I spent a lot of time with chapter 8 this week and it sparked my interest. When I initially chose this chapter, my attention was grabbed by the title, but after reading it several times I found it to be really illuminating. I had to do some background research on the British transportation of convicts to Australia, and it made me contextualize the chapter better. The fact that most robberies were sentenced for a 7 year transportation and at the time many people were economically struggling with the industrializing world. I see parallels with flaws in our legal system with the faults detailed within this paper. Additionally, I see similarities between why people got tattoos then and why people get tattoos now … to process emotions! Across cultures, it becomes evident that tattoos represent an aspect of your personality. It is so common for people to get tattoos after enduring trauma, or a specific life event; which is also observed in the article.
Category: AR474 (Page 9 of 10)
Chap 7 presentation.
Godna: Inscribing Indian Convicts in the Nineteenth Century
The chapter describes the detailed history of Godna (tattoos) in India from roughly the 15th to the 20th century. Anderson highlights the way in which Godna in India evolved from a cultural practice, associated with healing, fertility, masculinity sexuality etc. Unto a colonial punitive form of class control and vigilance.
The essay poses interesting questions about the long-lasting effects of colonialism on a given society’s cultural practices. What is the difference between a pre-colonial and a post-colonial world?
The third section of the essay focused on the attempts of regaining power made by the the convicted men in 19th century colonial India. The resistance made by the Bombay presidency particularly struck me while reading about all of the cruelty coming from the East India Company during the transition period between Colonial and post-colonial India. It is counterintuitive to me that a specific region under colonial control would be able to withstand such scrutiny when it came to such a conventionally applied immoral practice. In that sense, the application of humanistic principles, or moreover the urgency for the consideration of humanistic principles in a time of European enlightenment is curious. It seems to me that the only way for the British to recognize their own savagery has to be through their own means. They refuse to learn about morality at the hands of another culture. The Indians are condemned to the cruelty of the British until the British (through their own devices) learn better.
Reading “Chapter 5: The Renaissance Tattoo” by Juliet Fleming of Written on the Body was a dense reading that honestly left me confused. While I was able to highlight some themes and examples that were placed throughout the chapter, I could not find an organizational pattern and Fleming brought up names without any context or how they held significance to the tattooing world of art. Overall, I found that Chapter 5 brought forward various examples of the varying purposes of tattoo as an art form in Western culture.
Chapter 6 of Written on the Body was written by Harriet Guest and was structured in a way that was much easier to follow than Chapter 5. Guest’s essay focused on the ways in which British people sought tattoos in the 18th century to create perceptions. Guest also notes the influence of gender in the analysis of tattooing and its perception in appearances. Guest explores the way that gender and appearance play roles in the recognition of one being acknowledged as civilized or uncivilized. Guest uses’ Banks’s conception and observation of the blurring of gender definition to further understand “the feminizing elision of the comparison between male and female Tahitians and European beauties works to endorse a homogenized and universal notion of feminine vanity untroubled by the cultural specificities of ornament” pertaining to theories concerning masculine fashions in Reynolds’s Discourse (Guest 91). The paintings of Omai seen in the book allude to the notion that colonization is for the good of the people and colonizers are therefore, saving their souls. What was interesting was how Omai was described as having various tattoos, but the images shown in the book do not highlight them. The relationship between Omai, colonization, and the perception of tattoos remains complicated in our comprehension, but sheds light on how to further understand the ways in which people brought forward the mark of exoticism through tattooing.
Chapter 7 again brings forth the correlation between social class or status to tattoos. However, Anderson focuses on the voluntary ways tattoos, or referred to as Godna, were present in India. She describes the Caste System and its direct correlation to tattooing with regard to social class. Dalits (outcastes) were the most likely to have the most tattoos due to their low status in the social hierarchy, versus Brahmins, who were least likely to have tattoos. Anderson sheds light on the 1871 Criminal Tribes Act, which created a psychological relation between criminals and social class. The association of tattoos to crime became inseparable and thus gave the government the power to control social groups and identify criminals easily.
