The Somatechnics of Bodily Inscription: Tattooing

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 individual's 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.