Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 10: 129141, 2009

Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN: 1524-0657 print=1940-9206 online
DOI: 10.1080/15240650902979210

The Somatechnics of Bodily Inscription: Tattooing

Nikki Sullivan, Ph.D.
Macquarie University
In the vast majority of accounts of tattooing, the tattooed body is conceived as the external expression of an inner self. From this conventional humanist understanding of the body=subject it follows
that the individuals character and=or intentions can be deciphered simply reading his or her skin.
Interestingly, these assumptions have informed the work of criminologists and psychologists
who have historically viewed tattooing as a sign of antisocial tendencies and also the work of
counterculturalists who are critical of the conclusions drawn by the former. In this paper, I critically
analyze these accounts, the assumptions that inform them, and the lived-effects they produce, in turn
deploying the notion of somatechnics to offer an alternative approach to bodily inscription.
One can be hypnotized by the splendour of these mobile canvasses . . . or one can . . . be shocked by
the bewildering strangeness of these decorations and the monstrous metamorphosis which they
represent [Grognard, 1994, p. 131].

This quote from Catherine Grognard nicely captures what I see as the two dominant ways in
which tattooed bodies are currently conceived, responded to, and=or constituted,1 that is, as
either splendorous or monstrous, cause for celebration or pathologization, something to be emulated or something to be problematized.2 But although these interpretations may appear to be
poles apart, both the notion of tattooing as a positive, even reclamatory,3 means of
self-expression and self-fashioning, and the representation of tattooing as a mutilatory practice
indicative of antisocial characteristics, are informed by and inform a shared conception of the
inscribed body as the external expression of an inner self. For example, psychiatrist Armando
Favazza (1996) describes the skin as a sort of message centre or billboard (p. 148). Taking
this assumption one step further, Grognard (1994) speaks fondly of tattooing as a kind of graffiti
for the soul: The very soul, she writes, can be read on the open page of the [tattooed] skin
(p. 15). Margot Mifflin, another advocate of nonmainstream body modification, shares
Grognards position, suggesting that tattooing is a way of cutting into nature to create a living,
breathing autobiography (Mifflin, 1997, p. 178). Ideas such as these are expounded with
regularity in both psychological and criminological studies of tattooing as well as in (positive)
1
Such responses, conceptions, and constructions are particular to contemporary Western cultures and may well vary
significantly from dominant constructions of tattooing particular to other cultural contexts and other historical epochs. It
is the former that is the focus of this paper.
2
For a detailed critique of psychiatric, criminological, and countercultural accounts of tattooing, see Sullivan (2001).
3
For a discussion of body modification as a means by which to reclaim ones body, see Pitts (2003).
Correspondence should be sent to Nikki Sullivan, Ph.D., Department of Media, Music and Cultural Studies, Faculty
of Arts, Macquarie University, North Ryde, NSW 2109, Australia. E-mail: nikki.sullivan@scmp.mq.edu.au

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personal narratives of body modification. For example, in a typically autobiographicalizing

move, Kiki, a 29-year-old art student who describes herself as nonconforming, nonmainstream, says, [I] had a really bizarre childhood . . . it was violent . . . I always fought back . . . I
I used my body to fight back through piercings, tattoos and all that (cited in Holland, 2004,
p. 105).
Indeed, in most celebratory (and=or reclamatory) accounts of this particular modificatory
technology, tattooing as a mode of self-expression and=or self-(trans)formation is conceived
as both political and liberatory. Daniel Wojcik, author of Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art, typifies
this tendency. He writes,
Pierced, scarred, and tattooed, the bodies of new tribalists become sites of symbolic control . . . at a
time in which the human body is increasingly vulnerable. . . . The body is a site of symbolic
resistance, a source of personal empowerment, and the basis for the creation of a sense of self-identity.
By . . . altering their bodies in symbolically powerful ways, both punks and neo-tribalists may
proclaim their discontent [and] challenge dominant ideologies [Wojcik, 1995, p. 36].

