Hard data or heart data? Interrupting prereflective experience with medical representations

The new life heralded by an artificial heart is hugely complicated: medically, socially, culturally, and experientially. In this paper, I argue that the compulsory presentation of medical data by artificial hearts can transform a patient’s prereflective experience of their own body and the world. First, I introduce the paracorporeal medical devices called artificial hearts. Second, I introduce the phenomenological approach of Merleau-Ponty, particularly his concern with prereflective, embodied awareness. Third, I consider how patients experience their bodies vis a vis their hearts. I then argue that the representation of cardiac conditions by artificial hearts turns the body from the origin of experience to an object of experience. Fourth, I consider Merleau-Ponty’s notion of motor intentionality and a well-known interpretation by Dreyfus, known as absorbed or skillful coping. I argue that representations of cardiac conditions may interrupt prereflective experience and crowd-out coping.