Both Chapter 8 and 9 discussed the presence and purpose of the religious tattoo and convict transportation to Australia for the overpopulation of prisoners in Britain. I found it interesting that Britain relocated over 162,000 convicts to Australia who were assigned to settlers and forced to do free labor.
In preparation for this class, we read the first four chapters of “Written on the Body”. Presenting “Stigma and Tattoo” by C.P. Jones, I got to learn about the etymology and the use of the word “Stigma” by the ancient Greeks and Romans. I did not know much about the tattoo in the ancient world, even though I am very interested in Classics. Their familiarity and the uses of tattoo was interesting to learn about. While reading and thinking about the chapter, I remember questioning how different neighboring cultures perceived each other many times. The decorative function of tattooing and tattoos as a sign of membership was perceived as “barbaric” in the ancient Greek culture. What were the reactions of the neighbors to Greece’s use of stigma? I would like to learn more about how cultures having a widespread practice of decorative tattooing, such as Thracians, perceived punitive tattoos.
Through reading these articles, I also thought about the self-consciousness of one’s body and especially face, and how the exterior manifests itself to the state of the interior many times. Mark Gustafson talks about the discipline of physiognomics, and how people attempt to detect a lot about one’s character through their face. It was stimulating to think about this in the context of face tattoos.
We also talked about skin and how it relates to the psychoanalysis concepts of self and ego. By communicating with the interior and the exterior, it reveals repressed desires and reactions. These functions of the skin have thought-provoking implications on the meanings of tattoos permanent on one’s skin.
I felt like Chapter 5 was really addressing the theory of tattooing, which I appreciated. Fleming identified tattooing as a fine art, also contextualizing it as a magical form of human expression in a culture where all other expression is academic (61-62). I also liked the idea that tattooing is therapeutic, especially how one tattoo artist “can see, as her clients can not, what ‘crawls beneath their skin…everything I ink on people is already inside them, their history'” (63). This concept goes well with Didier Anzieu’s idea that “thought were as much an affair of the skin as of the brain,” which explores the connection between our internal and external worlds (65). Tattooing can be a necessary part to how we feel the most ourselves in the world, and this authenticity is so important for our mental health.
In the beginning of Chapter 7, Anderson mentioned that in some cultures, people needed to have tattoos in order to get married, which I found interesting (102). I was also drawn to the Hindu belief that tattoos could survive death, and they were “seen as evidence of earthly suffering which would be accepted in heaven as penance for sins” (104). In these cases, tattooing seems to be a requirement to achieve something many people want (marriage, to get into heaven). I think this brings up the question of agency, as does forced tattooing onto convicts. Anderson said that people could cover up tattoos through cultural practices like turbans or growing hair, which gives convicts some level of agency but not much. In Chapter 8, Maxwell-Steward and Duffield discussed how convicts would consistently be subjected to full-body inspections by officials, where all their physical features — including tattoos — would be recorded in detail (121).
I am very intrigued by this idea of agency when it comes to tattooing. Because in some cases, when people are choosing their tattoos, it can be a healing, essential process. But in other cases, when tattoos are being forced upon people, it can be a traumatic process.
I might just be overcomplicating it, but I struggled to read and fully understand Chapter 5. I understand that the author is trying to explain the different roles tattoos have taken in various societies and cultures, but it felt more like an amalgamation of various ideas than a single coherent thought. This, I’d say, is because of the organization of the essay. Fleming jumps around going from region to region and it’s easy to lose track of their argument as you try to follow along with what it is they’re trying to tell you. I mean, I understand that Fleming is trying to share how tattoos have different meanings, that for some cultures they are honorific marks while others see them as having fate-altering capabilities and that this contrasts the current meaning of tattoos as a way of bringing what’s on the inside to the outside, but this could’ve been explained in a way that’s less confusing for the reader.