Likewise, Perry Farrell,4 a self-proclaimed modern primitive, ex-punk, and lead singer of Porno
for Pyros, describes his tattoos, piercings, and scars as signs of defiance [that] symbolize
both . . . estrangement from mainstream society and a triumph over dominant values and lifestyles that I find oppressive (cited in Wojcik, 1995, p. 33). Such resistance is often portrayed
in feminist terms in writings by women. Here tattooing is seen as providing one access point
for revolutionary aesthetics for women (Braunberger, 2000, p. 3), or, as Mifflin (1997) puts it,
Tattoos serve as . . . visual passkeys to the psyches of women who are rewriting accepted
notions of feminine beauty and self-expression (p. 9). The assumption, then, is that tattooed
bodies, unlike the bodies of those who have undergone mainstream procedures (most
particularly those associated with cosmetic surgery),5 write back to the larger culture,
subverting proscribed physicality (rather than reproducing gendered beauty norms), and
broadening our sense of body aesthetics with monster beauty (Braunberger, 2000, p. 19).
However, although monstrosityas a counterhegemonic mode of bodily-beingmay
be a cause celebre for some, it is the stuff of nightmares for others. In much psychiatric and criminological work,6 for example, the monstrous body of the tattooed other is read, at least implicitly, as a sign of the subjects deviance. As criminologist Adolf Loos put it just over a century
ago, Those who are tattooed but are not imprisoned are latent criminals. . . . If a tattooed person
dies at liberty, it is only that he died a few years before he committed a murder (1908, p. 100).
That such constructions are not simply a thing of the past is evidenced by the existence of
4
Farrell changed his name to Perry Farrell, which is a play on the word peripheral, in his punk-identified period, in
order to signify his sense of social marginality and his fascination with cultural boundaries. At the same time the name
evokes, according to Wojcik (1995), the primitive, the feral, with which Farrell later came to associate. In other words,
Farrells consciously chosen name is read as the expression of his true self.
5
It is interesting that rather than destabilizing dominant ontologies, much countercultural work on body modification
by women simply reverses commonly held assumptions about proper and improper bodies and bodily practices. For a
critique of this tendency, see Sullivan (2006).
6
See, for example, Baden (1973); Bennahum (1971); Copes and Forsyth (1993); Ferguson-Rayport, Griffith, and
Strauss (1955); Goldstein (1979); Hamburger (1966); Lander and Kohn (1943); Parry (1934); Post (1968); and Verberne
(1969).

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numerous studies that continue to draw qualitatively similar conclusions. For example, in an
article entitled The Tattooed Man, Yamamoto, Seeman, and Lester (1963)7 conclude that
the tattooed man shows definite personality deviations from his contemporaries. . . . He is more
likely to be immature and impulsive, to be psychopathic, to aspire to be more masculine than
his fellow patients, to have a criminal record, and to be something of a liability to society
(p. 367). Similarly, Gittleson, Wallen, and Dawson-Butterworths (1969) study of 67 psychiatric
patients posits a connection between tattoos and personality disorder, concluding that the
more marked a body is, the more deviant the subject is likely to be.
Not only does the assumption that tattooing is associated with various forms of criminal
and=or pathological behavior continue to inform psychiatric accounts of body modification, at
the most fundamental level, I argue, it shapes the very form such research takes. For example,
the question of whether there is a link between substance abuse and body modification in
adolescents (Brooks et al., 2003) always already presupposes that tattooing, like drug use, is,
without question, a problematic risk behavior that requires monitoring, assessment, and so on.8
Unsurprisingly, this is pretty much what Brooks and her fellow researchers conclude. However,
the thesis proposed by the authorsthat there is a link between body modification and substance
abuseis undermined by the blind spots necessitated by the methodology employed and the
assumptions associated with it (and reproduced by it). For example, although the participants
in Brooks et al.s study were not, as is the case in most studies, committed to a psychiatric institution or incarcerated in prison or adolescent detention centers, participants were referred by
healthcare providers working in an adolescent clinic. Thus the sample was not random, nor,
as the authors note, was it significantly diverse. What, from my perspective as a critical theorist,
is problematic about the study (and others like it), is its failure to critically interrogate the
assumptions that inform the research at the most fundamental level. For example, the authors
conflate substance use with substance abuse (as exemplified in the claim that substance
use=abuse is a risk behavior [p. 49]), never asking why some substances are considered risky
whereas others arent; what the terms use and abuse mean; where the line between them should
(or could) be drawn, how, by whom, on what basis, and to what ends. In a similarly problematic
way, the authors state that compared with those without tattoos, young people with tattoos rate
themselves as more adventurous, creative, artistic, individualistic, and risky (p. 48) but fail to
consider whether or not an interviewer can or should simply take at face value the statements
made by respondents. They thus fail to consider what social factors may lead tattooed adolescents to conceive themselves in this way, to explore what the investment might be (particularly
for adolescents) in conceiving oneself as more individualistic, or more creative, or more risky,
than ones peers. In short, the researchers fail to recognize and thus to articulate the complex,
contradictory, and contextually specific ways in which identity and difference are continually
(re)negotiated in and through relations with others and with a world. In turn, they fail to
recognize the role that research (and its discipline-specific assumptions, methodologies, and
forms of knowledge production) plays in the somatechnologies of bodily inscription.

