Final Thoughts

My life path is leading me to a place where I will be too occupied to continue this online discussion on a regular basis. For that reason, I want to make a closing statement. The profusion of tattoo in contemporary society is indeed an "ironic fad," that I believe is not going anywhere. Through my own ethnography, and my extensive literature review, I have extracted what I think to be the future of academic research, and that is the paradoxical nature of tattoo. Not only is tattoo an ironic fad, meaning that "fads" are temporal and tattoos are permanent, but also meaning behind tattoo is transient. All the energy placed on "diagnosing tattoo," has not taken into account the complex quality of the art of tattoo, that tattoo is grounded on living flesh. Tattoos become a part of a living, breathing, changing being, and although the design stays the same the meaning can and will change with its bearer. As we live in post-structuralist, post-modern times, we need to focus on the complexity of meaning, and tattoo's multifaceted character where subject and object coalesce into a non-static, unfixed entity.

Thanks for Reading-
Mandarax

Open Post

“When people see my tattoos or my piercings, the most common thing they say is, ‘That hurt didn’t it?' Or, 'I bet that hurt!’ Almost never do people ask me, ‘What does that mean to you?’ You know? People are so weird man… And I tell them, yeah, it fucking hurt.”
-D the Shop Bitch

Undeniably people are fascinated with pain, especially when it’s elective or self-inflicted. To this day, people who know me, but don’t know I have tattoos, act absolutely fascinated when they find out. They say, “Oh my god! I didn’t know you had tattoos… wow.” I think my tattoos are larger than most people expect. The first shock is that I have them. The second is how large they are. D is right; the most important and frequently asked question is how much did they hurt? The surprise towards me having tattoo has to do with a variety of things including gender, socio-economics, aesthetics and religion.

As I am a female (surprise?), it’s shocking since we are traditionally the gentler, weaker sex. As I come from an “upper-middle class” family, it’s shocking that I have this "pejorative folk-art." As I am beautiful, it’s shocking because I have mutilated my flesh. As I have Jewish heritage, it’s shocking for two reasons, the first because the old testament says not to mark thyself, but more contemporaneously, because the Nazis tattooed the Jews against their will during the Holocaust. Each of these reasons can be unpacked into full length posts of their own; however, the bottom line is they’re all problematic. Each issue is paradoxical. For example, some might think I am objectifying my female body, sexualizing it in a demeaning way, while others might feel I’m embracing my womanhood and wielding my sexuality in a strong “I am female, hear me roar” kind of way.

Tattoos are a visual expression; they are made to be seen. Like any crafted art, the seeing brings conceiving. Because of the severity of tattoo, there is increased interest. Because of the pain associated with tattoo it is exoticized, it is an “Other.” This could be a coincidence, but the word taboo is frighteningly close to word tattoo, and both evoke the same wanton fascination in most contemporary societies

Tattoo Narratives

“Images, colours (sic) and symbols reflect transitions and provide the structure
for life history. They function as reminders for their bearers’ history and
they serve as lived memories remaining on the surface of the body”
-Oksanen and Turtiainen, 2005

Traditionally the term “tattoo narrative” is used to refer to a story behind the tattoo. The story may be the reason behind getting a particular tattoo, or the events leading up to the acquisition. Tattoo narratives "re-create for both the teller and the listener not only the facts of the tattoo but the complex justifications for it . . . The narratives are dialectical in that they presuppose a questioner or listener who objects to, or at least cannot understand, the tattoo" (DeMello 2000,152). Tattoos often symbolically represent certain periods of a person’s life, either directly or retroactively, and in doing so create a visual timeline or history documented on the body. In this sense, a person’s tattoo narrative can be a dermal life history.

However, my 7 months of participant observation, and working with the artists, has inspired me to take on an imaginative approach to tattoo narratives. My approach centers on the art itself. In another essay, I will be telling the stories of individual tattoos, as though the tattoos have (fictional) life histories of their own. The purpose of my tattoo narratives is to share in the creativity of tattoo, and to give anthropological depth to the characters that live among the masses on a daily basis . After all, the characters are technically flesh and blood (and ink), and in that sense living organisms who cohabitate with their bearers. They were brought into this world painfully, they were created by the collaboration of two people, and if you prick them, will they not bleed?

Killa App

Fun Fun Flickr

Perusing the host of web 2.0 features that help the visually inclined has been a laboriously vexatious task. However, I have come across an abnormally user friendly tool called flickr. Lets face it, we (I) don't want to have the internet cause anymore strife than any other piece of technology (usually) would cause. Afterall, technology is meant to be the "application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes," ...thank you Apple Dictionary, you have once again assisted in my contentions.

Flickr is a tool for sharing and annotating images. Flickr was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver based company that launched Flickr in February 2004. The service emerged out of tools originally created for Ludicorp's Game Neverending, a web-based massively mulitplayer online game. Flickr proved a more feasible project and ultimately Game Neverending was shelved.

Flickr enables you to share your photos with the world. But wait! It's oh so much more than that. It is a online photo management system that has two main goals: 1) To help people make their content available to the people who matter to them. 2)To enable new ways of organizing photos and video.

In regards to their first goal, Flickr has arranged for multiple ways to get photos and video in and out of the system; from the web, mobile devices, the user's home computer and whatever software their using to manage their content, and through the flickr website, rss feeds, email outside blogs... and so on.

In regards to the second goal, they want to reduce the stress of the massive amount of photos or video made possible by the digital switch. Their solution to the overwhelming nature of digital photos/videos is a collaborative sharing process. The people you choose to share with can be given permission (by you) to organize your stuff.

Let me introduce you to the "tour" of flickr: What is Flickr? Flickr is a way to get your photos and videos to the people who matter to you. And basic accounts are free! You can UPLOAD, EDIT, ORGANIZE, SHARE, MAP, MAKE STUFF, and KEEP IN TOUCH.