After Chapter 5, I appreciated that Harriet Guest split Chapter 6 into sections. Although I wouldn’t say any chapter in this book is easy to comprehend on the first read, having the sections helped me greatly in digesting the information because it split the focuses up for me. From my understanding, Guest is exploring how the perceptions of British people in the Eighteenth-century were influenced by tattoos. It started off with the idea that I believe is most familiar to the typical reader, that tattoos were seen as a way to mark the other, to “signal an exoticism” (Guest 85). When I say typical reader, I am including myself because when I think about it, the only opinion I believed Eighteenth-century Europeans to have on tattoos were that they were a mark of exoticism. And while this is the dominant idea that existed, the following sections of this chapter quickly goes on to prove how easily that idea can get complicated. Something I liked about this chapter was that it defamiliarized something that I thought was so familiar to me. For example, the influence of appearance on the perception of one as civilized or uncivilized was an idea I knew of but this was expanded upon by talking about the importance of general and gender association which, looking at it now, seems so obvious but was something I had not considered.
Chapter 7 was an interesting read, primarily because I had never stopped to consider whether or not tattooing was prevalent in South Asia. I think this was because of my preconceived notions on religions generally condemning tattoos. I realize now that that is not the case, but my general understanding of the most common religions nowadays had led me to believe that religious culture are, and have always been, against tattoos, disregarding that religious beliefs can also change with time. Getting back to the chapter, I thought it was interesting how, among some caste Hindus, tattooing was primarily for women. This contrasts the representation of tattoos that is explored in Chapter 6 where tattoos being used to mark people as exotic and barbaric seemed to be reserved more for men. The chapter also states that tattoos were sometimes used to mark rites of passage (Anderson 104). This made me think of henna and how many cultures in South Asia have a tradition of bridal henna in which these designs on the skin are viewed as an important part of the garb of the bride.
Reading Chapter 8 made me realize again how complicated the relationship between convicts and tattoos are. Nowadays when people relate convicts to tattoos, it is with a negative connotation. However, Chapter 8 shares some of the intentions behind the tattoos that some convicts had. For instance, in one of the sections in this Chapter the authors describe how some tattooed symbols of hope onto themselves. They write, “convicts stubbornly located hope elsewhere. Love tokens and tattoos richly inform us about this” (125). However, this chapter also tells us about how tattoos were used to brand those they deemed problematic, going as far as to mark a deserter with the letter D. Even so, the convicts mentioned in the chapter make jokes about these tattoos, they turn them into jokes by changing the meaning of the tattoo. This is about ownership, ownership of one’s body, resisting against the state’s claim that they have a the rights over a convict’s body. There is a power in the convicts using what the state has done to confine them as a way to take back ownership of their bodies.
I found Chapter 9’s description of tattooing in Victorian Britain as a transaction of goods interesting. In the greater frame of things, it makes sense why in a culture where amassing one’s wealth was so important that tattoos seemed like a waste since only the tattooer and not the tattooed would seem to get monetary value. I feel like it just goes to show how much perception has changed today because I don’t think most people that are tattooed would consider their tattoo a waste of money or that they hadn’t gotten anything of value in return for their money. I also thought it was nice that Bradley expanded upon the perception of tattoo equals criminal and how it was more than a simple, oh many criminals had tattoos so that’s why we make that relation now. He goes on to really expand upon that perception, not by just writing it off as wrong, but by explaining why that idea exists and the things that are true and the things that are false about it.
In preparation for this class session, we read chapters 5-9 of Caplan’s Written on the Body. Chapter 5, by Juliet Fleming, first discusses how tattooing is, of course, permanent; for some reason, current Western culture has identified permanence as a negative thing. I thought this was interesting, because there are some things – like marriage – that our culture holds on a pedestal for their permanence. But, when the permanent change involves the body, we’ve gone too far. On the other hand, Fleming raises the point that tattoos are only as permanent as the body they adorn – so, not very permanent at all in the grand scheme of things. At the end of her chapter, Fleming makes a compelling point about the connection between tattooing and “foreignness.” She writes “the tattoo may be thought to have achieved its status as the mark of strangeness or barbarity by force of analogy, since it is itself caused by the introduction of a foreign body under the skin” (81). I wish Fleming had explored this idea more thoroughly; I like arguments that compare the action of tattooing to its figurative effect.