Yamamoto et al. (1963) undertook a study of 433 male patients at the Oklahoma City Veterans Administration
Hospital.
8
See also Braithwaite et al. (2001); Caplan, Komaromi, and Rhodes (1996); Claes, Vandereycken, and Vertommen
(2005); Colman (2001); Jessor (1991); Koch et al. (2005); Roberts and Ryan (2001); Roberts, Auinger, and Ryan (2002).

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One of the most graphic (and rigorous) examples of the imperative to classify, know, and thus
control the (body of the) marked other is Gerald Grumets (1983) account of dermal diagnosis. Grumets thesis is predicated upon two long-held interrelated assumptions: first, that the
human flesh has proven itself a suitable canvas on which to portray psychologically relevant
themes (p. 482) and second, that tattoos are a form of non-verbal communication that can
often be deciphered (p. 489). Such assumptions inform and are supported by the fact that
Grumet has, in and through the complex process of dermal diagnosis, (allegedly) come to know
the truth about tattoos and the subjects whom they adorn. Tattoos, argues Grumet, are a prosthetic attempt by low-barrier types to strengthen [their ego] definition and thereby
become able to function in a more independent and realistic manner (pp. 482483), in short,
to become high-barrier types or low-risk types. Although Grumets thesis is, in my opinion,
far from convincing, his work is nevertheless interesting, first, because it makes explicit the
ontological assumptions that inform almost all contemporary accounts of tattooed bodies (both
pro and anti), and second, because it exemplifies a trend toward increasingly sophisticated
modes of what Foucault refers to as governmentality: in this case, classificatory methods for
rendering transparent the body, the subjectivity, of the other, and, in turn, the nature of
manmethods that in fact produce the individuals they claim to simply describe.
In his articulation of dermal diagnosis as a clinical method, Grumet (1983) argues that the
number, sequence, location, quality, and content of tattoos provide clues as to the subjects
character and the evolution of character development (p. 490). Moreover, the subjects
emotional reaction to his or her tattoo(s)as earlier efforts to galvanize an identity and
consequently symbolize the self (p. 489)serves as an indication of current self-esteem:
embarrassment, for example, is (allegedly) indicative of the subjects subsequent psychological
maturation. In order to support his thesis, Grumet discusses an individual whose knuckles are
adorned with jailhouse letters H-A-T-E. As Grumet sees it, the location, quality, content,
and mode of acquisition of this particular tattoo tells of a delinquent past and an antisocial temperament. However, the subject concerned informs Grumet that for him, these letters now signify happiness all through eternity. This leads Grumet to acknowledge that the [alleged]
objective meaning of the tattoo does not [always] coincide with the private meaning for its
bearer (pp. 490491), but despite this, he fails to recognize, or at least to articulate, the ways
in which this disjunction undermines his overall thesis. Although in as much as the meaning of
this tattoo has changed for its bearer, it could be said to support Grumets claim that tattoos can
provide a pictorial history of character development, at the same time, this shift in meaning
(although the graphic itself remains the same) suggests that tattoos neither contain nor represent
a fixed referential reality, or, to put it another way, the relation between signifier and signified is
arbitrary and unstable. It demonstrates too that the tattoo is not simply reducible to a symbolic
representation of the truth of the subject but rather is inseparable from the subject and can be
understood as a process (rather than an object) in and through which the ambiguous and
open-ended character of identity and of meaning is constantly (re)negotiated through relations
with others and with a world. Further, the disjunction that Grumet mentions between the objective meaning of the tattoo and the private meaning for its bearer (pp. 490491) points to a
problem inherent in the process of interpretation and evaluation that informs not only medical
discourse but also social relations more generally. In short, there is no objective meaning:
the tattoo will generate different meanings depending on a range of factors including the embodied history of the subject who interprets, the relationship between him or her and the tattooed

