Tattoo Histories

Transcultural Perspectives on the Narratives, Practices, and Representations of Tattooing

Sinah Theres Kloß

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367333256
• eBook ISBN: 9781000707984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Tattoo Histories is an edited volume which analyses and discusses the relevance of tattooing in the socio-cultural construction of bodies, boundaries, and identities, among both individuals and groups. Its interdisciplinary approach facilitates historical as well as contemporary perspectives. Rather than presenting a universal, essentialized history of tattooing, the volume's objective is to focus on the entangled and transcultural histories, narratives, and practices related to tattoos. Contributions stem from various fields, including Archaeology, Art History, Classics, History, Linguistics, Media and Literary Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Sociology. They advance the current endeavour on the part of tattoo scholars to challenge Eurocentric and North American biases prevalent in much of tattoo research, by including various analyses based in locations such as Malaysia, Israel, East Africa, and India. The thematic focus is on the transformative capacity of tattoos and tattooing, with regard to the social construction of bodies and subjectivity; the (re-)creation of social relationships through the definition of (non-)tattooed others; the formation and consolidation of group identities, traditions, and authenticity; and the conceptualization of art and its relevance to tattoo artist–tattooee relations.

1 Indelible Ink

An Introduction to the Histories, Narratives, and Practices of Tattooing

Sinah Theres Kloß

Introduction

Tattoos are impermanent, fluid, and volatile. They change and disappear when people die. They are transformed in shape and intensity on human bodies over time, for example as a result of ageing, and are frequently reworked, removed, covered, or extended. However, academic and popular articles, books, and personal accounts frequently address and emphasize the permanence of tattoos. Definitions usually refer to tattoos as permanent, or at least “semi-permanent”, highlighting that tattooing is the “process of inserting pigment into the skin to create permanent designs and patterns” (Deter-Wolf and Krutak 2017: 3), or that tattoos are to be distinguished from (supposedly) less permanent forms of body transformation: “unlike clothing, a tattoo is permanent – it will be inscribed onto the body for life” (Kosut 2000: 82).¹ While in these texts and accounts the authors and narrators certainly acknowledge that tattoos are always changing (e.g. ibid.: 99), the notion of permanence still remains a defining feature.

Internet searches with key words such as “tattoo” instantly reveal contributions in, for example, online magazines, video portals, and popular science websites, which display seemingly contradictory headlines, including: “Why tattoos are permanent and how tattoo removal works” (Lintz 2018: np). These contradictory statements indicate the social construction of tattoo permanence. Tales and knowledge of tattoo removal are, despite their seeming novelty and the recent technological developments, not a new phenomenon. Methods for removing tattoos have been discussed since antiquity, for example among the ancient Greeks, whose attitudes towards tattooing are especially revealed in descriptions of tattoo removal (Rees, this volume). The German tattoo artist Christian Warlich was known not only for his tattoo work in the first half of the twentieth century, but also for a tincture with which he was able to remove layers of (tattooed) skin (Wittmann; November 30, 2018). Practices of tattoo transformation, for example cover-ups, have also been conducted in the past. Examples in this regard are US American sailors, some of whom had their tattoos of naked women – a popular motif at the beginning of the twentieth century – “corrected” (DeMello 2000: 51) due to the evolving prohibition of “obscene” tattoos by the navy in the middle of the twentieth century. They “returned to the navy with their formerly naked ladies [now] clothed as nurses, hula dancers, or ‘Indian squaws’” (ibid.). Today, with tattoo removal becoming more common, diversified, and commercialized, the impermanence of tattoos is becoming increasingly visible.

Tattoo removal also often becomes part of (personal) tattoo narratives. Tattoo narratives are biographical narratives in which the life of the narrating person is told in relation to their tattoos (Oksanen and Turtiainen 2005).² Narrators often frame their tattoos as documenting specific stages of life, and use them as “historical reference points or aides-mémoire” (Kosut 2000: 96). In conversation with members of the Euro-American “tattoo community” (DeMello 2000) today, stories of and references to tattoo removal are often included in reflections on the process and practice of collecting tattoos. Such conversations frequently revolve around aspects such as colours of ink: which colours are easier to erase than others? What is the cost of tattoo removal? What is the influence of skin colour on a person’s decision to have a tattoo removed? Although tattoo removal is not a new phenomenon, new technologies for doing so bring tattoos closer the realm of traditional consumer products, which have an inherent potentiality of being discarded and disposed of.

