b'Short Essays Sonia Thakurdesaiand seen throughout history in society. However, ifmutilated his skin in various manners and pushed his body someone is known to cut themselves, they are deemed andto extremities with body modification. He replicated a dismissed as crazy. Self-mutilation is frowned upon byHindu ritual in which his chest and back were pierced with Western society and so encourages them to stop, but doninety-four-foot steel rods with which he danced for hours they have the right to? Why do people self-mutilate? Thecarrying the weight of fifty pounds until he reached a state question of agency comes into play.of ecstasy (Strong 2005: 142-143). I was curious about this idea of self-mutilation and whyThis kind of work towards spiritual enlightenment it is frowned upon whilst cutting the body is accepted inattracted Abramovi. She says Im interested in nature medicine and various cultures and performance art, so Iand people from different cultures who push their bodies have conducted some further research into this. I cameand minds in a way we dont understand (Abramovi as across the book titled Bright Red Scream, which discussesquoted in Beard 2016). Different cultures hold different various (non-fiction) accounts of peoples experiences withviews of the body and its boundaries. Frazers idea of self-mutilation.sympathetic connexion between bodies and body parts or other objects is noted in Rethinking the body and its boundaries. The section titled Reclaiming the Body, examines howI agree with what is stated that boundary making is self-mutilation can be an empowering act for women.something in which all cultures engage, regardless of era Psychologist Lisa Cross argues that a females experienceor locale, and this includes socially constructing bodies with their body and its ongoing changes through variousand establishing body boundaries (Leigh, Michael, stages (puberty, childbirth, symbiotic possession of theirAshby, and Mthot 2012: 3-4). The text then goes further, body by another life in pregnancy and breastfeeding)suggesting that the unwillingness of Western cultures can cause many women to see their bodies as unfamiliarbiomedical body to consider subjective influences in the and out of control- as object, not subject. As OBryanname of scientific process and the human condition means states: Theres a history of the female body as the locusnew biology could be overlooked. Thus there is a risk of of gender-determined fears (OBryan 2005: 43). Self- misunderstanding [.] ourselves and what it means to be mutilation and other body control syndromes, such ashuman. I would go further to bring this back into the eating disorders, are ways in which one may exert controlquestion of ethics and cutting the body, and put out the over their body (Strong 2005: 125). Additional pressuresprovocation that: If there is truth in the spiritual, which of a persons milieu are mentioned which can be relatedscience refuses to engage in, then perhaps those who back to early perceptions of the female body and its senseengage in cutting outside of a medicalised environment of otherness. I would like to relate this to Abramoviswould not be deemed as mad or mentally ill by Western statement on self-cutting - that it was primarily concernedsociety. It took years for people to accept and see the with the attempt to liberate herself from her fear of bloodbeauty of Abramovis work and in her own words her and bleeding (Richards 2010: 8). Bleeding is a naturalearly career was hell (Abramovi as quoted in Beard 2016). biological process for the female body when the uterusAs OBryan writes: [the] cartesian aspiration toward pure lining sheds. I argue that the empowerment from femalescientific objectivity (OBryan 2005: 49) rejects that which self-mutilation is a result of early perceptions of theengages in the practice of spirituality. womens body and the fear of being out of control from ones body and suffering from the wandering womb- anWe are given new ways to view the body and consider what extension of the patriarchal narrative that the male body isit means to be embodied. Organ donations or cyborg body the standard.parts for example question what constitutes the body-self (i.e. boundaries) and asks what belongs to who? (Leigh, The chapter A Walk on the Wild Side, talks through variousMichael, Ashby, and Mthot 2012: 1-4). cultural performances of cutting and body-mutilation and their historical roots. Another account I was drawn to wasThese questions link back to what I discussed on rights that of Fakir Musafar, who was an American performanceto the body. To return to Orlans work, she employs the artist and coined the term modern primitivism, whichdigital technology used in surgical procedures to alter her he believes is a way of reclaiming the body from all thebody (Hope and Ryan 2014: 98) There is a notion of flux in figures and institutions which have taken control fromher work which reflects the significance of technology on people in Western society. Since the age of thirteen he hasthe body- being deconstructed and reconstructed. 45'