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person, the other ways in which the tattooed body is marked (e.g., in terms of gender, race, class,
etc.), the context in which such an encounter takes place, and so on.
In each of the studies mentioned briefly earlier, tattoos function as a source of diagnostic
information, a somatic sign of deviance decipherable by those with expertise in scientific or
psychiatric research methods. And, as Grumets (1983) method of dermal diagnosis in particular
makes clear, in the process of this moral and somatic surveillance, the soul of the deviant is
both exteriorized to the bodys surface and annexed to its various recesses where only men of
science can peer (Terry and Urla, 1995, p. 11). Hence, I argue, the soul, the truth, is less
something intrinsic that is simply uncovered by the dermal diagnostician than a product, a (truth)
effect, as Foucault would no doubt put it, of the somatechnics of bodily inscription. As Judith
Butler (2005) suggests in her account of how bodies come to matter, of materialization as a
biodiscursive political process, the self=soul posited as prior to construction will, by virtue
of being posited, become the effect of that very positing, the constructed of construction
(p. 64). In keeping with Butlers position is Foucaults (1979) conception of the soul as the
effect and instrument of a political anatomy . . . the prison of the body (p. 30), a claim that,
I suggest, provides a means of critically engaging with the assumption that the soul can be read
on the open page of the tattooed skin without suggesting that such a claim is nonsensical or
simply erroneous. For, as Foucault (1979) says,
It would be wrong to say that the soul is an illusion, or an ideological effect. On the contrary, it
exists, it has a reality, it is produced permanently around, on, within the body by the functioning
of a [disciplinary] power. . . . This real, non corporal [sic] soul is not a substance; it is the element
in which are articulated the effects of a certain type of power and the reference of a certain type
of knowledge, the machinery by which power relations give rise to a possible corpus of knowledge,
and knowledge extends and reinforces the effects of this power [p. 29].

But despite the claims made by Foucault, Butler, and others, the notion of the depth-body as
an ontological fact remains firmly entrenched in the dominant conception of the tattooed body
that informs the work of both psychiatrists and criminologists on the one hand and counterculturalists on the other. Associated with this conception of the body-subject is not only a distinction between mind and body, inside and outside, but also a fundamental separation of self and
other. This model and the assumptions on which it is founded almost inevitably engender a
failure on the part of the dermal diagnostician to perceive the ways in which his or her own subject position is reaffirmed (as normal, as arbiter of truth) in and through his or her relation
with the tattooed (pathological) other, that is, the ways in which his or her own bodily being
marks and is marked, inscribes and is inscribed. And, in a circular sort of logic, this failure
further reinforces the notion of the subject as autonomous and of subjectivity as innate rather
than as an ongoing effect of intercorporeal relations. Along with an indexical relation between
tattooed bodies and those who supposedly inhabit them, then, what is also maintained (and thus
reaffirmed) is a dichotomous understanding of identity and difference that functions solely in
terms of complementarity and=or opposition.9
9
Coextensive with this liberal humanist model of subjectivity and social relations is a mimetic theory of textuality that
reaffirms the traditional distinction between reality and representation, a distinction that postmodern theorists have challenged, arguing that in fact representation constructs reality rather than simply reflecting it. See, for example, Hall (1997).

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Of course, the pathologization of tattooed bodies is not confined to criminology and

psychology. Feminist scholar Sheila Jeffreys considers tattooing (along with piercing, transsexual surgery, cosmetic surgery, foot-binding, corsetry, sadomasochism, scarification, anorexia
and bulimia, substance abuse, the amputation of digits, penilectomies, and cutting) an example
of self-mutilation,10 or, when performed by others, self-mutilation by proxy.11 Although
Jeffreys (2000) recognizes that the listed practices are hugely diverse, she argues that we should
be aware of the similar origins of all of these practices (p. 410): that is, patriarchal abuse. She
writes,
Some of the enthusiasm for piercing in lesbians, gay men, and heterosexual women arises from the
experience of child sexual abuse. Self-mutilation in the form of stubbing out cigarettes on the body,
arm slashing and even garrotting are forms of self-injury that abuse non-survivors do sometimes
employ. . . . Sadomasochism and the current fashionability of piercing and tattooing provide an
apparently acceptable form for such attacks on the abused body. Young women and men are walking
about showing us the effects of the abuse that they have tried to turn into a badge of pride, a savage
embrace of the most grave attacks they can make on their bodies [Jeffreys, 1994, p. 21].12

