Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how people renegotiate their ethical perspectives on health/harm through self-injury. Through their practise, individuals' ethical priorities shift from the pursuit of a ‘healthy’/’unwounded’ body, towards values of agency, autonomy, and wound/body ownership.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork with a grassroots self-injury support organisation in the North of England, this paper examines how people renegotiate their ethical perspectives on health/harm through self-injury and wound management. Using case studies from the field, I consider, how, when and under what circumstances individuals have sought treatment for their injuries; and the ethical quandaries they have faced when doing so.

Using perspectives from feminist new-materialism and ANT, this paper will discuss how practises such as cutting, burning, scratching and hair-pulling make up aspects of individuals’ perceptions of their own mental healthcare, rather than being opposed to it. I will show how, through the practise of self-injury and wound-management, individuals blur boundaries between healthful/harmful behaviours. In so doing, their ethical priorities shift from the pursuit of a ‘healthy’/’unwounded’ body, towards values of agency, autonomy, and wound/body ownership.

Insights from new-materialism and ANT prompt a discussion of the agency and role of the wound in self-injury. I argue that an understanding of what the wound does, is central to understanding the decision-making process that individuals who practise self-injury go through when deliberating how and when to seek treatment.

Finally, I will discus what implications of these perspectives might be for treatment protocols and research ethics alike.