The couch, the cathedral and the laboratory: On the relationship between experiment and laboratory in science. In A. Pickering (Ed.), Science as Practice and Culture (pp. 113–138). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kurzweil, R. (2006). The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Viking. Law, J., & Lien, M. E. (2012). Slippery: Field notes in empirical ontology. Social Studies of Science, 43(3), 363–378. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0306312712456947. Lock, M. (2017). Recovering the body. Annual Review of Anthropology, 46(1), 1–14. Merleau-Ponty, M. ([1945] 2012). Phenomenology of Perception. London; New York: Routledge. Pickering, A. (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pickering, A. (2017). The ontological turn. Taking different worlds seriously. Social Analysis, 61(2, Summer), 134–150. https://doi​.org​/10​.3167​/sa​.2017​.610209 Shilling, C. (2005). The Body in Technology, Culture and Society. London: Sage. Strathern, M. (1992). Reproducing the Future. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Strathern, M. (2004). The whole person and its artefacts. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33(1), 1–19. https://doi​.org​/10​.1146​/annurev​.anthro​.33​.070203​.143928. Thompson, W. E., & Gibbs, J. C. (2017). Deviance & Deviants: A Sociological Approach. Malden; Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Van Wolputte, S. (2004). Hang on to your self: Of bodies, embodiment and selves. Annual Review of Anthropology, 33(1), 251–269. https://doi​.org​/10​.1146​/annurev​.anthro​.33​ .070203​.143749. Wacquant, L. (1995). Pugs at work: Bodily capital and bodily labour among professional boxers. Body & Society, 1(1), 65–93.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate figures, and references following “n” refer endnotes. ableism 131–132 above-average ability 16, 53, 212, 232–233 Abraham, A. 38, 82, 231 Abrugar, V. 113 actor-network theory (ANT) 59, 121–122n24 Adams, V. 87 Akrich, M. 115, 121, 189, 201 algorithmic aversion 204 Al-Jumaily, A. A. 4, 152 Alkemeyer, T. 58 Ames, M. 114 Anam, K. 4, 152 Anderson, N. 7 Andrieu, B. 5, 27 anesthetic subjects 179, 180 anthropotechnie 134 anticipatory regimes 87 Appadurai, A. 27, 146 assistive technology 62n5; see also technology Atkinson, M. 102 augmentation/augmented: for actors 168; body 158, 178, 215, 219, 232; corporeal 5, 7, 135, 160, 190; dis-order 51; exoskeletons 4, 15, 132, 134, 141, 205; of human capabilities 158; military field 159; motility 11; partial 156; vulnerability 162 automaton 16n5 Bahnisch, M. 139 Baldi, P. 13, 49 Balsamo, A. 218, 222 Barber, M. D. 9 beauty staging 224n4

Becker, H. S. 7 Beckerle, P. 112, 223 Bellaby, P. 150, 151 Berthoz, A. 47 Besmer, K. 91 Besnier, J. -M. 52, 53 Bijker, W. E. 112 biographical disruption 75, 84 biographical flow 84 biomimicry 167 bionic prostheses 193; see also prosthesis biosignals 110, 121n21, 193 Bird, G. 9 Black, D. 1, 133, 135 Blackman, L. 76 Blakeslee, S. 47 Blum, V. 50 bodiliness 232, 234n2 bodily capital 80, 100, 227 body habitus 143,160, 227 body idiom 194 body knowledge(s) 90, 197–202 body one 82, 100, 120n8 body present 75–80, 82, 87, 91 body schema 12, 149, 176, 191, 215; body images and 50, 57, 217; body-morphing challenges 196; defined 56; human body integrating foreign objects 142; intercorporeal relations 57; material changes in 90; of workers 143 body work 144; corporeal habits 102–109; exoskeletons 140; impaired persons 195 Bochner, A. P. 33 Bogner, A. 25 Bostrom, N. 52, 232