Jeffreys (2000) thesis is that self-mutilatory practices such as tattooing are employed by
women, gays and lesbians, disabled people, and those who have been subjected to childhood
sexual abuse as a result of their occupation of a despised social status under male dominance
(p. 410). In other words, tattooed subjects (read self-mutilators) have, according to this
particular theory, internalized patriarchal abuse and (unwittingly) turned it on themselves. Thus
tattoos, like piercings, scars, brands, and so on, are constituted in and through Jeffreys thesis, as
they are in the psychological accounts discussed previously, as a form of corporeal confession,
an expression of the truth of the subject and his or her traumatic history. And this truth that
Jeffreys perceives writ large on the bodies of those with tattoos, scars, piercings, brands, and so
on, negates the kinds of claims about resistance, reclamation, self-(trans)formation, the assertion
of agency, the challenging of dominant ideologies, and so on, made by (pro) body modifiers
such as Farrell, Wojcik, Mifflin, and Braunberger. In other words, the subjugated knowledges
of those who argue, for example, that the physical experiences (most often of pain) associated
with tattooing, branding, scarification, and so on, can engender self-awareness, enlightenment,
or a state of grace,13 is constituted as nothing more than what psychologist Dorothy Rowe
refers to as sickening tosh (cited in Pitts, 1999, p. 299).
In an insightful discussion of mutilation discourse and the ways in which it is deployed in
the delegitimization and=or pathologization of nonmainstream body modification and those
who participate in it, Victoria Pitts critiques the conflation of particular modificatory practices
10

For a critique of normative accounts of self-mutilation, see Sullivan (2002).

See Jeffreys (2005). In her discussion of self-mutilation by proxy, Jeffreys argues that the client base of the
mutilation industry is comprised of hundreds of thousands of troubled young people in western cultures who self-mutilate
on a regular basis (p. 409) and that this industry further legitimates mutilation by alleviating the feelings of guilt and
approbation associated with self-mutilation in private.
12
For a critique of this sort of logic as it has been applied to (reading) the body of Lolo Ferrari, the French porn star,
queen of Eurotrash, and largest-breasted woman in the world, who in died in 2000 at the age of 37, see Sullivan (2007).
13
See, for example, Musafar (1996).
11

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with self-mutilation and thus with pathology. Pitts begins by interrogating the construction, in
media accounts of body modification, of the figure of the claims maker and his or her antithesis, the discredited person. In and through mutilation discourse, suggests Pitts, mental health
practitioners are positioned or (re)inscribed as experts whose authority resides in their professional qualifications, their use of authoritative discourse, and their capacity to access and
expound readable truths. More often than not, claims Pitts, the truth that is constructed
in and through mutilation discourse is that people who participate in nonmainstream or
extreme modificatory practices are self-mutilators who are driven by irrational and uncontrollable psychological impulses. Hence claims of agency such as those made by Wojcik (1995) are
conceived=constructed as attempts to rationalize and thus disavow aberrant behavior and the
psychopathology to which it is wedded. Before I go on to critique the polemics of mutilation
discourse I want to turn to a phenomenon known as straightedge tattooing because the way
in which this is conceived by those involved in its practice appears to explicitly challenge the
notion of the body modifier as an unstable or irrational person driven by a pathological compulsion to self-mutilate.
Straightedge is both a philosophy and an identity that extols the virtues of self-restraint, physical purity, personal responsibility, and social awareness (Atkinson, 2003, p. 198), and straightedge tattooing is conceived as a signifying practice employed by those who see themselves as
outsiders dedicated to resisting the self-injurious hedonistic excesses they identify with
late-modern consumer-driven lifestyles. The austere ascetic lifestyle adopted by straightedgers
and iconized on their bodies in the form of tattoos such as X, XXX, 100% pure, rise
above the rest, and poison free is perhaps redolent of what, in The Use of Pleasure, Foucault
(1987) refers to as an aesthetics of existence.14 Here Foucault discusses the ways in which
the problematization of aphrodisia (most particularly sexual behaviors and pleasures but also
pleasures of the flesh more generally), and the technologies of self-(trans)formation, were undertaken by the citizens of Ancient Greece in relation to ethic-oriented moralities.. According to
Foucault, unlike code-oriented moralities that prescribe universal moral laws applicable to all,
the focus of ethic-oriented moralities is on the forms of relations with the self, on the methods
and techniques by which [the individual] works them out, on the exercises by which he [sic]
makes of himself an object to be known, and on the practices that enable him to transform
his own mode of being (Foucault, 1987, p. 30). To cut a very long story short, ethical
self-(trans)formation in this particular context involves the active (visible) exercise of moderation, restraint, and self-mastery in the (critical) use of pleasure and the (trans)formation of the
self. Here, self-mastery, and the ascetic ideals with which it is associated, is constituted as the
virile practice of freedom, of self-(trans)formation, which marks the ethical subject not only
as different from others and=or the dominant culture but more important, as (morally) superior,
as subject.
Like the Ancient Greek citizen whose performative ethics holds out for Foucault the
possibility of a nonhermeneutic model of the self, and of social relations, straightedgers could
be said to practice a form of ethical self-(trans)formation founded on rational self-mastery: a
practice that inscribes the body both visibly (in the form of tattoos) and in more insidious but
nevertheless fundamental ways (at the level of the materialization of being). In and through
the (soma)technologies of self-(trans)formation, the subject in=of straightedge comes to matter,
14

