ABSTRACT
Primitive inscriptions on the body surface function to intensify, proliferate, and extend the body’s erotogenic sensitivity. Instead of being read simply as messages, that is, as signifiers of a hidden or inferred signified which is the subject’s inferiority, the incisions function to proliferate, intensify, and extend the body’s erotogenic sensitivity. Less solid, permanent, and tangible than the transformations effected by the body writing of muscular exertion but no less inscriptive is the habitual marking of the body by clothing, ornamentation, prosthetic devices, and makeup. Knowledge is not simply an illusory aspiration, a mode of survival, of pure use value; it is a body of propositions and texts, together with their accompanying institutions and protocols. The body is “naturally” bisexual, and it is a form of social, inscriptive “castration” that creates the division between the sexes. There is no sensitivity to or awareness of the major sexual dysymmetry of circumcision and clitoridectomy, for both function as support to the phallus.
