Reading Desire: Commentary on Papers by Danielle Knafo,Victoria Pitts-Taylor,and Nikki Sullivan

All 3 papers on body modification share a particular approach to their topic as they are substantially located in discourse analysis and a deconstructive approach to their material, and all are concerned with binaries. All 3 papers also grapple with the matter of interiority. Having explored how these issues play themselves out in the particularity of the practices of tattooing and cosmetic surgery and in the work of Orlan, the author invites further dialogue between Foucauldian analyses and psychoanalytic ones with special reference to the notions of desire and unreason.