The founders of flicker, Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake head a team of 45, and pride themselves on their good work. After all, Flickr has received worldwide recognition, and accolades from some of the most prestigious press outlets. Flickr is a Yahoo company, and is bookmarked on Delicious.

Some of Flickr's competition includes: Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish, and Photobucket. Personally, I have used Kodak Gallery and Photobucket and although they provide a way to share photos with friends, the infrasturcture is completely different. They are not as much of sharing/organizational based sites. Oh, and Kodak Gallery is constantly pushing (trying to sell they're shit).

I have been playing with Flickr for only 2 days now, and I'm completely enamored. I have not even made myself public yet. I'm still in the first stage of the game, uploading photos, creating sets, and even dabbling in the editing. I'm satisfied with the editing capabilities, however, they offer better or more "advanced" editing for around $25 a month.Too bad.

The only reason I would order the advanced version would be to stay on par with the massive amount of professional photogs out there in flickr-land. Flickr is extremely community oriented, people are constantly posting new pictures, and what's more then that, people are constantly commenting on them. Using such photography jargon as "negative space" and "streamlines" and "contrast." It feels like a virtual photography gallery, where everybody's an expert, or at least feel entitled to their opinion. Another social phenomenon of the internet, everybody's a critic. However, I have yet to see a mean or devastating critique, one said, "i like this very much except for the small blurry spot in the background." Yee-ouch!

Like the Universe, FLickr is constantly expanding. I just checked, and with in the last MINUTE there were 5,865 uploads. Ok, and I checked again: 5,762, again: 6,243. So I think it's fair to say the site averages somewhere beteen 5 and 6 thousand uploads per minute.

Flickr provides it's own press page...

example:
The Village Voice writes: "Flickr didn't invent online picture sharing, of course, but it was the first such site to recognize itself as much more than a hosting service for personal photo albums. Tricked out with features inspired by the latest fashions in online-software design & post-Friendster social-networking tools, folksonomy-friendly image-tagging code Flickr has also won a devoted following of users hungry to explore the possibilities its Web-centric toolset opens up. It's a place not just for self-display, but for an emergent visual conversation" (24 March 2005).

Ok, so here's an example of how easily I took an unusable image and made it sharp and vibrant on Flickr!






Flickr... and You

I realized that I should probably qualify my last posting. Flickr is a tool that is perfect for tattoo enthusiasts and Visual Anthropology junkies alike. Here's why:

Two words, Organization and Sharing (I guess that's three words, but take away the and, and it just looks weird, trust me, I write a lot). Not only can you organize a "set" of tattoo photos, but you can organize multiple "sets", for instance tribal, old school, quotes, monkeys, whatever and have them all be under a "collection" titled Tattoo. You can then put that collection with in a larger Body Modification collection. You dig?

Same goes for Visual Anthropology, where categorization of images in a relatively comprehensive way is of the utmost importance. Then, there is the sharing of said collections. You can find a group of tattooists or tattooies, or people just interested in body modification in general. Just like you can find groups of people who organize their images by cultural, anthropological significance.

The discipline of Visual Anthropology is about culture through visual mediums such as photography and film. The field can be looked at in two ways, 1) How culture represents itself visually, ie. through art, architecture, fashion, body modification, etc. and 2) How the anthropologists visually represent the culture they are studying, ie. through film and photographs mostly.

Although the most popular route for a Visual Anthropologist is through ethnographic (mostly documentary) film, photo essays are another form of project. Flickr is an online space to create and exhibit photo essays. Not only can the editing and organizing of the photographs be done in a relatively easy way, but in the same space, a person can label and provide context, narrative or explanation for each photograph and set/collection. What is more, the anthropologist can then share his or her photo essay with the world.

Having reflected on this post, I realized that the discipline of Visual Anthropology could use a site like flickr, only more specialized. Meaning, I anticipate Flickr to create susidiaries they can sell to artistic, journalistic or scientific associations. For example, associations such as the AAA American Anthropological Association. This open forum would be much more useful than tools like Photobucket or Kodak Gallery, two tools I feel are best for ameteur photographers wanting to share their photos with friends and family.

As I previously displayed, I am new to Flickr, so I have yet to become public, but, here is a screen shot of my "sets":



Contextualizing Flickr

Using a neat tool called Prezi, I have made a "prezi"ntation about FLickr that might be useful...

flickr prezi

In my original posting, I provided links to the Flickr tour, here is a summary:

Uploads can be made from your desktop, by email, or by your cameraphone ; "via the Flickr Uploadr (available for both PC and Mac), iPhoto, Aperture, or Windows XP plugins our upload web page, email, various free third-party desktop programs."

Editing your photos is easy with their partner, Picnik. "Get rid of red eye, crop a photo or get creative with loads of different effects!" After you've authorized Picnik, you can edit your photo as much as you wish.

Organizing is made comprehensive with their sets and collections grouping options. "The Organizr" is where both Collections and Sets are created. It also allows you to perform common tasks on large batches of photos and videos, such as tagging, changing permissions, or editing timestamps.

Sharing can be done in groups, a way for people to come together around a common interest. "Groups can either be public, public (invite only), or completely private." Every group has a pool for sharing photos and videos and a discussion board for talking. Privacy is easy to control, you can set your own privacy level, usage license, content type and safety level. What's REALLY neat, to me anyways, is you can, like, sticky note on the photos! Don't worry, they only appear when they've been scrolled over by a mouse. Otherwise, that would be lame.

Mapping is cool. It's a way to "map" out photos by place! "Drag-and-drop your photos and videos onto a map (using the Organizr) to show where you took them, or browse a world map to see where other people have been and what they saw."

Making stuff like photo books, calendars, cards, etc. Basically, anything with an image is possible.

Keeping in touch via Flickr means building relationships in an online community. Using the "Contacts page", you can have contacts of friends and/or family. You can even give "guest passes" for non-Flickr members to see your collections.


I hope you enjoyed my "prezi"ntation... Happy Flickring everyone!

