Split skin: Adolescent cutters and the other

Abstract

“They tell a story," remarks 15-year-old Callie toward the end of Patricia McCormick’s controversial adolescent novel Cut (2000). Indeed, her self-inflicted scars do tell a story that places cutting, or self-mutilation as it may be referred to more broadly, in the complicated realm of psychic interdependence as opposed to solipsistic internal aggression. When her scars are read as a representative story revealing the permeable borders between self and other, Callie’s skin illustrates how self-mutilation often involves not just the individual who self-harms, but also the varied external forces that have been exerted upon her.