Getting Under the Skin: Body and Media Theory (MIT Press) by Bernadette Wegenstein

The physique as an item of serious research dominates disciplines around the humanities to such an quantity new self-discipline has emerged: physique feedback. In Getting below the Skin, Bernadette Wegenstein strains modern physique discourse in philosophy and cultural stories to its roots in twentieth-century concept -- exhibiting how psychoanalysis, phenomenology, cognitive technological know-how, and feminist conception contributed to a brand new physique proposal -- and reviews the millennial physique in functionality artwork, pop culture, new media arts, and architecture.Wegenstein exhibits how the idea that of physically fragmentation has been in flow because the 16th century's research of anatomy. The historical past of the body-in-pieces, she argues, is a historical past of a suffering courting among techniques of the physique -- as fragmented and as holistic. Wegenstein indicates that through the 20 th century those it seems that contradictory pursuits have been built-in; either fragmentation and holism, she argues, are critical modes of imagining and configuring the physique. The background of the physique, consequently, is a historical past of mediation; however it was once no longer until eventually the flip of the twenty-first century and the electronic revolution that the physique was once most sensible in a position to express its mediality.After analyzing key recommendations in physique feedback, Wegenstein appears on the physique as "raw fabric" in twentieth-century functionality paintings, clinical suggestions for visualizing the human physique, and methods in pop culture for "getting less than the outside" with photos of freely floating physique components. Her research of present developments in structure and new media artwork demonstrates the deep connection of physique feedback to media feedback. during this method of physique feedback, the physique not stands in for anything else -- the medium has turn into the body.