Abstract

This chapter explores both human and canine assistants for people with visual impairments and other disabilities, theorizing what is called companion prosthetics. Animacies and responses can fluctuate between living beings in better or worse forms of prosthetic relation with each other. Companion prosthetics brings together recent work in posthumanism, disability studies, and human-animal studies, exploring theoretical work from Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida, Judith Halberstam, Margrit Shildrick, and Alison Kafer; as well as studies of humans working as personal assistants for people with disabilities in Japan, Norway, and the United Kingdom; and dogs working as guides for humans with visual impairments in memoirs by Rod Michalko, Stephen Kuusisto, and Susan Krieger. In each case, the chapter explores how various kinds of prosthetic relations can become companion prosthetics in ways that acknowledge boundaries and power differentials but nonetheless illustrate the possibility of recognizing and responding to the animacies of each other.