238 Index Bourdieu, P. 52, 99, 101, 103, 104, 121, 143, 157, 174, 182, 194, 227 Brauer, F. 144 Bröckling, U. 48, 205 Brown, E. 138 Bryant, A. 27, 28 Bucciarelli, L. 70, 118 Buchanan, A. E. 49 Budgeon, S. 107–108 Bulmer, M. 7 Bury, M. 75 Butnaru, D. 11, 39, 49 Campbell, F. K. 131, 132 capital see bodily capital Caputo, V. 24 Carel, H. 212 carnal sociology 10 Celnik, P. A. 97 Chamayou, G. 159 Chapoulie, J. -M. 7 Charmaz, K. 4, 28, 82, 87, 88, 125 Cheng, G. 72 Clark, A. 13 Clough, P. T. 221 Coeckelbergh, M. 7, 12, 149 Cohen, E. B.-O. 212–213 Cohn, D. 192 Cole, J. 57, 79, 91 Collinson, D. 149–150, 167 companionship 6, 9; between body and technology 109; corporeal 157; technological 193, 220 Conrad, P. 86, 90 Cooper, N. 162 Corbin, J. 75, 83 Corner, J. 174 corporeal ability 13, 93, 117, 129, 194, 196, 229 corporeal alterity: corporeal potentialities 80–86; objectifying one’s “own body” 75–80 corporeal companionship 157 corporeal understanding 82 corporeal vulnerability 162, 168–175 Costargent, D. 163 Couser, G. T. 73 Coy, M. W. 69, 101 Coyne, R. 11 Crawford, C. S. 10, 57, 79, 90, 170, 212, 220–222 Crossley, N. 10, 41, 51, 56, 77, 108, 157, 227

Csordas, T. J. 10, 47, 48, 88, 163, 214, 223 cultural capital 121n19 cyborg 193; bionic human beings 132; human–machine hybrid 92; intentionality 60; objects 207n2; project 91; resilient 85; species 13 Dahlberg, H. 30 Dahlberg, K. 30 Dalibert, L. 91 dance of agency 229, 230, 231 Dant, T. 31 Davis, K. 50, 82, 220 de Boisboissel, G. 160, 181 De Preester, H. 47 Dean-Leon, E. 50 Denzin, N. K. 24, 33 Derksen, M. 146 Détrez, C. 88 Dewey, J. 59, 60 digitalization 139 Dolezal, L. 53, 63, 133, 193, 202, 227 domestication 38, 69, 202, 217, 219 Donner, J. 114 Douglas, M. 196, 221, 224 Downes, D. 220–222 Downey, G. L. 189 Doyle, J. 50 drones 159, 201s Dumit, J. 189 Durkheim, E. 221 Duttweiler, S. 109, 222 Dyer-Witheford, N. 205 Elias, N. 52, 88 Elish, M. C. 201 Ellis, C. 33 embodied identity work 103 embodied mind 59–61, 143 embodied self 4, 82, 83, 112, 150 embodiments 9, 112; creation of 141–147; human 59; reflexive 51; research on bodies and 37–39; resisting 147–152; variations 168–175 empathy 30–37 enactive ethnography 10 enactive intentionality 155 enactive phenomenology 62n3 enactivism 10, 14, 16n11, 58, 62n4 Engels, F. 134, 137 entrepreneurial self 48 Epstein, S. 83

