Writing on the Body? ─ Thinking Through Gendered Embodiment and Marked Flesh

They speak earnestly of the work of art they maintain is their body. However, those around them say they committing para-suicide, conducting self-injury or self-mutilation, performing body modification or, in a slightly more generic term, practicing body marking. Inckle (sociology, Trinity College, Dublin) takes on the distinctions and moves us into a world beyond the medical model. She uses a feminist approach, which includes a sharp consideration of the linkage between womanhood and the body, to describe the subjects of her research and the methods they employ, marks the borders of sexual difference through a consideration of gendered embodiment, considers the edges of normative femininity in terms of social control and body marking, moves beyond binaries of agency and mutilation in body marking, and analyzes the relationships among blood, pain and gender. Annotation c2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)