BODIES OF POWER

BODIES OF POWER


ANDREW, A YOUNG BODY MODIFIER IN HIS 20S, HAS UNDERGONE
hundreds of hours of tattooing, body piercing, scarification, branding,
and self-surgery. He studies anatomy textbooks and has performed
surgery on his own body using laser technology, scalpels, sutures, and
local anesthetics. With these and other implements, and with the assistance
of other body modification artists, he has carefully modified his
face, back, arms, torso, earlobes, genitals, wrists, and ankles, and has

added over one hundred various piercings to his body. Some of his
body alterations are modeled after those of non-Western, indigenous
cultures—for instance, his stretched earlobes and a genital subincision
(a practice of partially slicing the penis undertaken by Maori tribes).
Others are “invented”—the piercing of the uvula at the back of the
throat, for example. His attitude toward the body is postmodern and
cyberpunk—he mixes tribal and high-tech practices to create a hybrid
style and sees the body as a limitless frontier for exploration and technological
innovation. To many observers, he is visually shocking, and
this influences many aspects of his life. In our interviews, he described
to me how he is unemployable in most sectors of the job market (he
makes his living as a self-employed body piercer), has had difficulty
seeking medical care because he worries about being labeled mentally
ill, and is by some considered a freak. In a particularly telling example
of this, he described being detained for hours while trying to cross the
U.S.–Canada border on a trip to visit a body art studio in Toronto. The
border patrol had apparently decided on the basis of his appearance
(which includes, among other alterations, a number of facial scars that
would be virtually impossible to hide, if he wanted to) that he was a
threat to Canadian security, and he was ultimately refused entry.
Most body modifiers are not as extreme as Andrew in their pursuit
of body alteration, but many share his belief that “you can take control
of what you otherwise could not” through body technologies. This sentiment
is a major theme of the contemporary body modification
movement. While various forms of body modification have become
hugely popular among youth and others, a significant portion of the
body modification movement could be characterized as outside the
mainstream. Nonmainstream body modifiers create not only spectacle
and controversy but also new forms of social rebellion through the
body. For example, cyberpunk body modifiers like Andrew attempt to
customize their bodies in ways previously imagined only in science fiction.
In doing so, they raise the issue of who owns and controls medical
and other high technologies. Other body modifiers address sexual

politics, gender inequality, and cultural identity. For example, gay men
and leatherdykes have eroticized practices like scarring and branding
and used them to reject the assimilationism of the more mainstream
gay rights movement, to mark themselves as “queer among queers,” as
one gay body piercer put it to me. Some women have described their
body art as a way to rebel against male dominance and to “reclaim”
power over their own bodies. In creating scarred, branded, pierced, and
heavily tattooed bodies, they aim to reject the pressures of beauty
norms and roles of “proper” femininity. Another group of body modifiers,
those who call themselves “modern primitives,” romantically
identify indigenous cultures as a repository of “authentic” and spiritual
experiences, and see traditional forms of body art as a way to rescue the
body and self from the problems of the modern world. In all of these
instances, the body is revealed as a space of important social significance.
Body practices such as these show how the body figures prominently
in our notions of self and community, in our cultural politics,
and in social control and power relations.