Skin

Claudia Benthien is assistant professor of German at Humboldt-University, Berlin. She received the Tiburtius Prize from the Berlin senate for this work.

• Preface to the American Edition 1. The Depth of the Surface: Introduction 2. Boundary Metaphors: Skin in Language 3. Penetrations: Body Boundaries and the Production of Knowledge in Medicine and Cultural Practices 4. Flayings: Exposure, Torture, Metamorphoses 5. Mirror of the Soul: The Epidermis as Canvas 6. Mystification: The Strangeness of the Skin 7. Armored Skin and Birthmarks: The Imagology of a Gender Difference 8. Different Skin: Skin Colors in Literature and the History of Science 9. Blackness: Skin Color in African-American Discourse 10. Hand and Skin: Anthropology and Iconography of the Cutaneous Senses 11. Touchings: On the Analogous Nature of Erotic, Emotive, and "Psychic" Skin Sensations 12. Teletactility: The Skin in New Media

A prize-winning examination of the changing cultural and metaphorical significance of skin, through innovative readings of literature, art, philosophy, history, anthropology, medicine, and more. Library Journal [Benthien] deftly illuminates her findings, and she is quite brilliant. This is historical anthropology at its best. -- Joanna Briscoe The Guardian Delves into the cultural role of skin as the place where personal identity is formed and assigned. Publishers Weekly This cultural study examines the relations among self-consciousness, subjectivity, and skin from the 18th century to the present... Benthien discusses the semantic and psychic aspects of touching, feeling, and intellectual perception; the motifs of perforated, armored, or transparent skin. Translation Review