Congress Paper Abstract

Producing Identity: Self Demand Amputation, Surgery and Disability

HARMINDER DOSANJH KAUR, UNIVERSITY OF HULL, UK.

This paper explores the phenomenon of self-demand amputation. Firstly, it considers how the phenomenon might cause us to re-think how we produce our body boundaries. Secondly, the paper considers how self-demand amputation has been re-framed as an ’identity disorder’. The article argues that the framing of self-demand amputation as an ’identity disorder’ brings to the surface the production of disability as an ’identity’.

In the context of gender reassignment surgery, it is notable that people who desire amputation have begun appropriate the language and arguments of the transgender debate. This raises a number of questions concerning the way that identity orientated body modification is framed, and more generally, about the relationship between identity and the materiality of the body.

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