This article offers an ethnographic account of a radical body modification ritual called “flesh hook pulling.” The article describes the motivations and rationales for flesh hook pulling as well as the spiritual, personal, and social benefits that flesh hook pullers derive from the practice. Data were collected via participant observation fieldwork and in-depth interviews. As an “extreme,” clandestine practice, flesh hook pulling elicits negative reactions from outsiders. Results are interpreted as part of a discursive competition for definitional control of radical body modification practice. The article speaks to competing constructions of body deviance and highlights the way in which the body continues to be a contested terrain.
