Suspended bodies: mapping and imaginary in urban youth skin

Abstract

This article seeks to explore on the world of body practices and its relation to a certain type of youth cultures that incorporate corporal modification as a life style. In Chile, at the present time, it is possible to observe an explosion of tattoos and piercing experimentation, and on a more incipient state -but also significant– implants and branding, expansions and the variant of human suspensions; practice on which the article deepens, in the purpose of giving account on the social and cultural context where human suspensions arise; the appropiation processes that experience this practice since their irruption on youth cultures in contemporary societies; the meanings and procedures conected to this ritual; and the relation between politics, aesthetics and corporal modification.