Literature Review

Pain as a subject matter has a plethora of theoretical literature (Coakley and Kauffman, Favazza, Hewitt, Scarry,). Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: the Making and Unmaking of the Word, discusses communicative roles, or the lack there of, during the confrontation of physical pain. She begins her book claiming pain’s inexpressibility; “not only is it difficult to describe in words, it also actively destroys language”(Scarry 1987, 4). She notes that pain reduces its sufferers to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry’s research is on a wide range of sources, including medical case histories and documents on torture, all instances of involuntary pain. Even though I’m interested in elective pain, Scarry’s analysis provides a useful resource in understanding how people cope with pain.

The tattoo process is essentially mutilation of the skin; tattooing is inserting pigment into punctures in the epidermis, commonly with a needle, to produce a permanent design. The action involves displacement of flesh and profusion of blood with ink. The procedure is painful, and every so often risky. Armando Favazza’s Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry and Kim Hewitt’s Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink provide psychological discourses of elective pain. Favazza defines self-mutilation in his preface as, “the deliberate destruction or alteration of one’s body tissue without conscious suicidal attempt” (Favazza 1996, xix). Favazza is the founder of cultural psychiatry, and approaches the vagueness of self-mutilation within the overarching web of culture. He divides self-mutilative behaviors into two groups, culturally sanctioned and deviant. To him, tattoo exists in the former category.

Micheal Atkinson’s Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art regards psychological analysis of tattoo to be biased, in that the lens itself only allows for a depreciatory interpretation. In laymen’s terms, psychoanalysis is designed to find out what is wrong with its subjects, not to celebrate what is right with them. Nikki Sullivan takes the argument a step further, dedicating an entire chapter to the mistakes made by the theoretical analyses of the past. In Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics and Pleasure, Sullivan puts psychological discourse on tattoo in the same category as criminological discourse of the last century and a half. Specifically, she examines the work of Lombroso; his brilliant theory was determining the criminal by his physical traits.

The atavistic nature of tattoo is displayed with the utmost fortitude in the Unites States through a group that call themselves “modern primitives”. In their world the book by Vivian Vale and Andrea Juno, Modern Primitives, is a tattoo and body modification bible, and Fakir Musafar is the guru philosopher, or founding father of the movement. Their intensity and fascination with the ritualistic aspects of tattoo/body modification provides a fixed theory that works for their worldview as to the subject of pain. Essentially, through pain they transcend their bodies to attain a level of spirituality equal to shamanistic or ritualistic rites of the past.
The subject of pain leading up to the acquisition of tattoo is the theme of Judith Sarnecki’s essay Trauma and Tattoo. This is an ethnographically informed analysis of tattoo and the traumatic events and motivations that might lead up to the decision to get tattooed. Sarnecki believes trauma and tattoo to be linked under most circumstances.

In Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture, an essay by Tu Weiming speaks of the Confusion philosophy of pain and the body. The Confucian idea of humanity is buren, a common expression in Chinese medical books explaining the paralysis of the arms and legs, which literally means the absence of humanity. “In this view, the sensation of pain is an essential feature of being human; an inability to feel pain is considered a major deficiency not only in terms of health but also morality. It is human to feel pain, while an inability to do so is detrimental to our humanity” (Coakley and Kaufman 2007, 221). My research will be examining tattoo pain from the perspectives of the interface of biology and culture, and the performance of ritual on the body.

What's at Stake?

I'm currently working on an essay, tentatively titled "Tattoo and Pain". The thesis is roughly, pain is undeniably apart of the tattoo process, what does pain have to do with tattoo? There is a history of deviance being associated with tattoo, and pain indeed plays a part in that line of thought. The psychological analyses on the subject of tattoo has cast the ritual in a pejorative light. The essay seeks to employ post-structuralist and postmodern approaches to the subject of pain's association with tattoo. What is at stake? First, problematizing psychology as a discipline, and second, leading the reader into a non-definitive space. I will draw on my own personal ethnographic research as well as existing literature broaching the subjects of pain, of tattoo, and of pain and tattoo. I will not be posting the actual essay simply because it reveals too much about me, and I am a fiercely private person. However, I will be posting a literature review.

As to the Topoi

I want to briefly mention something here about the"fun resource flakes" topoi widget I had mentioned in my "tour of pageflake" posting. If you haven't heard of it, the Topoi is an antiquated method for thinking. It was invented by Aristotle, and refers to place, like places in your brain, or even places your brain goes when thinking about certain topics. Even more to the point, the topoi mimics how we think of things.

The topoi widget provides a list for analysis:
• change
• contrast
• cause/effect
• form/structure
• values
⁃ morality/ethics
⁃ pragmatic
⁃ social
⁃ spiritual/metaphysical
⁃ political

The topoi is a tool to help you develop your hypothesis. To use different perspectives and stretch out ideas.

It is hard to look at this list and see how this could possibly be helpful, it is better to put the topoi to practice. So here:

Hypothesis:
As tattoo is becoming popularized, does it run the risk of changing from a subcultural practice to an ordinary, mainstream, or even banal convention?

Morality
Tattoo and deviance have historically been impenetrably linked, the question then becomes will deviant behavior become a mainstream convention?

Spiritual
In the Judeo-Christian belief, there is doctrine that explicitly states "thou shalt not mark thyself". As the United States is primarily a Christian oriented nation, what does the profusion of tattoo say about people in regards to their beliefs and practices?

Cause/Effect
As popular culture is in a constant state of ebb and flow, and traditionally subcultural practices that have filtered into mainstream society leaves impressions for generations that follow, how will the future perceive this moment in time when tattoo was an ever-present cultural custom?

The topoi layers on another framework of categorical or systematic ways in which you can model your argument. From one hypothesis, I now have three theses to work off of and expand into entire essays.

Tour of Pageflake

Want to hear about something fantastical? Something that might possibly make your life, oh, just a little bit better? Well, before I go overboard, I want to mention that it's not a magic lamp, or money growing tree, but, it has the same skipping the hard stuff elements... Pageflakes.

