Missing Bodies

Pbk 240pp 9780814716786 2009.06 New York University Press A$38.95 NZ$49.95

Missing Bodies: The Politics of Visibility Monica J Casper and Lisa Jean Moore We know more about the physical body - how it begins, how it responds to illness, even how it decomposes - than ever before. Yet not all bodies are created equal, some bodies clearly count more than others, and some bodies are not recognised at all. In Missing Bodies, Monica J Casper and Lisa Jean Moore explore the surveillance, manipulations, erasures, and visibility of the body in the twenty-first century. The authors examine bodies, both actual and symbolic, in a variety of arenas: pornography, fashion, sports, medicine, photography, cinema, sex work, labor, migration, medical tourism, and war. This new politics of visibility can lead to the overexposure of some bodies - Lance Armstrong, Jessica Lynch - and to the near invisibility of others - dead Iraqi civilians, illegal immigrants, the victims of HIV/AIDS and "natural" disasters.