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Rachel Hurst, Professor of Womens' and Gender Studies at St. Francis Xavier University in Montreal, has written an exciting book of particular interest to those of us fascinated by the role of the body in psychic life. Right away, one is intrigued with her chapter titles: chapter 1, “Surface
Imaginations”; chapter 2, “From the Quest for Recognition to Surface Imagination Surgery”; chapter 3, “The Photograph as Reminder, Evidence, and Promise”; and chapter 4, “The Feminine Skin as Anxious Archipelago.” A fifth chapter, “Conclusion,” follows.
Hurst's thesis is of the moment, especially as it recognizes the impact of cyberspace on the modern psyche. The research is qualitative. She starts by interviewing at length a small sample of people who have had cosmetic surgery. They talk vividly about their bodily concerns and personal bodily aesthetics. She uses conventional narrative when the subject talks in a linear way, with little contradiction in time or event. But when the subject “collapses temporal boundaries” or becomes contradictory, Hurst contracts these long conversations in a highly original fashion. She creates a unique, condensed text crafted solely of the interviewee's own words and ideas that are repeated or stressed. She looks for the person's own reflections, as well as for direct metaphors or affect-laden words. These texts read like poems and preserve a lively individuality for the subject. She then uses these précis to help detect the main themes for her project. Here is an example of such a “poetic transcription,” one she calls “The Gravity of Age”:
As you age,Strange thingsHappenTo your features.That really bothered me a lot: every decade another thing.…The gravity had set in.