For a detailed engagement of Foucaults account of the aesthetics of existence, see Sullivan (2001).

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as does his nemesis, the impure other, the nonsubject, the nation of zombies who have failed
to rise above the rest.15 Interestingly, then, far from signifying loss of control and excessive
pathological tendencies, the tattooed body of the straightedger (allegedly) tells a significantly
different, or more precisely, antithetical, story. However, although in the eyes of the straightedger this may be so, Jeffreys, I imagine, would be reluctant to agree, as would the psychologists
and criminologists mentioned in this paper. This clash of opinion, which, as youll remember,
Grumet (1983) refers to as a disjunction between the objective meaning of the tattoo and
the private meaning for its bearer (pp. 490491), is worth paying attention to because it tells
us something about the difficulty of attempting to (re)inscribe a practice or an identity (in this
case the subject in=of tattooing) in ways that ignore, or are at odds with, its discursive history.
What I mean by this is that insofar as tattooing has historically been denigrated in the mainstream imaginary, at least in the West (it has been associated with crime, mental instability,
the social underbelly, the use of needles, etc.), then deploying the practice in order to
signify civilized asceticism and rational self-mastery seems like a contradiction in terms.16 This
contradiction, then, cannot simply be overcome by ignoring or attempting to bypass the ways
in which meaning and identity is intertextually affected in relation to sedimented contextually
specific knowledges and=or technologies that operate (and are reproduced), for the most part,
at a somatic level. This notion of knowledge as materialized in and through the somatechnologies of everyday liferather than being the content of a mind that one intentionally deploys as
one choosesis further illustrated by the seemingly contradictory role of body modification in
the straightedge account of ethical self-(trans)formation.
According to Atkinsons (2003) study, which took place in a Canadian context, straightedgers
are predominantly well educated, young, White, urban, middle class, and heterosexual
(pp. 205206). Consequently, Atkinson argues, Canadian straightedgers tend to have embodied
a middle-class ascetic (p. 207). In other words, this asceticthat is, the bodily technique(s) of
ethical self-(trans)formation that the straightedger assumesare not as freely and consciously
chosen as they may appear. Let me explain. Atkinson argues that straightedgers differ from
traditionally working-class subcultural groups such as punks, skinheads, riot grrls, and
hip-hoppers in that the formers desire to disaffiliate with the profane cultural mainstream
is not focussed on the social inequalities generated by cultural marginalization or exploitation
(p. 215). In other words, in and through the materialization of specific bodily histories,
knowledges, and (soma)technologies, straightedgers could be said to (perhaps inadvertently)
prioritize self-transformation over social transformation or to at least to focus on the individual
as the vehicle for social change. This is not to imply that straightedgers are not interested in
getting their message of bodily purity and restraint across to others but rather to suggest that
the form their resistance takesthat is, individualized body projectsis symptomatic of (and
unquestioningly reproduces) a very specific epistemology (liberal individualism) in which the
body is (re)inscribed as the (com)modified stuff of (individual) self-actualization. As Victoria
Pitts (2003) puts it, Self-invention is an ideology that informs body projects as much as it is
15
According to Atkinson (2003), these phrases or symbols of indictment can sometimes be found tattooed on the
bodies of hardcore straightedgers (p. 213).
16
Atkinson (2003) also notes this contradiction (p. 207) but nevertheless concludes that the Straightedge exploration
of tattooing as a vehicle for civilizing resistance . . . disrupts [the] neatly organized theoretical picture offered in
psychological and sociological accounts of tattooing (p. 216).