The impermanence of tattoos – although an intricate part of narratives and public discussion – is commonly addressed only indirectly. The emphasis placed on permanence serves as a means of creating and representing stability. To numerous social actors, although certainly not all, this is relevant as social structures and cultural traditions are always in flux and are constantly reinvented and recreated, a perspective that may seem challenging and even dangerous due to the uncertainties created. Social actors often conceive of tattoos and tattooing as something that creates stability amidst the fluctuations and uncertainties of life. This is particularly well researched for the North American context, where tattooees often draw on the notion of identity and authenticity when talking about their tattoos, highlighting how tattoos engage in the marking and making of authentic selves and a “core that is real and stable” (Kosut 2000: 92). They indicate that tattoos form and reassert identity, as they are considered to be more permanent and durable than dress and other forms of corporeal adornment. At the same time, other social actors, who are more critical of tattooing, may (unconsciously) perceive body modification – its specific visibility, intentionality, and abruptness – as dangerous and risky. From their perspective, body modifications emphasize instability and flux, as they reveal the social constructedness of bodies and their impermanence. Those who are not (yet) tattooed sometimes express worries that the look of a design may change as the body ages or gains weight, leading to a degree of uncontrollability concerning one’s personal appearance. This uncontrollability is conceived of as a particular risk in societies where individuality and the felt need to enhance and improve the body are prevalent and linked to notions of individual capacity, capital, and skill.

Certainly, impermanence is not perceived as threatening in all socio-cultural and historical contexts. For example, in cultural contexts in which notions of circularity are emphasized regarding life and body, tattoo designs may be emphatically embraced as impermanent or as in process, marking, for instance, life stages. This indicates the necessity of reflecting on different socio-cultural approaches to tattoos, and the various motivations in past and present social contexts to tattooing and becoming tattooed. This is necessary, as tattoos cannot be assumed to have a universal, essentialized function, as was often portrayed in tattoo research of the 1990s with regard to, for example, tattooing’s subversive potential (Sullivan 2001). Recent academic literature highlights and discusses various motivations for tattooing: as a means to create and negotiate identity; to decorate, assign, or achieve a specific social status, for example by demonstrating knowledge of fashion or by partaking in anti-fashion movements; to define group insiders and outsiders; to heal, protect, or divert spirit attacks; to reduce the permeability of the body; to reinstate boundaries between self and other, individual and society. Not only are tattoos relevant as images, but the process and practice of tattooing may be considered to be of equal or even greater importance. As discussed most prominently by Alfred Gell, the relevance of tattooing may be based on its being a proof that a specific ritual has been conducted (2004 (1993)). Tattooing, thus, may be considered as a communal, not individual, practice, and group tattooing may constitute a rite of passage that creates group identity through a shared painful experience (ibid.).

In the Humanities and Social Sciences, there exist various approaches to the study of tattooing, despite the still limited number of studies that include or fully focus on this topic. For example, the research in Social and Cultural Anthropology often focuses on tattoos and identity formation, as well as tattoos’ ritual character. Although the dominant regional focus of anthropological tattoo literature is on Oceania and New Zealand,³ the range of anthropological studies relating to tattoos also includes research in China (Lei 2009), Cuba (Penger 2017), India (Krutak 2007), Italy (Castellani 1995, 2014), Papua New Guinea (Barker and Tletjen 1990), the Philippines (Salvador-Amores 2011), Thailand (Cook 2007/2008), and Chicano culture in the US (Phillips 2001). Particularly with regard to Chicano culture, an overlap with sociological approaches can be noticed (Santos 2009). The majority of sociological studies on tattooing focus on North America and/or Europe,⁴ although there are exceptions with regard to regional (Almog 2003) or thematic focus: for example, there are analyses of corporate logo tattoos in Euro-American contexts (Orend and Gagné 2009) or media representations of tattoo (Adams 2009a), sometimes overlapping disciplinary boundaries. Other major fields of tattoo research are the disciplines of History and Archaeology, covering a diverse range of historical contexts and regions.⁵ The number of publications in art history still remains limited, although art historians have been publishing on tattooing from the late 2000s, as elaborated in the final section of this introduction (Lodder 2011; Wittmann 2017).⁶

As research on tattooing requires interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives, this volume is interdisciplinary and includes contributions from Archaeology, Art History, Classics, History, Linguistics, Media and Literary Studies, Social and Cultural Anthropology, and Sociology. It specifically seeks to challenge ethnocentrism and not only focuses on Euro-American contexts, people, and regions, but also includes various other regions such as Malaysia, Israel, East Africa, and India, as well as marginalized social groups in Italy and the US.

