Overview
- Argues that only through inter-disciplinary approach can the phenomena of tattooing be understood
- Examines tattooing practices and literary examples through a multi-disciplinary and transcultural lens
- Offers a multifaceted examination of tattooing as artistic, literary, and philosophical phenomena
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body (PSFB)
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Table of contents (15 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Tattooing (as) Art
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Front Matter
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Transcultural Tattooing
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Front Matter
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Tattooing Literatures
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Front Matter
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Keywords
About this book
The essays collected in Tattooed Bodies draw on a range of theoretical paradigms and empirical knowledge to investigate tattoos, tattooing, and our complex relations with marks on skin. Engaging with diverse disciplinary perspectives in art history, continental philosophy, media studies, psychoanalysis, critical theory, literary studies, biopolitics, and cultural anthropology, the volume reflects the sheer diversity of meanings attributed to tattoos throughout history and across cultures. Essays explore conceptualizations of tattoos and tattooing in Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, Agamben, and Jean-Luc Nancy, while utilizing theoretical perspectives to interpret tattoos in literary works by Melville, Beckett, Kafka, Genet, and Jeff VanderMeer, among others. Tattooed Bodies prompts readers to explore a few significant questions: Are tattoos unique phenomena or an art medium in need of special theoretical exploration? If so, what conceptual paradigms and theories might best shape our understanding of tattoos and their complex ubiquity in world cultures and histories?
Reviews
- Danielle Meijer, DePaul University
"What is a tattoo? Associated in the past with criminals and degenerates, tattoos have become high fashion in the 21st century. In this collection, leading scholars speculate about the nature and implications of these bodily inscriptions. Are they social or antisocial? Conformist or rebellious? Decorative or disfiguring? Atavistic or futuristic? How do they relate to other scars, such as the navel as the mark of our maternal origin? By opening up these questions and many more, the essays in this volume show how the tattoo challenges the distinction between word and flesh, self and society, life and death.”-Maud Ellmann, University of Chicago
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
James Martell is Associate Professor of French at Lyon College, USA. He specializes in French literary theory, aesthetics, and philosophy.
Erik Larsen is Assistant Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester, USA. He writes and teaches about biopolitics, medicine and literature, and American culture.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Tattooed Bodies
Book Subtitle: Theorizing Body Inscription Across Disciplines and Cultures
Editors: James Martell, Erik Larsen
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86566-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-86565-8Published: 21 January 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-86568-9Published: 22 January 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-86566-5Published: 20 January 2022
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XVIII, 358
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 22 illustrations in colour
Topics: Popular Culture , Cultural Studies, Audio-Visual Culture, Arts