Pageflakes is a free application for the internet, and allows you to make that very same internet, more about you. It takes care of your wants and your needs, before you even ask. Pageflakes is working 24/7 just to make sure you have everything you could possibly want, out of the internet that is.

Let me explain, Pageflakes is a page, full of flakes.

Ok, so, I can't explain. But I can tell you about mine...

Since beginning this whole blogging endeavor of mine, I have been deligently trying to navigate my way through this messy sphere called the world wide web. Hoping to improve my strategy to finding anything interesting, or remotely related to my blog topic, I have stumbled across things like socialbookmarking cites, rss readers, and the like. Granted, two months ago, I had never heard the term rss, or socialbookmarking for that matter, but now I am starting to understand there is a thing called metadata, a way of organizing this messy sphere. Again, two months ago, I thought I knew how to "google". That's what I would say if someone asked how internet savvy I was, "Well, I can google". Lo and behold, I was not even googling correctly! I stuck to keywords only, I never tried to think in terms of what others would say about my search topic. Well, now that I have a pageflake, I don't even need to do that anymore. I mean, for my blog topic I don't, I have my pageflake monitoring the internet for me.

My pageflake has different widgets on the same page working full time to do what they are programmed to do. I have divided my pageflake into sections. There are two columns. The left column is my RSS flakes. There are ten in total, and they alternate between tattoo related blogs and/or websites and anthropology related blogs and/or websites. The right column has four different sections. The first (on top) is my BIBLIO flakes, which is actually one flake, a webpage flake, that is connected to citeline a bibliographical webpage. The cite it's specifically connected to is my own annotated bibliography, six sources of which I have already mentioned in my Selected Readings post. The next section is my SEARCH flakes, there are two, universal news search and universal blog search. Both widgets are programmed to be searching for " tattoos and visual anthropology." Below the searching flakes is my section BOOKMARK flakes. This has only one flake, a bookmarking widget, that is hooked up to my del.icio.us account, and displays all the bookmarks that I have made on that socialbookmarking website. Lastly, the bottom section of the left column is my FUN RESOURCE flakes. So far, this too only has one flake. It is a specially designed by the University of Southern California (or Southern Carolina) Topoi widget, that is a resource to help when writing.

I hope that better helps to understanding what I mean by making the internet more about you. Right this second, my rss flakes are updating any new postings to be displayed on my page, and at the same time, any news or new blogs related to tattoos and visual anthropology are also being refreshed. So, when I look at my pageflake, I see a multitude of resources unfolding before my very eyes, all specifically working to get me the information I need to write a well informed blog on a specific topic of interest.

An Interesting Find

Having been made aware of the bountiful research on tattoos from an anthropological perspective by my kindred socialbookmarking spirit, I now am at ease about my capability to find interesting topics to discuss. My first "interesting find" I have already mentioned in my selected readings post. However, a mere glossing of the article's content I feel does not suffice. I would like to dedicate this entire post to Mary Kosut's well written and fascinating, "An Ironic Fad: The Commodification and Consumption of Tattoos".

The article focuses on the popularization and consumption of tattoo through the lens of the contemporary media, and in turn, the affect on mass culture. She begins with a few societal statistics, stating "The 2001 MSNBC television special, Skin Deep, which examined tattooing
and other contemporary body modifications, reported that twenty percent of the American population is tattooed. Although the validity of this statistic is speculative, a 2002 survey conducted by the University of Connecticut produced similar findings." Though the population of tattoo bearers is a minority, the consumption of the product of tattoo has yielded a booming industry, attracting consumers cross-ethnically and cross-socioeconimically.

Kosut suggests the popularization of tattoo is attributed to its sheer visibility in the public eye, especially, the entertainment industry. She provides examples from box office movies whose main character's are ostentatiously tattooed (anti)heroes. The movie industry is not the only form of popular culture to take on the tattoo craze, high end retailers like Versace and Chanel are using tattoos to promote their companies in advertising campaigns. These ads are "being used to target the present-day leisure classes" and in doing so "indicates an elevation in their (tattoos) cultural status."

Though, as Kosut points out, the product of tattoo is an interesting commodity, simply because of the corporeal character of the product itself. "Tattoos simultaneously decorate the body and permanently modify it. For this reason, tattooing can be conceptualized as an ironic fad-a popular cultural trend that, due to its permanent nature, cannot be as easily discarded as a pair of jeans." Kosut also suggests the danger of the popularization of tattoos, in that like other subcultural turned popular-cultural trends, they run the risk of becoming trite.

The article ends by recognizing the growing interest in tattoo by cultural institutions such as art museums. Through the help of the mass media who contemporaneously portray tattoo as art with aesthetic value, these cultural institutions have accepted tattoo, "blurring the distinctions between high and popular culture".

I will most definitely be using Mary Kosut's concept of the "ironic-fad" in future tattoo research endeavors.

Socialbookmarking Soulmate

It took a long time to commit, as so many of us in postmodern romances do, but I think I've finally found my socialbookmarking soulmate. I heart bobaker, of citeulike.org. He/She is dreamy... what? I cannot assume bobaker's a male, what if Bob is short for Roberta?

In all seriousness, this whole social bookmarking thing has been a double edged sword for me, the perpetual bungler of all things web 2.0. On the one hand, there are so many and they are so complicated, and you have to understand all this new techno-vocabulary just to navigate your way around them. On the other hand, once you do, they are so helpful.... but back to the first hand, so expansive and wide-ranging.

An academic acquaintance of mine informed me of citeulike, a social bookmarking network for peer reviewed articles only. Which is so perfect, for me, someone who likes libraries, and the concepts of validity, legitimacy, and authenticity.

