Patriotic Gore

The idea that being injured in war and using prosthetics makes a man more masculine and patriotic.
Injuries in war were considered patriotic, masculine, and a sign of a man being heterosexual. This
was patriotism to an extreme level. David Serlin discusses this term in relation to the production of
prosthetics after World War Two in "The Other Arms Race". Serlin describes how a prosthesis was
produced with an "emphasis on rehabilitating the amputee's masculinity along with his body"
(Serlin 38). This shows how prosthetics shaped bodies physically and psychologically. Prosthetics
allowed injured war veterans to perform tasks that people without any injuries could complete, but
also allowed the veterans using them to viewed as men just as masculine as someone not injured, if
not more masculine and extremely patriotic as well. This term helps us think about how injuries
affect bodies, aside from being a mark on the body that was a result of harm being done to it. By
thinking about how injured bodies are viewed, we can gain a greater understanding about what
kinds of bodies are valued. Serlin briefly discusses how employers were hesitant to hire war
veterans, mainly because they felt the injuries the veterans had would make them less productive
than someone who did not have those same injuries. Prosthetics can then be seen as an object that
allows injured bodies to be just as productive, and therefore as valuable, as an unscatheded body.
Docile Body
The idea that bodies can be viewed as objects for studying, which can also be controlled, used, and
improved upon. By having control over simple actions of the body, such as a person lifting their
arm, the people in power during the Classical Age hoped to maximize their control over their
subjects. Michel Foucault discusses this term in "Docile Bodies" and shows how by interacting with
objects, people can change and improve their bodies. He uses a description about how to use a rifle
to demonstrate how "over the whole surface of contact between the body and the object it handles,
power is introduced, fastening them to one another" (Foucault 153). Foucault shows how by simply
holding the rifle and aiming it, the soldier's body has interacted with the rifle. resulting in the rifle
becoming a part of the soldier's body in a sense. The rifle seems to be a part of the solider's body
that makes him more docile by increasing how deadly the soldier is. By using the rifle, a soldier can
kill faster but also will feel safer since they know they can easily defend them self . This term
introduces us to the idea of bodies being considered objects, allowing us to analyze them in a class
which studies objects. By thinking of bodies as objects, we can gain a better understanding how
interactions between people and objects affect their bodies, and how people view bodies, such as
their opinion of an armed soldier.
Signature Wound
The idea that certain injuries, such as traumatic brain injury, are most common during particular
war. These injuries lead to specific medical advances during a war, such as new physical and
psychological therapies to help victims of traumatic brain injuries live normally. As Jenny Terry
discusses in "Significant Injury: War, Medicine, and Empire in Claudia's Case", traumatic brain
injury and poly traumas are the signature wounds of the wars in the Middle East. She examines the
effects of these injuries on Claudia, whose memory is "in [her] hands" (Terry 200). This is because
Claudia, who is a war veteran with traumatic brain injury, relies on a personal data assistant (PDA)
to help her remember important information. The PDA increases her docility by helping her keep
track of information that should be remembered and can be considered a medical advancement that
was a result of finding a way to help war veterans overcome the significant injury of the wars in the
Middle East. This term helps us think about how objects can be used to correct flaws of the body or
injuries that happen to body in order to allow the body to remain as docile as it would be if it was
perfect. We are able to analyze the PDA as a object that is a result of a signature wound and how
that object affects bodies. By using objects, such as the PDA, even people with injured bodies, both
physically and psychologically, can live seemingly normal lives.
Quantified Self

The idea of thinking about statistics, such as a person's weight, and making decisions based on
those statistics. By living a lifestyle where the person is able to collect data about every aspect of
their lives, that person can make decisions to will allow them to make their body more docile in
ways that they desire. Mark McClusky examines the effects of the Nike Fuel Band on a person's
physical fitness in "The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed the Power of Personal
Metrics" and shows how useful knowing data about a person can be for that person. One of the
people who McClusky discusses about "enjoyed the sense of accomplishment that came from
charting his progress as he got more and more fit" (McClusky 7). While the Nike Fuel Band is only
worn by the user, it has important psychological effects that make bodies more docile. By using it,
people can keep track of how much they run, allowing them to decide how much they should run to
make improve their bodies. This motivates people who may not necessarily like exercise to become
physically fit. This term shows how objects can be used to track data about people, which people
can use to make their bodies more docile. By using certain objects, such as the Nike Fuel Band, data
can be recorded about peoples' bodies, which can be used to both analyze various aspects of their
lives and judge how valuable someone's body is.
