In this article, I introduce the critical study of the skin in three parts. I start with a reflection on what makes the skin such a suggestive and, arguably, special phenomenon. I then provide a brief overview of the key works, recurring themes and ongoing debates that characterize the skin studies subfield. And finally, I end with a presentation of the articles that make up Body and Society’s special issue on the skin, taking care to highlight how they both contribute to the subfield as it currently stands while orienting it towards new questions, concerns and challenges.
AhmedSStaceyJ (2001a) Introduction: Dermographies. In: AhmedSStaceyJ (eds) Thinking through the Skin. London: Routledge.
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AhmedSStaceyJ (eds) (2001b) Thinking through the Skin. London: Routledge.
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AlexanderBK (2004) Black skin/white masks: The performative sustainability of whiteness (with apologies to Frantz Fanon). Qualitative Inquiry10(5): 647–672.
4.
AnzieuD (1989) The Skin Ego, trans. TurnerC.New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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AnzieuD (1990) A skin for thought: Interviews with Gilbert Tarrab on psychology and psychoanalysis, trans. BriggsDN.London: Karnac.
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AnzieuD (2016) The Skin-ego, trans. SegalN.London: Karnac.
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BenthienC (2002) Skin: On the Cultural Border Between the Self and the World. New York: Columbia University Press.
8.
BerissD (2004) Black Skins, French Voices: Caribbean Ethnicity and Activism in Urban France. Oxford: Westview.
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BlackmanL (2008) The Body: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg.
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BlackmanL (2010) Bodily integrity. Body & Society16(3): 1–9.
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BlayYA (2011) Skin bleaching and global white supremacy: By way of introduction. Journal of Pan African Studies4(4): 4–46.
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BlayYACharlesCAD (eds) (2011) Special issue: Skin Bleaching and Global White Supremacy. Journal of Pan African Studies4(4).
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CavanaghSLFaillerAHurstRAJ (eds) (2013) Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
14.
ChaneyS (2017) Psyche on the Skin: A History of Self-harm. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
15.
ChengAA (2011) Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface. New York: Oxford University Press.
16.
ClassenC (ed.) (2005) The Book of Touch. Oxford: Berg.
17.
ClassenC (2012) The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
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ConnorS (2004) The Book of Skin. London: Reaktion.
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CoulthardGS (2014) Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
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CurtinMF (2003) Out of Touch: Skin Tropes and Identities in Woolf, Ellison, Pynchon, and Acker. New York: Routledge.
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DabashiH (2011) Brown Skin, White Masks. Halifax and Winnipeg: Pluto Press and Fernwood Publishing.
22.
DiamondN (2014) Between Skins: The Body in Psychoanalysis. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.
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EmberleyJ (2008a) Skin: An assemblage on the wounds of knowledge, the scars of truth, and the limits of power. English Studies in Canada34(1): 1–8.
24.
EmberleyJ (ed.) (2008b) Special issue: Skin. English Studies in Canada34(1).
25.
FanonF (2008) Black Skin, White Masks, trans. PhilcoxR.New York: Grove Press.
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FeatherstoneM (2000) Body Modification. London: Sage.
27.
FendM (2017) Fleshing out Surfaces: Skin in French Art and Medicine 1650–1850. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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FlanaganMBoothA (2006) Re: Skin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
29.
FreudS (2001) The ego and the id. In: StracheyJ (ed.) The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 18. London: Vintage and Hogarth Press.
30.
GlennEN (2008) Yearning for lightness: Transnational circuits in the marketing and consumption of skin lighteners. Gender & Society22(3): 281–302.
31.
GoldsmithM (2003) White skin, white mask: Passing, posing, and performing in the Great Gatsby. Modern Fiction Studies49(3): 443–468.
32.
GrabhamE (2009) ‘Flagging’ the skin: Corporeal nationalism and the properties of belonging. Body & Society15(1): 63–82.
33.
GroszE (1994) Volatile Bodies: Towards A Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
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GubarS (1997) Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
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HallRE (2010) An Historical Analysis of Skin Color Discrimination in America. New York: Springer.
36.
HamiltonS (2017) Rituals of intimate legal touch: Regulating the end-of-game handshake. Senses and Society12(1): 53–68.
37.
HeatonMH (2013) Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists, Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
38.
