Szarota, Magda (2023) Diminished faculties: A political phenomenology of impairment. By J.Sterne, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2022. pp. 304. $102.95 (cloth); $27.95 (pbk). ISBN: 978‐1478015086. Sociology of Health and Illness, 45 (8). pp. 1769-1770. ISSN 0141-9889
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‘[T]his is really a story about how to exist in a changed body and how to negotiate that change. It is not meant to be offered as a lament or a form of mourning. I experienced a change in orientation, and phenomenology is all about orientation’ (p. 12). ‘I’ in this quote stands for Jonathan Sterne, a culture and technology professor at McGill University in Canada, and the author of ‘Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment’. This book aims to dissect impairment, disability, illness, fatigue, power and (assistive) technology in relation to each other. It does so in the context of capitalism, mainly that of Canada and the US. Sterne’s book is a fantastically meta work, in which the academic rigour and theoretical sophistication not only make room for but are also enhanced by formal experimentation and…. humour.