Witnessing through the skin: the hysteric’s body as text

Abstract

How does the hysteric bear witness through her body?This article looks at ways in which, from antiquity to the present day, the hysteric has borne witness to the anxiety of her time, age and sex through the speaking surface of her skin. In the eighth century CE a doctor tears the veil off the caliph’s concubine; in the Renaissance physicians and witchfinders look for stigmata; in the eighteenth century hysteria is located in ‘the nerves’; in the early twentieth century Charcot displays hysteria to audience or camera and Freud ‘wipes away’ the memories of Frau Emmy von N.What anxieties mark the surface of the troubled young woman of today? In its conclusion, this article suggests that it is exposure that haunts the outside of her body, circling it without protection, in a world where ‘health’ is not a pleasure but a duty.