Index  ergonomics 24, 30, 139–141 excentricity 232 face-to-face relationship 194 factual body 175–181 Faircloth, C. A. 84 Featherstone, M. 51–53 Feenberg, A. 201 Feher, M. 48 Ferguson, H. 9 Fischer, B. 197, 198, 210 Flick, U. 24 Fordism 139 Foucault, M. 80, 88, 150, 179, 203 Fox, N. J. 132 Frank, A. W. 37, 40, 68, 73, 74, 119, 162 Freund, P. 144 Fuchs, T. 55, 89, 96, 121 Gallagher, S. 4, 9–11, 16, 40, 56–58, 60, 62, 83, 88, 104, 119, 120, 134, 142, 143, 155, 176, 191, 213, 223, 229–231 Garcia, E. 158 Garland-Thomson, R. 53, 82, 222 Geertz, C. 4, 28 Gell, A. 67 Gibbs, J. C. 227 Giddens, A. 103, 142, 212 Gimlin, D. 9, 50, 95, 102–104, 144 Glaser, B. G. 32, 83 Goffette, J. 5, 134 Goffman, E. 3, 27, 35–37, 57, 80, 83, 90, 91, 104, 150, 180, 194, 202, 227, 229 Goffredo, M. 112 Goldblatt, M. 175, 178 Goldman, A. I. 34 grounded theory method (GTM) 30, 32, 33, 67 Grygorowicz, S. 175 Guérin, V. 5 Gugutzer, R. 4, 8, 10, 12, 31–33, 36–41, 51, 55, 77, 168, 216, 222, 227 Gusterson, H. 159 habitual bodies 215, 219 habitus 227; corporeal 160; defined 143; working class 153 Hannerz, U. 24, 27 Haraway, D. J. 5, 33, 48, 89, 91, 98, 133, 197 Harding, C. M. 83 Hasselman, M. 29, 40 Hauskeller, M. 32

239

Head, H. 191 Heidegger, M. 9, 59 Hichert, M. 130 Hidalgo, C. A. 204 Hirschauer, S. 24, 36, 41 Hitzler, R. 32 Hockey, J. 167, 169, 176, 182 Holliday, R. 49 Honer, A. 30 Horowitz, C. M. 159 Hughes, E. C. 83 Hull, D. 89, 121 human prosthesis 87, 106 human–machine: co-relations 79, 86; hybrid forms 92; interaction 5, 60, 71, 106, 109, 111, 199; relations 5 Hunsaker Hawkins, A. 36 Hurcombe, M. 162 Husserl, E. 9, 11, 30, 31, 34, 55, 56, 58, 67, 96, 192, 207, 230, 231 Hutnyk, J. 4 hybridity 13, 60 hybridization 91, 92 Hyden, L. C. 73 Hyysalo, S. 214 ideal type body 111, 118, 179, 180, 206 Ihde, D. 58–60, 62, 120, 207 illness trajectory 120n9 incorporation 9, 47, 50, 57, 58, 133, 142–143 Ingold, T. 201 instrumental embodiments 207 intentionality 40n14, 155; cyborg 60; enactive 155; human 136, 147; motor 88; multiple forms of agency and 81; operative 56; self and 59 interperceptivity 213 interproprioceptivity 213 interrelational ontology 59 Jasanoff, S. 126 Jensen, T. E. 214 Johannessen, J. A. 135 Jones, M.33–34, 102 Kazerooni, H. 158, 159 Kemp, A. 201 Kim, S. H. 158 Kinnunen, T. 102 Kjøjen, A. M. 205 Kleinman, A. 73, 119 Knights, D. 144

240 Index Knoblauch, H. 24, 27 Knorr-Cetina, K. 14, 36–38, 40, 52, 54, 231 Krieg, A. 163 Krueger, J. 33, 34 Kurzman, S. 181 Kurzweil, R. 52, 232 La Mettrie, J. O. 13 Lafontaine, C. 51 Lande, B. 176 Lane, K. 103, 110 Langsdorf, L. 59 Lanillos, P. 50 Latour, B. 59 Law, J. 230 Leder, D. 58, 78, 217 Leem, Y. 102 Legrand, D. 33 Lien, M. E. 230 Lindemann, G. 55, 77 Linnenberg, C. 161 Liotard, P. 51 living bodies 54–61, 201, 229 Lock, M. 232 Loh, J. 6 Lotti, N. 112 Low, J. 156 Luckmann, T. 77 Lupton, D. 88, 90, 109, 113–114, 139, 222 MacKenzie, D. 12, 13 MacLeish, K. T. 162, 163, 169, 173, 179–182 Macnaghten, P. 4 Main, J. 158 Malacrida, C. 156 Malafouris, L. 13, 59–61, 134 Malet, D. 160, 161, 165, 168, 175–179 Marcus, G. E. 24, 26–27, 38 Marino, M. 121, 149 Martin, E. 9, 48, 59 Marx, K. 134, 137–139 Mast, J. 155 material engagement theory (MET) 59, 60, 61, 62n4 Mauss, M. 5, 58 Maynié, L. -J. 160 McKinlay, A. 144 McLaughlin, E. 220–222 McLuhan, M. 3 McSorley, K. 159, 162, 172 Mead, G. H. 4 Mensch, J. R. 142

