Out of Touch by Maureen F. Curtin - 9780415866996

Out of TouchSkin Tropes and Identities in Woolf, Ellison, Pynchon, and Acker\nAuthor(s): Maureen F. Curtin\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Routledge\nISBN-13: 9780415866996, 978-0415866996\nSynopsis\nOut of Touch investigates how skin has become a crucial but disavowed figure in twentieth-century literature, theory, and cultural criticism. These discourses reveal the extent to which skin figures in the cultural effect of changes in visual technologies, a development argued by critics to be at the heart of the contest between surface and depth and, by extension, Western globalization and identity politics. The skin has a complex history as a metaphorical terrain over which ideological wars are fought, identity is asserted through modification as in tattooing, and meaning is inscribed upon the human being. Yet even as interventions on the skin characterize much of this history, fantasy and science fiction literature and film trumpet sk.