Transacting Sites of the Liminal Bodily Spaces

This book focuses on liminal bodies and their delicate transaction with themselves and other peoples bodies. More specifically, it explores the spatiality and discourses of the body dying; the body opened in surgery, or through MRIs, CATs, and sometimes in autopsies; the body preserved through computerized images such as those created by the Visual Human Project; the metonymic body that continues to live in another body through organ replacement; and the bodily parts cast in silver, and then abandoned in a museum.This study also analyzes the discourses of the contemporary body commissioned by the vast industry of mass-media. This type of body has started to direct itself toward frugal, almost furtive pleasures; consequentlyunlike those seriously affected by illnessesa body constantly guarded by fear eventually runs on empty, becomes a corps-déjà-vu, and thus moves toward different types of minimal and liminal topology. The primary works examined include memoirs (Marjorie Williamss Hit by Lightning: A Cancer Memoir, Arthur W. Franks At the Will of the Body: Reflections on Illness, Audre Lordes The Cancer Journals), films (Alejandro Amenábars The Sea Inside, Akira Kurosawas Ikiru, Pedro Almodóvars All about My Mother), stories (Marisa Silvers Night Train to Frankfurt), visual artworks (as accomplished by Jo Spence, David Wojnarowicz, Félix Gonzales-Torres, and Natalie Horne) and plays (Bryony Laverys Last Easter, Paula Vogels Baltimore Waltz, William Hoffmans As Is), which are read comparatively, namely as works positioned at the intersection between literature/visual art and social diaries.This book has become part of the collections of the worlds leading universities: Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, the Library of Congress, and more. See more