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a practice that constitutes them (p. 34). Body projects do not, she continues, quoting Elizabeth
Grosz, invent the self as a matter of personal choice. Body projects may appear to be productions of the self, but they are historically located in time and place and provide messages that
can be read only within a [specific] system of organization and meaning (p. 34). In other
words, rather than expressing the truth of the straightedge subject (as is claimed by straightedgers) or signifying his or her mental instability (as Jeffreys, Grumet, etc., would argue),
straightedge tattooing tells of the complex, contradictory, and shifting ways in which meaning,
identity, and difference are continuously (re)negotiated at the level of the (inter)corporeal, the
somatechnical. But rather than testifying to the impossibility of fixing meaning, identity, and
difference and recognizing the potentially productive effects of such an impossibility, more often
than not, accounts of tattooing (whether they be pro or anti) unquestioningly embrace the Logic
of the Same, constructing the (tattooed or unmarked, excessive or rational) other as a
discredited person (Pitts, 1999, p. 300) whose subjugated knowledges17 are thus further
subjugated.
Foucault (2004) uses the term subjugated knowledges in two different but connected
senses that I think are pertinent here. For Foucault, the term refers first to both local knowledges
that have been disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: nave knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below the
required level of erudition or scientificity (Foucault, 2004, p. 7) and, second to blocks of
historical knowledges that were present in . . . functional and systemic ensembles, but which
were masked (p. 7). As Foucault sees it, critique, as a tool of scholarship, is able to reveal
the existence (p. 7) of masked knowledgesof what I want to think of as somatechnologies
integral to particular systemic ensembles, in this case, mutilation discourse (in its various forms,
i.e., psychiatric, feminist, etc.) and=or the discourse(s) of self-(trans)formation. Moreover, in
revealing these somatechnologies, critique makes possible the reappearance of disqualified
knowledges and of the ontological struggles specific to a genealogy of the somatechnics of
bodily inscription.
Let me illustrate thisand expand Pittss thesisby turning to Foucaults (1997a) critique of
polemics as outlined in an interview with Paul Rabinow entitled Polemics, Politics, and
Problematizations. Here Foucault discusses what he regards as the differences between
polemics and problematization as modes of investigation concerned with the search for truth
and the relation to the other. According to Foucault, the polemicist
proceeds encased in privileges that he [sic] possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On
principle, he possess rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking;
the person he confronts is not a partner in the search for truth but an adversary, an enemy who is
wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. For [the polemicist], then,
the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak, but of abolishing him, as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue. . . . [The polemicists] final objective will be not

17
Foucault (2004) uses this term, in two different but connected senses, to refer to both local knowledges that have
been disqualified as nonconceptual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: nave knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity (p. 7) and to
blocks of historical knowledges that were present in . . . functional and systemic ensembles, but which were masked
(p. 7). He goes on to suggest that in case of the latter, critique was able to reveal their existence (p. 7).

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to come as close as possible to a difficult truth, but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he has
been manifestly upholding from the beginning [Foucault, 1997a, p. 112].

