The Book of Skin

by Steven Connor

Skin, Steven Connor argues, has never been more visible. The Book of Skin explores the multiple functions of the skin in the cultures of the West. In this vividly illustrated book, Connor draws on evidence from a variety of sources including literary and other forms of public and private writing, especially medical texts, as well as painting, photography, and film, folklore and popular song. Because of its newfound visibility, skin has never been at once so manifest and so in jeopardy as it is today. This dilemma becomes evident, in Connor's view, if we examine how skin is displayed and manipulated as a site of inscription. In order to trace our culture's anxious concerns with the materiality and mortality of skin, Connor's analysis ranges from the human body itself to photography, from Medieval leprosy, Renaissance flaying, and eternal syphilis to cosmetics, plastic surgery, and skin cancers. Connor examines the chromatics of skin color and pigmentation, blushing, suntanning, paleness, darkening, tattooing, cutting, the Turin shroud, the Mummy, and the Invisible Man. He also offers engaging explanations for why particular colors are ascribed to feelings and conditions such as green for envy, purple for rage, and yellow for cowardice. Connor's insights into the obvious and yet unfamiliar terrain of the skin and its place in Western culture ameliorates the intensities and attenuations of touch in cultural history. The Book of Skin bears out James Joyce's claim that "modern man has an epidermis rather than a soul."

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Medical, History

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Steven Connor is Grace 2 Professor of English in the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and Director of the Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH). Among his many books are explorations of aspects of the cultural history of the senses, including Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (2000), The Book of Skin (2004), and Beckett, Modernism and the Material Imagination (2014). His most recent books are Dream Machines (2017), The Madness of Knowledge: On Wisdom, Ignorance and Fantasies of Knowledge (2019), and Giving Way: Thoughts on Unappreciated Dispositions (2019).

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting and analytic look at skin and the many many ways it has been approached in Western society from early myth to the modern day take. Connor covers a wide range of subjects and sources from folklore and medicine to photography and film showing how the views on skin have and haven't changed over the years and how these views have governed various aspects of art, life, language and society as a whole. His writing is incredibly readable despite the somewhat academic nature of much of this book which was refreshing and opens it up to a much larger readership. Overall a good book but for reasons I can't quite put my finger on it didn't enthrall me as I thought it would. Still well worth trying though.

[Karl Steel · Rating 4 out of 5]

probably the best psychoanalytic/cultural studies book on skin available. Psychoanalytic critique isn't doing it for me anymore, so I didn't finish, but I still recommend this. NB: Connor's a very good writer.

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Locates an inquiry into embodiment at the level of the epidermis, that liminal zone in which self and world cross paths. Theories of stigmata, tattoos and the history of scientific inquiry into the skin.

[Renata · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nojinho.