The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 17 (2006) Intact or Cut? Castration and the Phallus in the New Gender Politics Joshua Paul DALE* This moment of the cut is haunted by the form of a bloody scrap—the pound of flesh that life pays in order to turn it into the signifier of the signifiers, which it is impossible to restore, as such, to the imaginary body; it is the lost phallus of the embalmed Osiris. 1 —Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection THE NEW GENDER POLITICS In 1999, Edward Bodkin was arrested in the state of Indiana for cas- trating men in his living room. As the videotapes he made of the proce- dures show, Bodkin was far from a trained physician. Nevertheless, all of the men he castrated came to him willingly, many leaving their excised testicles behind at Bodkin’s request, where they floated in jars on his kitchen table. 2 According to anecdotal evidence collected by Body Modi- fication Ezine, Bodkin was not kind to these men. Never highly skilled, he presided over several botched surgeries that ended with sudden trips to the hospital; furthermore, a number of men claim that he sold mail- order videos of their castrations without their consent. 3 *Lecturer, Tokyo Liberal Arts University Copyright © 2006 Joshua Paul Dale. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author. 223