In the next chapter, Harriet Guest discusses 18th-century British views on South Pacific tattooing. To be honest, I found this chapter and the point it was trying to make confusing. Guest does provide a lot of interesting information about different cultures’ customs of tattooing, but given that this is done through the lens of 18th-century Britain, the information is heavily skewed. From my understanding, Guest mainly reiterated the point that the British did not view these South Pacific people as people, which added fuel to their fascination with their tattooing customs. I think the most interesting point she raised was that, in Enlightenment philosophy, “the treatment of women” is “the index of civility” (91). I had not encountered this idea before, so it provides a helpful framework for other 18th-century readings I may do in the future. It makes sense that these philosophers would have viewed femininity as unchanging and therefore a valid index to judge how “civilized” a certain culture may be. They only saw white men as having depth or agency, so these same white men’s treatment of women became the pinnacle of “civilization.”
Clare Anderson moves the discussion to India and the practice of godna. Anderson describes how, in Hinduism, tattooing had several functions: “evidence of earthly suffering,” religious rites, a way to achieve good health, and a way to signify caste (104). I think this is such a beautiful variety of uses for tattooing, and I had no idea that tattooing was so integral to both tribal groups and caste Hindus in India. Unfortunately, tattooing also had a punitive function, even before the arrival of the British. I thought the most interesting result of this function was that “cultural norms relating to dress and physical appearance thus became a means through which convicts were able to mask the identity assigned to them by colonial penal codes” (115). Convicts would use turbans or their hair to cover forehead tattoos, which does seem like an obvious flaw in the forehead tattooing system. So, even though the marks themselves were permanent – or, as permanent as they can be on a human body – these people were able to effectively erase them.
In chapter 8, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart and Ian Duffield discuss the tattooing practices of convicts shipped to Australia for their crimes. Maxwell-Stewart and Duffield mention how common anchor tattoos were among these convicts as a symbol of hope, originating from a New Testament passage. I found it super cool to see how far back the tradition of anchor tattoos goes because I think they are still very common today. Further, I think a lot of people who get anchor tattoos today get them to represent hope or another similar sentiment. The authors use this meaning of anchor tattoos to, in a sense, translate many convict tattoos; by saying the word “hope” in place of “anchor,” these tattoos gain a more coherent meaning. Apparently, many of these convicts would get some, if not all, of their tattoos while on the long journey to Australia. Because they were booked in and identified by their tattoos, some convicts would then tattoo over previous tattoos to take back control of their bodies.
Finally, in chapter 9, James Bradley discusses tattooing in Victorian Britain. I was most interested in Bradley’s assertion that some members of the upper class got tattoos; thus far, much of the scholarship we have read has heavily identified tattooing with criminals or the working class. Bradley mentions Gambier Bolton, a member of the “newly tattooed upper classes” who had several tattoos, some acquired over the course of world travels (146). I don’t think I have ever encountered media that depicts rich Victorian people with tattoos, but this chapter completely flips any assumptions I may have made on their heads. However, I also thought it was important that Bradley noted that a lot of Victorian people still would not have viewed tattooing as a normal thing. In this case, tattoos were “a leisured and luxurious form of consumption,” cementing the type of tattooing Bolton engaged with as a somewhat frivolous, unattainable practice (153).
I really enjoyed our discussion in class on 9/13 and particularly thought the concept of ritual was very interesting. In our worlds that are constantly changing, we need some sort of continuity to ground us. Tattooing as a practice is one of those rituals that people keep turning to in order to connect the exterior and interior, as Alfred Gell described. I also think it’s interesting how tattooing can give us a sense of agency over our own bodies, as we can’t always control how history marks us. But it’s quite disturbing how people tattoo others against their will, which completely deprives them of agency in marking their own body and serves almost as a way that history marks them instead. I feel like that takes away from the spirituality and expression of tattooing as a ritual.