The health lift is weight-lifting machine from the nineteenth century, while the Nike fuel band is a
wristband that records how much people run and can make people want to be more physically
active. By considering these two objects together, we can see how ideas about bodies and objects
have changed between the late 1800s and the 2000s. Compared to the late 1800s, when having a
strong body was considered equivalent to having a strong mind, bodies in the 2000s are considered
to never be sufficient and this leads to the belief that bodies must be constantly improved. Objects,
such as the health lift, in the late 1800s were thought to be used to strengthen the body, while in the
2000s, objects are now thought to be used to collect data about the body and perfect the body by
making decisions based on that data.
These two objects have some similarities. Both of these objects were aimed at making the body
physically stronger. The health lift does this by strengthening the muscles of the user, similar to how
the Nike fuel band does this by motivating the user to run more. They are also both class-related
and allow "users to interpret technology as a benevolent force" (De La Pena 16) as Carolyn De La
Pena states in "The Machine-Built Body". Both exercise objects allow the user to interact with
them, mixing mechanical power with bodies, which increases human potential. This is because
bodies can now become more physically fit than before the invention of the health lift. Additionally,
these two objects have some differences.
The Nike fuel band takes a more scientific approach to making bodies more physically fit
compared to the health lift. This is because quantitative data, such as time, is used to analyze the
user's physical activity and enable them to make optimal future exercise decisions. On the other
hand, health lift users simply wanted to strengthen their body, not think about data. As stated
previously, both objects are class-related. The health lift was directed at upper class white men,
while the Nike fuel band is directed at the middle class. The health lift is associated with a strong
body being equivalent to a strong mind, while the Nike fuel band can be connected to the idea of
making decisions to improve the body based on statistics. While health lift users are satisfied once
their muscles were big enough after using the machine enough, users of the Nike fuel band aim to
keep on improving their running ability. This reflects the idea of the health lift representing people
being satisfied with their body eventually, while the Nike fuel band represents how people are never
truly satisfied with their bodies. In terms of appearance, the health lift is a large exercise machine,
while the Nike fuel band is "a brown plastic box, emblazoned with Nike's iconic swoosh logo"
(McClusky 2) as Mark McClusky states in "The Nike Experiment: How the Shoe Giant Unleashed
the Power of Personal Metrics".
Judging the Value of Bodies and People
Do not judge a book by its cover. Although this proverb conveys wise words, thinking about how
people are categorized and valued through racialization, gendering, and classing of bodies and

people from a material culture studies perspective shows how the meaning of this proverb is not
respected at all.
Raciallization is the concept of how people are given identities in terms of race and how some
people consider certain races more desirable than others. By consider considering corpses of people
as objects, this term can be better understood. As Craig Steven Wilder shows in "All Students and
All Americans: The Colonial Roots of Racial Science", racialization is a way of categorizing people
that dying will not allow a person to escape. He describes how during the Colonial Era, at King's
College, "the faculty an students harvested colored corpses from the African cemetery for years,
dragging cadavers across Broadway to the dissecting table" (Wilder 200). Through the interactions
between the corpses being used for the dissections and the people dissecting them, who during that
time period were most likely Caucasian, the idea of racialization is depicted. If a someone is
considered to be of an undesirable race, they will not be respected both in life and in death. In life,
they will be treated unfairly, while in death, their corpses will be used for dissections. If a corpses is
from a Caucasian, it would likely have not been used for a dissection. This is because of how once
people are considered to be a certain race, it can not be changed. The dead bodies of people given
the identity of African-American were considered inferior to the dead bodies of people given the
identity of Caucasian, and therefore it was considered acceptable to use those objects for
dissections. Clearly, the corpses of African-Americans were not respected as much as those of
Caucasians. This is similar to how African-Americans were treated while alive during that time
period, which is that they were not respected very well. By viewing corpses as objects, it is clear
that racialization is something that not only affects how a person lives their life, but also what
happens to their body when they die. Moreover, thinking about objects can also provide a greater
understanding of gendering.
