Skin and Scars

Abstract

What does considering skin carefully and specifically illuminate about addiction, addiction discourse and/or the visual culture of addiction, that more general considerations of the body do not? What light is shed when we talk about skin and addiction? I want to propose in this brief article that in looking at addiction and addiction discourse through the lens of skin studies, we see with even more clarity the thinness of the argument that addiction is legible from corporeal evidence. I conclude that while we may want skin to tell us things about others, it nevertheless behooves us to be wary of what we think skin tells us about addiction.

Legitimacy and Respectability on the Skin: Bruises, Women’s Rugby and Situational Meaning

“…Not only is it relational, it is also ‘intersensory’, meaning both object and subject, felt and seen, hard and soft (Lafrance, 2018). The contribution of skin studies to our understanding of bodies and body work is important here, in considering the intersubjective, sensory and normative nature of attributing meaning to bodies (Skelly, 2018), but also the reflexive body work that individuals engage in when managing their social identities (Lafrance and Carey, 2018). Skin studies offer an opportunity to answer sociological questions surrounding norms, normativity and the maintenance of inequalities of class, gender or race as they are lived and experienced in embodied ways (Lafrance, 2018).…”