vi, 239 pages : 22 cm

"The 1990s saw the dramatic rise of spectacular forms of body modification, which included the tattoo renaissance and the rise in body piercing, the emergence of neo-tribal practices like scarification and flesh hanging, and the invention of new, high-tech forms of body art like subdermal implants. This book, based on years of interviews with body modifiers throughout the United States, is both sympathetic and critical and provides the most comprehensive look at this phenomenon. From punk rock to "modern primitives," from queer sadomasochism to cyberpunks, sociologist Victoria Pitts provides insight into the full range of body modification subcultures. Whether by turning themselves into female punks, neo-tribal "primitives" or science fiction cyborgs, body modifiers are engaged in the project of "reclaiming" their bodies from the machine of modern life. Pitts explores the connections between body modification and contemporary struggles over sex and gender, and widespread attitudes about identity, consumption, and the body"--Publisher description

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-234) and index

Bodies of power: new body art technologies -- Subversive bodies, invented selves: theorizing body politics -- Reclaiming the female body: women body modifiers and feminist debates -- Visibly queer: body technologies and sexual politics -- Modern primitivism and the deployment of the other -- Cyberpunk, biomedicine, and the high-tech body -- Reading the postmodern techno-body

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