ABSTRACT
But did various elements of performance art and the intrinsically linked presence of the ‘real’ body ever disappear at all? I think not. Moreover, I would challenge the assumption that contemporary forms of artistic casting, photographing, X-raying, mutilating, and fragmenting the body imply a rediscovery of the body. On the contrary, I would characterize these actions as related to now conventional ideas about subject formation and corporeality. Such approaches, namely, uphold the Lacanian concept that the identification of the subject is exclusively constituted through a distanced specular process and mediated through language.3
