Daily Dialectic

From Maori Ta moko to tramp stamps, (ex-)girlfriend’s names and the good old southern cross, tattoos have a long and colourful history. Tattoos are a form of speaking without words, a presentation of ourselves to others. They can also be a marking of time, history, identity, ancestry, and membership of a community. Tattooing can be a rite of passage, an act of rebellion, or a way to take ownership of a body that you have struggled to claim as your own. Tattoos are also arguably a significant and unusual art form, both performative and visual, with multiple artists and an ever-changing exhibition space. And finally tattoos are often simple (yet disastrous) mistakes.

This talk will in part be a response to an article by Eduardo de la Fuente that appeared in The Conversation (https://theconversation.com/more-than-a-fashion-choice-the-everyday-aesthetics-of-tattooing-39798), which claimed that in today’s culture tattoos are primarily a fashion statement, ‘an individual act of consumption akin to other styling or decorative choices’, albeit one with ‘strong ritual and existential overtones’. I will argue that this is largely a misreading (or at least a gross generalisation) of the place of tattoos in many modern societies. I will also discuss what it is about tattoos that might be philosophically interesting, including ideas about performativity, identity, art and humour.