Download or read book Tattoo, Torture, Mutilation, and Adornment written by Frances E. Mascia-Lees and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 1992-09-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary theory across a wide range of disciplines denaturalizes the body and reveals it to be a social construction. Cultural practices which deform, adorn, mutilate, and obliterate the body illustrate that it is an important site for the inscription of culture. The authors draw on cross currents in feminist theory, literary criticism, anthropology, and history to analyze several such cultural practices as examples of the power of culture to encode its messages on the human form.