Next, it was a matter of searching for tattoo tags, or people who had articles, essays or books in their libraries that they had categorized as having to do with tattoo. There were many, though most were having to do with skin and dermatology (a perfectly fascinating science on its own, just not for me). So, I included culture to the keyword search, and voila! Introducing, bobaker, and his 14 articles relating to tattoo and culture. Bobaker is not meticulous in his library upkeep, he doesn't add comments or organize in a overtly coherent way (soulmate). Bobaker has 40 articles in all, with a good majority to do, not only with tattoo and subculture, but psychology and philosophy as well (sigh). Bobaker even has cinematography and horror as tags (louder sigh), the former having to do with my visual anthropologically inclined side, and the ladder to do with my guilty pleasure customarily clandestine side.

What were the chances? Well if you believe in fate, then I suppose there were none, and it was meant to be. I was destined to stumble upon babaker, and glean scholarly articles on my specific subject matter off of him/her. Although, that leads me into reverie... what have I ever done for bobaker?

Selected Readings

The practice of tattoo itself has a long history, dating back to archeological findings of 5000 year old mummies. “There is no known culture in which people do not paint, pierce, tattoo, reshape or simply adorn their bodies.” (Gay and Whittington 2002, 14). Due to the lengthy duration of the practice, as well as the immense cross-cultural existence, there is a plethora of scholarly literature on the subject in/of tattooing. One well informed book that I have in the past used as a reference is Kathlyn Gay and Christine Whittington's Body Marks: Tattooing, Piercing and Scarification. It is a comprehensive overview of the art of tattoo (and piercing and scarification).

The contemporaneous work concerning tattoo is less historically driven, and more analytical of tattoo's position within social contexts. Nikki Sullivan's Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics and Pleasure is an exemplary tome on the subject in/of tattooing in the postmodern theoretical era. Instead of offering a chronicle of what the tattooed "other" signifies, she defies the expectations of a researcher, presenting a nuanced tattooed body, proposing the very notion of searching for concrete textuality as duplicitous. "My aim, rather, is to seduce, to affect, the reader and to open up the possibility of diverse and infinite voyages to destinations that are beyond the scope of my imagination and this book, rather than to convince the reader, through traditonal means of argument, that knowledge is possible, and that since I discovered it, all that is left for you to do is to witness the truth of my claims" (Sullivan 2001, 11).

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the tattoo process is essentially mutilation of the skin; tattooing is inserting pigment into punctures in the epidermis, commonly with a needle, (though any sharp object may be employed) to produce a permanent design. The process is painful, and sometimes dangerous. Armando Favazza’s Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry and Kim Hewitt’s Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink provide psychological discourses of elective pain. Favazza defines self-mutilation in his preface as, “the deliberate destruction or alteration of one’s body tissue without conscious suicidal attempt” (1992). Favazza is the founder of cultural psychiatry, and approaches the vagueness of self-mutilation within the overarching web of culture. He divides self-mutilative behaviors into two groups, culturally sanctioned and deviant. To him, tattoo exists in the former category. Kim Hewitt focuses mainly on selfmutilative actions such as tattoo, "as acts that asked to be witnessed- acts not only of self-expression but self-innitiation and sometimes self-medication" (Hewitt 1997, 2).

Two other sources worth mentioning are actually scholarly articles from anthrosource.net. The first is Mary Kosut's "An Ironic Fad: The Commodification and Consumption of Tattoos", an interesting take on the popularization of tattoo, and how the once underground or underclass practice has transformed into an art form of "highculture". She concentrates on how tattoo is portrayed by the media, and in turn how the media shapes mass culture. The second is Judith Sarnecki's "Trauma and Tattoo", an article that touches on my own inquiries and research in the world of tattoo. The article proposes certain motivations behind recieving tattoos, presupposing the desire to be tattooed as the tattoo recipient's psychological coping strategy for dealing with traumatic experiences.

Favazza, Armando R. 1996. Bodies under siege : Self-mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press.

Gay, Kathlyn and Whittington, Christine. 2002. Body Marks: Tattooing, Piercing, and Scarification. Twenty-First Century Books.

Hewitt, Kim. 1997. Mutilating the Body: Identity in Blood and Ink. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

Kosut, Mary. 2006. "An Ironic Fad: The Commodification and Consumption of Tattoos". Journal of Popular Culture 39, no. 6 (December): 1048, 1035.

Sarnecki, Judith. 2005. "Trauma and Tattoo". March 17. http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/ac.2001.12.2.35.

Sullivan, Nikki, and Nikki Sullivan. 2001. Tattooed Bodies: Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics, and Pleasure. Westport, Conn.: Praeger.

Blogorama---Updated April 27th, 2009 12:00pm

Hello

Human flesh is the original social networking site...

As possibly the first canvas upon which humans have inscribed, skin has been a subject of continuous interest in Anthropology, from the early descriptions of “exotic people” to postmodern theorizing about the body in contemporary society, a subject that theorists such as Michel Foucault and Claude Levi-Strauss have exhaustively elaborated on. I believe such research is relevant to my own inquiries, and plan on keeping the subjects of both the body and identity in the scope. In fact, it is my theory that the profusion of tattooing, especially before the institution of blogging, is the original myspace. The body, the skin, is a space that is proprietary of the person on the one hand, and the utilization of the skin as a “forum” of visual self-expression, on the other.

The origins of the academic discipline of Anthropology were rooted in the study of the exotic “other”. The ritual institution of tattoo has been a scholarly interest since the beginning of Anthropology as a discipline. These first anthropological pursuits were structured categorically around perceived identity. Recently, scholar’s interests have turned to more complex notions of modernity, authenticity and representation. The word “tattoo” literally translates to “to mark.” The practice, however, is a tad more intensive then simply marking the skin. Tattooing is inserting pigment into punctures in the epidermis, commonly with a needle (though any sharp object may be employed) to produce a permanent design. As you might imagine, pain is involved.

The tattoo industry takes many forms all over the world. It has an extensive diverse history rich in cultural traditions. All nations have their own stylistic background and body art history. It is my goal to use this space, to express these histories culturally, practically, and aesthetically. Furthermore, drawing from the traditional structural-functional discourses of ritual, I propose the practice of tattoo to be a form of rite of passage. From this analytic standpoint of tattoo, along with the historical tradition of the art, the custom can be deconstructed into its proverbial ritualistic stages. I desire to elucidate how a person goes into a tattoo shop and leaves transformed.

