Tattooed Bodies: Theorizing Body Inscription Across Disciplines and Cultures (Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body)

The essays collected in Tattooed Bodies draw on a range of theoretical paradigms and empirical knowledge to investigate tattoos, tattooing, and our complex relations with marks on skin. Engaging with diverse disciplinary perspectives in art history, continental philosophy, media studies, psychoanalysis, critical theory, literary studies, biopolitics, and cultural anthropology, the volume reflects the sheer diversity of meanings attributed to tattoos throughout history and across cultures. Essays explore conceptualizations of tattoos and tattooing in Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, Agamben, and Jean-Luc Nancy, while utilizing theoretical perspectives to interpret tattoos in literary works by Melville, Beckett, Kafka, Genet, and Jeff VanderMeer, among others. Tattooed Bodies prompts readers to explore a few significant questions: Are tattoos unique phenomena or an art medium in need of special theoretical exploration? If so, what conceptual paradigms and theories might best shape our understanding of tattoos and their complex ubiquity in world cultures and histories? Acknowledgments 7 Contents 8 Notes on Contributors 11 List of Figures 15 Chapter 1: Introduction: Totem and Tattoo 17 Bibliography 25 Part I: Tattooing (as) Art 26 Chapter 2: A Medium, Not a Phenomenon: An Argument for an Art-Historical Approach to Western Tattooing 27 Prologue 28 Introduction 29 Inserting Modes 30 Tattooing as a Verb 32 Tattooing in the Historiography of Art History 36 Methods 39 Tattooing in Its Visual Culture Contexts 39 Tattoo Artists as Authors 42 The Archival Lens Problem 45 Conclusion 47 Bibliography 53 Chapter 3: Contemporary Western Tattooing as an Inherently Collaborative Practice: The Contingent Authorial Input and Operational Mode of the Tattooist 57 The (In)visibility of Tattooing Practice and Practitioners in Academic Literature 57 The Processes of Tattoo Production 58 Consultation Process 59 Design Process 60 Preparation Process 61 Tattooing Process 63 The Contingent Operational Mode/Authorial Input of the Contemporary Western Tattooist 65 The Authorial Input of the Tattooist Operating as a Craftsperson 66 The Authorial Input of the Tattooist Operating as a Visual Artist 67 The Authorial Input of the Tattooist Operating as a Designer 70 Toward an Informed Understanding of the Collaborative Nature of Contemporary Western Tattooing 72 Bibliography 77 Chapter 4: Branch Out, Perform, Interlink: Reading Tattoos as Soma-hypertexts in Shelley Jackson’s SKIN and Skin Motion’s Soundwave Tattoos 80 The Body as a Medium: Soma-hypertexts and Tattoo Narratives 82 The Semiotic Body in Shelley Jackson’s SKIN 86 Soundwave Tattoos and the Experiences of Permanence and Transience Through Tattooing 91 Bibliography 99 Part II: Transcultural Tattooing 101 Chapter 5: Hüh tu pu/To Mark with Tattoo: Chen Naga Tiger-Spirit Tattoos and Indigenous Ontologies in Northeast India 102 The Chen Tattoo 105 The Tiger-Spirit Tattoo 110 In Conclusion 118 Bibliography 124 Chapter 6: The Last Generation of Tattooed Bedouin Women in Southern Jordan: When Tradition and Climate Change Collided in Wadi Rum 128 From Traditional to Taboo 128 Wadi Rum and Its Bedouin 131 Bedouin Female Tattooing: Tarfa and Bakheeta 136 Bakheeta and Tarfa34 137 Climate Change and the Unraveling of Washam 143 Deconstructing the Aftermath 147 Conclusion 150 Bibliography 154 Chapter 7: Tattoos, “Tattoos,” Vikings, “Vikings,” and Vikings 156 Enigma and Simulacrum 159 Metatexts and Fictionality 163 Bibliography 172 Part III: Tattooing the Political Body 174 Chapter 8: Herman Melville’s (Un)Readables: Tattoos 175 Introduction 175 Disrupting Conventional Readings of the Body 178 A Primal Scene of Reading 185 Ishmael’s Unconscious Chirography 189 Conclusion 193 Bibliography 200 Chapter 9: The Life of the Tattoo: Subcutaneous Surveillances and the Economy of the Stigmatization 203 Biopolitical Tattooing 206 Discipline and Control 210 Dis-grace 213 Tattooing and Being Tattooed 220 Bibliography 226 Chapter 10: Democratic Hieroglyphs: On the People’s Indecipherable Flesh in Moby-Dick 229 Bibliography 250 Part