A few weeks ago I was sitting in on a professor's 'Disability Lit.' class. She utterred the phrase; "Body as text." The phrase, in this setting, referred directly to a disabled person and how a person's body could literally be read. Even though that particular phrase was a direct reference to a disabled body I started to think of other instances in which the body could be seen as text. I thought of tattooing as body text, and the possibility of seeing the tattooed as walking literature. With the rising popularity of tattooing, along with other forms of body art, the tattooed body has become a platform on which messages can be read. Body art, I argue (and hope), is slowly becoming a post-modern literature genre and basis for literary study. What, exactly, is literature? That is an age-old question asked in every literature class I have ever taken. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what constitutes literature, and those ideas are constantly changing. So someone is bound to buy the argument of tattooing as a new form of literature. I often wonder why Hemingway is so often considered great literature and Kerouac is so readily cast aside by most literature professors. Perhaps this differentiation has something to do with certain social deviations so prevalent in Kerouac's work -- the use of drugs, the portrayal of premiscuous sex, homosexuality, and so on. If deviation is a sound case for not studying certain texts as literature, then perhaps that is why the argument for body as text is such a precarious literary platform. The human physical body, aside from body art, is full of deviations, and tattooing is yet another deviation. Body art is seen by the social mainstream as highly deviant, a taboo and it's difficult for people to accept deviance in any form. We have to let go of classically accepted literary study to accept the body as text. But, isn't discovering new forms of literature the ultimate goal of literary study? At least, I argue, it is in this post-modern age of critical study. New schools of criticism are continually popping up. My hope is to incorporate the body into literary critical study. Cordell Terrien argues for the universality of the body art phenomena in his essay "Body Adornment"; "Body adornment and decoration is a cultural universal. All cultures everywhere have attempted to change their body in an attempt to fulfill their cultural construct of beauty, religious or social obligations" (1). Isn't conventional text used by most to fill the same constructs? I now ask; 'What is the body?' Is the body -- as Buddhists and Hindus believe -- simply a material vessel which houses the real us? Or is the body, alone, sacred in itself? It is against the Jewish faith to have any body art in which case tattooing bars one from rightfully being buried in a Jewish cemetary. Within many other cultures and religions bodily ornamentation heightens one's social standing. Members of the Maori tribe of New Zealand are more socialy revered if they are heavily tattooed. In India Hindus take a regular pilgrimage in which male members practice sacred body scarification rituals, called Kavadi, in order to pay religious homage. In many non-western cultures body art (scarification, tattooing, and piercing) is seen as an important, sometimes sacred, statement. Non-western people, because of the importance of body art, more readily regard the body as text. The correlation between body art and religion is important. Religiosity is the main reason that the modified body may be seen as text. Buddhist monks are tattooed for protection, members of the Masai African tribe are scarred with animal shapes to bring themselves closer to the animal world, and the Maori also have tattoos to ward off evil spirits -- to name a few examles of the correlation. The religiosity of body art gives rise to bodily textuality in that religious symbols upon the body are meant to be read. Ancient body art practices have paved the way for the 'modern primitive', thus allowing one to view the modern body as text. I quote from Anthony Synnot's The Body Social to further the previous argument;
The body has been regarded as a tomb of the soul, a temple, a machine, and the self, and much more; and it has also been treated accordingly. Bodies may be caressed or indeed killed, they may be loved or hated, and thought beautiful or ugly, sacred or profane. Ideas about what the body is, what it means, its moral value and the values of its constituent parts, the limits of the body, its social utility and symbolic value, in sum, how the body is defined both physically and socially, vary widely from person to person, and have changed dramatically over time. The one word, body, may therefore signify very different realities and perceptions of reality (7).With the popularization of tattooing in today's culture the 'modern primitive', I argue, has become a new form of literature. The modern primitive as literature, or seeing the body as text, seems a radical idea. One is used to the notion of conventional literature as being words contained on a page by the likes of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Elizabeth Grosz in her essay "Iscriptions and Body Maps: Representations and the Corporeal", offers a sound argument for viewing the modern human body as text;
The body has figured in many recent texts as a writing surface on which messages can be inscribed. The metaphorics of body-writing poses the body, [etc.] as corporeal surfaces on which engraving inscription or 'graffiti' are etched. The metaphor of the textualized body affirms the body as a page or material surface on which messages may be inscribed (236).With the help of Grosz's argument I hope to break the conventional notions of what literature is or should be. Richard Hargrove, in his dissertion abstract, argues for the shift from classical literature studies to a more modern or post-modern approach to literary theory; "Traditional explanations for the movement of artifacts between cultures have relied on theory drawn from the diffusion of innovations literature" (DAI). Grosz's argument is ultimately built upon a more feminist foundation, but I think her argument for the social importance of body inscription can (and does) cross gender lines. A woman's body -- apart from tattoos -- is left to be read by society. This idea of reading the body, however, goes beyond the female body for me. Society reads my body, aside from my own body art, because of my disability. Society is very dependant on physical appearance, and body art takes this dependance to a whole new level. Through body art the body becomes a text which society can read; this reading, in general, is sexually non-spacific.
