Transplantations

This essay considers the transplanted organ in its transit between bodies, right in the place where it shouldn’t be – on the move and decontextualized. From the plastic, amputated finger on the cover of Rebecca Schneider’s Performing Remains to the organ on ice, awaiting relocation, such body parts are out-of-place and can be radically destabilising. Things that are usually hidden and bounded, work loose and surface a range of affects that are biological, social and philosophical. Playing with ideas about the performance of the surrogate and the performative nature of the discourse of organ transplantation, the essay explores the transplanted organ as something that troubles the self and identity, potentially revealing complex interconnections between bodies and boundaries.