In this collection leading thinkers writers and activists offer their responses to the simple
question do I have a body or am I my body?. The essays engage with the array of meanings that
our bodies have today ranging from considerations of nineteenth-century discourses of bodily
shame and otherness through to arguing for a brand new corporeal vocabulary for the
twenty-first century. Increasing numbers of people are choosing to modify their bodies but as
the essays in this volume show this is far from being a new practice: over hundreds of years
it has evolved and accrued new meanings. This richly interdisciplinary volume maps a range of
cultural anxieties about the body resulting in a timely and compelling book that makes a vital
contribution to today's key debates about embodiment.
