This article considers women's use of the body as a site of protest by taking up women's participation in non-mainstream body modification. The use of scarification, multiple genital piercing and other practices by women in the lesbian SM movement has been considered self-mutilative (Jeffries, 1994). This article takes a different, but not uncritical, approach by examining the `reclaiming' discourse surrounding these practices and considering how this discourse reflects the feminist poststructuralist project of identity subversion.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Babcock, Barbara
(1978) The Reversible World: Symbolic Inversion in Art and Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
2.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
(1981) The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press.
3.
Bakhtin, Mikhail
(1984) Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
4.
Bataille, Georges
(1986) Eroticism: Death and Sensuality, trans. Mary Dalwood. San Francisco: City Lights Books.
5.
Bilmes, Jack
and Alan Howard (1980) `Pain as Cultural Drama', Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly5: 10-12.
6.
Bordo, Susan
(1990) `Feminism, Postmodernism, and Gender- Scepticism', pp. 133-156 in L. Nicholson (ed.) Feminism/Postmodernism. New York: Routledge.
7.
Butler, Judith
(1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
8.
Butler, Judith
(1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of `Sex'. New York: Routledge.
9.
Davis, Kathy
(1997) `My Body is My Art: Cosmetic Surgery as Feminist Utopia?', The European Journal of Women's Studies4(1): 23-37.
10.
Favazza, Armando
(1996) Bodies under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
11.
Frank, Arthur
(1991) `For a Sociology of the Body: An Analytic Review', pp. 36-102 in M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth and B.S. Turner (eds) The Body: Social Process and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.
12.
Gardner, James
(1997) The Age of Extremism: The Enemies of Compromise in American Politics, Culture and Race Relations. Secaucus, NJ: Carol Publishing.
13.
Gelder, Ken
(1997) `The Birmingham Tradition and Cultural Studies', pp. 83-89 in K. Gelder and S. Thorton (eds) The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge.
14.
Haraway, Donna J.
(1991) Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. London: Free Association Books.
15.
Hewitt, Kim
(1997) Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.
16.
Jeffries, Sheila
(1994) `Sadomasochism, Art and the Lesbian Sexual Revolution', Artlink14(1): 19-21.
17.
Leder, Drew
(1990) The Absent Body. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
18.
Mascia-Lees, Frances
and Patricia Sharpe (1996) Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
19.
Melucci, Alberto
(1989) Nomads of the Present. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
20.
Melucci, Alberto
(1995) Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
21.
Morgan, Kathryn Pauly
(1991) `Women and the Knife: Cosmetic Surgery and the Colonization of Women's Bodies', Hypatia6(3): 25-53.
22.
Musafar, Fakir
(1996) `Epilogue', in A. FavazzaBodies under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
23.
Musafar, Fakir
(1997) `Becky's Breast Cuttings', Body Play and Modern Primitives Quarterly4(3): 25-7.
24.
Myers, James
(1992) `Nonmainstream Body Modification', Journal of Contemporary Ethnography21: 267-307.
25.
O'Neill, John
(1989) The Communicative Body. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
26.
Phelan, Peggy
(1993) Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge.
27.
Shields, Rob
(1991) Places on the Margin: Alternative Geographies of Modernity. London: Routledge.
28.
Stallybrass, Peter
and Allon White (1997) `From Carnival to Transgression', pp. 293-301 in K. Gelder and S. Thorton (eds) The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge.
29.
Stauth, Georg
and Bryan S. Turner (1988) Nietzsche's Dance: Resentment, Reciprocity, and Resistance in Social Life. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
30.
Steele, Valerie
(1996) Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. New York: Oxford University Press.
31.
Turner, Bryan S.
(1984) The Body and Society, Explanations in Social Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
32.
Turner, Victor
(1967) The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
33.
Vale, Valerie
and Andrea Juno (1989) Modern Primitives. San Francisco: Re/Search Publications.
34.
Young, Katharine
(1993) `Management of the Grotesque Body in Medicine', in K. Young (ed.) Bodylore. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
