The ambiguities and paradoxes of domestic violence were amplified in Victorian culture, which emphasized the home as a woman's place of security. In The Marked Body, Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky examine the discarded and violated bodies of middle-class women in selected texts of mid-nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. Guided by observations from feminism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theory, they argue that, in these works, domestic violence is a crucible in which the female body is placed, where it becomes marked by scars and disfigurement. Yet, they contend, these wounds go beyond violence to bring these women to a broader state of female subjectivity, sexuality, and consciousness. The female body, already the site of alterity, is inscribed with something that cannot be expressed; it thus becomes that which is culturally and physically denied, the place which is not.

This groundbreaking piece of work establishes a “position of embodiment” as an ethically salient epistemological and empirical strategy for understanding, representing, and experiencing gendered embodiment and marked flesh. Developing an embodied, feminist critique of the sociology of the body, the author integrates this position with some of the most recent developments in qualitative methodologies and creative research practices in order to engage with, and represent, women’s experiences of body-marking. As such, the specific body practices which are addressed, “body modification” and “self-injury,” are refigured in the context of a feminist, embodied position. This position of embodiment not only establishes a holistic, non-dualistic orientation from which to experience and explore gendered embodiment and body-marking practices, but in doing so, also highlights the limitations of normative dualistic, disembodied theories and methods which objectify and distance the very experiences they purport to explain. Overall, this exploration is a provoking, moving and often uncomfortable journey into the imperatives of gendered embodiment, abject corporeality, blood and pain, and the practices which mark the body and evoke and transform the gendered, embodied self. This is a courageous, beautifully written, evocative, and thought provoking book that takes the reader on an intimate journey into the misunderstood world of body marking practices. As part of the journey, Inckle provides a range of insights into the fluid, ambiguous, and complex forms of embodiment experienced by women over time. The reflexive stance she adopts throughout enables the reader to chart her emerging awareness of methodological dilemmas and the inherent tensions she experiences in trying to resolve them in relation to feminist ethical positions. As part of this process, she challenges the norms of knowledge production and dissolves the disciplinary boundaries that frame much of the current debate on embodiment and body marking practices. Inckle 's findings offer a powerful critique of dominant research perspectives that focus on the body and she makes a strong case for the development of a feminist-embodied-sociology in the future. As such, this book will be of immense interest to sociologists and psychologists with an interest in the body and the dynamics of embodiment as well as to scholars seeking to develop their understanding of key methodological issues. Professor Andrew C. Sparkes PhD Exeter University This book is based on one of the best methodological approaches I have come across. Supported by materials from a wide variety of disciplines, it is reflexively argued, and Dr Inckle charts new grounds in her trajectory from feminist methodologies to creative sociology, searching for new ways of producing knowledge and radically broadening the sociological research agenda to include ‘stories that come out of the body’. I particularly like the way Dr Inckle develops feminist research methodologies, critiquing participatory approaches as often difficult to implement, and the fearless, yet highly problematic, positioning of the ‘researching I’ at the centre of the research process. Dr Ronit Lentin, Department of Sociology Trinity College Dublin