Merleau-Ponty, M. 9–11, 33, 38, 40, 41, 47–48, 56–59, 76, 77, 88, 96, 120, 133, 142, 191, 194, 214, 215, 219, 231 Merton, R. K. 28, 221 Mesko, B. 5 methodological situationism 37–39 Meuser, M. 26 Meyer, C. 41, 58, 61, 139, 156 Meyer, U. 156 mHealth 114 micro-sociology 37 Miele, F. 137 Mol, A. 102 Monaghan, L. 102, 179 mono-usage technologies 134 Montagu, A. 76 Montgomery, S. 98 Moran, D. 9 morphing technologies 194 Moss, P. 183, 202 motor intentionality 88, 230 Müller, S. M. 38 Mullins, A. 53 multiple body 102 multi-sited ethnography 24, 27 Murphy, R. F. 86, 122 Mussa-Ivaldi, S. 116–117 Naddaff, T. 48 Nagel, U. 26 neophenomenological sociology 33 Nichols, T. 135 Niewöhner, J. 27 Noe, A. 10, 62, 96 Nourrit, D. 47 objective body 11, 31, 34, 90, 111, 139 Ogien, R. 3, 212 Oliver, M. 77 O’Neill, C. 139 ontological insecurity 85 other minds 35, 40n17 Ott, K. 62, 133 Oudshoorn, N. 38, 69, 85, 91–93, 95, 112, 202 Outsiders 221 own body 6, 11, 32, 54–55, 58, 73, 75–80, 86, 96, 97, 107, 152, 221 Parizot, I. 90 Parry, J. 48, 174 Parsons, T. 76 Passoth, J. H. 109

Index  pathography 36 Pavalko, E. K. 83 Penfield, W. 77 Perkins, D. G. 163, 164 perspectival ownership 56 Pescosolido, B. A. 87 physical capital 121n19, 174, 194 Pickering, A. 207, 229, 231 Pinch, T. 93, 112, 202 Pink, S. 34 Pistorius, O. 53 Plessner, H. 55 Ploder, A. 33 postphenomenology 59; categorical importance of 60 pragmatism 59 praktognosia 56 Prentice, R. 9, 31, 81, 199 Pretorius, J. 164 Prince, M. J. 183, 202 Prinz, S. 31 prosthesis 79, 106, 132–133, 169 protean selfhood 49 proximity technologies 59, 162, 163, 182n9 Psathas, G. 31 quantified self 109 Rabier, C. 5, 86 Rajan, K. S. 29 Ramachandran, V. S. 47 Rasmussen, T. 77 Ratcliffe, M. 55 reflexive body techniques 51, 108 reflexive embodiment 51, 157 residual subjectivity 14, 95–102, 206–207 resilient cyborgs 85 Rickli, J. M. 163 Riener, R. 23, 71, 99, 121 Rip, A. 201 Riverasaenz, J. 163 Robitaille, M. 179 Rochat, P. 34 Rock, P.220–222 Roen, K. 50 Rosa, H. 178 Rosch, E. 10 Rosenfeld, D. 88 Rosselin-Bareille, C. 47 Rothwell, J. C. 97–98 Roussel, A. Capt. 166 Røyrvik, E. A. 24, 29 Rubino, J. -T. 171

