autobiography of a body

Like Pimm, I’ve been looking at Jackson’s other projects. I was pretty interested in her autobiographical (with lies, as she writes) hypertext ”My Body.” Jackson has drawn a picture of herself (a pretty good approximation, I have to say) and each body part is linked to a story or thought. Within these body parts are links to further stories.

It’s pretty clear now that Jackson is really, really super interested in bodies along with words. But I wouldn’t say that this is a love letter to her body, there’s something a little unsettling going on here that I can’t explain at this point. Perhaps I should look more carefully; I’ve only spent a little time reading through.

But my initial reaction was…well, kind of grossed out. Jackson brings up some pretty crazy ideas in this piece. Words take some intense trips… she writes about inserting them into herself (in every way imaginable) and changing their meaning. Even though we actually have a text in this case, I think I’d rather discuss this work as a concept or idea…which makes me wonder if I’d like the actual text of “Skin.”