Gendering is the idea of how people of a certain sex are expected to behave a certain way in order
to not be considered abnormal. This term can be better understood by viewing the interactions
between women and corsets during the early 1900s, which Jill Fields focuses on in "'Fighting the
Corsetless Evil': Shaping Corsets and Culture, 1900-1930.". She describes how corsets had the
power to "regulate women's behavior as well as signify women's subordinate status" (Fields 356).
Corsets are a type of clothing that women were expected to always wear during the early 1900s.
They usually covered the upper body of a woman and were often uncomfortable to wear. Corsets
were associated with the social expectations for women at the time, which included being
uneducated, working at home and having no access to birth control. This shows how objects can
linked to how a people of a certain sex should behave. Once women began to not wear corsets, they
started changing their role in society. This demonstrates how a simple decision of how people of
certain sex choose to interact with an object can lead to them altering how people view the group.
By analyzing how women interacted with corsets, it becomes clear that the gendering of people of a
certain sex is greatly affected by how they interact with certain objects, such as the clothes they
choose to wear. Additionally, thinking about objects allows the idea of the classing of bodies to be
better understood.
The classing of bodies is the idea of how certain bodies are considered more desirable than others,
due to a certain characteristic. This idea can be better understood by thinking about the bodies of the
maquiladoras, female Mexican factory workers, as objects that people interact with. Melissa W.
Wright discusses these interactions to a large extent in "'The Dialectics of Still Life: Murder,
Women, and Maquiladoras." In Mexico, the maquiladoras "represent cultural value in decline and in
consequence are possibly not valuable enough in death to warrant much concern" (Wright 458). The
maquiladoras are considered so worthless in Mexico that people are not even concerned when they
die. Even before they die, their bodies are seen as less valuable than a man's. Factory employers
prefer male workers and if they do hire female workers, the working conditions are very harmful for
females. After long hours of experiencing these conditions, the maquiladoras' bodies will become
weaker and less productive, which contributes to how undesirable their bodies are considered.
When their bodies appear after the maquiladoras have been killed, the female is always at fault.
Males are hardly ever at fault for the death of maquiladoras, even if it is blatantly obvious that they

were the ones directly responsible for killing the maquiladoras. As a result of their bodies being
considered inferior to males, the maquiladoras experience injustice and abuse throughout their lives
and arguably even after they die, as people do not seem very concerned about them dying. By
thinking of the maquiladoras' bodies as objects that people interact with, it is clear that the classing
of bodies can distort peoples's sense of justice, cause people to experience a torturous life, and even
make people unconcerned about the death of fellow human beings. Furthermore, thinking about
how people interact with objects can also provide a greater understanding of the classing of people.
The classing of people is the concept of some people being considered more valuable than others
because of a certain characteristic. This idea can be better understood by thinking about the
interactions between students and human capital. In "The Human Capital Strategy", Morgan
Adamson discusses the object and how it is used to determine the value of people at length.
Adamson describes it as "[h]uman capital is an embodied, measurable form of fixed capital
understood as knowledge, skills, etc." (Adamson 273). During the college application process,
students interact with this object at length. This is done when they write essays and when they take
standardized exams. Based on these interactions, colleges assign a value to each student and then
choose to accept the students that have the highest values. To the colleges, only these students are
worth investing a higher education into. The rest of the students are considered worthless to the
colleges, regardless of their aspirations. Human capital is not tangible, but the interactions that
students have with it during specific situations allow the colleges to determine which students seem
to be worth more than others. By thinking about how students interact with an intangible object that
undoubtedly increases the docility of all living bodies, it becomes evident that the classing of people
is heavily influenced by how those people interact with certain objects, sometimes only during
particular circumstances.
By viewing these methods which are used to determine the value of a person, a group of people,
and their bodies from a material culture studies perspective, it is quite disheartening to realize just
how often people decide to judge others before even knowing them. At the same time, analyzing
these methods from a material culture studies perspective could possibly one day lead to the end of
certain groups of people and their bodies being considered inferior to others and therefore subjected
to injustice for eternity.