Short description:

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 o

Long description:

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?

Table of Contents:

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