I found Enid Schilddkrout’s article “Inscribing the Body” to be fascinating and very informative – she laid so many interesting concepts out on the table that I feel I could pursue as my research topics.
I like this article because it did such a great job holistically encompassing the different attitudes towards body art within the literature. It was helpful when she started speaking about specific theories (feminist, poststructuralist); this led me to think more about how I could ask my research question in different ways.
This quote resonated with me (pg 322):
“Inscribed skin highlights an issue that has been central to anthropology since its inception: the question of boundaries between the individual and society, between societies, and between representations and experiences”.
I think for my research I want to focus on the practice of getting a tattoo after a traumatic event / specific tattoo designs used (the Medusa tattoo, for example). This quote made me reflect to think about how it would be interesting to explore the history of this kind of tattooing (where it has been documented, what kind of trauma, the people getting it), the societal attitudes towards these tattoos, and its implications for trauma healing.