Likely areas of discussion include transcription, (trans)culturation and (trans)formation of the body. Future themes will include symbolism, mysticism and world view. Also, the existing contemporary literature on tattoo such as Victoria Pitts, Nikki Sullivan and Arnold Rubin will be analyzed and used to initiate further dialogue. As a Visual Anthropologist, I will be conducting participant observation and interviews and providing ethnographic data (written and visually documented) for those with curiosity towards the subject in and of tattooing as well as my academic field. I am hoping to include narratives of both tattoo artists and tattoo recipients to express the subjectivity of the institution, provide pictures of tattooings, as well as discuss where tattoo fits into postmodern cultural theory. The experience I have already had in the specific world of tattooing has led me to see tattoos as, and here I quote myself, “public communications of private narratives”. There are an infinite number of reasons/motivations to get a tattoo, so the question of why is subjective. However, “why” provides a splendid opportunity for fascinating discourse. The stuff that anthropological dreams are made of.

Who's Talking Tattoo?

After my initial posting, it seemed pertinent that I should try to find other blogs out there if I indeed want to become a part of "a larger conversation" of tattoo. In searching for blogs that I thought might be relevant to my own, I stumbled upon "Tattoo Blog". At first, I scoffed at the title, thinking it was ridiculously vague. As it is no secret that my experience in the blogosphere is somewhat minute... okay non existent (see first essay-like post), and after scrutinizing "Tattoo Blog's" different posts, I realized how liberating a vague blog title could be. This blog is about tattooing in the broadest sense. In fact, there are different authors (7 bloggers) who proceed to display "cavemen ramblings" (a term I borrowed from one of the bloggers, MJones) from an array of perspectives. From science and technology and medical suggestions/opinions to "how to" material; as long as it is somewhat related to tattoo, it belongs on the blog. The most recent posts touch on politics,artists, skin, celebrity gossip, and even conspiracy theory. Not to mention, tattoo "do's and don'ts".

This blog is obviously related to my own endeavors. I can navigate through and find certain posts that match my own areas of interest, or I can see what else people have to say about tattoo. My own blog's theme is more theoretically driven, and not as dialectic as an open topic like "Tattoo Blog". The flavor and fervor of these bloggers is stirring to me, as I have no idea what I'm doing here in the blogosphere. Each log-in or google search, to me, is a learning experience. "Tattoo Blog" has showed me that there are ways to have a specific audience (people who are interested in tattoos) and also be interesting to others (by means of colorful language... aka "caveman ramblings"). The most important thing I got from reading this blog, and any blog (I think I have read 3?), is that the blogosphere is dialogue driven, hence the text should reflect a conversation.

Unfortunately, where I'm at now is still what one in the Web 2.0 religion would rank as amateur status... or a newb... or is it noob? That being said, I believe that the frequency of postings is "high", as there appears to be at least one a day, and according to technorati, they rank 4,978,471... which is also a high number... so... good? Oh wait, I was just informed high number on rank is bad...whoops. I do know that these bloggers are interested in tattoo, and keep their eyes and ears open to any news relating to tattoo. For instance, Dr. Hook's post "Tattoos By Big Brother" is all about a new ink technology. Dr. Hook explains what it is, RFID ink or radio frequency identification ink, a product that will be injected into skin and used to track animals. He proposes the inventors are using animal tracking as a ruse, and will eventually be violating human rights. He likens the possibility to that of the Nazi's use of tattoos in tracking the Jews/Gypsies and other unfortunate bystanders during the Holocaust. On a completely different train of thought, MJones posts about the detriment the sun can cause on tattoos in "(Don't) Fade to Black". Like Dr. Hook, MJones discusses a product in the world of tattoo, a treatment called "Tattoo Inkgaurd" to prevent sun damage. It's interesting that these two posts are back to back, it makes for entertainingly dynamic and informative reading.

If you're having one of those days where you just want to peak into a larger conversation having to do with tattoo, in one way or another, I recommend checking it out. If by any chance you want to talk about the sociogenisis of tattoo, and get some theoretical perspectives I recommend sticking with me. It's your choice...

Voice

Body Tattoo- blog about tattoo art is a straight forward title for a straight forward enterprise. The voice behind the posts was a little less forthright, as it took me a few posts to try and determine who is speaking. In fact, it took 9 posts for me to figure out Body Tattoo's author was a guy named Bill. It took one posting to figure out he lives where it is cold, because a person living there would need gloves (the first posting was about a tattoo he spotted on a woman's ungloved hands). It took four posts to grasp that this glove wearing Bill lives in New York, as he mentions doing his regular "quick pass" through Penn Station. All in all, I would say that New York Bill operates as though he has a regular slew of Body Tattoo readers. This is the impression I get through his candid manner, and his lack of desire to fill in the details.

New York Bill tries to come off as an expert on tattoos, though I'm not quite sure why. There does not appear to be a life history or credentials of any sort. I guess the medium of blogging allows for this sort of expertise. Not that Bill is pretentious, far from it. He writes simply, utilizing laymen's terms and even commonplace nomenclature like "nifty" or "gee".

One posting is a response to a question of healing normalcy. The answer to the girl is concise at first, setting her at ease about her question of how well her butterfly tattoo was healing. Then it throws in an extra bit of advice, telling her to go to the doctor and see if her slow tattoo healing had to do with some disease like diabetes or a vitamin deficiency. Needless to say, I found the two part answer contradictory. At the bottom of the post was a link, displayed as "link" without explanation, so I clicked on it, and came to find that the entire posting was a question and answer post from about.com... nothing to do with NY Bill. Why did he choose to include it? Well, the title is QOW: Tattoo Healing Slowly, Color is Dull, so question of the week? It makes sense, but why not have his own forum for questions that he can answer on his own tattoo blog?