The subject [body] is named by being tagged or branded on its surface, creating a particular kind of 'depth-body' or interiority, a psychic layer the subject identifies as its (disembodied) core. Subjects thus produced are not simply the imposed results of alien, coercive forces; the body is internally lived, experienced and acted by the subject and social collectivity. Messages encoded upon the body can be 'read' only within a social system of organisation and meaning. They mark the subject by, and as, a series of signs within the collectivity of other signs, signs which bear the marks of a particular social law or organisation... (Grosz 238).Various authors throughout modern literature have used tattooing as a thematic basis for some of their writing. Ray Bradbury, in The Illustrated Man, developed a tattooed central character whose tattoos tell each story in the novel. The illustrations contained within each tattoo move about the character's skin to visually tell each short story contained within the novel. "So people fire me when my pictures move. They don't like it when violent things happen in my Illustrations. Each Illustration is a little story. If you watch them, in a few minutes they tell you a tale" (Bradbury 3). In Franz Kafka's In the Penal Colony tattoos are used to inscribe a prisoner's misdeeds upon his flesh. The prisoner's flesh is left for everyone to read -- his physical body becomes an open book. " 'This man for example' -- the officer indicated the man -- 'will have inscribed on his body: 'Honor thy superiors!' " (Kafka 130). To further my argument, I intend to look at two pieces of conventional literature, Bradbury's The Illustrated Man and Kafka's In the Penal Colony, which use tattoos as a thematic basis for each story. Within both Kafka's and Bradbury's texts tattooing is used, much like conventional text, to convey meaning on one level or another. The modern primitive, clad in his or her tattoo finery tells a story with each tattooed illustration. With the growing influence of and interest in post-modern theory the idea of what, exactly, constitutes conventional literature has become obscured. For hundreds of years conventional literature was contained on the printed page. As we enter the twenty-first century, however, the idea of the body as text becomes much more plausable. Grosz looks at Niezsche to further her argument that body inscription is sometimes used to display guilt or suspicion, as in In the Penal Colony, upon the individual. "For Nietzsche, civilisation instills its basic requirements by branding or tattooing the law on bodies through a mnemonics of pain" (239). Franz Kafka uses this "mnemonics of pain" as a thematic basis for his short story, "In the Penal Colony." Within the story the prisoners are forcibly tattooed with there misdeeds. A machine is used to inscribe the misdeed upon the prisoner's naked torso. The pain from the forced inscription is excruciating; the prisoner is put to death immediately following the inscription. Civilians are invited to watch the inscription, and read the prisoners guilt upon his body. The prisoner's body transforms into a definate text for everyone to read.
The condemned man is laid here on the bed -- you see, first I want to explain the apparatus and then start it up, that way you'll be able to follow it better... -- well, so here is the bed, as I said before. It's completely covered with a layer of cotton wool, you'll find out what that's for later. The condemned man is laid facedown on the cotton wool, naked of course; here are straps for the hands, the feet, and here for the neck, in order to hold him down. So, as I was saying, here at the head of the bed, where the condemned man is at first laid facedown, is the little felt gag that can be adjusted easily to fit straight into the man's mouth (Kafka 128).Here a character explains the inscription machine, and its intricacies, to an observer. These prisoners' bodies are forced into textuality, rather than chosen to be inscribed. "This man, for example -- the officer indicated the man -- will have inscribed on his body: 'Honor thy superiors!' " (Kafka 130).Many of us have had the freedom to consciously choose our inscriptions. Well, most of the inscriptions; we don't choose scars from a skinned knee or back surgery, which further the textuallity of our bodies. Though, a forced or unchosen inscription can, also, be worn and displayed with pride. Only when an inscription is worn with pride can the truth be read. The prisoner of "In the Penal Colony," however, is executed immediately following the forced inscription -- leaving the corpse as text. "[T]he harrow pierces him clean through and throws him into the pit, where he's flung down onto the cotton wool and bloody water. This concludes the sentence and we, the soldier and I, bury him" (Kafka 137). Buried, however, the body clearly becomes unreadable, and the text no longer carries an impact of meaning. The impact this body as temporary text holds becomes, perhaps, more meaningful in its temporance. We have all met varios things which carry a deeper meaning because they have flashed through our consciousness. We all remember learning how to add and subtract in first grade from the use of flash cards. The entire inscription process lasts twelve hours, so it is not exactly a flash. Thatis still a relatively brief time span, however. We have seen various instances of the "mnemonics of pain" and forced inscriptions, in one form or