IV: Tattooing Literatures 252 Chapter 11: Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy: Writing Out the Body Between Grammatology and Exscription 253 Jacques Derrida and (Bio)grammatology 254 Jean-Luc Nancy and Exscription 258 To the Southern Reach 261 The Crawler 262 Making Sense of It All 267 In Conclusion (Beyond Allegory) 269 Bibliography 272 Chapter 12: Tattooing Terminable Interminable: Psychoanalysis, Corporeal Marking and Literature 273 Lacanian Tattoos: Writing on the Body 273 Tattooing as Marked Body in Literature: Toward Kafka and Beckett 278 Tattooing Punishment 278 Tattoo for the Species 283 Endless Ending 288 Bibliography 291 Chapter 13: Effluvial Exhalations: Genet’s Ontological Quandary 293 Bibliography 311 Chapter 14: Limited Ink: Of Repressence, Inkorporation, and Marineation 312 Where Film Grows Cryptcurrently 316 Cinematic Writing/Righting: Of Interpellation or Inkorporation? 317 Siedlung/Setzung: Of Housing Schemes and UnSettlements 322 Tattoo as Immuno-Suppressence and Cryptcurrency 323 Cryptcurrency and the Mise-En-Abyme of Tattoo and of the “DEM” Contained Therein 329 Bibliography 335 Chapter 15: Derrida and Deleuze as Tattooed Savages 336 Derrida’s Idiom: Scarified Dream of a Tattoo 337 Deleuze’s and Guattari’s Eye for Tattoos 346 Immanent and Transcendent Beauty 350 Bibliography 356 Index 358 "Tattooed Bodies--apart from often being an exemplary model of Continental philosophy--is a groundbreaking contribution to tattoo studies that shows us how tattooing, when taken seriously, can open up the meanings of works of art, literature, film, and theory itself in unexpected ways. For those who have already been thinking about the meaning of "the tattoo," this collection of essays will greatly expand possibilities of inquiry. For those who are new to the field, several essays act simply as excellent primers on how to undertake deconstructive, anthropological, aesthetic analysis in general offering up scholarly, nuanced investigations of texts without indulging in exclusionary jargon." -Danielle Meijer, DePaul University "What is a tattoo? Associated in the past with criminals and degenerates, tattoos have become high fashion in the 21st century. In this collection, leading scholars speculate about the nature and implications of these bodily inscriptions. Are they social or antisocial? Conformist or rebellious? Decorative or disfiguring? Atavistic or futuristic? How do they relate to other scars, such as the navel as the mark of our maternal origin? By opening up these questions and many more, the essays in this volume show how the tattoo challenges the distinction between word and flesh, self and society, life and death." -Maud Ellmann, University of Chicago The essays collected in Tattooed Bodies draw on a range of theoretical paradigms and empirical knowledge to investigate tattoos, tattooing, and our complex relations with marks on skin. Engaging with perspectives in art history, continental philosophy, media studies, psychoanalysis, critical theory, literary studies, biopolitics, and cultural anthropology, the volume reflects the diversity of meanings attributed to tattoos across cultures. Essays explore tattoos and tattooing in Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, Agamben, and Jean-Luc Nancy, while interpreting tattoos in literary works by Melville, Beckett, Kafka, Genet, and Jeff VanderMeer, among others. James Martell is Associate Professor of French at Lyon College, USA. Erik Larsen is Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester, USA "The essays collected in Tattooed Bodies draw on a range of theoretical paradigms and empirical knowledge to investigate tattoos, tattooing, and our complex relations with marks on skin. Engaging with perspectives in art history, continental philosophy, media studies, psychoanalysis, critical theory, literary studies, biopolitics, and cultural anthropology, the volume reflects the diversity of meanings attributed to tattoos across cultures. Essays explore tattoos and tattooing in Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, Agamben, and Jean-Luc Nancy, while interpreting tattoos in literary works by Melville, Beckett, Kafka, Genet, and Jeff VanderMeer, among others."--Back cover