In the first two chapters of the textbook, Caplan reveals a pretty detailed and well-argued summary of the uses of tattoos in ancient civilizations and the development of the word stigma to what it is nowadays in the modern world.
I was not aware that the word stigma had anything directly to do with tattooing at all. Stigma could be anything, but the fact that it once exclusively meant tattoos and someone stigmatized was someone who was tattooed really makes one ponder about just how deep the anti tattoo culture is historically. Hatred, disdain, rejection for tattoos is Greco-Roman. For some of the most important western civilizations, who helped forge so much of our understanding of epistemology and culture and politics and math, tattooing was not something that started out as positive and was demonized throughout its existence, but rather something which had, for an extended period of time in these societies a direct correlation with criminal activity, slavery and poverty.
And yet it was the christians who turned this whole ordeal around by making a divine correlation between the role of the slave and a servant of God. It makes me wonder how different the views on tattooing would have turned out had it not been for the never-ending influence of the Judeo-Christian tradition on the western world. Admittedly the Constantinian approach to tattoos being a desecration of the body and therefore banning them from being implemented on the faces of slaves seems more in line with the modern day idea of what the notion of tattooing is for Christians, but I still think it interesting that religious tattooing was the first form of non punishment related tattooing found within Persian, Greco-Roman societies.
Tattoo is one of the oldest forms of body modification. However, too caught up in the aesthetics of tattooing, I have never really wondered about the history of tattooing, especially with Western tattoos. According to Jane Caplan in the introduction, there is evidence that supports the pre-existing practice of tattooing but finding the origin of it in Europe is hard to pinpoint.
Chapter 2 and 3 felt very similar. Like how the Romans adopted much of what the Greeks’ culture. Similarly to how the Greeks tattooed prisoners with their crime, the Romans did the same. However this was not the only purpose of tattooing. There was a lot of intertwine between tattooing and religion and its other functions: mark of status, decoration, as well as, unknown functions within certain groups of people and cultures. Overall, the act of getting tattooed and carrying a tattoo was mostly negative.
It is interesting to see how far back the history of tattooing is but also to see the function that it served. One comparison that really caught my attention was “The Settling of the Manor of Tara”. The saints themselves were the book and thus their skin was the manuscript. And so the idea that when the saints died, the skin was collected and ‘stitched together’ like a manuscript. A little grotesque but I thought it was the most interesting part of this chapter.
For the Celtics, history was not properly documented through writing making it unknown if there is a connection between the symbols and the actual practice of tattooing.
Where did tattooing in the Western World originate? Chapter 4 asks of the origin of tattooing inside of England. It is possible it came from outside cultures, the indigenous people or even from someplace within England? But according to the reading because of unreliable documentation, it is hard to pinpoint it to a specific time or place.
I thought that magic being a part of the larger history of tattooing was truly something I wouldn’t have guessed. When the Church of England became unreliable to the people, they turned to magic. Magic was about the virtues in the things made by god and exploring the purer forms created by god. One belief they had was that every being was made with a virtue or multiple virtues from god. For example a cock, like the chicken, represented confidence. So to be more confident, one would take the the innards of the animal and keep it on the body to be connected and imbued with the confidence or virtue of the animal. Symbols were a large part of the magic. Since obtaining parts of an animal wasn’t reliant, the used symbols. Celestial symbols were believed to have power that would help change their fate in the earthly world and the after life. However these markings were mostly on cloth and didn’t leave permanent marks on their body. So, celestial magic wasn’t fully regarded as tattooing because of it didn’t fully penetrate the skin to leave a permanent mark. But it is also important because of the belief and power behind the symbolic markings.
Nobody really knows the origin of the tattoos but magic in England played a culturally significant role in symbolic markings and the meaning and belief behind the inked markings. Many modern people with tattoos use it in a similar way to empower themselves, imbed some virtues, and have all sorts of meaning to the the markings.