241

Sacks, O. 146 Sahinol, M. 77 Salerno, R. 7 Sandberg, A. 232 Sandel, M. J. 13 SartreJ. -P. 9 Sater, J. M. 158 Savulescu, J. 52 Scarry, E. 76, 162, 169 Schaupp, S. 155, 156 Scheffer, T. 27 Scheler, M. 9, 34 Schilder, P. 57, 191 Schneider, J. 204 Schulze, B. 8 Schütz, A. 9, 30, 31, 33, 34, 36, 56–58, 61, 67, 75–77, 126, 194, 201, 207 Schütz-Bosbach, S. 9 Schütze, F. 32 “script” approach 121–122n24 Seibt, D. 155 selfhood, subjectivity and 109–119 Sennett, R. 53 sense of agency 83, 94, 104, 119, 120n7, 134, 154, 176 sense-of-ownership (SO) 57–58, 83 sensory education 81 Sharon, T. 114, 115 Sheets-Johnstone, M. 8 Shildrick, M. 49, 91 Shilling, C. 6, 13, 49, 50, 99, 101, 138, 142, 157, 160, 169, 174, 203, 221, 222, 232 Simmel, G. 39, 50, 52 simulation theory (ST) 40n17 Singer, P. W. 204 situated knowledges 98 situated understanding 39 Sloterdijk, P. 5, 134 smartphones 48, 50, 92–93, 113, 114, 116 Sobchack, V. 53, 133 sociotechnical imaginaries 158 Sontag, S. 80, 227, 234 Sørensen, E. 26, 29, 30 Spampinato, D. A. 97 Spreen, D. 4 Spry, T. 34 Stadlbauer, J. 33 Stahl, R. 159, 163 Stark, L. 34, 41 Starkey, K.144, 186 Stein, E. 9, 34 Steinhoff, J. 205 Stern, D. N. 34

242 Index Stirling, L. 147 Strathern, M. 226, 228–229 Strauss, A. 75, 83, 120 strong contextualism 29 Strübing, J. 222 Stueber, K. R. 34–35 Subjectivity and Selfhood 121n20 Suchman, L. 67–68 Sugar, T. 135 Svenaeus, F. 34, 78 sympathy 30–37 Synnott, A. 47, 91, 137 Taddei, R. 40, 201 Tamari, T. 133 Taylorism 139 Terry, J. 3 theory theory (TT) 40n17 Thoër, C. 179 Thomas, C. 47, 88, 96, 119, 214 Thomas, I. W. 7 Thomas, S. 135 Thompson, M. 103, 227 Tirabeni, L. 137 Torricelli, D. 143, 144 traumatic brain injury (TBI) 183n14 traumatic memory 89 Tsakiris, M. 9, 47 Turkle, S. 4, 6, 12, 136 Turner, B. S. 53–55, 61, 68, 85, 90, 91, 130, 142, 203 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) 159, 163 unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) 163 Urla, J. 3 Van Gennep, A. 69, 146 Van Wolputte, S. 232, 234

Varela, F. 10 Verbeek, P. P. 60, 119 von Karman, T. 70, 118 von Wedelstaedt, U. 58, 213 Voskuhl, A. 8 Wacquant, L. 10, 100, 143, 170, 227 Wagner, H. R. 9, 179 Wajcman, J. 12, 13, 139 Waldby, C. 189, 190 Waldenfels, B. 36, 85 warfare 161; complexity on land 164; exoskeletons 172; surrogate 163 Warin, M. 51 Waterman, I. 57 Weber, M. 52, 100 Weeks, K. 135 Wehling, P. 48, 49 Weiss, G. 196 Welton, D. 30 Wendell, S. 73 Wernick, A. 51 Westermann, B. 8, 53 Wilcox, L. 159 Williams, G. 8, 31, 68, 83, 85, 110, 120, 189 Willmott, H. 144 Winance, M. 12, 90 Wirth, L. 7 Wolf, G. 113, 139 Wolkowitz, C. 143, 151, 153 Woodward, K. 140 Woolgar, S. 147, 189 Zahavi, D. 4, 9, 14, 30, 33–35, 40–41, 54–57, 120, 121, 143, 145, 191 Ziewitz, M. 139