Adolescents are said to be, figuratively speaking, thin-skinned. But their thin-skinnedness is also real: both ambivalent and ambiguous, the border between self and other is, for many young people, a source of constant turmoil. The recourse to bodily self-harm is a means of dealing with this turmoil and the feelings of powerlessness it generates. Drawing on extensive semi-structured interviews conducted over the course of the last twenty years, this article explores the experiences of adolescents who engage in self-cutting. A deliberate (...) and controlled use of pain, this ‘symbolic homeopathy’ – that is, harming oneself to feel less pain – acts as a defence against externally imposed suffering. Far from being destructive, self-harm practices can paradoxically be understood as survival techniques. Part of a long-term, ongoing project investigating adolescent risk-taking, this article seeks to better understand the experiences of teens who injure themselves through skin-cutting. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss several arguments against non‐therapeutic mutilation. Interventions into bodily integrity, which do not serve a therapeutic purpose and are not regarded as aesthetically acceptable by the majority, e.g. tongue splitting, branding and flesh stapling, are now practised, but, however, are still seen as a kind of ‘aberration’ that ought not to be allowed. I reject several arguments for a possible ban on these body modifications. I find the common pathologisation of body modifications, Kant's argument of duties (...) to oneself and the objection from irrationality all wanting. In conclusion, I see no convincing support for prohibition of voluntary mutilations. (shrink)

Judith Butler's (2006) account of vulnerability, resonant with other accounts offered by feminist theorists of embodiment (such as Margrit Shildrick [2000] and Rosalyn Diprose [2002]), underscores a "conception of the human . . . in which we are, from the start, given over to the other, one in which we are, from the start, even prior to individuation itself and, by virtue of bodily requirements, given over to some set of primary others" (31). She is concerned with how this state (...) of being—"not only constituted by our relations but also dispossessed by them as well" (24)—becomes recognized, or not, in the political production and recognition of vulnerability, and the suffering that occurs in the violent .. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper, I discuss several arguments against non‐therapeutic mutilation. Interventions into bodily integrity, which do not serve a therapeutic purpose and are not regarded as aesthetically acceptable by the majority, e.g. tongue splitting, branding and flesh stapling, are now practised, but, however, are still seen as a kind of ‘aberration’ that ought not to be allowed. I reject several arguments for a possible ban on these body modifications. I find the common pathologisation of body modifications, Kant's argument of (...) duties to oneself and the objection from irrationality all wanting. In conclusion, I see no convincing support for prohibition of voluntary mutilations. (shrink)