What this description makes clear is that the polemicists practice does not constitute (or, one
could say, that it attempts to negate) what Rosalyn Diprose refers to as corporeal generosity,18
that is, an openness to the other and the experiences, challenges, and indeterminable knowledges
that the other necessarily brings to any and every encounter. Indeed, for the polemicist whose
being epitomizes the Logic of the Same integral to liberal humanism, preemptive strikes seem
like the only reasonable response to difference. And this waging of warof a war against
alterity that must be won, seemingly, at all costsis infinitely justifiable because it is undertaken
in order to determine what Foucault (1997a) describes as the intangible point of dogma, the
fundamental and necessary principle [the truth, if you like] that the adversary has neglected,
ignored, transgressed (p. 112). One of the most disturbing things about the ontology of
war19 that informs the polemical mode of investigation Foucault describes here (and which
we find in all of the accounts of tattooingboth pro and antidiscussed thus far) is its
sterilizing effects (Foucault, 1997a, p. 113): the fact that this somatechnological practice does
violence to the other and to difference and closes down (rather than opening up) channels of
investigation. It falls back continually on the staunchly held assumptions, the same old stories,
that have informed the polemicists attack on the other from its inception and which have served,
and continue to serve, to justify the polemicists cause, his or her modus operandi, and of course,
his or her very being. What I suggest is that both the pathologizing and the celebratory accounts
of tattooing Ive mentioned in this paper are polemical not least because they do not constitute a
work of reciprocal education (Foucault, 1997a, p. 111) but rather consist of the processing
of a suspect: for example, the dermal diagnostician collects the proofs of [the tattooed
subjects] guilt, designates the infraction[s] [s]he has committed, pronounces the verdict and
sentences him [or her] (Foucault, 1997a, p. 112), whereas pro bodmod countercultural feminists do likewise to the normalized bodies of other women.
As an alternative to polemics that claims to be a methodical examination in order to reject
all possible solutions except for the one valid one (Foucault, 1997a, p. 114), Foucault formulates what we might think of as a sort of ethical problematization. This critical approach, he
argues in What Is Enlightenment?, should
be conceived as an attitude, an ethos [italics added], a philosophical life in which the critique of what
we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them [Foucault, 1997b, p. 319].

Rather than making a homogenizing judgment, and pursuing it relentlessly to the detriment of
others and of difference, problematization as an ethos, a way of being, constitutes a critical
attitude toward the formulation of provisional and partial knowledges that are culturally and
18

See Diprose (2002).

This is a term Emmanuel Levinas uses to describe both modes and theories of being that at best disavow alterity in
and through the thematization of the other and at worst result in literal genocide. See, for example, the Preface in Levinas
(1979).
19

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historically specific, in process, and acknowledged as such. Thus unlike polemics, problematization as an ethics of intercorporeality, of heterogeneity, of generosity, does not foreclose, in
advance, an openness to the other and the experiences, challenges, and indeterminable subjugated knowledges that the other brings to any and every encounter. Problematization in this
sense perverts the ontology of war insofar as it unmasks the knowledges present in pathologizing
systemic ensembles (such as those employed by Jeffreys, Grummet, Wojcik, etc.), questions the
mystical foundation of authority20 (Derrida, 1992, p. 22) that justifies such polemical undertakings, and reactivates local knowledges (Foucault, 2004, p. 10). To put it more simply, genealogya term Foucault also uses to refer to a sort of deconstructive mode of critiqueis an
attempt to desubjugate historical knowledges . . . to enable them to oppose and struggle against
the coercion of a unitary, formal, and scientific theoretical discourse (Foucault, 2004, p. 10).
But let me make it perfectly clear that this insurrection of knowledges . . . against the centralizing power-effects that are bound up with the institutionalization and workings (Foucault, 2004,
p. 9) of the Logic of the Same inherent in the accounts of tattooed bodies discussed in this paper
leads not to liberation but rather engenders (at least potentially) an ethics of alterity in and
through which the inscribed body can be (re)conceived as what Bill Readings (1991) describes
as the site of an aporetic clash of incommensurable languages, a site that has the performative
effect of provoking further discussion (p. 37). And of course, as my analysis of the somatechnics of bodily inscription shows, despite (what we perceive as) appearances, it is not only the
inked body that is inscribed.
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AUTHOR BIO
Nikki Sullivan is Associate Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies and Director of the
Somatechnics Research Centre at Macquarie University. She is the author of Tattooed Bodies:
Subjectivity, Textuality, Ethics and Pleasure (Praeger, 2001) and A Critical Introduction to
Queer Theory (Edinburgh University Press, 2003); Coeditor (with Samantha Murray) of
Somatechnics: Queering the Technologisation of Bodies (Ashgate, 2009); and author of a large
number of articles on body modification.