Self-injury places in a  semiotic perspective

Sternudd, Hans T.,1955-Linnéuniversitetet,Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper, KV (författare)

Self-injury practice involves activities that take place on the skin. In this paper I argue that this activity is not only taking place on the skin; the cutting is also creating a special place – a wounded skin. From this domain stories of emotional distress and/or disorders are communicated.Skin is often apprehended as the surface of the individual, and giving it to much attention is interpreted as expressions of superficiality or shallowness. As a point of departure this paper suggests that the wounded cut up skin of a self-injurer contradicts these notions. In this reading skin becomes the place where identity is produced as a discursive meeting between an apprehended inner self and a world posit outside. Superficiality is not something pejorative - it's all there is.On internet self-injurers create communities where members share stories, discuss experiences and show images of their wounds - different modalities that are expressing a common semiotic principle. Verbal and visual texts reveal how a place (the place of the wounded skin) is constructed with the help of different modes - based on the principle of the cut. This principle can refer to loss of control, of being a victim - but also the opposite, as an act of agents formulating aggressive response against an intolerable situation.

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