Constellations of meaning on and from the skin

Abstract

In modern western culture, biomedicine hegemonized knowledge about the parts, faculties and organs of the body. At the same time, the “racial epidermal schema” (Fanon, 2009) used the skin as a marker of a fictitious substantial difference between human beings. Focusing on both matrices of difference, this article approaches the skin as an organ and medium that condenses historical and power relations. It proposes to address two "constellations of meaning" related to the experience of J., a person whose skin captured biomedical attention and intervention; and to explore the relations between the "racial epidermal scheme" and the scheme of modern western biomedicine. Finally, recovering theoretical-political proposals that privilege the multiplicity of bodies, the text weaves possible lines of escape from these schemes, in search of other horizons of meaning.