Description
‘Phantom limb’ refers to the sensation of a limb being present where one is absent, whether due to a congenital condition or following a surgical amputation. Usually, a phantom limb reflects the location and size of the absent limb, although they can also be experienced as shrinking or telescoping to unusual proportions. Medical understanding of phantom limbs has shifted significantly in the past hundred and fifty years; previously understood as fictions or madness, they are now accepted as common sequelae of amputation.However, phantom limbs complicate the relationship between the body-as-lived, or what phenomenologists call the Leib, and the body-as-object (Körper). An amputee lacks a limb in the latter sense – their limb is absent from their body-as-object – yet phantom sensations cause them to experience that same limb in the body-as-lived. In this sense, their limb is simultaneously present and absent. Despite medical acceptance, this paradox means that phantom limbs represent a threat to ‘common sense’ understandings of embodiment, and claiming them as part of one’s embodied reality is therefore a potentially face-threatening act.
This paper examines lower-limb amputees’ stories of living with a phantom limb, arguing that those stories work to construct the storyteller’s potentially contested body and a competent identity. Narrators draw on storytelling techniques similar to those used in narratives of paranormal experiences, including dramatic performance and deixis, with the effect of anticipating and defusing sceptical interpretations of the participants’ own ‘ghost stories’. They also appeal to the embodied experiences of their (non-amputee) interlocutor – touch, pain, movement – to frame their phantom experiences as similarly legitimate. Performing their narratives in these ways allows storytellers to achieve the complex rhetorical task of claiming their embodied reality of limb presence, while simultaneous acknowledging the objective reality of absence.
| Period | 15 Sept 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event title | Embodied Lives: Interdisciplinary Dialogues on the Body |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Msida, MaltaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |