62 CHAPTER TWO
tities; rather, it depends on many factors, including the features of the built
environment, social norms, and particular aims, as well as the prostheses
available in each encounter (Siebers 2008). The concept of “mis/fitting”
draws attention not only to the body- subject’s embeddedness in the world,
and to the extended character of human action, but also to variances in that
embeddedness and extensionality.
Body- subjects and worlds can both fit and misfit, and they can do so at
the same time; that is, they can fit queerly. In some of Garland- Thomson’s
examples, misfittings have aborted intentionality. One gets to the stairs in
a wheelchair and stops; one waits blindly by the atm. Siebers (2001) high-
lights how body- subject and world can assemble in anomalous ways with-
out being dysfunctional. For example, “Blind hands envision the faces of
old acquaintances. Deaf eyes listen to public television. Tongues touch- type
letters home to Mom and Dad. Feet wash the breakfast dishes. Mouths sign
autographs” (737). Such assemblages could in theory be offered as evidence
for extended functionalism; they show that the same task can be achieved
by multiple means and with different resources. The dishes are washed; the
face is remembered; letters are typed. With or without commonly expected
bodily capacities, the cognitive and practical work gets done. Differences
“need not be a problem” (Scully 2008, 16).
The ability to recognize this may be a significant payoff of extended
functionalism. Yet Clark’s approach masks the ways in which such assem-
blages can be more and less costly, can be more and less facilitated and
encouraged by the social affordances of the world, and can generate novel
outcomes. As Siebers complains of cyborg theory in general, “Prostheses
always increase the cyborg’s abilities; they are a source only of new powers,
never of problems. The cyborg is always more than human — and never
risks to be seen as subhuman. To put it simply, the cyborg is not disabled”
(2008, 63). It is useful to recall that, for Haraway, hybridity is not to be cele-
brated or scorned; rather, it contains both risks and benefits, and these must
be gauged in particular circumstances and contexts. Thus, the task is to
ask, as Haraway does, “for whom and how [do] these hybrids work?” (1997,
280n1, cited in Sullivan 2001).^18 To put it another way, if extended minds are
made possible by cognitive economies, how might these economies enact
differences, even inequalities or privileges?