With the devil in the skin: the association between body modification and the devil's image

• Grant number: 15/26195-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2016
• End date: December 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Urban Sociology
• Principal Investigator: Jorge Leite Júnior
• Grantee: Cristiane Vilma de Melo
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project aims to understand the discourse that associates some practices of body modification with the devil image. Through a diabolical imagination built by conservative Christian religious perspectives is intended to describe how this imaginary constituted and perpetuated in our society, leading in the case of bodies changed the perception of what is in the imagination for observable, objective and tactile. By associating the diabolical image to a body that differs from what society "expects" these bodies are often removed from the human category and set in a gray area that reaches the limit to be associated with evil. To understand how this association happens, interviews will be conducted with a group of people who are part of the world of body modification, seeking to understand how the notion of the devil is present in this area and to what extent this notion participates in the constitution of these modified bodies like this notion is captured and (in) corporated in this field and, from that, make intelligible as the occurrence of the association is possible between the modified body and the diabolical body.