Written on the Body

by Caplan, Jane

• ISBN13: 9780691057231
• ISBN10: 0691057230
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-06-12
• Publisher: PRINCETON UNIV PR

Summary

Despite the social sciences' growing fascination with tattooing--and the immense popularity of tattoos themselves--the practice has not left much of a historical record. And, until very recently, there was no good context for writing a serious history of tattooing in the West. This collection exposes, for the first time, the richness of the tattoo's European and American history from antiquity to the present day. In the process, it rescues tattoos from their stereotypical and sensationalized association with criminality. The tattoo has long hovered in a space between the cosmetic and the punitive. Throughout its history, the status of the tattoo has been complicated by its dual association with slavery and penal practices on the one hand and exotic or forbidden sexuality on the other. The tattoo appears often as an involuntary stigma, sometimes as a self-imposed marker of identity, and occasionally as a beautiful corporal decoration. This volume analyzes the tattoo's fluctuating, often uncomfortable position from multiple angles. Individual chapters explore fascinating segments of its history--from the metaphorical meanings of tattooing in Celtic society to the class-related commodification of the body in Victorian Britain, from tattooed entertainers in Germany to tattooing and piercing as self-expression in the contemporary United States. But they also accumulate to form an expansive, textured view of permanent bodily modification in the West. By combining empirical history, powerful cultural analysis, and a highly readable style, this volume both draws on and propels the ongoing effort to write a meaningful cultural history of the body. The contributors, representing several disciplines, have all conducted extensive original research into the Western tattoo. Together, they have produced an unrivalled account of its history. They are, in addition to the editor, Clare Anderson, Susan Benson, James Bradley, Ian Duffield, Juliet Fleming, Alan Govenar, Harriet Guest, Mark Gustafson, C. P. Jones, Charles MacQuarrie, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, Stephan Oettermann, Jennipher A. Rosecrans, and Abby Schrader.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Editor and Contributors	vii
Introduction	xi
Jane Caplan
Stigma and Tattoo	1	(16)
C. P. Jones
The Tattoo in the Later Roman Empire and Beyond	17	(15)
Mark Gustafson
Insular Celtic Tattooing: History, Myth and Metaphor	32	(14)
Charles W. Macquarrie
Wearing the Universe: Symbolic Markings in Early Modern England	46	(15)
Jennipher Allen Rosecrans
The Renaissance Tattoo	61	(22)
Juliet Fleming
Curiously Marked: Tattooing and Gender Difference in Eighteenth-century British Perceptions of the South Pacific	83	(19)
Harriet Guest
Godna: Inscribing Indian Convicts in the Nineteenth Century	102	(16)
Clare Anderson
Skin Deep Devotions: Religious Tattoos and Convict Transportation to Australia	118	(18)
Hamish Maxwell-Stewart
Ian Duffield
Body Commodification? Class and Tattoos in Victorian Britain	136	(20)
James Bradley
`National Tattooing': Traditions of Tattooing in Nineteenth-century Europe	156	(18)
Jane Caplan
Branding the Other/Tattooing the Self: Bodily Inscription among Convicts in Russia and the Soviet Union	174	(19)
Abby M. Schrader
On Display: Tattooed Entertainers in America and Germany	193	(19)
Stephan Oettermann
The Changing Image of Tattooing in American Culture, 1846-1966	212	(22)
Alan Govenar
Inscriptions of the Self: Reflections on Tattooing and Piercing in Contemporary Euro-America	234	(21)
Susan Benson
References	255	(47)
Select Bibliography	302	(4)
Acknowledgements	306	(1)
Photographic Acknowledgements	307	(1)
Index	308