Skin as cover: the discursive effects of 'covering' metaphors on wound care practices

This paper outlines a Foucauldian analysis of interactions between nurses and patients during wound care procedures in a burns unit. It explores the use of Kristeva's psychoanalytic concepts of abjection and the abject body to illuminate the emotional affects of wounds on nurse and patient. In this process, I identify how cultural metaphoric understandings about skin influence and organise the care of burns patients. Such analysis suggests the import of the complete skin, the medical scientific control over the definition of this work, and the emotional forces that resist such control.