Body Modification

by Mike Featherstone

• ISBN13: 9780761967965
• ISBN10: 0761967966
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-06
• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd

Summary

This fascinating collection explores the growing range of body modification practices such as piercing, tattooing, branding, cutting and inserting implants, which have sprung up recently in the West. It asks whether this implies that we are returning to traditional tribal practices of inscribing identities onto bodies on the part of 'modern primitives', or is body modification better understood as purely cosmetic and decorative with body markings merely temporary signs of transferable loyalties? Contributors address the question of the permanence of body transformation through fitness regimes and body building; look at the French performance artist Orlan and the Australian performance artist Stelarc who explored Western standard of beauty by experimenting on their own bodies with surgery and prosthetics; and explore the construction of the anatomy of a virtual body in Real Video Surgery and the Visible Human Project. Academics and students in sociology, cultural studies, anthropology, communication studies, social psycholgy and art and design

Table of Contents

Body Modification: An Introduction	1	(14)
Mike Featherstone
`Modern Primitivism': Non-Mainstream Body Modification and Racialized Representation	15	(24)
Christian Klesse
The Possibility of Primitiveness: Towards a Sociology of Body Marks in Cool Societies	39	(12)
Bryan S. Turner
Anchoring the (Postmodern) Self? Body Modification, Fashion and Identity	51	(26)
Paul Sweetman
This Body Which Is Not One: Dealing with Differences	77	(16)
Margrit Shildrick
Marinetti, Chopin, Stelarc and the Auratic Intensities of the Postmodern Techno-Body	93	(24)
Nicholas Zurbrugg
Parasite Visions: Alternate, Intimate and Involuntary Experiences	117	(12)
Stelarc
In Dialogue with `Posthuman' Bodies: Interview with Stelarc	129	(20)
Ross Farnell
An Order of Pure Decision: Un-Natural Selection in the Work of Stelare and Orlan	149	(22)
Jane Goodall
Serene and Happy and Distant: An Interview with Orlan	171	(14)
Robert Ayers
The Sacrificial Body of Orlan	185	(24)
Julie Clarke
Citation and Subjectivity: Towards a Return of the Embodied Will	209	(18)
Roy Boyne
Interaction Order and Beyond: A Field Analysis of Body Culture within Fitness Gyms	227	(22)
Roberta Sassatelli
The Body as Outlaw: Lyotard, Kafka and the Visible Human Project	249	(18)
Neal Curtis
Creating `The Perfect Body': A Variable Project	267	(24)
Lee Monaghan
Body Modification, Self-Mutilation and Agency in Media Accounts of a Subculture	291	(14)
Victoria Pitts
Tattoos and Heroin: A Literary Approach	305	(12)
Kevin McCarron
Performing the Technoscientific Body: Real Video Surgery and the Anatomy Theater	317	(20)
Eugene Thacker
Index	337