HerringCKeithVHayward DerrickH (2004) Skin Deep: How Race and Complexion Matter in the ‘Color-blind’ Era. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
39.
HowesD (2005) Skinscapes: Embodiment, culture and environment. In: ClassenC (ed.) The Book of Touch. Oxford: Berg.
KayS (2006) Original skin: Flaying, reading, and thinking in the legend of Saint Bartholomew and other works. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies36(1): 35–74.
KrokerA (ed.) (1987) Body digest: Fashion, skin and technology. Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory11(1/2).
44.
LafranceM (2009) Skin and the self: Cultural theory and Anglo-American psychoanalysis. Body & Society15(3): 3–24.
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LaineT (2007) ‘It’s the sense of touch’: Skin in the making of cinematic consciousness. Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media & Culture29(1): 35–48.
46.
LemmaA (2010) Under the Skin: A Psychoanalytic Study of Body Modification. London: Routledge.
47.
LeongS (2006) Who’s the fairest of them all? Television ads for skin-whitening cosmetics in Hong Kong. Asian Ethnicity7(2): 167–181.
48.
LuptonE (2002) Skin: Surface, Substance, and Design. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.
49.
MacCormackP (2006) The great ephemeral tattooed skin. Body & Society12(2): 57–82.
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ManningE (2009) What if it didn’t all begin and end with containment? Toward a leaky sense of self. Body & Society15(3): 33–45.
51.
MarksLU (2000) The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
52.
Merleau-PontyM (1965) Phenomenology of Perception, trans. SmithC.London: Routledge.
53.
Merleau-PontyM (1968) The Visible and the Invisible, trans. LingisA.Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
54.
MielantsE (2007) Black skin, white masks revisited: Contemporary post-colonial dilemmas in the Netherlands, France, and Belgium. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge5(3): 297–304.
55.
MireA (2001) Skin-bleaching: Poison, beauty, power, and the politics of the colour line. Resources for Feminist Research28(3/4): 13–38.
56.
MontaguA (1986) Touching: The Human Significance of Skin. New York: Harper and Row.
57.
NielsenCR (2011) Resistance through re-narration: Fanon on deconstructing racialized subjectivities. African Identities9(4): 363–385.
PileS (2009) Topographies of the body-and-mind: Skin ego, body ego, and the film ‘Memento’. Subjectivity27(1): 134–154.
60.
ProsserJ (1998) Second Skins: The Body Narratives of Transsexuality. New York: Columbia.
61.
ReynoldsD (2009) Response to ‘Skin and the self: Cultural theory and Anglo-American Psychoanalysis’. Body & Society15(3): 25–35.
62.
RondillaJLSpickardPR (2007) Is Lighter Better? Skin-tone Discrimination among Asian Americans. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
63.
SaraswatiLA (2010). Cosmopolitan whiteness: The effects and affects of skin-whitening advertisements in a transnational women’s magazine in Indonesia. Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism10(2): 15–41.
64.
SchneiderAK (2014) Skin as a trope of liminality in Anne Enright’s The Gathering. Contemporary Women’s Writing8(2): 206–222.
65.
SegalN (2009) Consensuality: Didier Anzieu, Gender and the Sense of Touch. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
66.
SerresM (1998) Le cinq sens [The five senses]. Paris: Hachette.
67.
ShillingC (2013) The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage.
68.
SolonO (2011) The ethics and aesthetics of using living tissue as a medium. Wired. Available at: https://www.wired.com/2011/07/bioart/(accessed 10 February 2018).
69.
TateSA (2005) Black Skins, Black Masks: Hybridity, Dialogism, Performativity. Aldershot: Ashgate.
70.
TateSA (2015) Skin Bleaching in Black Atlantic Zones: Shade Shifters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
71.
TurnerBS (2008) The Body and Society. London: Sage.
72.
UlnikJ (2007) Skin in Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.
73.
VanderbekeDRosenthalC (eds) (2015) Probing the Skin: Cultural Representations of our Contact Zone. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
74.
VergèsF (1997) Creole Skin, Black Mask: Fanon and Disavowal. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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WalterKL (ed.) (2013) Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
76.
WilliamsLF (2003) The Constraint of Race: Legacies of White Skin Privilege in America. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
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YangM (2013) Yellow skin, white masks. Daedalus142(4): 24–37.