another, throughout history. Societies all arround the world and in every time period have enforced some sort of bodily inscription to easily identify or read prisoners' bodies. From the number tattoos inscribed into the flesh at Auschwitz to the enforcement by many modern prisons that imposes crew-cut hairstyles upon prisoners. Aside from prisons, however, modern society, to a much lesser degree, enforces forms of bodily inscription. For instance, we are coerced into wearing the fashions of the day or having the right hairstyle to be seen as acceptable members of our society. All of these things, from tattooing at Auschwitz to having the right hairstyle, add to the notion of body as text. We use these symbols upon the physical body to convey meaning within our social matrix. Such physical adornment and symbolism provides other members of the matrix with a means of reading the body. These various bodily inscriptions provide a textual meaning into who or what we are. These various symbols put us in our social place. Other members of our society "read" us as criminal and deviant or part of the "in" crowd. I'm sure we have all heard about the Circus Side Show full of tattooed men and women, the human skeleton, the dog-faced boy -- to name a few. People paid to "read" this freakish body text. Side shows were set up to bring strange and taboo body text to the masses making the reading of the body more accessible to the general public. Tattoos were, and still are, a freakish novelty and taboo to people without tattoos. There is a side show today called the Jim Rose Circus which incorporates a heavily tattooed man, ThEnigma, in a central act. His tattoos are to be read as an important part of the show. Tattoos are still seen by many as novelty which could be read with the same lightness as the Sunday Funny Papers. To many wearers of tattoos, however, tattooing is much deeper and more significant than a simple novelty. Each tattoo, like a good book, carries different meanings for both the wearer and the reader. Many authors have gone through similar phenomena; the author used a word to mean one thing, but the reader derived a totally different meaning. However, many tattoos and body inscriptions, like a clear, well-written novel, present a clear, concise meaning with little or no room for misinterpretation. But the meaning is still far clearer for the wearer than to the audience. In The Illustrated Man the central character's tattoos and the stories they tell are (painfully) clear to everyone involved. The Illustrated Man says of his tattoos; "Everyone wants to see the pictures, and yet nobody wants to see them" (Bradbury 2). The man is aware that the meanings are frightfully clear. The central character of The Illustrated Man is miserable because of the tribulations and sorrows the permanence his tattoos bring. His life is controlled by the inscriptions and text upon his body. " 'Oh yes,' said the Illustrated man, 'I'm so proud of my Illustrations that I'd like to burn them off. I've tried sandpaper, acid, a knife..." (Bradbury 3). This same sort of misery can also come from conventional text. I'm sure an author somewhere, at one time or another, has said; "Why did I ever write that piece of crap?" That piece of crap stays with them for the rest of their lives. Like a bad piece of writing the Illustrated Man's tattoos will be with him throughout the rest of his life, defining him. Sometimes an unwanted tattoo may convey the wrong message. As with Shaespeare a reader may become confused by an ambiguous tattoo. The Illustrated Man's tattoos, however, are far from ambiguous. It is because of the crystal clarity of his illustrations that he wishes so vehemently to get rid of them. They are full of meaning, maybe to full, for the reader. The illustrations take on a new air and tell a different tale to each reader. They become incredibly personalized for each reader telling the reader intimate, personal details of his or her life. A good piece of literature can also mold itself to become very personal to each reader. Tattoos -- and the body, overall -- are also very personal to the "wearer" or subject. I, personally, have a couple of tattoos that I adore that nobody else seems to like; in the same sense Allen Ginsberg had written poems that he loved but were not well recieved by others. To each his own, I guess. "It was almost midnight. The moon was high in the sky now. The Illustrated Man lay motionless. I had seen what there was to see. The stories were told; they were over and done" (Bradbury 186). I contend that the pre-historic human was much more apt to see the body as text in the days before language was developed. A body holds an unspoken language of its own and, unlike conventional literature, body language needs very little (if any, at all) translation. Anyone, of any culture, can read a body as text. Tattooing deeply enhances this body textuality, and body art makes the body easier to read. Body art is not only tattooing, scarification and piercing; it is also makeup, hair-styles and fashion. On halloween children display temporary body art by donning costumes. All these practices -- from tattooing to wearing makeup to donning costumes -- greatly add to the notion of bodily textuality. We wear makeup to send various messages for others to read upon our bodies. The same applies to tattooing, however, tattooing often provides a much deeper message.
Works Cited
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