Its objective is to focus on the transcultural and entangled histories of tattooing. This is necessary, as its multifaceted histories are seldom acknowledged in public discourse; often instead, emphasis is given to narratives of singular origin, tracing the alleged roots of tattooing. For instance, Samuel M. Steward traces the origin of tattooing to ancient Egypt, analysing how “trails” of tattoos have crossed the globe and how various people, for example in the Americas and without any traceable link to Egypt, “somehow knew of it” (Steward 1990: 183). Furthermore, the colonial encounter between colonizers, sailors, and voyagers with tattooed people in the Pacific islands continues to be portrayed and narrated as the origin of current Euro-American tattoo practices (Caplan 2000a: xv; Thompson 2015). Academic research and publications however stress that Euro-American tattooing did not originate in the Pacific and cannot be understood to be a result of the colonial encounter, although certainly “it was heavily influenced by it” (Caplan 2000a: xvi). Tattooing existed in the various historical and cultural contexts of Europe and North America before then, as the growing body of archaeological and historical literature with a thematic focus on tattooing reveals. For example, tattooing has been part of pilgrimages in Early Modern England (Rosecrans 2000), was conducted among some Celtic groups (MacQuarrie 2000), and has also been documented for pre-colonial North America (Deter-Wolf and Diaz-Granados 2013). However, despite these scholarly findings, public (and to a lesser extent also academic) discourse on the “growing popularity” of Euro-American tattooing in the twentieth century as originating from Captain Cook’s voyage to the Pacific and his encounter with Pacific tattooing continues to be emphasized. This persistent and dominant narrative of tattoo history, today sometimes referred to as the “Cook myth” (Friedman Herlihy 2012; Alvarez, this volume), silences histories and experiences, often of subalternized groups, which are marginalized or excluded from historiography. For instance, tattooing was prevalent in North America before, during, and after White settler colonization, hence cannot be claimed to have been reintroduced as a result of European expansion in Oceania.

When recognizing that cultures cannot be considered to be bounded and homogeneous entities, even though they are constructed as discrete at times, and that tattooing cannot be regarded as based on either continuity or importation, but that history is “rather a process of convergence and reinforcement” (Caplan 2000a: xx), a specific transcultural approach to the analysis of tattooing becomes necessary. Besides the focus on the transcultural histories and narratives of tattoo, this volume addresses tattoos and tattoo practices as transformative, in between permanence and impermanence. Contributions discuss how the transformative capacity of tattooing influences (1) the social construction of bodies, at both individual and communal levels, (2) the (re-)creation of social relationships and communities through the definition of (non-)tattooed others, (3) the formation and consolidation of group identities, traditions, and authenticity with regard to tattoo revitalization movements and global power relations, and (4) the conceptualization of art and the tattoo artist–tattooee relations.

Tattoo as Individual and Communal Body Projects

Tattoos and bodies mutually influence each other. Not only do bodies influence the (im)permanence of tattoos, but tattoos and tattoo practices transform bodies too, and irreversibly, as is often emphasized in tattoo narratives and academic analyses (Caplan 2000a: xi). Even though tattoo designs are impermanent and volatile, modified bodies are permanently transformed. This does not imply that the body can be understood as something that is fixed and stable. Bodies are always in a process of transformation and change, and are “transitory entities” (Kosut 2000: 97). Bodies have to be understood as fluid (Pitts 1998), as projects or processes that cannot be thought of “as objects, upon which culture writes meanings, but as events that are continually in the process of becoming” (Budgeon 2003: 50). When considering the body as a project and as constantly transforming, tattoos have to be understood as part of and influencing this transformation process, not as facilitating it. The tattooed body, Mary Kosut argues, is a “distinctively communicative body created within a multiplicity of contexts” and may be conceptualized as “an unfinished corporeal and social phenomenon that is transformed” (2000: 80). Nikki Su...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Indelible Ink: An Introduction to the Histories, Narratives, and Practices of Tattooing
• PART I Tattoos as Individual or Communal Body Projects
• PART II Tattoos and Othering
• PART III (De-)Colonization, Revitalization, and Cultural Appropriation
• PART IV Tattoo as Embodied Art
• List of Contributors
• Index