Abstract of the Week!

Annette Gough of Deakin University in Australia presented this paper at the 2003 Sydney conference on "body modification":

Embodying a Mine Site: Enacting Cyborg Methodology

This paper will discuss my experiences of body modification as a feminist poststructuralist environmental education researcher through "autoethnographic rants" (Crawley 2002). I have worked as an environmental educator for much of the past 30 years, and a frequently recurring theme in my curriculum work has been the impact of mining on the environment, and what "restoring the land" means. It never occurred to me that my body would become a mine site too. However, in August 2001 doctors discovered a rare ore body, Paget's Disease of the Nipple, on my corporeal body and rushed to excavate this new diamond mine site. This paper focuses on my coming to terms with my post-operatively scarred body as a quarry, which I saw as in need of reconstruction to return its appearance to normality as a cyborg, and all that entailed--theoretically as a feminist poststructuralist researcher and physically as an aging female." . . .

(via Sydney Line)