a few words on self-harm
it's difficult finding works on self-harm that are neither medicalizing nor psychoanalyzing it, seeing the behaviors it includes instead in context, so here are some recommendations i would have if you are interested:
general historical overview:
Chaney, S. (2017). Psyche on the Skin: A history of self-harm. Reaktion Books.
on the construction of the rational european subject in discourses of mutilation:
Chaney S. (2011). ‘Self-control, selfishness and mutilation: how 'medical' is self-injury anyway?’. Medical history, 55(3), 375–382.
Gilman, SL. (2013) ‘From psychiatric symptom to diagnostic category: self-harm from the Victorians to DSM-5’, History of Psychiatry, No.2, p. 148-165,
on the construction of the category of self-harm as cutting:
Millard, C. (2013). Making the cut: The production of ‘self-harm’ in post-1945 Anglo-Saxon psychiatry. History of the Human Sciences.
on self-harm/biological transition as an attack on the social body:
Stryker, S., & Sullivan, N. (2009). ‘King's member, queen's body: Transsexual surgery, self-demand amputation and the somatechnics of sovereign power.’ Somatechnics: Queering the Technologisation of Bodies (pp. 49-63)
Measure Once, Cut Twice: In Defense of Self-Harm
