"In Prosthetic Memories, Hyaesi Yoon examines how personal and cultural memory are externalized through a "chimeralogical" merging of animal, human, and machine at the turn of the twenty-first century. While many critics have hewn to an idea of prosthetic memory as false or supplemental memory, Yoon contends that prosthetic memory is a promising mode for apprehending how human memory is extended into both machines and animals. Far from being an alien technology, prosthetic memory reaches into the most intimate corners of our lives to foster networks of solidarity and empathy between human and non-human subjects. Yoon takes up dog cloning in Korea, Asian-American poetry that engages the human-machine divide, and stem cell research as sites that activate potent feminist mnemonics, or methods for remembering feminist and decolonial practices"--
Hyaesin Yoon examines the entanglements of humans, animals, and technologies across South Korea and the United States at the turn of this century to outline alternate modes of memory and connection that can enact feminist and decolonial politics.
In Prosthetic Memories, Hyaesin Yoon examines the entanglements of humans, animals, and technologies across South Korea and the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. Interrogating a variety of body-technology interfaces, Yoon outlines an emergent mode of prosthetic memory in which human memory is extended into both machines and animals. Prosthetic memory overflows and provides an alternative to familiar human perception, Western scientific reason, and other senses of knowledge in ways that can foster networks of solidarity, care, and empathy between human and nonhuman subjects. Among other sites and subjects, Yoon examines tongue surgery to correct English pronunciation in Korea, Asian American poetry that engages the human-machine divide, transnational dog cloning, and stem cell research, each of which activates potent postcolonial feminist mnemonics and alliances. In so doing, Yoon narrates the countermemories of racialized, gendered, diasporic, queer, and marginalized human and nonhuman others that work against the violent and isolating biopolitical and neoliberal forces in contemporary society.