This got me wondering about his largest recent posting on Sailor Jerry. The posting has an authoritative voice, as it is a life history of one of the "founding fathers" of tattoo. The post is well written, though arrogant at times, including one sentence that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up, "He did more for the ancient art than any other single person". My interpretation was, NY Bill is clearly a big fan of Sailor Jerry. Well, this may very well be the case, however, this post, too, had been transplanted to Body Tattoo. Ahem.

Now, what does appear to be his own brainchild, is something called "Tattoosday". This is where Bill spots a tattoo bearer on the street, interviews and photographically documents them. These postings are where his rich material is revealed. This is where he has a voice. He is interested in why people get the tattoos that they have, as well as why they have or don't have tattoos period. He includes circumstances as to where they met, how the person received him, and his own thoughts on their choices.

If this blog were entitled Tattoosdays, I'd be a bigger fan. Oh, and not that it has an effect on how I perceive him, but NY Bill's linking strategies make me feel like some sort of linking savant. The only ones he has are after his posts, and cleverly projected as "link", or if there are more, "this link" and "that link".

NY Bill's voice is like that neighbor that everyone has. He's nice enough. You say hi to him when you see him in the hallway, or outside walking his dog. But, it's not like you invite him over for dinner to discuss the new propositions on the political scene. You know? For instance... "Mary-Lee appeared in my doorway at the end of the work day with Anthony standing next to her. Mary-Lee’s tattoo was featured here in December. I had never met Anthony before, but Mary-Lee had mentioned his tattoo to me, and she had told him about Tattoosday. He works for one of the vendors our company utilizes for a mailing process." You get what I mean? "Nice chatting with you too, neighbor (and you slowly close the door)."

voice

Body Tattoo- blog about tattoo art is a straight forward title for a straight forward enterprise. The voice behind the posts was a little less forthright, as it took me a few posts to try and determine who is speaking. In fact, it took 9 posts for me to figure out Body Tattoo's author was a guy named Bill. It took one posting to figure out he lives where it is cold,  because a person living there would need gloves (the first posting was about a tattoo he spotted on a woman's ungloved hands). It took four posts to grasp that this glove wearing Bill lives in New York, as he mentions doing his regular "quick pass" through Penn Station. All in all, I would say that New York Bill operates as though he has a regular slew of Body Tattoo readers. This is the impression I get through his candid manner, and his lack of desire to fill in the details.

New York Bill tries to come off as an expert on tattoos, though I'm not quite sure why. There does not appear to be a life history or credentials of any sort. I guess the medium of blogging allows for this sort of expertise. Not that Bill is pretentious, far from it. He writes simply, utilizing laymen's terms and even commonplace nomenclature like "nifty" or "gee".

 One posting is a response to a question of healing normalcy. The answer to the girl is concise at first, setting her at ease about her question of how well her butterfly tattoo was healing. Then it throws in an extra bit of advice, telling her to go to the doctor and see if her slow tattoo healing had to do with some disease like diabetes or a vitamin deficiency. Needless to say, I found the two part answer contradictory. At the bottom of the post was a link, displayed as "link" without explanation, so I clicked on it, and came to find that the entire posting was a question and answer post from about.com... nothing to do with NY Bill. Why did he choose to include it? Well, the title is QOW: Tattoo Healing Slowly, Color is Dull, so question of the week? It makes sense, but why not have his own forum for questions that he can answer on his own tattoo blog? 

This got me wondering about his largest recent posting on Sailor Jerry. The posting has an authoritative voice, as it is a life history of one of the "founding fathers" of tattoo. The post is well written, though arrogant at times, including one sentence that made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up,  "He did more for the ancient art than any other single person". My interpretation was, NY Bill is clearly a big fan of Sailor Jerry. Well, this may very well be the case, however, this post, too, had been transplanted to Body Tattoo. Ahem.

Now, what does appear to be his own brainchild, is something called "Tattoosday".  This is where Bill spots a tattoo bearer on the street,  interviews and photographically documents them. These postings are where his rich material is revealed. This is where he has a voice. He is interested in why people get the tattoos that they have, as well as why they have or don't have tattoos period. He includes  circumstances as to where they met, how the person received him, and his own thoughts on their choices.

If this blog were entitled Tattoosdays, I'd be a bigger fan. Oh, and not that it has an effect on how I perceive him, but NY Bill's linking strategies make me feel like some sort of linking savant. The only ones he has are after his posts, and cleverly projected as "link", or if there are more, "this link" and "that link". 

other interesting stuff...

Just as there are an immeasurable number of tattoos existent in the world, so too are there a sizable amount of blogs regarding them. The same goes for the variance in type of tattoos; the blogs about them range in voice, consistency and premise.  My own personal interests are directed in the philosophical and social aspects of tattoo, though I can appreciate interests in aesthetics, authority or even humor. 

The most alluring that I have run across is a blog that deals with the social effects of tattoo, from the perspective of one witty, educated, and tattooed woman. Marisa DiMattia writes daily blogs that "look at the fine art and culture of the world of tattoos, she covers artist profiles, event listings, convention news, tattoo's impact on society and more". The artistry that goes into needled's structure is remarkable, and there's loads of multimedia to keep oneself amused. 

On the complete opposite side of the spectrum,  I ran across a blog that frankly, made me laugh out loud. Perusing "Horrible Tattoos" is funny, mindless activity, much like watching reality television shows. We want to see what other people are like, especially if they do something outrageous... like have a giant tattoo across your back that's misspelled. It covers the side of tattooing that most aficionados shy away from, especially when arguing for the normalcy of tattoo. After all, it's hard to defend a practice that has been historically categorized as deviant behavior, when there are individuals who make (by means of "horrible tattoos") the entire medium seem absurd. Though, that raises an interesting question, as tattooing is a way to adorn the body, much like fashion; do we laugh at people who choose to wear clothes that are not in vogue? Well, most likely not, but even if we do, it's nothing more then mildly amusing, given wearing clothing is a temporal phenomenon. The permanence of the faux pas somehow takes "horrible tattoos" to a whole other level of hilarity. 

