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?
Inhaltsverzeichnis
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