Toni Garbe M.A.

I am a sociologist at the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1482 “Studies in Human Differentiation”. My research focuses on technologies for human bodies and explores the question of how technologically enhanced bodies are (re)interpreted. Do they appear to us as deficient or advanced? Are they understood as human or transhuman? How are different body interpretations produced? How do body interpretations vary according to context? The objects of my research include wearables, exoskeletons, prostheses, and implants. My dissertation looks specifically at media representations of technologically enhanced bodies. Based on PR representations of technology manufacturers and self-representations of users, I reconstruct the norms that are conveyed in the idealized representations.

After completing my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, I initially worked on the BMBF research project “Materially Designing the Future: Prototypes as Communication Media of the New” for two years. This project dealt mainly with the differentiation between the present, futures, and alternative worlds in fiction. Since 2021, I have been a collaborator in the CRC Project C06 “Posthuman Dedifferentiation? The Technological Enhancement of Human Bodies.”

Publications

Garbe, Toni (i. E.): Enhancement als Weg zum posthumanen Körper? Über die Divergenzen der Körperdeutungen von Transhumanismus und gegenwärtigem Alltagsverständnis. In: Zeitschrift für Semiotik. Sonderheft 2023.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich