ABSTRACT
Our analysis here proceeds from the understanding that discourses limit and constrain bodies, but may also extend the capabilities of those bodies, allowing them to act in ways which would not be possible without the sustaining and prosthetic effects of discourse. Discourses inscribe meaning on to physical bodies in so far as, for example, we understand our possession of a specific type of genitalia to mean that we are also gendered, masculine or feminine (Brewis et al. 1997b). However, these meanings can be reinscribed, albeit with considerable difficulty if the transcriptions involved are transgressive (such as transgendering), by their owners and by others through the availability of other potential inscriptions, other ways of understanding and relating to the body. Associated with a physical body may therefore be a part-real, part-fantasized, cyborg body, a body which never completely exists because it is always becoming-a muscular version of me, a skinnier version of you, a submissive version of him, a dominant version of her-always a body to come. These fantasized bodies may require the bodies of others to be inscribed in their turn-the lover needs someone to love, the master a slave, the sadist a masochistif they are to move closer to realization, which is always, in this reading, simulated. It is this plastic aspect of the body, termed (as we have seen earlier) the Body without Organs, or BwO, by Deleuze and Guattari (1987), which, although present throughout everyday
life, in prostitution emerges to assume particular importance as a place where signification and sensation meet through desire.
