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Summary: Modifying the Medical Line
Review: In the Flesh is an insightful examination of the more extreme body modification subculture, one that invites the reader to re-examine his or her expectations about bodies, body politics, and medical technologies. A generous writer, Pitts presents her research to the reader and offers a framework for investigating how some bodily alterations are medicalized or accepted because they enforce normative expectations about health and beauty, and how others are pathologized. In lively and lucid prose, the author provides us with a useful look at an important issue, and does so (much to her credit) without confining her research participants or her readers to a specific political camp. There may be bright political lines between circumcision, botox injections, Michael Jackson, and flesh hangings -- or then again, maybe there are not. In the Flesh gives us new tools with which to draw those lines for ourselves.
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Summary: Body modification-let the truth be told!
Review: The book deals with a myriad of social issues pertaning to the body and its modification to show both resistance and conformaty to mainstreem and subculture respectively. And indeed the book was interesting to read once and maybe twice if one is writing their masters thesis or doctoral dissertaion. However, I felt that the book would someteimes just drag on and on. What was however interesting was the course that included the book in its uses. The work is very academic, professional and worth the time to read.
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Summary: Excellent Qualitative Research!
Review: This book does a great job of opening up the lives of body modifiers and situating them clearly in a complex cultural context. Victoria Pitts beautifully balances her own qualitative analysis with the voices of those she interviewed. This book is accessible while still delving deeply into social theory. Pitts neither romanticizes nor objectifies body modifiers. Instead she honestly explores their narratives, from "reclaiming," to "queer," to "modern primitive" to "cyberpunk." I'd recommend this book to any reader interested in cultural studies, body modification, social theory, deviance, the construction of identity, or the politics of bodies.
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Summary: A fascinating look at a freaky world
Review: This book is an engrossing and well-crafted analysis of a sub-culture which moves beyond the radar of our nation's more austere population. In showing and telling this seamy and sadistic underbelly (with all its diverse accoutrements and experiments) Victoria Pitts manages to achieve a very difficult balance: she gives the members of a distinct sub-culture the right to tell their own stories in their own distinct voices, yet she also provides erudite and elucidating commentary on that sub-culture. Her insights prove as interesting as the strange stories her subjects tell, stories which, suprisingly enough, have relevance to the reactions many of us experience toward contemporary culture, though we may often respond through less extreme measures. I reccomend this book as a fine example of the interesting work being done in academic scholarship and the pleasures such work can offer, even to non-specialists.
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Summary: It reads like a parody
Review: This claims to be an academic study of body modification. When I started reading it, I thought I was reading something published by The Onion. As I read more, it seemed as though it was really an academic study. Reading even more, I began to see that this was due only to its form, which is accurately patterned after the learned writings of academe. I still can't decide whether this book is a very clever parody of academic work, or a real report of very un-clever academic activity. After 20-30 minutes of reading this potentially interesting book, I gave up in boredom and disbelief. It has nice pictures of cutting-edge "far out" people with interesting tattoos, piercings, etc., but other than being good for a few chuckles, the text is a near-total waste.
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Summary: bodies and culture
Review: This is a fascinating book that is theoretically sophisticated and guides us through the body in modern and postmodern theory. Her insight into the range of body modification practices and how they are linked to broader cultural shifts in late modernity is sharp and convincing.
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Summary: Superbly intelligent rendering of postmodern culture
Review: Victoria Pitts's book "In the Flesh" is the most brilliant analysis of postmodern culture I have ever read. Through the lens of recent phenomena in body modification--from the beautifying to the erotic and grotesque--she shows how issues of subjectivity are complexly intertwined with body strategies--performances in which the actors at once gain and lose themselves. With exquisite analysis of fascinating subjects and clear-minded use of postmodern theory, her book is the epitome of rigorous scholarship, both theoretical and empirical. It is, in a word, a theory of flesh and its agencies; but beyond the body, it offers us a scaffolding from which to view the painfully complex issues of contemporary culture at large.
Rating:
Summary: Superbly intelligent rendering of postmodern culture
Review: Victoria Pitts's book "In the Flesh" is the most brilliant analysis of postmodern culture I have ever read. Through the lens of recent phenomena in body modification--from the beautifying to the erotic and grotesque--she shows how issues of subjectivity are complexly intertwined with body strategies--performances in which the actors at once gain and lose themselves. With exquisite analysis of fascinating subjects and clear-minded use of postmodern theory, her book is the epitome of rigorous scholarship, both theoretical and empirical. It is, in a word, a theory of flesh and its agencies; but beyond the body, it offers us a scaffolding from which to view the painfully complex issues of contemporary culture at large.
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