The field of Visual Anthropology is severely lacking in its blogospheric representation. Nonetheless, I have found a few sites and one blog that might be able to clear up exactly what the discipline is all about. Don't think that just because I see the lacunae in the blogosphere having to do with my specialization, that I intend to do anything about it. I do plan to incorporate the jargon and ideologies, concomitant with explication, but a whole new blog is not something I'm equipped to launch; I lack the time and inclination. 

who's talking tattoo?

After my initial posting, it seemed pertinent that I should try to find other blogs out there if I indeed want to become a part of "a larger conversation" of tattoo. In searching for blogs that I thought might be relevant to my own, I stumbled upon "Tattoo Blog". At first, I scoffed at the title, thinking it was ridiculously vague. As it is no secret that my experience in the blogosphere is somewhat minute... okay non existent (see first essay-like post), and after scrutinizing "Tattoo Blog's" different posts, I realized how liberating a vague blog title could be. This blog is about tattooing in the broadest sense. In fact, there are different authors (7 bloggers) who proceed to display "cavemen ramblings" (MJones) from an array of perspectives. From science and technology and medical suggestions/opinions to "how to" material; as long as it is somewhat related to tattoo, it belongs on the blog. The most recent posts touch on politics, artists, skin,  celebrity gossip, and even conspiracy theory. Not to mention, tattoo "do's and don'ts".

This blog is obviously related to my own endeavors in many ways. I can navigate through and find certain posts that match my own areas of interest, or I can see what else people have to say about tattoo. My own blog's theme is more theoretically driven, and not as dialectic as an open topic like "Tattoo Blog". The flavor and fervor of these bloggers is stirring to me, as I have no idea what I'm doing here in the blogosphere. Each log-in or google search, to me, is a learning experience. "Tattoo Blog" has showed me that there are ways to have a specific audience (people who are interested in tattoos) and also be interesting to others (by means of colorful language). The most important thing I got from reading this blog, and any blog (I think I have read 3?), is that the blogosphere is dialogue driven, hence the text should reflect a conversation.

Unfortunately, where I'm at now is still what one in the Web 2.0 religion would rank as amateur status... or a newb... or is it noob? That being said, I believe that the frequency of postings is "high", as there appears to be at least one a day, and according to technorati, they rank 4,978,471... which is also a high number... so... good? I do know that these bloggers are interested in tattoo, and keep their eyes and ears open to any news relating to tattoo. For instance, Dr. Hook's post "Tattoos By Big Brother" is all about a new ink technology. Dr. Hook explains what it is, RFID ink or radio frequency identification ink, a product that will be injected into skin and used to track animals. He proposes the inventors are using animal tracking as a ruse, and will eventually be violating human rights. He likens the possibility to that of the Nazi's use of tattoos in tracking the Jews/Gypsies and other unfortunate bystanders during the Holocaust. On a completely different train of thought, MJones posts about the detriment the sun can cause on tattoos in "(Don't) Fade to Black". Like Dr. Hook, MJones discusses a product in the world of tattoo, a treatment called "Tattoo Inkgaurd" to prevent sun damage. It's interesting that these two posts are back to back, it makes for entertainingly dynamic and informative reading. 

I recommend checking it out...

Hello

The origins of the academic discipline of Anthropology were rooted in the study of the exotic “other”. The ritual institution of tattoo has been a scholarly interest since the beginning of Anthropology as a discipline. These first anthropological pursuits were structured categorically around perceived identity. Recently, scholar’s interests have turned to more complex notions of modernity, authenticity and representation. The word “tattoo” literally translates to “to mark”, though the practice is a tad more intensive then simply marking the skin. Tattooing is inserting pigment into punctures in the epidermis, commonly with a needle, (though any sharp object may be employed) to produce a permanent design. As you might imagine, pain is involved.

As possibly the first canvas upon which humans have inscribed, skin has been a subject of continuous interest in Anthropology, from the early descriptions of “exotic people” to postmodern theorizing about the body in contemporary society, a subject that theorists such as Michel Foucault and Claude Levi-Strauss have thoroughly elaborated on. I believe such research is relevant to my own inquiries, and plan on keeping the subjects of both the body and identity in the scope. In fact, it is my theory that the profusion of tattooing, especially before the institution of blogging, is the original myspace. The body, the skin, is a space that is proprietary of the person on the one hand, and the utilization of the skin as a “forum” of visual self-expression, on the other.
 

The tattoo industry takes many forms all over the world. It has an extensive diverse history rich in cultural traditions. All nations have their own stylistic background and body art history. It is my goal to utilize this space, to express these histories culturally, practically, and aesthetically. Furthermore, drawing from the traditional structural-functional discourses of ritual, I propose the practice of tattoo to be a form of rite of passage. From this analytic standpoint of tattoo, along with the historical tradition of the art, the custom can be deconstructed into its proverbial ritualistic stages. I desire to elucidate how a person goes into a tattoo shop and leaves transformed.
 

Likely areas of discussion include transcription, (trans)culturation and (trans)formation of the body. Future themes will include symbolism, mysticism and world view. Also, the existing contemporary literature on tattoo such as Victoria Pitts, Nikki Sullivan and Arnold Rubin will be analyzed and used to initiate further dialogue. As a Visual Anthropologist, I will be conducting participant observation and interviews and providing ethnographic data (written and visually documented) for those with curiosity towards the subject in and of tattooing as well as my academic field. I am hoping to include narratives of both tattoo artists and tattoo recipients to express the subjectivity of the institution, provide pictures of tattooings, as well as discuss where tattoo fits into postmodern cultural theory. The experience I have already had in the specific world of tattooing has led me to see tattoos as, and here I quote myself, “public communications of private narratives”. There is no one reason to get a tattoo, so the question of why is subjective. However, “why” provides a splendid opportunity for fascinating discourse. The stuff that anthropological dreams are made of.