Carved in Flesh

Abstract

This paper opens up questions regarding the ways in which reading the body leads to limited and limiting notions of identity. These questions are based around a critique of an ethnography of lesbian body-modification which I problematize in a number of ways. I suggest that reading the body of another is both methodologically and politically problematic. I reflect on how this approach confuses the complexity of body and identity and the ways in which this relates to establishing problematic boundaries of lesbian identity. I suggest an embodied identity cannot be fully understood or incorporated within any notion of the body as fixed or finite, and that neglecting the variability and mutability of the body is antithetical to political strategies of inclusion and equality.

Key Words:

• Body-modification
• embodiment
• gender
• sexuality