The Global Cochlear Implant: Provincializing "Brain Implants" through Disability Technocultures

FAIN: DOC-293629-23

University of Chicago (Chicago, IL 60637-5418)
Michele Friedner (Project Director: January 2023 to present)
Mara Mills (Co Project Director: June 2023 to present)

A humanistic comparative study of cochlear implant technology as an early form of a neural-computer interface. 

Perhaps no medical device has sparked more popular discussion of the "dangers and opportunities of technology" than the cochlear implant (CI). The first true bionic device, CIs (re)produce an absent 'normal' human function. Despite debates about the ramifications of CI technology, few book-length studies of the technology exist and these overwhelmingly emphasize U.S. and European perspectives. This collaborative and comparative project will document the impacts of the technology itself, the influence of the global corporations that market it, and the range of ways implants have been domesticated, maintained, and re-interpreted. At this pivotal moment for the development and global dissemination of neuroprosthetics, with brain implants featured ubiquitously in the headlines, this multi-disciplinary, international project will serve both a documentary and a comparative function, as well as provide a platform through our conference and published work for alternative narratives of CI use.