Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment: The Denaturalization of the Body in Culture and Text

By Frances E. Mascia-Lees

Book Overview

Analyzes the power of culture to encode its messages on the human form.

Contemporary theory across a wide range of disciplines denaturalizes the body and reveals it to be a social construction. Cultural practices which deform, adorn, mutilate, and obliterate the body illustrate that it is an important site for the inscription of culture. The authors draw on cross currents in feminist theory, literary criticism, anthropology, and history to analyze several such cultural practices as examples of the power of culture to encode its messages on the human form.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0791410668
• ISBN13: 9780791410660
• Release Date: September 1992
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.8" x 9.0"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher