rhi, h",,~ " flllhilshnj h, (hlord l'ni\Trsm

Press thanks to Ihe genl'rJl

ediTorslup 011,,,,, ard .\lorphy, \ ~nivl'rslt) Lt'\.,turcr in Ethnolo~ at Oxlilrd
Jnd I :urator al the Pitt Rivers Museum, llnd Fred Myers. Assodatt
Professor (,f Anthropology at New York University.

WRAPPING
IN

IMAGES

Society and Exchange in Nias

.'Indrew Bmlly
:\nthropolo!(Y, Art, and\t'sthetics
Fdit,.d Ir)' ],.rnnl' COOII' and .1nlhony Shdllln

Tattooing in Polynesia

The C:uhurc of Coincidmcc:

.\reidt'nt and Absolute Lial->ilityin Huli
Laurellce (;oldm,n~
Exchange in Oceania: A Graph Tht'oretic
Per Hat,. and Frallk- H.irtll)'

Analysis

Wrapping Culture: Politeness, Pn'sentation,

Power in Japan and Other Societies
7(1)1 Hend/)
\larquesan

and

Soeicties: Inequality and Political Transformation

in Eastern Polynesia

Ni,.ho/as Thomas

~/O
CLARE~O~RESS'OXFORD

The purpose of this book is to hring together the lacts concerning tattooing
in Polynesia and to offer an interpretation of them. To what extent, and in
what ways, were the Polynesians tattooed, during the historical period for
which documentation exists? \\ hat can we now recover of the cultural significance of this once widespread practice? The extant evidence which bears
on these questions is in some respects quite full, because tattooing was a
visible trait which tended to attract the attention of early observers of the
customary practices of south sea islanders; yet often enough the evidence
peters out just as we appear to be approaching the heart of the matter. In
order to make the fullest possible use of the ethnographic material bearing
specifically on tanooing it becomes necessary to range quite widely over the
field of Pol}'Desianstudies. So there are many pages, among those to come, on
which the word 'tattooing' fails to make an appearance. This digressivefonnat
is an unavoidable necessity, and in consequence this book takes the fonn, at
least in part, of a general introduction to Polynesian culture and society,
besides being a specialized treatment of one particular feature of these
societies.
It is not just that some knowledge of the social context and cultural
background is required in order to grasp the nature and symbolic associations
of Polynesian tattooing. It is rather that tattooing practices played such an
integral part in the organization and functioning of major institutions (politics,
warfare, religion, and so on) that the description of tattooing practices
becomes, inevitably, a description of the wider institutional fonns within
which tattooing was embedded. These institutions themselves pose theoretical
and interpretative dilemmas, which are the stuff of the ongoing debates
between specialists in Oceanic anthropology. Many of these general questions
and debating points will be addressed in what is to follow.
The idea which germinated this work is a simple one. It occurred to me, in
the process of writing some lectures for a course on 'The Anthropology of
Art', that one way of exploring regular co-variation between art style (body
art, in this-instance) and the socio-cultural milieu would be to collect together
the infonnation on tattooing styles fora number of Polynesian societies, and
then to align these data with the corresponding social systems (i.e. degree of

:ntr.ucll\. I'rtSllll"(' or ahsuKl' of cl'ntr.lli,ed government, and so on), Would

,r turn Olit rJw thl'll' lITre IlIlcJhglolc correlations between the tattooing tyl
.lIld hroadl',r sonal alld politil'al paramett'l'S among the s~"'pl
f PIs
. es
, , "
.
'
es 0 oyneslan
SOCIl'tICS, AccordlOglv I took the social-typololJ'icaJ
h
"
(' IJ
'
"
'.
O'
sc erne contamed m
, 10 l man S ,~namf Polynesian Society (1970) and collated it with tattooin
1Il10ml,ltlOn from thl' main ethnographic sources. The resulting colla e wa~
nOl \lllhoUl sornl' mterestillg features: Hawaii, reputedly the furthest ~olved
1011.lrds statl'-formatlon 01 all the Polynesian societies, was also the socie
shIm 109 the least cultural emphasis on tattooing' Tonga next'
I'
,ty
d"
""
I
'
,
In mem
liS rLSpelt, a so sl'cml'd to underplav hodv art n t th ~1
"
,
,
, U
l' 1> arqucsas, at the
O!'posI,te l'nd 01 thc political spectrum-the
most stn'fie t 1m th I
'
' I '
'.
- ( , c cast stateIp
o l1l.zel (I.C, the n.lOst Opell according to Goldman's schemel-had
the
most dabnr.lte tat!oomg oj all.
Therc seeml'd, OIl /irst inspection to be some kind of 'elecn' . ffi"
hetll"
, .....
'II'
,eamtv
, . ,(l,n SOLletles lilt 1 e anorale tattooing .md an Open (competitive) sta~s
hler.lr~h}, '10~ ~omerscly, there seemed to be disaffinitv between CI
d
e
(stralihed) SOCIetIesand the existence of a culturally stressed trad't1'
fbods
Jrl B t ' ' I d'd
' .
,
) on 0
y
.: u. : .IS. I n(~t lall to pomt out in mv lecture, this crude application of
thl IOgle of eorrelatlOlls produced as manv I'uzzles and bl t t'
h
'
j' I '
"
"
.
a an Jrusmatc es as
It III
Il1tcrcstmg-lookll1g res~l.ts, There were reputedly stratified societies,
sU~h. as .\.Iang~r~va an~ Tahiti, which practised tattooing extensively. And
thcre ," ere soclenes whIch were not at all stratified but which had
I
tatto
h
H"
'
,'
even ess
, omg t an
awall, such as Niue (Opl'n) and Pukapuka (Tr din al
Thesl' non-correlations couJd be accounted for in two ways which a , on ).
by 'illY mea'
t IJ
I'
.. ,
"ere not
: ' ,.
. ns mu ua y exc uSlye; either there was something wron
th th
\Iay In whIch Goldman had classified Pol,,'
, I
g WI
e
,
,
"
ynt SIan socia systems, or there was
~omethmg II rang WIth the Idea that one should expect to find correlations
C('lltcn body art. and the socio-cuJtural milicu-or
at any rate simple ea _
to- gct -at correJatlons.
'
, sy
The typological, question concerning how best to classify PI'
'
SOCICtIesfi
.
0 ~neSlan
"
, or comparailYC purposes can be deferred until later-tho~gh
th
~~~~)encle~ of a typolo~ which puts strife-tom New Zealand and peacefu~
. pula ill the same pigeon-hole hardly needs to be underlined, But the
other prob.Jem h~s to be c~n:ronted without delay, because it is essential to the
\~hoJe project. ~ ~gue hohstlc mtuitions apart. on what conceivable grounds
s ~uJ? o~e anncl~ate a 'fit' between patterns of sociological variation and
~anatlOn m tattoolOg styJes and institutio1i5' Some kind of recondite but
lllescapabJe caus~J Jinkage between body arts allU political arrangements; That
h as ra<her a dub
'
. Y'

. , ,
, IOUSn~g to It. et nothing less seems to he implied in the
search for bod~ -artlsoclCtv corrchtions.
, How might it come abo~t, even in principle, that there would be consistent
lIlterpretable. relationships between body art and other social variables' I~
answer to thIS I wo ld
'
. h b'
.
,
u mamtam t at ody art docs mdeed co-vary intelJigibly

with other social factors to the extent that, and because of the fact that, it
is functionally implicated in the maintenance and reproduction of the
encompassing social system. Of course, this remains to be demonstrated, by
means of arguments whiCh must needs be more subtle and methodologically
roundabout than the construction of crude tables of correspondences. But I
believe that it is possible to show that the distribution of different types of
tattooing in Polynesia did not simply reflect the existence ()f a prior sociopolitical milieu, but, in certain instances, and in combination with certain
other factors, was actually constitutive of it. That is to say, tattooing, as a
technique (one of the large category which Mauss (1979) idl'l1tified as 'les
techniques du corps'), made possible the realization of a distinctive type of
social and political being,
In the Polynesian setting, tattooing had an intrinsic functional efficacy as a
means, a linking element in the sequence of social intention, action, and
result. It formed part of the battery of such technical means on which the
reproduction of social life once rested, One could say the same of the
techniques involved in canoe-construction
or weaving mats, As a technical
means of modit)ing, the body, tattooing made possible the realization of a
particular type of 'subjectioJl'(Foucault
1979; Sheridan 1980) which, in turn,
allowed for the elabOtlfliori and perpetuation of social and political relationships of certain distinct kinds. I base this argument on the premiss that the
perpetuation of a given polity-a
given distribution of power, honour, and
access to resources-is
contingent on the formation and intergenerational
transmission of self-understandings which are congruent with the prevailing
milieu, Notions of the person (Mauss 1979; Lukes et al. 1985; .\1. Strathern
1988), its powers and attn'butes, must coincide as far as possible \\ith political
necessities, The significance of Mauss's 'body techniques' often stems from
the fact that it is through the body, the way in which the body is deployed,
displayed, and modified, that socially appropriate self-understandings
are
formed and reproduced. Tattooing (and, conversely, non-tattooing where
tattooing is expected and normal) is a very specific and recognizable way of
modifYing the body, and, via the body, reconstructing personhood according
to the requirements of the social milieu,
Foucault (1979: 25) writes of a 'microphysics of power' exercised over the
body: 'the body is directly involved in the political field; power relations have
an immediate hold over it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to
carry out tasks, to perform'ceremonies,
to emit signs'. Pol}ncsian tattooing, as
I will show, did ali these things; it was a species of political gesture which
marked the b~dy, tortured it, ceremonialiy prepared it for war and sexuality,
and which made it emit signs. But, as Foucault immediately goes on to point
out, this power exercised over and through the body, is not the privilege of a
dominant c1ass...,.-not~ven in western societies and still less so, of course, in

<",-' ~~.

\ _~\.;_'

. ~U).

.:.:.

Jiffused everywhere, amongst the dominated

as !litH h ,I' lhe dOllunanL In !'olmesi,l the physical suhjection involved in

tattooing nprcss~J hierarch, ,md domination, yel it was most ardently sought
wh~rc, Ul dYcel, 11 ,was ,mosl o~ligalory. Power over the body C()lllcs f!"Q1!l the
subJection 01 the soul (p. 2tJ), the 'element in which are articulated the
~ffccts of ~ml'r in relerence to a certain type of knowledge' (Sheridan 1980),
knowledgl' In tIllS mstance not heing th<.codes, so minutely explored by
Foucault. WIHCh undcrhe wcstnn 'bio-power' (Rabinow 1984: 17) but the
indigenous conceptions and lllythologies of the person, the cosmos and the
social order which knd thematic consistency to Polynesian societies.'
, It is the suhjection/subiectitieation
of tlw 'soul' through tattooing institutl~lI1s-ah, ays m conjunction with a wide array of parallel institutions, techl1Iyues, and hOlWy uldes-which
constitutes the main topic of this work. 'Vhy
tattoom!l m partlClilar should he susceptible to analysis along these lines is a
mallcr wIl1eh I WIll JISCUSSin detail in a moment (Sect. 1.2.1).

Is!and-by-island, society-b!-society comparisons within the Polynesian region

have he en a lery ?opular lorm oj exercise for the anthropological imagination
for a very long tIme, and no wonder (Goldman 1970 Sahlins 1958' Buck
} 938a;. etc;). But is. this type of island-by-island comp~rison really a ~erfect
laboratory
ot SOCIal forms as Margaret -'read once claimed? Recentlv
scepticism was expressed on this ycry point by Edmund Leach in one of th~
very last oj the onslaughts on anthropological complacency to which he
devoted his career. In a postscript to the volume Transfonnali~lIs of Polynesian
Culture (Hooper and Huntsman 1985: 222) whose title alone indicates the
intellectual pitfalls he had in mind, he expressed the opinion that 'Polynesia'
was 'not quite, but very nearly ... fa] figment of the ethnographic imagination'.
H~ denounced the t.endenc}' to esscntialize 'Polynesian culture' and to sttldy
t~IS abstrac:IOTI and Its purely symbolic vicissitudes, instead of focusing attention where It should be focused, on tile real world and its concrete historicity.
And he went on to say ~hat the apparent cultural consistency of 'Polynesia'
was a result of the filter:mg and distorting of the ethnographic record, as a
neces~ary by-product of colonial and missionary penetration. The cultural
and hIstorIcal depiction of the south seas was codified and transmitted '1a
Eur:o~eans :\ho were (1) participants in the creation of (post-European)
socletI~s whICh were none the Ics:; reprcsented as tr'dditional and who were (2)
commItted to the grandiose schema of 'Polynesia' as a unified whole.
Leach's douhts about 'Polynesia' arc overstated. But he was surelv right to
denounce the complacent assumption that the cultural spectrum of Polvnesia
ref~ects a 'cultural logic' such that each society individually repres~nts a
ratIonal transform, according to a global law gOH'rning 'Polynesia' as a whole,

~-------.-.--.
......

of every other one-much

as if the relation between these societies was akin
10 the transfonnational
relationships which can be said to exist between
variant versions of a myth. At the very least, this cultural logic would have to
be demonstrated. What is so insidiously tempting is the petitio prin~pii w~ich
hases arguments purporting to explore the interconnected transformatH~ns
undergone by diverse Polynesian societies on an implicit appeal 10 the prInciple that this interrelatedness exists intrinsically.
.,
How can the choice of 'Pohnesia' as the frame for comparative studlcs
be justified, without appealing' to the idealized concept ~f pan-Polyne~ia.n
culture? The short answer would appear to be that the UOlty of PolyneSIa IS
based on archaeological, linguistic, and historical facts. Pre-historians, such
as Bellwood (1978) and Kirch (1984), are entirely uninhibited in making
reference 10 the 'Polvnesians' as a people with a culture which can be traced
to a unique and iden'tifiahle origin in time and space. The lin~istic.picture
is
equally unequivocal: the languages spoken in the PolyneSian mangle, as
conventionallv defined, are far more closely related to one another than they
are to any other Austronesian languages (Pawley and Green 1975). In the
light of these well-established findings, Leach's outburst against the concept
of Polynesian culture must seem perverse.
. .
.
But the matter is not so simple as that. The shared ongm and mnumerable
resemblances between different Polynesian societies are not in doubt: what is
at issue is the implicit assumption that, in so far as Polynesian cultures are
actually different from one another, their differences are such as to be
attributable to regular transformations of a shared cultural substra~e. ~he
similarities between Polynesian societies are a consequence of the hlstoncal
facts surrounding their origins. However, the di".ergencies between Pol.Yl1es.ian
societies which are hardly less marked, are equally the outcome of hIstOrIcal
facts-the
same historical facts. In order to account for the dissimilarities
between Polynesian societies one can refer to all manner of historical. pr~cesses, ecological shifts, social and ideological contrasts. But the temptanon IS
always to explain the re~idual similarities, such as they are, by reference to a
prindple of cultural inertia, 'a common Polynesian heritage' which survive.s
(tautologously) wherewr the contingent processes of history have not swept It
away.
.
.
This heritage or rultural inertia clearly has no status as an hlston~oexplanatory principle on a par "ith the identifiable conti~gent pro:ess~s whIch
have caused different Polvnesian societies to pursue different hlstoncal and
developmental trajectorie;. If Polynesian societies resemble one another in
such a way as to make detailed comparisons possible, it is because the very
same historical processes which caused Polynesia to diverge, historically and
culturally, from the 'Lapitan' prototype (Kirch 1984: 41-67) also caused the
preservation and reproduction of certain cultural elements under altered
6J"(,ulT'''t~n('(' and perhaps with alt(red meanings. Each wave of canoe-borne

,ould nol ICIi1Il'nt

culture. hlll~UJge, and society in their entirety, to
,lctonl II ith rhc lircumstances in whit'h they found themselves. All the same,
it \\ as not the tug of common origins which kept Polynesian culture within
delimited bounds-if
indeed it is possible to say that there are any such
bounds-but
the strictly localized demands made by the processes of social
feprodudion. A different cultural apparatus could have procured the survival
of hUlIWl populations in the eventual Polynesian habitat. The organizational
and tcchnical mt'ans relied on by the Polynesians are not the only possible
ones. But they wcrc thc ones the Polynesians happened to have at hand, and
which tlll'Y pressed into service and modified as time went by.
On these grounds I would reject the imputation that willingness to engage
in comparisons between Polynesian societies implies acceptance of a global,
constLlining Polynesian culture of the kind I,each criticizes. I shall treat the
I arious
island and archipela~rjc politics under consideration here as independent entities rather than as refractions or transformations of any underlying cultural archetype. I am concerned with Polynesia, not as a whole of any
kind, hut as a collection of ethnographic examples of societies which differ
interestingly from one another. These interesting differences are arbitrary
with respect to those factors, relating to origins, in the light of which Polynesia
is one. Thus, it is not on continuities and similarities that I am going to lay the
greatest stress, but on contr;1sts and divergent developments.
Nor shall I wholly respect the conventional ethnological boundaries of
'Polynesia' which Thomas (l989a) has with some justification identified as the
source of misleading contrasts between 'hierarchical' Polynesian societies and
'democratic' .\lelanesian ones (cf. Sahlins 1963; 1989). I shall not, it is true,
deal e.\1l'l1sivcly with tattooing in Melanesia, but I iI]clude Fiji in the discussion of tattooing institutions in western Polynesia for reasons which will
he come immediately apparent once the discussion gets under way in Chapter
2. And this is not because I think that Fiji ought to be Polynesia, in defiance
of the culrural and linguistic data suggesting otherwise, but because Melanesian
Fiji was intimately articulated to Polynesian Tonga/Sam~
while remaining
culturally quite distinct (Sahlins 1981a; Kaeppler 1977).
'.ctlkr,

The plan behind this study is, therefore, to pursue the differences between
various Polynesian societies (plus Fiji), and to correlate these with differences
in body art, with a view to clarifYing the role body art plays in social reproduction. At this point I am obliged to open a parent.~esis in order to explain what
I mean h\ 'social reproduction' in this and the other contexts in which I
employ this form of words. Social reproduction is not reproduction carried
out by societies (which arc not agents and which cannot be the subjects of

transitive \erhs like 'reproduce'). l\or do \;ulturcs' reproduce themselves for

the same reason. Social reproduction is reproduction carried out by rep~oductive agencies (individuals and groups sharing a common reproduetJ~e
mterest)'in a social context. Reproduction has been achieved when certam
locally conventional criteria of reproductive success have. been met. Among
these criteria may be the physical reproduction of offspnng, but not necessarily, and certainly this is hardly ever the sole requirement. The criteria of
reproducti\'e success, seen from the point of view of the .reproducers,
encompass thc production of 'successors' who have all the attnbutes (moral
qualities, status attributes, possessions, titles, etc.) they ideally should have,
not just physical bodies. Successtlll reproduction (or even averag~ly unsuccessful reproduction) cannot occur without the active co-operatlOn of the
successors (reproducees) in the reproductive activities of the reproducers, for
it is their attributes which provide the yardstick of reproductive success.
Reproduction thus encompasses the activities of the reproduced, in so f~~ as
they seck to fulfil the e.\.p. eetations placed upon them by parents, authontJes,
and role models-including
the e.\vectation that they, in turn, should become
successful reproducers. And so on.
.
This network of agentive relations, the agency of the reproducers ~n
bringing into being their successors, and. the. agency o~ th~ reproducces m
bringing themselves into being in confornuty WIth the obbgatJons and .expectations placed upon them, and thereby assuming responsibility .for theIr rep~oducers' reproductive success, is, in sum, the process of SOCIalrep~oductJon
(Mcillassoux 1975; Goddier 1978). It is important to note that SOCIalreproduction is not intrinsicallv a conservative process, which seeks only the
replacement of a 'generatio~' of reproducers by successors. ,,:h~ are thei~ exa~t
counterparts-Xerox
copies, as it were. On the contrary, It IS mherent III thIS
definition of social reproduction that reproducers may seek to produce successors who are different from themselves (e.g. their superiors with respect to
rank or wealth) and, conversely, successors can seek to outdo their antecedents
in whatever respect is necessary to magnifY their reproductive success,
Social reproduction is guided by collective representations, in so far as the
conventional criteria for reproductive success are arbitrary, even though they
cannot escape from material constraints. I make the general assumption that
societies continue to exist, or change or decay, become extinct, etc. on. the
basis of the interaction between locally prevailing collective representatJon~
governing social reproduction and the presence or lack of the necessary
material and other conditions on which the implementation of these reproductive schemes depends.
..
.
The argument I am putting forward is that tattooing play~d a dislmctJ:e
part in social reproduction in certain Polynesian cult~ral se~ngs, but not m
an of them, and nol always in identical ways. It would be gomg too far to say
that tattooing was essential to the reproduction of these societies, though the

I
I
I
I

high !'nori!\

,h\l"ned to the ntir)"

,
,
such ,1\ missiooaril's \\h(I'l' '11"11" 't J ,ItI 0ln,ot tattoomg by agents of chan,ge.
,
"',,,
as 0 cst'l ) Ish I
I
repr\lducthc succcss, may retlect a uite' . ,a ar~e y nc,,: sC,tof criteria of
part, that tattooing institutions PlaYc~ a k~cnume .cultural. ~slght. on their
mentality, But one must not exa
y p~ m sustammg the 'pagan'
,
,
ggerate; my monvation'
d
.
pages to tatt()()inp' is that tatt"
,,
'.
In evotmg so many
'
,
<"
oomg
IS
an
exceptionall'
.
.
th
at II IS an l'xt'eptionally 'important' onc (h
.y mteres.nng sUb,~ct, not
portanr subjcl'ls, like politics rcli!i '
I ~ ough It docs hnk up WIth imsolemnilv, thl'refore
one m~', , g hn, a hance, ctc,), Avoiding excessive
,
" '
"
y say t at tattooing pIa d
'. .
.
.angt ntla!, part m social reproduction'
th. t' II'
ye a Significant, If
, ,
,
,
m c 0 owmg ways:
l. I.l!toolllg mstitutions, and the sub'ect
.
becoming tattooed and interacting v'll 'd,/r
e~enences
engendered bv
helped produce a cert'lin m' d,
vI I ( I, er~nl1ally) tattooed social other~
,

III -set, a certam tram

I'
' I I '.
'
certain notion of person selt'..h d
d
e, 0 Socia c assdication, a
"
,'
00 ,an
empowenn
t 'h' h '
,
f:actor
III the reproduction
of th.,
o'h'
en.' W Ic lIas an enablIng
c
'
e spel'l c types ofsoc I d
I"
lound III various parts (It' P II
' (
la an po Inca.! reoimes
'
,
( vnesla nol in all ' d
O'
extent).
,
,an not everywhere to the same
"ltlTI

2, T.l!tooing institutions entered

d'
.
'
,
more
IrectIy mt th
pro d UCllOn m that they were olit
d'
I
.
0
e process of re'
en Irect v amcul t d
th
an d thnebv Ihe social m 'h,'
,
,
a e to
e life-cycle
.
.
ec amsms tor the d' tn'b'
f
hfe-chances.
_
IS unon 0 (reproductive)
3. Tattooing was itself a reproductive device'
.
.
mode, Human beings don't J'ust rep d
th m the ImagInary or artefaetual
'
ro
uce
emseJves
th
h
b ut a Iso as artefacts (ca~';
as 0 er umap beings
"
ngs, canoes fine t xtil
b 'ld'
'
mtangIble entities such as 0
~L'
e es, UI mgs) and as
s ngs, mv UIS spirit b .
.
later, tattooing brings into eX!'st
. d'
emgs, etc. As I WIll describe
'
ence an populates th
ldth
b eIngs,
spirit selves which
d
e wor \\01
subsidiaM!
.
'
surroun
and protect th ta
d'
OJ
sometimes be the case that the
I' I"
e ttooc subJel1. It can
'
mu tip Icatlon of this th
f f: "
, ,
f:
d
an
anraslzed 'companions' inscribed within
~ong 0 amIl18TSpInts
Surrogate for reproduction in th
the skin can actually be a
I.' more mundane (ph
. I . I)
ta tlooed person is ipso fi ct
od
'.
YSI0ogIca sense, so the
a () a repr ucer, vlcanousIy, if not in reality.

1.2.1. The Sailor and the Native

Le! me consider another source of preliminarv do
I SIngled out tattooing, of all thin
for '
'
ub~s. On what grounds have
clearly definable phenomen
h~h'
a comparative survey? Is tattooing a
Why should tattooing in onl'tw 11.',\can usef~Ily be studied cross-culturally?
,
cu ure n necessanlv ha'
yth'
ta!toom!, in culture BI Th
h
J
ve an
mg to do with
.
e
s
ort
anSWer
to
that
is
that
th
.
w hy tallooing in culture A sh Id h '
ere IS no reason at all
,
ou
aye the same cultu I ' 'fi
tattoomg in culture B Tatt
'
, b
ra Slgnl cance as
"
'
,.,
OOlng IS Y no stretch of the .
. .
unncrsal wllh an InvarIant mea'
Th
.,
Imagmatlon a cultural
mng,
e mlmmum definition of tattooing, the

I
I

basic technic.11 ~chema of punrturing the skin and inserting pigment, cannot
hy itself suffice I to delimit any particular symbolic meaning.. The age and scx
of the tattooinltl subject, the nature ,and extent of the designs made, their
positioning on the body, the institutional framework of the tattooing process,
and many other factors, make all the difference in the world, even within a
single 'tattooin~ system', let alone in cross-cultural perspective.
Although tattooing can carry a very wide range of c:.:!tural meanings, even
in Polynesia, as will be shown in later chapters, it is also true to say that this
variety is by no means infinite. The basic technical schema of tattooing-the
fact that it 'in'l Ives puncturing or cutting the skin, that it involves inserting
something into the body, and at the same time letting blood, and that the
marking left be ind when the scars have healed is pennanent-gives
rise to
ccrtain e1ectiyc affinities between a finite range of cultural meanings and this
possible means (among others) of giving exprcssion to them. Just on the basis
of its underlyin technical schema, tattooing has a certain functional valency,
In Polynesia, I will argue, this functional valency was widely exploited in the
fonnation and nculcation of a personal construct which may be interprcted
in political ten s. T allooing was part of the 'technology' for the creation of
political subjects, and hence the reproduction of political relations,
In asserting this rather essential proposition, I do not mean that tattooing
played a unifdrm role in Polynesian social reproduction. As I have just
emphasized, 'P lynesia' is here being considered as a cluster of differentiated
systems, held together by no overarching principle of Polynesian sociocultural consis ency, As politics varied, so did the manner in which the basic
technical sche a of tattooing was e:.:ploited in the creation of subjectivity;
certain aspects of the totality of possibilities inherent in the basic schema are
foregrounded
ccording to the demands of the local system, others being
suppressed,
The basic te 'hnical schema of tattooing, which will be considered in greater
detail in a mo ent, gives rise to a finite (but inconsistent) range of potential
significationsly
some of which are locally manifested in (relatively) consistent guises.
d it is important to recognize that the meaning of tattooing in
'local' tattooin systems is never autonomous; the technical schema is read
not just by its If, but always in conjunction with other technical schemataother mutilation, other treatments of the bodily envelope, including clothing,
other art forms and fonns of prestige production, and so on.
My intention, so far as possible. is to get at these local meanings, rather
than to propose a universal interpretation. But how to be sure of these local
mranings? Is the infonnation available good enough? Can it be interpreted in
a methodologically sound way? Let me recall another of Leach's admonitory
, remarks, cited earlier: the very record on which one might attempt to base
such a reconstruction is itself the product, as he says, of 'European categories
of thought' (1985: 222).

In short, \\t: arc here in the presence of a fused mass of interrelated

clements of ethnic and class praetkes l(lrged in a complex historical dynamic
which the historians of EuropeanlPolynesian
interactions have only recently
begun to unravel (Dening 1980; Thomas 1989b; Sahlins 1987). It would be
futile to pretend that it is now possible to reconstruct Polynesian tattooing
practices as if the encounter between European and Polynesian cultures had
never taken place. We can draw no hard and fast line between western ideas
about tattooing and Pol}l1esian ideas-the
ones we know about, anywaybecause both arc the historical residues of a historical episode in which both
Europeans and Polynesians participated.
It is true, of course, that the Polynesians had tattooed themselves for
millennia prior to the arriyal of Europeans in their area. It is also true that I
will often describe Samoan tattooing, \larquesan tattooing, etc. as iitithfully as
possible as indigenous traditions of body art, without reference to the circumstances under which these traditions came to bc recorded. That is the most
convenient way of communicating the known ethnographic facts. But the
interpretation of thesc facts is quite another matter, and the peculiar cultural
fusion between tattooing as a western (class) practice and tattooing as a
Pol}l1esian (ethnic) practice cannot be hygienically bracketed away because, in
the final analysis, that is our point of contact with the long-dead Polynesians.
This is not a matter of imposing western values on Polynesians, but of exploiting
the historical resonances which the encounter between us and them produced.
The source of the interpretations
of practices pro,ided in the ensuing
chapters is western in the sense that it is critically, but explicitly, founded on
the western perception of tattooing as a component of a certain class habitus or
lifestyle, rather than being conjured out of thin air and purified ethnography.
Why be coy about where hypotheses really come from? But just as Sahlins
(1987) says that cultural schemes are 'put at risk' by the contingencies of
historical conjunctures, so is this western perception when decontextualized
and pressed into sef\'ice here. POl}l1esian tattooing is not a class practice, or a
sign of criminaliiy. But in order to begin to form a dearer idea of what it
really was, it is necessary to explore the constellation of ideas which makes it
into these things for us, because it is only in this way that one can begin to
respond to its guiding metaphors.

With this in mind, I will turn to the problems of degeneracy, ornament, and
crime, as discussed by Cesare Lombroso (1896; 1911) and Adolph Laos
(1962 (1908J), not because I wish to reinstate the intellectual reputations of
either of them (especially not Lombroso) but because they provide a point of
view on tattooing which is explicitly (rather than implicitly) European, middle-

',l.l'S, alld dh,Jppn \lIl!-,. I do so hCClllsc' these \ery prejudicial altitudes are, in
l'\llr \\a.\, Illuch n\(lrl' rnl'ahng than any attempt to conlront tattooing Irom a
S!illldpOlllt 01 cullural neutrality or sympathy could ever be Th'
'I
' h"
.
,.
.
rn VlO ent
il!1Upat ~.IS mdlcilive not just of da.ss attitudes, but also of the inherent power
~)f 1.H!OOI!I!! to e\l)ke a response: and who is to say that it was not the response
1I1lcndedf
l

!let.l1rl' Sherlod
1.lolmes In'came a detective, he wrote a lIIonograph on
Ll!tnOlllg, .lI1d the ahdllv to reco!-'llize talloos played an important part in his
",nilest rl'curded case. Here, as elsewhere, Conan Doyle reveals his familiarity
\\ 1l h the most. advanced criminological
theories of his day, for the turn of the
last c'entUT\ wItnessed the development of the earliest scientific investigations
of rill' prac,'lllT of tattooing. which were bv nature criml'nolo<Tic'l Th
..
Ih
'..
.
.. a,
eywere
1l1'1'Irec \ the statIstICIan, lawver and 'criminal anthropolo<Tist' Lb'
h
'.
.
..'
..
am rosa, III
is d,1\' a SOCl,IItlunkcr of \\ orld-wide renown. One of the founders of modern
cni11ll101o~:, Lomhroso was an otlshoot of the broad stream of nineteenthcr!1iury :'wlutlOnan
thought, and more specifically a representative of the
tn'lhi IlIItJatrd III the 1870s by the embryologist Haekel, which sought to
1l1.rt'll'ret the ontogenetic history of the individual organism as a recapitulation
oj irs phylogrnetJe past (Gould 1977; 1984).
. I ('mhros() 's leading idea was that criminal behaviour occurred where an
md.l~:dual, as a consequence of poor breeding, suffered from an ontogenetic
de~cl~, an~j n~ver, .a~.a cons~quence, advanced to the evolutionary stage
nccrssary lor tully cmhzed socIal life. Criminality was the inborn dispos' .
f ','
. 1
.
h
.
.
ItIon
o .. l.nmllla man', w ~ mIght be. recogIlized, not just by law-breaking, but
~(.n III the ab~cnce 01 law-breaki~g,. by certain physical-biological stigmata.
1 hIS came to ?I~ III a moment of mSlght while he was examining the skull of
a notl)rJOUS cnmlllal:
At r~~'sight of that skull, I seemed to see all of a sudden, lighted up as a vast plain
undc. "fla~mg sky, the problem of the nature of the criminal-an atavistic being who
reprod uc:s, m hISperson the ferocious instincts of primitive humanity and the inferior
amnuls. I hus were e:l.plained analomically the enormous jaws high cheek-bo
se]'t
]'
. th
I
h
1
,nes,
) I an
m.es m . ~.pa ms, . and e-shaped or sessile ears, found in criminal", savages,
and apes, !lIsenslbdl1}to pam, el.1remelyacute sight, tattooing, excessive idleness love
of orfl1cs, a~~ I.he irresislible craving for e.il for its own sake, the desire not o~ly to
e:\1ll1glilshhie In the Vlcllm, but 10 mutilate the corpse, lear its flesh, and drink its
blood. (Lombroso 1911: pp. xiv-xv)
Jt.j~,~u~ as ~.qua~i-biological ata.ism that tattooing first became the object
ot Sll:dllhc speculauonlll the \\cst. Lombroso was, of course, well aware that
t~ttoomg had t~ he artificially applied to the criminal types who displayed it.
~ot [he tattl~ Itse~f, but the irresistible disposition to become tattooed was
bIOJo~,allY ~1Yen, III conjunction with other psychological propensities, such
~s a .ove of ornament and gaudy clothes, a passion lor obscure demotic
Jargon. and, most importantly, deficient moral sensibilities.

These moral deheiel1l'ies werr made evident, not only by the acquisition of
tattoo markings but also in the sentiments expressed in words and images.
Lombroso listed these carefully, emphasizing the presence of ra.c!i<;id/anll!:cjlist
political slogans, defiant assertions of loyalty to criminal organ~ations and to
the honour which reigns' among thieves, and a wide variety 01 references to
sexual themes. Lombroso also noted the fatalistic ethos expressed in many
criminal tattoos. 'The notorious criminal Malassen was tattooed on the
chest \\ith a drawing of a guillotine, under which was written the following
prophesy: "J'ai mal commence, jc finirai mal. C'est la fin qui m'attend". A
prostitute's tattoo showed de\il amid hell-fire accompa~ie~ by thc mot.to:
"A toi mon ame".' (1911: 47) On the basis of these and SImIlar tattoos whIch
seem to indicate resigned acquiescence in the inevitable consequences of a
misspent life, Lombroso concludes that criminals have a dumb, animal-like,
acceptanre of their fate, an inherent awareness that, come what may, they arc
just not capable of virtue.
It is easy enough to detect, nowadays, in Lombroso's expoSItIon of the
atavistic n;ture of criminal man, the simple projection of middle-class
antagonism towards unsuitably dressed, tasteless, ill-spoken, and potentially
dangerous class enemies and/or 'Victims, tricked out in pseudo-scientific
terminology. But it is not enough to be suitably indigIlant about Lombroso's
bland prescription that such disagreeable persons should be confined to a va.st
system of eugenic gulags-for their own good, of course. Lombroso, III
treating tattooing the way he does, is doing more than giving vent to class
prejudice; he is also reflecting aspects of a cultural system which, th~re is
every reason to think, embraced the very classes whose common humamty he
was at such pains to dispute.
Lombroso's biological theories are worthless, but the factual basis upon
which thev were erected cannot be disregarded entirely. It is as true now as it
was in Lu"mbroso's time that criminals and the insane are very often tattooed,
while criminologists, judges, and psychiatrists, on the whole, are not. The_
statistical basis of Lombroso's association between tattooing and incarceration
is as strong as ever (Moran 1980; Haines and Hufferman 1958) and is
only undermined ~y his failure to prmide 'matched samples' from. dle nonincarcerated population to test for the genuineness of the causal lInkage he
asserts (cf. Gould 1984). Even so, the high incidence of tattooing among
prisoners could hardly be regarded as a matter of chance, Neither may.the
content analysis he makes of criminal tattoos be dismissed simply as a proJection of class prejudice. In tattooing slogans like 'born to be hanged' or the
insignia of commonst gangs on their bodies, Lombroso's criminals appear to
have played deliberately into his hands. They have biologized their cri~inal~ty,
stigmatized themselves, just as he is prepared to biologize them and stigmatIze
them. They want to be seen as Lombroso sees them, or, at least, they want it
to appear that an act of will, codified in permanent form in the very tissues of

th,'ll hodi"",
precedcd the prUhl'JIllCIlI of criminalitv in which they have
1'''IliIIC l'llfllcshnL Thl' onlv difli:renl'c bct\H'Cn the iattoocd crimin~ls and
i ,I'l1lh~os(l i~that he pretends 10 Sl''Cbehind the act (or imagined act) of wilful
eonnmtment to IllC,criminJI way of life, an inescapable biological necessity,
WIllie tor thc ertmlllals the determining factors are primarily social ones:
honour, ambition, the nee'd to struggle against poverty and degradation, and
the' Illemal toughness nCl"lkd to recognize, in advance, that the struggle is a
11ll1'l'lcss one.

It ~eems 10 me thaI I,ombroso's treatment of tattooing as a biological

atallSIll has ~1 certain rnclatory power about it, not because it is biologically
sound. but because l,ombroso's theory e:\"presses in a dish'1lised way the actual
Sl rnt'oile proccsscs
motivating the practice of the tattooed criminal class,
I IOil'llIr anwlIg- thien's. commitment to criminal associates and a criminal life
Cltahsll1. making a virtue of nccessity-these
arc necessary adaptations t~
ve rv pressing social conditions, yet. at the same time, they are particularly
sus"l'[,tibJc ro expression by means of mutilations of the bodv, These mutila~
tions cwkc the permanent,
scar-like imprint of lifelong struggles with
adversity, and testif}' to the JitCIong commitments which the common struggle
CJ1f'cllders, I,ombroso's biologization of the criminal disposition is countered
b~ ;lll. oppositional pra~tice, a demotic culture of the body which chooses
blOlog1cal metaphors lor social impulses, and consequently coincides on
es~ential ~oints with the prejudicial notions advanced against it by the
~nm1I1oI0~st. Or to be more specific, the powerful metaphor which is implicit
In the baSIC schema of tattooing works identically in both instances but is
interpreted differently.
'
In order ~o grasp more fUl~ythe metaphoric burden implicit in the tattooing
schel1l.l. It IS necessary, I thmk, to enquire more deeply into the role of the
skin in ,elation to the body-image and the psyche in general-a
task which
has. hitherto mainly been attempted by certain psychoanalytical writers, whom
I will diSCUSSm due course, Meanwhile there is another aspect of Lombroso's
assenion of. the natu~al affinity between tattooing and criminality which
deserves nOl:Ice, espeL1ally in the present context. Lombroso believed that
tattool'd criminals were lower on the evolutionary scale than 'civilized' persons.
Pred1Ct:lblv enong]l, he regarded 'savages' as born criminals as well and for
the same reasons. Savages were representatives of the 'childhood 'of man'
criminals not in the sense that actual crimes could be attributed to them'
because in the rude societies in which they lived no laws existed for them t~
break. but certainly criminal in their lack of moral refinement. The fact that
tattooing is a practice which united contemporary European criminals and
'Stone\ge'
sayages could not fail to escape his attention. But Lombroso's
antipath~ t~)wards tattooing is only an aspect of his far more encompassing
condemnal:Ion of ornament in all its forms, which he traced back not just to
the shallow impulsiveness and emotionality of the savage, but to the basic

condition of animality itself-since

where does one lind showiness epitomized
if not in the animal kingdom?
Savages and criminals (and children, the prototype of both) share ~ith
animals their love of finery, which demonstrates their moral inferiority
(Lombroso 1911; cf. Gould 1984). In elaborating these views, Lombroso
played a part, not only in the development of modern criminology, ?ut in.
the history of modernist aesthetics, It is not by chance that the penod of
Lombroso's greatest fame coincides with the period (between 1885 and 1925)
during which decorative detail in art and design fell into ever greater disrepute, leading to the promulg-ation of the aesthetic of functional (dccorationfree) forms.
The designer and critic Adolf Loos exercised a decisive influence over the
development of the modernist attitude towards decoration, and in his essay
'Ornament and Crime' one can easily see direct borrowings from the Italian
criminologist, as the title would suggest.
The child is amoral. The Papuans are equally so for us. The Papuans slaughter their
enemies and eat them. They arc not criminals. If, however, a man of this century
slaughters and eats someone, he is a criminal and a degenerate. The Papuans tano.o
their skins, their boats, their oars, in short, everything within reach, But a man of thiS
century who tattoos himself is a criminal and a degenerate,.,. I have found the
following law and present it to mankind: the evolution of civilization is tantamount to
the remo\'J1 of ornament from objects of use. (I %2, cited and !T. in Gombrich 1984)
This passage perfectly expresses the rationale behind the negative ~~ge
enjoyed by tattooing in educated circles in contemporary western sOClel:Ies.
Tattooin~ is archaic; and it runs counter to a very basic idea in western
thought, long antedating Loos, that the human body, unadorned, is beautiful,
and is so because of its functionality. Gombrich (1984) has provided a brilliant
account of the history of taste with respect to decoration applied to 'objects of
use' and th~ pendulum swings between pro- and anti-decoration sentiment.
But even during the most ebullient periods of Eilropean taste, mutilation of
the body by scarring or tattooing has rarely been openly promoted among the
privile~d ~Iasses. Loos, brusquely imposing the 'denial of synchrony' ris-avis the 'savage' Other criticized by Fabian (1983), consigns it to the 'Papuan'
doubly displaced to the evolutionary-historical past and the ontogenetic phase
of childhood amorality.
I cite this passage-, not simply because it exemplifies a still-widespread
middle-class perception of tattooing, to wit, that it is barbaric, but because it
signals a basic theme of the ensuing study. !:-oos's objection to tattooing is not,
truly that it is criminal, but that it is in poor taste. How has it come about that
, in
est, tattooing hasfemained
such an obdtJrately 'tasteless' practice?
Even a recent glOSSYvolume including chapters on contemporary tattooing in
California and l'oti;led, ~i<Tnifica"tl\'hnt lInf'onvincingly, Marks of Civilization
c

tht \\'

!.Ilk I" "ldll.llt

that thc Clil'llldc of up-market West Coast
parlours <Ire tasll'Iol folk, rather than would-be exhibitionists. For
~"l1le n:.hon, Wilhlll thc confincs of our cultural system, tattooing is not
~\lscl'ptihle to acsthl'tirism within the accepted canon of art forms in the way
th,1t many pOllular nafts and pral'tices-quilt~mak.ing.
for instance-have
blTn. The answer lies, as has heen suggested already, in the specific relation
I>t'l\\ecn tattooing-, thc bodv, and sub;cctivity, which has an irreducibly political
dimension,
!f\uhll1 j<)\S)
I.ltl"(ljn~

In ren'lll vears we haH' heen made aware of the relation which exists
hel\\ een taste and p(m cr in its more recogniz;lble forms. The notion of the
b,',11 .lI1d its hca!thv appearance .Ire intrinsic to the contemporary middleel."s lit/hilii.'. as !lourdiCli (1979) has shown with copious examples. Yet,
~r.ll1tlJ1g Ihis li)r thc mome!)t, wc arc still left with an intellectual puzzle.
\\ !ur. if alll, is the ClIT\-(,\l'r, so to speak, hetween the apparently unbreak.lhk linkagc hetwcel] social repn:ssion/marginality
and tattooing in our
Culiural "'item, and the role which tattooing plays in (non-class) social
Sl SIcms in which tallooing is accepted practice?
I oos, in the pass.lg-e cited, suggests that there is this carry-over: savages are
cllll,lIike and unciliJi/ed, they arc motivated by the same impulses which
g-()\ern the behaviour of children and degenerates in our society, and that is
"h~ they succumb to the impulse to become tattooed. The difference is only
onc of the population mcan of evolutionary advance, so to speak; among the
Papuans the ata,-istie types are in the majority, while among men of this
ccntury thcy are (or should be) the minority. The atavistic Papuans are
not criminals only because they constitute tlle majority, but they behave as
criminals. Their conduct is dictated by the same impulses as those which
produce criminals and degenerates in a civilized milieu.
Inns, in other words, is postulating a universal ne:ms between primitiveness/
crimlllaJitY/ornamentality,
in opposition to civilization/restraint/functionality.
This opposition works along two axes, first to discriminate, within western
society, standards of taste (linked implicitly to social class) and secondlv to
discriminate between western civilization and barbarism. Here we detect the
ideological consequences of the fusion I spoke of earlier between class and
cthnic stereotypes and practices, which arose directly from the- historical
coincidence of the development of industrial class society and world-wide
colonial penetration.
(lne can respond to this fusion in a variety of ways. One strategy is to
attl'mpt 10 impose a barrier betwe'?n class and non-class societies in the
name of ,mti-ethnoeentrism.
It is ethnocentric to form interpretative analogies
hetll l'cn class practices in class societies and ethnic practices, even when
these practices arc superficially identical. ,!,he alternative strategy-a
much
lIlore dangerous but possibly more productive one-i;:; to take class practices
as the starting-point for the analogical rcconstruction of the significance of

practicl's in non-class societies on the basis of th.e postulate of the intrinsic

functional valency of practices under whatsoever clfcumstances they occur.
This is not to absolve Loos of gross ethnocentrism. It is clear that he knows
little and cares less about the Papuans and Red Indians he uses as stcx:k
figures in his tirade against ornament. Inv~tigation will show .tha~ h~ IS
far from correct in attributing body decoratIOn, or other decoratJ~e a~s, to
motives of childish gratification. But that really goes without saymg .m. the
present context. Rather than restrict oneself, to sim~le-minded denu,ncla~ons.
of ethnocentric prejudice, it is much more mterestJng to preserve eertam 01
the logical elements in Loos's thought while revaluing his valu~s.
.
Consider the tentative conclusion reached just now m relatIOn to
Lombroso's discussion of criminal tattooing, namely that Lombroso and the
criminal classes are in different ways responding to a single core meta~hor.
centred on the schema of tattooing. Can one not follow an analogous tram. 01
thought with respect to Loos's opposition between primitive ornamenta~on
and chilized refinement? Is it not conceivable that 'barbarous' orn~entau~n
has exactly the significance (the reverse of 'tasteful') which ~oos ascnbes t~ It,
but in the' context of a value-system which revalues this sigruficance, reversmg
the polarity of good and bad but leaving everything else unchanged?
.
Consider the alternative, which is to suppose that the body decoratJo~
which Loos regards as uncivilized are locally unders!ood in quite the opposIte
sense as culturally approved indications of confonruty to tasteful standards of
orna~entation. For many examples along these lines we need look no .funner
than the collection Marks of Civilization edited by Rubin (19.88) whi~h has
already been mentioned. This phrase occurs ~
~ the text, III an arnde b}'
Vogel on the Baule of West Mrica '[whose] scanficatJon can be seen as a mark
of civilization in general' (1988: 97). The Baule, by scarifYing themselves, arc
seeking to distinguish themselves from 'bush creatures' and to show themselves as 'real human beings' according to Vogel. They are placing themselves
on the side of culture (denoted by the presence of artificial scars) as opposed
to nature.
. th Ii h f th
But this conclusion does not seem partiCtllarly secure III
e g toe
following facts reported by the same author.

1. Canings of nature spirits show elaborate sca~fic~tions, So do carvings

of animals. This does not support the idea that scanficauon deno~es culture. as
opposed to nature to the Baule. (And on the. difficul~s inherent III employm~
the nature/culture opposition in ethnographIC analySIS, cf. M. Strathern 1980,
and below, Ch. 2.)
.
2. Scarifications were done by foreigners, outside the Baule area. DeSIgns
were widely imitated across tribal boundaries .. For instance, one common
design was called 'slave' and imitated the markings of Senufo slaves. If. ~e
standard for eivilizedness for the Baule is set by the Baule themselves, It IS

llimrl'll'it! !ll/ro,!"I'I;iJ/l

;l,lrd

SeCIlhl {Ilt I should lrall" lo distant laces to "

,, ,
to he assol'i.Hed willJ l't'I"
(
.p
acqlllre scanhcatlOns
II trent
posslblv
ho
'fl)
h'
I'\Tn sl'l\t's.
', J
S I e et mc groups and
10

~nnwll

3.. It was.c.ommonto scaritYchildren and 've

'
'.'
to divert SpInt attacks. Here scarific (.
!Pvid'them rubbish names, so as
rather than beautification ()t'her ,a ~fion~ c endy a matter of mutilation
.
Scan catlOn w
d' .
Haule had a varien of diller"nt rea'
Ii
. as me ICInaI.It seems that
,
,sons
or engaging in
'fi'
to thl' indigenous thcorv of th' bIb
scan cation, connected
. ,
,e
o{v ut these had nth
d
pro1e:l!ng a civilized image.
.'
0 109 to 0 with
4. I he Baulc, despite preserving their r'
.,
.ihandolll'd scariliCH;'}IJm' _ _
llstInctJ\e culture and ethnicity
.
"
.1Il)
)ears
ago-but
witho
t
bl . , . '
(I1atthl'l have retrclll'll t(l -Jpr' h
d' .
u presuma y IIlternng
, '
'.
e- uman con Ilion 0 th
.
tlw tor ContemporaryBaule bei
",'I', d
. n e Contrary, It must be
',.
.
- ng llllize stronglventails
b'
o attcmpt to counln this b'.
'
h'
not emg s{'arified,
.
- ) .lr/-''1llngt at what c
t d
. ,.
IItIOn.i1k
{roil
(and "h;ch 11--1" ("'pI' "d'
.,
oun e as CIVIlization
,
'.
-, " esse via sc'mti ti ) h b
11ell, modem but implicitly e"uival' t ":'1." .ca on . as een replaced by a
.'
.
,'1
en CllllzatlOn (whIch e
"
.
l1on-scanheatlOn) is to imply that th. d'ffi
xpresses itself via
ciYililationis a'nutter t,e .1 he.rencebetween traditional and
_modernBaule
h' IIIthout reallv changing
"0
'
Iior
.!I1otcr.
h' swltc
T' 109 one set of ar b'tI rary SignS
\'iCII'or the histon' of'the ], 't 11' anyt In.g. hiS hardly amounts to a tenable
,
as 10 centunes.
It is apparent that the strategy of ti
body arts such as the Baul~s' b' tu .cn thclzmgthe. ethnocentric response to
.
"
I
rnmg e accusation of . .. b
on Its head and claiming that' ou 'b b
' .
pnrmnve arbarism
,
J
r
ar arous IS the BauIes ". cnl'1'Ized', IS
.
lDaliequate. It is no less eth'
p
.
nocentnc to project on t th B I
'1 Pllans a definition of civilization
d fi
0 ~ au e or the
condemn them, as Loos does as d' aS wed e ne .and value It, than it is to
I
to modern men. \\'hat i
d' d . ISPace ~archaIc,child-like) counterparts
,
s nee e IS a theorencal a
h h'
nrde between standard eth'
pproac w Ich squares the
Lombroso and Loos and the nocendtns~ and/or class bias, represented by
,
',
more e\Cl0US
ethnoc tris
f
.
apolOgists for primitiye man who insist th
en. m 0 cultural-relativist
liberal and gifted with perfect t t .
at, despIte appearances, he is a
squ.lring cannot be achieved ~tshem mki~tters
of Art, Culture, etc. This circler I
WI out ta ng serious acc
f
.
o t 1e Loos/Lombroso position and I
Id rk
ount 0 certain aspects

wou I e to spell out what these are.

>

1.2.3. The EPidemi%g)' of Tattooing

(;ross!v", speaking' tattooing, and'tI s sIster-art
.
scarifi .
.
(I ) pre!Jterate
tribal societies (2)
cation, are charactenstic of
,
repressed or ma""'; aI' d . . .
more complex state System Th
_n Ile mmonnes within
"
s.
ere are many e
ti
b
.
general case. Lombroso and L
'.
- xcep ons, ut thiS is the
,
oos, by mvoking th
ataVIsm,proyide no satisfacton'
I'
. e concept of hereditary
I
.
exp ananon for thISstat f lr'
.
a. east respond to it and refl"ectit A
Iy
.. eo aJlalrs, but they do
. pure relanVIstanalysis would regard
>

tattooing cultures in category (I)-in

PolYl1esia,lor instance-as haying
nothing to do with the tattooing subcultures in category (2). But to do this is
to reity cultural boundaries and leads, as we have briefly indicated, to reverse
ethnocentrism just as debilitating as the straightforward variety.
Alternatively,we can take this global observation as a starting-point for the
elaboration of more positive and plausible hypotheses. Instead of retreating
into cultural relativism, one can develop Loos and Lombroso in the following
direction. Tattooing in the West is characteristic of marginal subcultures,
especially those which suffer repression (e.g. criminals, common soldiers and
sailors, lunatics, prostitutes, and so on). As a particular form of bodily mutilation, it scems to have an elective affinityfor a certain constellation of lifestyles,
a certain class of being, which always stands in opposition to the dominant
canons of taste in bodily presentation and adornment. (Incidentally, this
constellation is precisely reproduced in the Far East, Japan particularly: cL
McCallum 1988.)
Outside the West, in tattooing cultures of the preliterate/tribal category,
tattooing is not subcultural in this sense, but it is perfectly possible that the
lifestyle and values associated with subcultural tattooing in the West continue
to be associated with the practice, the only difference being that these are now
sociallydominant, constituting the majority culture and no longer the minority
one. In other words, these are societies which are dominated by criminals,
soldiers, and prostitutes, not societies which repress them. This conclusion,
obnoxious to standard anti-ethnocentrism, is not wholly true, as more detailed
investigations will reveal, but it cannot be rejected out of hand because it
appears to denigrate non-western societies. What this hypothesis does is
to run counter to deep-seated middle-class d7Juhts about the moral worth
of criminals, soldiers, and prostitutes. That an anthropological hypothesis
Should conflict with these moral standards is no reason at all for rejecting it,
because it is precisely these deep-seated moral evaluations which constitute
ethnocentrism, not the assertion that other people are possibly free of them.
Following this train of thought, it can be suggested that tattooing has a
world-'Aide distribution which can be interpreted according to consistent
'epidemiological' principles. In speaking of an 'epidemiology' of tattooing I am
invoking Sperber's (1985) proposal for an 'epidemiology of cultural representations'. Sperber's metaphor is an apt one, because tattooing resembles a
'3ermatological complaint, and has been the subject of learned dermatological
discussions, ycry much as if it were a somatic illness. Sperber suggests that
many 'reprcsentations' (he has in mind such common notions, founGin many
cultures, as that kings are like lions, or that offerings please the gods) are
widespread because they conform to certain basic cognitive requirements of
the human mind.
It is well within the spirit of Sperber's ideas that I should put forward the
'basic schema of tattooing' as a candidate representation for epidemiological

lfc',lllllcnf. 'I atr"nlnc; .1"" indced hwcl

)' tt
'
~idcrl'll l'omparali\ t:h. whil'h r"
~I' ' ,I a ern 01 m;currenee, when eon'. "
,,'
escm" es t Ie uneven b t 'I h '.
'
Pltdlll',lhle, lIlCldence of an illness' th
'I'
u ate
same tlme
' , ere are u tra-suscept'bl '
I'
I'
W!t're
IlIcldenee rises to near 100'
,
I e popu atlons
"
' per cent (reCIdIVIsts) d"

Iatlom
who arc hardly CYer touched ("
an resIStant popuhas the outstandinu n~erit of 5impIJ'c'ty~mvcrslhty~eachers). Sperber's proposal
,
r"
'
I.
once avmg chart d th d' 'b .
pattern of the causal factors I' th
e
e Ism utlonal
.,
"n
c structural prop rti
f th
cogmtl\ e ap1'aratlls, which arc res ons hl. fi
e es 0
e human
'catchilll(' li,r some suh,'errs alld
,p fiI C or the representation
being
" ' ,
,.
.
not 50 or others.
Alcordlllglv, hanng charted the d' 't'b'
f
.
.

IS n utlOn 0 tanoolng
e th I
~l.Ige or on a more n'stril,t"d (r"
I)
h
' J er on a g obal
,
'

eglona one t e obj - ti '

b
lhscoYl'T\ of the tlcrors "hi.'ll .' I,'h
ec ve can e stated as the
"
np am t e observahl
d', 'b'
,
Spcrbenan project is Yen mUl'h w'h, "II I
e Istn utlOn. ThIS
,
"
at WI )e anempt'l h
th
l'l11pJO\lng the epidemiolo'rical met' h
"
et ~re, WI OUt openly
incidenl.I1 to the basic idea SIJerb h,I1' ,or a,m fur~h~r, SinCe this is quite
'h
'
er as m mllld. I dIner from S
b-'
1.,It er Important respect thou h ' th
I
per cr m one
,
,
g ,m
at
1m far I"
.
d
I~ th~t cpi-'1litive psychology provides the kt.v' to th
~s~ CO~Y1nC~ than he
sl.lndmg of all conceivaLle . d'd
'
e epIdemIOlogical under. ,
"
can I ate represent ti
Th"
1;lt1ooin!' (considered as a r'
_'
. a ons,
e mCldence of
epresentatlOn) certaml)' c
t b
I .
thc basis ,,( am theon in co'ml'tl' k
anno
e exp allled on
,
,

r'"
on nown to me thou h
"f:
exptun satisfactorih' the distrl'b tl'
f th
'
g cogmtIve actors may
,
~
U on 0 0 er types of
II .
non. Tattooing is also of Course n t
"
co eC!lve representa,
"
0 one representati
b
01 representations
and the probl
. I
on ut a protean family
"
,
em IS ess a matter of h .
th
.
of a smgle specific cultural 'disease' than :>f
" . cartIng
e inCIdence
traceahle ro this 'd'"
'.
, , e:\plalnlng the varied symptoms
I,ease among the dlnere t
I'
,
Polynesia. rattooing is often f"ar too"
I n popu a!lons It affects. In
,
intimate y embedd d '
I
01 technical schemes and symboll'c as
"
Ii
e In a comp ex matrix
.
SOClatlons or the de
f b
"
'1 !'cprcsclHation from its context, implied in S
b'
gree 0 _a stractlon of
possible, -"one the less, it may be hel ful to J:er er s proposal,. to b~ really
CJ'ldemiologicaJ metaphor for purp
p f
e reader to bear In nund the
if nor working-out in det;il.
oses 0 general methodological orientation,

if annhing like Sperber's epidemiol

'cal
d .
must he that a certain principle of ii:ntitymo e1 IS to work, how~Yer, it
rcpresentations: the idea that 'kl'n
I'k I: has to apply to the target'
,
gs are I e IOns' as fo d'
I aI
'), has to COUnt as the same idea (
,
un 'n cu tur system
repertoire bclonuing to cult
I ' representatlon) when encountered in the
O'
ura s~stems B or CoN
Th' .
the model which is most ll'kely't" , d 'b
,r.
IS IS the feature of
0
raIse
ou
ts
In
wh
t
I
h
"d
I
, may I,law appeared to equivocate betwee~
a , . ave sal up tO,now,
lO:lI1el'tlOll. in principle, betvieen the si ifi the POSltlon ~at ~ere IS no
CUltural Svstems where it is present while~ hca,nce of tanoolng In any two
a ,hasic schema of tattooing W'h" h
~Ye also repeatedly r,eferred to
IC may pOSSIbly be u
IN'
nlllmenr to deal directh with tl' d I"
.
mversa " ow IS the
.
liS C !Cate questlon.

1 have just suggested that tanooing is primarily associated with two sociologically defined categories (1) marginalized subcultures and (2) preliterate
tribal societies. I have further hinted that this distribution is explicable
because there is elective affinity between tanooing as an expressive mode and
certain lifestyle attributes and value orientations, and that these are the
common properties of both categories (1) and (2). It would seem to follow
that I must have in the back of my mind some universalist interpretation of
what tattooing means. It is indeed true that I have a certain general interpretative idea, but 1 hope that this need not imply that 1 am hell-bent on
forcing all the available ethnographic data, from whatever source, into a single
procrustean bed of 'tattooing-theory'.
For a start, I am at present only interested in responding to the overall
trend of the evidence, rather than in explaining every single instance of
tanooing in one way. For instance, in Polynesia tanooing is not regarded as
therapeutic in any obvious way. Nor, as it happens, is therapeutic tattooing
much a feature of western practice. But there are parts of south Asia in which
the basic technical schema of tattooing is exploited primarily in this connection, to the relative exclusion of the kinds of meanings which tanooing has
either in the West or in Polynesia. An account of therapeutic tattooing among
the Shan (on the Thai/Bunna
border) has "recently been published by
TaJlnenbaum.
She states: 'Shan tattoos are not decorations; they are
medicine, in the broad sense, and can be thought of as analogous to vaccinations against various diseases' (1987: 693). Here the basic tattooing schema
generates a particular metaphoric coding of the therapeutic process, in which
the idea of injection (of evi.l-spirit-deflecting
or bullet-deflecting sacred
power) is involved. This idea is not found everywhere, and not in Polynesia so
far as I know. Similarly, the Shan tanooist is either a Buddhist monk or a
person of high spiritual standing, and the therapeutic effectiveness of the
tanoo depends on L'1ekeeping of religious precepts and food taboos. Merit is
absorbed directly via the ink used in the most potent 'five Buddha' tattoo,
which contains as an ingredient the exfoliated skin of a monk, This extraordinary idea has no parallels elsewhere and, in the tanooing cultures I will be
describing later, tattooists are neither attributed with spiritual gifts nor the
power to confer them. It is necessary therefore to give full recognition to the
rdative autonomy of the complex of ideas underlying Shan tanooing which,
as Tannenbaum
well demonstrates,
are intimately connected to popular
Buddhism. None the less, when Tannenbaum uses the following terms to
descnbe Phi Lo ('cannibal ogre'), the most powerful of all the Shan's annoury
of protective tattoos: 'The tanoo is the body of a monster, rectangular in
shape, the face contains a mouth with pointed teeth or, alternatively, the face

l'
U)\(JcJ
\\JlIi the 'pJril\ hands .. " Phi Lo are said to close off a person,
making- Imn. mmpkleh
impervious Ito bullets]', certain Oceanic parallels
\.Orne 1f!U11edlalt'l~to nund (e,g, the Marquesas: Von den Steinen 1925).
.
JUSl as there IS mort', than one possible reading of the tattooing schema, SO
can titnt' be man~. qUite distinct ways in which tattooing practices can be
Illcorporated Into hfrstyks. Just to give one striking example it is worth
relllarklll~ on the "lCt that, despite Loos's claim that only criminals and
deg-elllT,neS were laltoonl in early twentieth-century Europe, in fact, at !11~t
\ny moment, the crowned heads of England, Germany, and Russia were aU
(dlscnTtly) tattooed, having each of them submitted to the operation while
ILl\clhn~ Jbroad ~lSlOung men (Scutt and Gotch 1974), And so of course
IIlTe thousands of per/i:ctly respectable gentlemen who had been 'involved i~
!1nhtan or mercantile anilities which usually involved living away from home
hut IIIndl ~\T~e.otherwise lar from criminal. Joseph Banks, who obtained a
l.lltuo If! I ahltl, \\as perhaps the original tattooed aristocrat. These indi\ Iduals, ,lI1d still less Ihe tatlflOed royals, can hardlv be discussed in the same
Inms .IS the archet\pal tattooed prisoners of Lombroso's pages. We are
.i1ways ohl~ged tr! respect the distinction between genuine subcultural tattooing
,llId the kind of ~attooing all aristocrat might acquire, which incorporates a
rc!lTcl1c',' 10 lOIl-hte practice, but which cannot be mistaken for the real thing
(the 'Prince Hal' syndrome). The Felon, the Aristocrat, and the Good Soldier
may all he found to have identical tattoos, but depending on their actual
CirCUmstances in li,fe, quitc different linkages may exist between this particular
clemen! III the SOCIalpersonae and the remainder of the elements which enter
I!1to lts composition, The prisoner's tattoo may best be interpreted as a
e()mpO~lellt ,of '~)Ppositional practice' (Hobsbawm 1969), the soldier's as
~r(lllp-IdentlfieatlOn, and the aristocrat's as mark of distinction, to be revealed
(ll1h, ,to chosen companions who can be relied on not to misinterpret its
sl~'lllhcancc, All these complexities arc possible w:iL~out compromising the
Id~a that m each of these cases the same core metaphors arc being invoked for
llittcrent purposes.

, I believe that it is possible to do justice to the empirical diversity and

mdeed, ambiguity of the ethnographic material relating to tattooing pr;ctices:
\\ I!hout abandoning the notion that tattooing, by virtue of its basic technical
sdlema, i,s comp~rable wherever it Occurs, and that this schema generates
mnaphoncal readmgs which, though distinct, arc related to one another, The
schema can be taken up and metaphorically exploited in different wavs and for
,IIUcrclH purp~ses, but because it retains its unique character "(Which is
~jehncd III phYSIcal/technical terms) in the final analysis all these readings are
IIllcrcollnected, and each carries with it all the others as a series of more or
Jess prominent overtones, How precisely the tattooing schema is read, and
whIch of the possible readings assumes the dominant role and which arc
cmcred up. depends on the o\erall Context: the political context, and the

b.~I.iiiliiiiiiii""'

,,,,,,,,,",_,

culture of the body which is part of it, and the position of the t~tto~d
individual in relation to this political milieu. These arc th~ factors ~h,ch ~1l1
be examined in later chapters in relation to PolyneSJ.an tattoomg. 1.he
analytical strategy I propose is universalistonJy
in thiS sense: tattool~g
provides a unique source of powerful poIitic~1 metaphors; but I remam,
relativist in thinking that this unique source prOVIdes not on~, but ~ numb~r of
different metaphoric possibilities, and that these arc explOlte? dl!Terentlal1y,
according to the context. To phrase this in terms of ~per~enan Ideas, .1 a~
concerned to chart, within a delimited area, the epidemIOlogy ,not o! one
representation but of a family of representations . ~hic~ arc genencally mtcrconnected but which are individually perfectly dlstmgulshable.

1.3.1. The Skin as a Symbolic Fonn

In order to take this idea further, it is obviously necessary to begin t~ s~ecify
the basic tattooing schema in rather greater detail: onl~ the~ will It be
possible to evaluate the claims I have made both as to ItS umve,rsah~ and local
variability. The best way to approach this topic is via ~ ~onslderatlon of the
skin itseif since tattooing (and scarification, body-pamtlng, etc.) are technically pr~duced modifications of this very important but not really very wellunderstood organ of the body.
,
Anthropologists and other historians cf culture, in the course of theIr.
researches, have amassed enough material to make ~ cross-c~ltural stu~y, of
the role of skin as a symbolic form a perfectly feaSible and I~deed en~c~g
research project. The material 1 am about to adduce on Polynesian tattoomg IS
part of this mass of relevant ethnographic mat~rial. 1 hope that ~OI~e of the
interpretative ideas 1 am going to put fo~ard ml~ht also be contnbutlons to a
more general understanding of this subJect. But It would be ~e to sa! that,
with a few exceptions, anthropologists have not focused on s~ a.s specdically
as they might, and that anthropological theory in this area IS stili somewhat
inchoate.
,
'Th
Among the outstanding exceptions, to date, are
Turner. s essay on , e
Social Skin' (1980) and, less directly on the subJect but stili very releunt,
Marilyn Strathern's 'The Self in Self-Decoration' (1979; cf. A. Strath~rn and
M. Strathern 1971). More recently, some other writers ?n Melane,sla have
emphasized the role of skin as a basic focus of symbohc elaboration (e.g.
o'Hanlon 1983; 1989).
,
1 do not intend to subject this literature to much by way of scrutiny h1:r~,
since to do so raises many issues which require detailed .ethn~grap~lc
exposition, which would not be germane. However, there is ?ne cruCial pomt
which a number of anthropologists have stressed and whlc.h needs to, be
highlighted. T. Turner expresses this key idea in the followmg words: the

!.

sud.!IC "j lllc budl bl'LO!lIe~, III all} human sockty, a boundary of II peculiarly
complo. kmd,. Whllh slIllultaneotlsly separates domains lying on either side
of it and contlates dil1i:rent levels of social, individual, and intra-psychic
meaning. The skin (and hair) are the concrt'te boundary between the self and
the other, the individual and sotiety' (I 980: 139), Marilyn Strathern has
developed this idl'a in her analysis of the way in which the spectacularly
decor;lled bodies of Nl'W Guinea Highlanders allow them to express their
'truc' sdves, in defiance of our prejudices concerning the basic mendaciousness of cosmetics and adornment (1979).

For .It least some people, the social skin is the support or vehicle for the
opressjon
of social relations. There is a contrast here with conventional
IITSIlTll attitudes. ',"e tend to reason in this way: the skin is on the outside of
the hod, -> what is outside is always less important/true/real
than what is
inside
,hence the skin cannot tell us about the real person. But there is
.If]othn way of looking at this. which Occurs more naturally to the kinds of
people l~. Turner and M. Strathern arc talking about. Thi~ reasoning runs:
lhe. skm IS o~ the outside of the body --,> the outside of the body is the part
\\/uch IS pubhe .and which comes into contact with other people ~ people are
the sum total of their relations with other people ~ the person is his/her skin.
l'he. nlllion that the skin is a constitutive clement of the social person and
proVIdes the means. of conducting social relationships is clearly a very significant one, though of such generality that, by itself, it is not very informative.
There ~as, howe\'~r, been one attempt to provide a more generalized
a~coulll of the role of the skin in cross-cultural perspective which, unlike T.
lurner or M. Strathern, explicitly attempts to examine the transition between
the symbolic significance of the skin (and skin treatments) in so-called
primiti\l' societies and more evolved societies such as pre-modem states and
Llltcr-dav modern societies. I am here referring to a work by Maertens which
hove.rs bttween anthropology, evolutionary reconstruction, and psychoanalysis
Jnd IS consequently rather difficult to classifY. Maertens's work is valuable and
inspiring, Lho.ugh casual enquiries among francophor.e colleagues of mine
h'IVC so. far faIled to unearth any details about this anthropologist whose book
/.( /)(.<S/II JUr Ie pcau (1978) I ran across quite by chance in the librarv of the
'''arburg Institute.
.
, .\Iacrtcns is a ~o~lowcr of the French psychoanalyst Lacan. Consequently,
Ile locates the ongms of all symbolic significations in a 'severing' provoked
hy language, which occurs during the so-called mirror stage of psychic
dC\c~opmcnt. A~ this developmental stage, psychological (as opposed to
phySical) separatIOn from the mother occurs, and the notion of the 'other'
al~d the subject-object
distinction comes into existence. Subsequent growth
ut the psyche takes the form of <i series of recapitulations of this initiallv
traUIl1;Hic separation; a series of parturitions which restate the original child!
mother / / self/other / / signifier/signified birth-events in different disguises.

These successive parturitions can be arranged in a sequence eorresponding

to indhidual ontological development (this is orthodox Lacanian psychoanalytic theory). Maertens, in the tradition of post~Freudian, analytically
inspired social theory, supposes that this ontological sequence of individual
parturitions can be aligned \\-ith a sequence corresponding to the evolutio~ary
stages of human civilizations, which he borrows more or less unaltered from
Morgan. The evolutionary scheme he proposes consists of the three-stage
sequence proceeding from 'tribal' (non-hierarchical) societies, via 'barbarian'
(hierarchical, pre-capitalist) kingdoms, to modem industrial states.
In gross terms, he asserts that in societies at the tribal level body art
flourished as part of a mythical discourse centred on the primary separation
of the fusional body-mother and the social self. Body-marking practices
in barbarian societi~s introduce a second severance between the 'profane'
(sexual) body-the
one which is ritually celebrated in primitive rituals-and
a
'sacred' body. Thus, while in primitive rituals we observe a 'parturition' which
could be represented as:
fused body-mother

~ own (social/sexual)

In hierarchical
but pre-capitalist
reduplicated as follows:
fused body-mother

systems

~ own (social/sexual)

body.
this parturative

sequence

IS

body ~ sacred (a-sexual) body.

The relation between the profane body and the sacred body is a hierarchical
one and provides a basis for hierarchy in general-an
idea not so different
from some expressed by Dumont (1970). Capitalism, via the fetishization of
commodities, introduces a further severing. The body becomes a possession
that one owns as a thing, and that others may own as a thing. Capitalist bodyrituals arc about creating, via cosmetics, clothes, accessories, and body-culture
in general, this uniquely desirable but vulnerable possession.
This account is historically oversimplified, but Maertens fills out his
scheme with an impressive array of well-selected examples to which any
interested person may turn for more details. I intend to concentrate on only
one aspect of his treatment of the subject, namely the contrast he draws
between non-hierarchical
and hierarchical societies. In non-hierarchical
societies (for which Maertens includes all tribal or archaic societies) bodypainting and tattooing are expressions of the original unity of the fusional
body. The coat of paint, or pattern of tattoo markings, envelops the body and
is integral with it, recapitulating the original fusion between own body/
enveloping maternal body. At the same time these body-markings are exteriorisations of the inner hidden self (here Maertens's ideas coincide with
those of M. Strathern 1979). The self and the enveloping integument which
~nites the self and the world (Le. the mother) are revealed as one. But there is
an important difference between body-painting and scarification/tattooing.

nodI -pJIJliJl1g (1111ICh

ISseCl1'I" 111('f'e pnnlltl\e
' "')'
IS temp
,
'
'I .
and gennally rrotic. Scaritit:<Hionand tattooin . b .orary~Pflman y vIsual,
Y
'I rrnllndatorv
character being perm
g, 'I contrast, have more of
,
'
.'
,
anent, taell e as well
. al
assoCIated\\lth birth and death' S
.
. as VlSU, and
mother object, whereas body_p.rin~~m~gr:xpres.~esthe defi~itive I~of the:
onpnal fused Slate.
g
gresslVe, nostalgiC, recalling the
,

".>

\ b:nens argues that tribal body art serves in ritual,

.
socI.11relations of solidarity on th. b"
t' h
~o~te:\1s,to establ!~h
'
,e
aSls
0 s ared renuncIatIon t th
th"
anl I th IS renunciation is achieved by fj', t' II
'
0
e mo er,
rSI 0 a recaJImgthe fi ' d
tIlCIIconsclluentlv
re-ell'ICtI'ngth
" I' act 01 sepa t'
'1
,

e' ongllla
p'use , state, and
thc !1Iolhrr is rc~'ained but th.
'
I,
. ra IOn, amt ISdonned,
T ' .
" "
r pamt a \\ays has to be washed if
'
.lllt10Sand mutilatIOns serve as 'lived' si sf,
~ .agam.
thc <vele of binh drath and -b'rth' h' g-n 0" common partICIpatIon in
, ,
.
,
rr I ,t ey prm'l,je p
. . ,
rrlll1l1eIalJon,scar-tissue left where the 0 "
I I:' ermanem Inslg-nlaof
took place.
ngma sp HtIngof the fusional body
IlowC\cr, oncc society begins to be or anized h'
.'
,
.\lacnens the .' d'.
' . g
lerarchlcaJly, accordmg to
,
pnlO IC return to ongms enacted'
" ,
,
.
lon,i'l'r socially admissible Scars and tatt 'd' I fiInpnmltIve ntual IS no
b
'
"
oos ISPav or all t
th'
,
lll\:, but once 'eschatological' discourse is established th~ ~oed'.. e finrthgmal
sp It IIltOtwo' on tl .
h d'
'v
IS u er
,
Ie one an mto an avowed b d
h' h' ci .
work and holiness and on the th h d'
0 Y w IC IS edlcated to
,
.,
0 er an Into a de . d (
I) b
relatIOn between the valued and dId
b d'
me sexua ody. The
,
eva ue 0 les becom th
od I fi
relatIOn between valued and dId
I
. es e m e or the
'-:
eva ue cements makIng
th
.I
,,0 that, whereas in non-hl'erarchi I
"
up e socIa whole,
,
ca SOCIetIesbody
ki
ImnUllcnt self whieh is inside the bod
d h' h
-mar ngs reveal an
th 1..' ,
,
y an w IC can be made to
e sm, III hIerarchical societies body-markin
. appear on
without. and sig-nit) the suppression or"the dev r>;r~odb~ands IOlposed from
represents,
a ue
y and what that body
I

r:

The' diacritical use of body-markin s t 'd '.

'
indeed an old and widespr~ad fi
0/ enn~ margmal/outcast status is
Romans had to deal with the 'P' ~ta, (re? Pdre-modem state systems. The
"
Ie s pamte men) ha ' th L
'
while within them, slaves were customaril b
rrymg e~ Honners,
hihiting marking the body (Le.iticus 19.2/
r~~ded. Th.e Mo~alc law prothe idea that the marked bod ' '
b'), an~ Its Koramc eqUIvalentreflect
,
, IS an a ommatlon whi h
b b
lI1to proximity with the sacI' d- ('
I,'
c cannot e rought
"
. e Just as a eper 0
d fi
d
ahomination), Outlaws (beginnin with Cain
r a ~ orme person is an
thun from social and religious life Bu
' ' ) were mutIlated s~ as to exclude
he set the more unusual
"liz' t agamst these marks of mfam~'have to
marglna Illg marks which b k
.
sanctity: the scars left by exceptional devotions the . eto en extra,ordmary
the wounds endured bv Christ h'
If
,stIgmata
of the samts, and
\1, >,
,
,I~se
.
, at nens shows how tattcomg m modern ind
.r
.
.
be a~sociated with marginal (though not unifo~tna Ised society connnues to
verv I1lterestingpoint that tattooing th " . th Ylow) ~tatus. He makes the
mes m ose margInal groups which are

confined in society, but which are denied the opportunity to reproduce within
it and have little personal stake in it, apart from their own continued hodily
existence. He '"suggests that these non-reproducing groups-prisoners,
soldiers andSiillors, prostitutes-tattoothemselves
with designs which both
seek to compensate for a rootless existence (MOTHER in large letters across the
chest) and simultaneously express tiltalistic acceptance of social exclusion.
Lombroso had earlier remarked on the linkage between tattooing and
fatalism, the philosophy most characteristic of the criminal classes, but he
accounted for it merely as a consequence of animal dumbness. Maertens
shows, more sympathetically, how the pennanent inscription of the hostile
attitudes of the dominant group, so that they become absorbed into the very
substance of the body, can be interpreted as an attempt to achieve reintegration, an encompassing wholeness, even if thc practical clfect of tattooing a
device such as BORN CRIMINAL on to the body is to make social reintegration
even more of an impossibilitythan it was before. The prisoner who docs this
accepts once and for all that he is a criminal and seeks to reconstruct the
world on that basis; either by challenging the forces of order or, more
typically, by representing passive acceptance of destiny as thc s~nlbolic
equivalent of exercising mastery oyer it,
Tattooing is thus a bodily code for registering social forces as part of the
person on whom these social forces impinge, thereby creating a conceptual
closure, a unity, out of what is; in fact, a relation of marginality and exclusion.
Thus soldiers and sailors (especiallyin old-style armies in which enlisted men
had little cbance of marrying and having families) tended to cover themselves
with national flags, regimental badges, plus sundry female figures, identified
as mothers, girlfriends, ",ives, etc, so as to create an enveloping social matrix
as a symbolic surrogate for the domestic envelope which their circumstances
in life made it impossible for them to develop satisfactorily.
Maertens's discussion of tattooing, body-painting, and cosmetics is in many
ways'bighly instructive (cf, Thevoz 1984). But, quite apart from the issue of
the plausibility of Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is unsatisfactory in that it is
ba$ed on an excessively simple paradigm of social evolution. In particular,
from the standpoint of the present work, it is unfortunate that Maertens's
social-evolutionaryscheme appears to have no place at all for societies such as
those in Oceania which are distinctly hierarchical, but which are none the less
not states nor prone to eschatological discourse of the ]udaeo-Christian kind.
Maertens is either unaware of, or at least does not mention, any instances
of tribal societies with repressive codes of sexual morality, which exist in
plenty,-for instance Manus (Fortune 1935) or Kaulong (Goodale 1980)nor any pre-capitalist hierarchical societies with permissive sexual regimes,
which are also not uncommon (e.g. the Society Islands; cf. th. 3), Such a
crude stereotype of cultural evolution cannot provide a secure basis for the
kind of global theory.Maertens is aiming at, which most anthropologists would

rC.'~.lrd .IS hopdcssh amhilious ilnvwav Th" I

\1'
~ -'
Is l ors not mean however th
~ .llTll'IlS IS IlClTssarilv wrong "/1 all "h' d
'I d
'
,at
,
0 IS etill e analyses f hi
can'v a good deal of conviction,
"
some 0 w eh
I also entirely disagree with the idea that sta
f'
.
,
corrdated
with stages of psych' d
I
ges 0 SOCIalevolutlon can. be
".
.
Ie eve opment This is
tJ th
otJ!o!'eny recapitulates phv'logenv' idea
.
.'
exae y . e same"
as
derh.Ts frum another of ihe in(ellectual InsPlref~ fII,omkbrlo~o,
only this time it
I (P-) \1
sons 0 . ae e I e Fre d (G Id
I,
'.
,Iertens docs not deprecate a~'h .
'.
' ' .
u
ou
, .
'
.c alc SOCieties as 10mb
d'd b .
more IIlchned to romanticize thc'l'r egal't "
d'fi'
roso I, e/llg
.
.
I anamsm an usio I'
,
It comes to the same thl'llg fl'
h'
na Integratl.on, but
.
. e IS at IS m 't
.,
h
ahout states and ,thout m<ldc
"
'
os connneIng w en he is writing
,
'
'rn socIety where th' t
.'
.
sOCl,d hehaviour 'IS I't' I't vv'cr th d' '
c emptatlOn to wntc about
.,
e
c Irect e
,. .
f' f: '
.
clearlv much less That I, ", h
' xpre~slOn 0 III anule tantasies is
,
,caves
t e questIOn ot th b '. I 'b' ,
I,acanian framework Maertens'
'h' h h
e aSlc p aUSI Ihty of the
,
' uses-w
Ic
as of c
h
po!o)!.lcal supporters (e,g, ,"lorton 1987).
"ourse,
ot er anthro11m IS not the placc to deal W'l'th th
b'
f th
'I'
,
e su Jen 0
e long
d'
,
re atlllnshlp between anthropol
'I
b r
.'
an mtncate
detail. since all I wish to do is togJ~la.~m 0 IC exege.s~s and psychoanalysis in
".
' 0 c arlJ~ my own posluon I tak th
'
th
th e speC/he Interpretations prov'd db'
"e
e VIew at
he t'valuated independenth of :h: s Ycfsych~a~alysIS (e.g. of rir,ual acts) can
'events' which are claimed to b p Y oa~~rlC theory of the mtra-psychic
symholic torms. It does not reall~ :s~onsl he for the origination of these
psychoanalytical claims to be abl' t a. er ,wthether or not I am sceptical of
,
.'
e 0 Intuit
e mental
f'
(I am) SInce these can be brack t d
. processes 0 babies
the task of finding coherence
~ e away .when applymg analytical ideas to
pological purposes, therefore an pattern I~ cultural materials. For anthroexegetical discourse rather tha'n PaSych~anallYSlsIcan be treated as a parallel
B'
s a causa -exp anatory theory
lit eyen III this role, as a Source of inte
..
.'
causal theoT\' I feel that Maert
'L
. rpretauve readIngs, rather than a
and that hi~' account sU'ffers ens s acaman approach is gratuitously narrow,
psychoanalytical work has app::read ~~s~q~nce,
~lore recently, however, a
hook, which lacks the narrow sectan'an c
arshi~lJ'hectJYdon
the theme of this
fiocus w c ten s to rend
. I .
h
ana Iyuca dIscussions unhelpfi I'
th
er psyc 0investigations, I am referring t~ ~~ woerkcoofnAtext.
of cUltuthr~kin~d sociological
nZleu on e s
ego' (1989),

1.3.2. Anzieu: The Skin-Ego

In ihis book, Didier Anzieu outlines a theo
I'
"
careful consideration from anthr
I'
b ry 0 ~e ego whIch ments very
p
"th
opo ogJsts, ecause It tends to confirm from a
Ps\'cholu:ncal
.
O'
erspectlve
e verv pro
"
h' h
'
Turner and from Ivl S 'th
:
posluon w Ic I extracted earlier from
. tra ern, I.e. that the ki . .
. ,
person himself/herself
Turner d al
'th sth~ ~, m many ways, the SOCIal
.
e s WI
IS In tenus which strikingly

,mtIClpate those used by Anzieu, and which also explicitly refer to psychoanalytical concepts, when he writes:
At one level, the 'social skin' models the social boundary between the individual actor
and other actors; but at a deeper level it models the internal, psychic, diaphragm
between the presocial, libidinous energies of the individual, and the 'intemalised
others' or social meanings, that make up what Freud called the 'ego' and 'super-ego'.
At yet a third, macro social level, the conventionalised modifications of skin and
hair that comprise the 'social skin' define, not individuals, but categories or classes
of individuals." The 'social skin'." [is) ... the boundary between social classes,
(1980: 140)
The formula Isocial skin -4 social person/, which in the hands of
T. Turner, Maertens, or M. Strathern amounts to an insight rather than a
theory, becomes in the work of Anzieu (1989) the basis for a radical reformulation of ego-psychology, He prefaces his work with the obsen'ation
that the very organ with which we think, feel, know, and experience-the
cortex of the brain-is
embryonically a development of the surface of the
early foetus, an introverted and reticulated 'skin', But we are prone to habits
of mind which make us blind to the significance off acts like these:
Since the renaissance, western thought has been obsessed with a particular epistemological conception, whereby the acquisition of knowledge has been seen as breaking
through an outer shell, to reach an inner core or nucleus. This notion has now been
exhausted .. , we are faced with a paradox. The centre (the cortex) is at the periphery.
(1989: 9)
He goes on to point out the way in which the development of bodily organs
(the brain and other organs as well) typically occurs, in utero, through a
folding-up process technically known as 'invagination', the process which
creates the endlessly complicated array of folds, envelopes, tubes, caps, and
pockets of which the body is made. He sees this as preparing the ground for a
process of psychic development which can be seen in metaphorically the same
way. And not just metaphorically, either, because the psyche is grounded
in bodily existence and bodily structures at every point. His theory of the
skin ego is designed specifically to integrate the understanding of psychic
development with the understanding of physical development, a somatically
based ego-psychology.
The key to Anzieu's approach is contained in the insight into the doublesidedness of the skin, which both protects the 'primal cavity' of the body from
the external world, yet at the same time reveals and communicates the internal
state of this primal cavity to the external world. The skin has an 'outsiee'
which serves as a shield, creating the boundary between the self and the
world, but this protective shield is also acutely sensitive to ,the world, and
liable to accumulate a complex texture of marks which bear witness to the
impinging external, forces. The skin also has an 'i!1side', an inner-facing

Sur),h,' \\ hich 'holds in' the body contents, but which is no less sensitive than
the ollter surf;\[e; registning the inner state of the cavity-its emptiness
repletion, well-being, or malaise. The inside-facing and outside-tlll:ing skin;
are, me~nwhile, one indivisible structure, and hence the skin continually
eommUllleates the external world to the internal one, and the internal world to
th,c otern?1 one. This traffic, mediated by the skin, is the formative principle
of the ego s basICsense 01 scllhood in the wodd.
PSllhoa~laJytically,\nzieu argues, the skin ego originates in babyhood, as
the mf.tnt ISbrought to recognize that it docs not share its mother's skin but
has one of its own. and that its inner senses of pleasure and pain are
detenl1~nedby the \\;1\. ill which this skin relates to other skins-originally the
~nothl'r s. I Ie emphNzes-lollowing
Winnicot (l958)-the significance of
iJoldlll).:and caresslllg IIJthe process of allowing thl' child to develop a secure
sense 01 sell, and he dIscusses clinical cases, whil'h unfortunateh' cannot be
considered ill detail here. of children whose (psychological) skins fail to
deH'lop ~roperly (a little girl who believes that her head is full of holes, an
older pa~lcnt wh.oscratches her face until it bleeds, and so on). The psychoanalytICImphcatlons 01 :\nzil'll's theory arc not what is important for present
purposes, t~o~~h I will have occasion to refer later to his basic hypotheses
that babies Intllally share one skin with their mothers and that ego-formation
necessitates the rupture of this skin. For the present I wish to concentrate on
.~nzie.u's admirably methodical descriptive account of skin as a basic symbolic
lorm In mental life, since this provides one with a series of useful leads which
can assist in formulating interpretations of cultural practices which involve
modification of the skin.
. Anzieu lists nine 'functions of the skin ego' (Ch. 7). Very briefly, thev are as
lollows.
.
I. .\ Ltintenan~e a~d. support. The skin-ego maintains the psyche as a
develop~ent .or Intez:on.sal1onof the holding maternal embrace. The person's
sense 01 .selfISa denvauve of early attachment, clinging, support, reassurance
eommumcated through the skin.
. 2. C.ont~ining.. T~e skin-~~o is a container, an outer bag, which keeps
s.ome,~In~ 111. ~hls Inner selr tS frequently identified as spontaneous, appetiI1ve, Illsl1nctual-very much on the lines suggested by Turner in the passage
cited above.
.
3. Protection. The skin-ego is a protective layer which shields the inner
sc.lf..The protectiv: skin mav be reinforced in various ways. Anzieu notes
c1:mcal.cases of pat1e~t~' ohses.sionalbody-building as a means of developing
a .muscular sec?nd ~ki.n-a skill of muscle, under the skin itself, as protective
remforcement In clrmcal cases of defective (psychological) skin-formation.
The protective role of skin will play an important part in the analysis developed in later chapters.

4. Individuation. Anzieu regards the development of a.skin as criticali~l

the
process of aequiJ1nganjndividual identity~This. re~e:-,both to the spwl1cally
psychoanalyticalthesis of the emergence of the mdividual p~ychef~oma st~te
in which ego's identity is submerged within an unbroken skin-shanng relanon
with the mother, but it is obviously entirely consistent with much more
familiar sociological ideas about identity (cf. M. Strathern 1988).
.
5. Intersensoriality. The skin is not a homogeneous envelope, hut IS
marked out by pockets containing specialized sensol)' organ~, the n:routh,
nose, eyes, genitalia, etc. These sensory pockets are co-ordmated na the
global relation which situates them all within one common structure, I.e. the
skin-ego.
.
6. Support of sexual excitation. The skin is also marked out Illto arcas of
localized erogenous significance. The skin-ego is the structur: whIch c~ordinates the sum of differentiated erotic zones (and in patholOgIcalcases, IS
the source of confusion between them).
7. Libidinal recharging. The skin-ego is the structure which registers the
steady accumulation or sudden depletion of libidinal desire.
','
8. Registration. The skin is the register or mirror of external reaIrty. [he
skin ego is the original parchment which preserves, like a palimpsest, the
erased scratched-out, written over, first outlines of an 'original' pre-verbal
writin~ made up of traces on the skin', says Anzieu (p. ~05). Here .~zieu
cites Bettelheim (1955), a psychoanalytic authority whose VIewsare familiar to
anthropologists, and suggests that mutilations, tattoos, etc. can be understood
as registrations of separation from the mother, much as Maertens does as
well.
9. Self-destruction. This is the pathological function of skin turned against
its owner as in auto-immune skin diseases, or m}1hologicalincidents such as
Hercules: self-flaying in the course of his vain effort to rid himself of the shirt
of Nessus.
Many, indeed most, of these nine functions of the skin-ego can be implica~ed
in the interpretation of body art and body mutilation in th~ P?l)n~slan
material to be introduced in later chapters. As a source of onentmg Ideas
about skin Anzieu's discussion is extremely useful, even if one retains a
degree of ~cepticism concerning his account of psychic ontogeny in all its
details.

Using Anzieu's nine functions of the skin-ego as an armature, I can ~ow begin
to fill out in more detail some of the possibilities inherent in the basiCschema
of tattooing.

FUIh'iiUI1 ] (Support).
!'he lanoomg interpremtion of this function has
already heen indicated to a certain rxtCI1l, in the discussion of Maertens's
workyee
Sec!. 1.3.1). It will be ret:allcd that this writer interprets tattooing
(particularly e.g. t11l' type of tatlooing practised by soldiers and sailors
invokinl! Home, .\ lUIll, Best Girl, Flag, Comrades. etc.) as the creation of ~
sub~tit\lt~' en.velope enfolding an otherwise exposed social persona in a protecnv", ,ImpliCitly maternal, embrace. Evidence wiII crop up later that in
PolyncslJ tattooing. was sometillll.:s quite explicitly conceptualized as the
culmmatmg stage or lhe birth process, and there is no doubt of the association
hctwel'll birth, rebirth, and tattooing in these instances. The idea here is that
tatt.ooing, hy prO\iding an extra skin, over the skin, a wrapping for the person
which IS not scpar,lte, hut integral, permits the recapitulation of the original
sItuatwn of an unlllediated single-skin relationship with the mother while at
thc SJme timc-and
somewhat paradoxically-marking
the final stage of
renunciation of that orit,rinal relationship. : do not intend to press this idea too
lar, at IcJst not where the question ()f the primordial relation with the mother
is concerned, hecause to do so is to yenture too far into the domain of purely
psychoanalytic theory. For the purposes of social and cultural analysis of
tattooing institutions. this fill1ction is effectively merged with function 4
(indhiduJtion, see below).

The close linkage between tattooing and \iolence is everywhere in evidence,

and can hardly be eJI1t>h~t:d~ufficientiy.
The underlying idea here is that
the tattooed skin is eithe reinforced or becomes the locus of harm-detlecting
(>OWC1'$.
I think that it is under this heading that one should consider the
painfUlness of the tattooing process, since there seems to be a spontaneous
costlbenefit inference at work here; i.e. the advantage secured by means of a
tattoo is proportional to the pains endured in the process of acquiring it.
Protective tattooing seems thus to be a way of mastering dangers by preempting them.
But it would be incorrect to think of the protective function of tattooed skin
exclusively in this directly magical/instrumental
framework. There is J much
wider sense in which tattooing can be understood as protective. llere,
following Anzieu, I would like to invoke a concept introduced by \Yilhclm
Reich in the year 1929, namely the so-called 'character armour' .. -\t this
period in his career, Reich was especially concerned with psychoanalytic 'hard
cases' -patients
who simply could not submit or be persuaded to lie down on
the couch and Tell All. Accordingly, he developed a special theory about the
way in which the 'difficult' patient's psychological malaise is itself the source
of his inability to submit to the psychoanalytical treatment which alone might
cure it.
This is not the moment to deeide whether this is a deep insight into human
nature or merely a device to ensure that psychoanalytic theory could never be
said to have failed, even if psychoanalytical treatment proved totally inelTective, or perhaps both. What is useful is the idea that the social person
('character' in Reich's terminology) may be understood as fundamentally a
defensive structure, something which is there to resist or absorb assaults.
In fact, there is no need to assume that character armour conceals, or is
produced by, damage to the psyche. Character armour could equally well be
considered a most useful acquisition, and those who remember the 1960s will
perhaps agree that partly Reich-inspired efforts to be divested of it did not
produce very attractive results.
Later on in his career, Reich developed the notion of character armour in
an interesting direction, though by this time he had become decidedly cranky.
He became preoccupied wim the musculature, which he thought of as a
second muscular skin. Muscular tension physically represented me elTon to
form an impenetrable carapace to resist intrusions into repressed psychosexual disorders, or bottled-up desire (Reich described the sadistic person as
'like a baBoon full to bursting' (1950. Once again, there is no need to
restrict these ideas to tlleir original context of abnormal psychology. These
metapl'iors of carapaces, balloons, etc. and their bodily referents are often met
with as components of the standard culture of the body, not by any means
, confined to the mentally unbalanced.
I think that the idea of character armour can be taken up in this connection

Fun~tion 2 ~Containing). It is under this heading that .the idea that tattooing
hol~s m me mward person can be considered. This inward person is restramed by the tattooed envelope yet, just as with any container, what is inside
reveals itself indirectly through what is outside (as me shape ora violin-case
cummunicates the shape of a Yiolin). Thus it is often found that muscles,
organs, hones, etc. are indicated in the formal arrangement and specific motifs
In tattoos. Sometimes tattoos arc bindings which physically restrain me organs
beneath. Here there arc complicated interactions between the tattooing
schema and clothes and other types of body-binding which will be considered
in due course.
.But what is inside? Is it correct to assume, as Turner does (in conformity
wH.h.psychoanalytic tradition) that the inside person is always spontaneous,
hbldlllal, etc. and that control is exercised by social Others (authority figures,
etc:) from the outside? This seems to me too restrictive an approach, and one
whICh ref1ects the traditional (western) presumption that the real person is
inside the exterior mask. For the present, the contents of the contained inside
can be left uns.peci~ed; v~'hat is at issue is only the role of tattooing in making
ma~1fest the function. of the skin as a container, and the dialectical way in
whIch the tattooed skm as a container communicates and at the same time
conceals that which is contained.
Fu~etion
3 (Protection).
One non-Polynesian
instance of protective
tattoomg has already been brief1y discussed (cf. Tannenbaum 1987, quoted
above, on the Shan). Polynesian examples will be discussed in due course.

.~,'
:il
..,.

l._---

as a f:(llcral (mer term lor the: elahoration of defences around the social
person. The expression contains a useful ambiguity, in that it can be understood hoth, as an ~Irmour'for' the character, and an' armour 'consisting of' the
character. [attonmg can he regarded in this way as character annour which
d~fends the social person (an apotropaic second skin) and simultaneously, at a
hlg~er level, as a component of the social person as a whole, regarded as a
dcfe:nsnc structure. In thiS way one can think of tattooing as simultaneously
proteC!lllg and also constituting the person. i\loreover the physiological
connotatIOns oj the concept of character armour allow one to forge the link
hetween the social person as a hasically defensive structure, and the social
person ;ISa hod", consisting of layers wrapped around a core, and with an
outside .md an inside.
The Icry common linkage between tattooing and violence has just been
mentIPncd. Hut the point whieh needs perhaps to he stressed in this connection ;s that this \iolence is essentially defensive. I have never come across
an insl.ll~ce of tattoo~!~g(th: self) as a means of inflicting harm directly on
sOl.~eother person. I attoomg does not confer omnipotence, but invulnerahdI.!}.. In our contemporary system of body culture invulnerability is sought
eX'PIICllI~
through body-building and Anzieu discusses this practice as a means
~)fde\l'.lopin~ ~n extra-resilient second skin around the 'real self' (he has
mterestmg clI~lcal examples). Likewise, in our culture, there is a linkage
hetween tattoomg and body-building (tattooing aficionados are often bodvhUild~rs as well) and b.oth tattooing and of course body-building are mu~h
praCt1Sel~a~ong the pnson population, often simultaneously. The tattooing/
body-bUlldmg nexus has perhaps no precise parallels elsewhere but it is
com~on enough to find tattooing associated \\ith growth, strengili, prowess,
etc: In the ~~re general sense, particularly the tattooing of adolescents just
;llTI~'lI1g
at mIlItaryor reproductive age. I suggest that this type of tattooing can
he IIlterprcted as the construction not just of the tattoo but also the newgrown body a~ a whole, of which the tattoo forms an integral part. Thus, on
my readmg of the evidence, character armour provides as good a summary
definition 'co:e metaphor' of Polynesian tattooing as I can conceive, though ~f
coursc tattoomg has many aspects to it, not just this one alone.
. Function 4 (Individuation). The creation of personal identity is probably the
tactor whICh IS most regularly invoked in the sociological literature as the
sourcc of the motive to become tattooed, at least in the West. Indhiduals
mark themselves with indelible insignia which, by their singularity, testifYto
thclr ~l1lquc per~onal relations, achievements, etc. and also their personal
fancy In the, chOIce of this or that design. At the same time they adopt
emblems (oj gangs, military units, etc.) indicating group-affiliations which
support their social identity l'is-a-l'is outsiders and enemies.
Anzi~u, as a psychoanalyst, secs individuation in terms of establishing
separatIOn from the mother on satisfactory terms, and failure to arrive at a

satisfactory sense of individuality as a consequence of unresolved moth~rl

child difficulties from an early infancy. Seen fiomthis point of vicw, tattoomg
may be interpreted, as Maertens suggests, as ,a symbolic scar, indicating
separation from the mother, and her renunciation. There is clearly only a
Partial overlap between the psychoanalytical understanding of 'establishing a
social identity' and the more neutral sociological definition, which docs not
require any psycho-dynamic interpretation. At this point there i~ no n~cd
to choose between them; either way, there are features of the PO~l1eSIan
tattooing material which can be related to the individuating function of skin.
But caution is necessary for another reason. Thc concept of individuation is
a derivative of the concept of the individual, but this concept is both slippery
and controversial. 'Individuals' in the sense implicd by 'social indi\iduality' in
the western context has becn claimed not to cxist in othcr cultures (e.g. India:
Dumont 1965; 1970). Within Polyl1esia,some societies may bc said to be
more individualistically oriented than othcrs (this is partly the basis of the
Traditional versus Open contrast proposed hy Goldman (1970) for typological
purposes). If tattooing is to be seen as a means of establishing a c.crtain
individuality, what that means has to be specified in terms of local tact?rs
governing the definition of the individual. Indeed, there is no logical hnk
whatsoever between identity and individuality, since a social identity could be
purely categorial/relational, without implying any individuality at all, in the
sense of independence, boundedness, self-containedness, etc.
Functions 5 (Intersensoriality) and 6 (Sexual Excitability). These two
functions may be dealt with together, and that only very briefly. This is not
because they are unimportant, but because they can more profitably be
considered later, in relation to more specific data. Essentially,these functions
are relevant to tattooing because tattooing is always localized on some part of
the body envelope, and the placement of tattoo design is always a factor in
understanding its significance.
Function 7 (Libidinal Recharging). ;\!lissionaries in Polynesia, if not
Polynesians themselvcs, left abundant testimony that they regarded tattO?i~g
as a major incitement to vice and lewdness (Ellis 1831; Clavel 1885) It ISIII
'(act true as will be described later, that tattooing ceremonies were followed by
erotic di~plays,dancing, etc. and there is no lack of evidence that some, if not
all, Polynesians resorted to tattooing for erotic purposes.
.
It is a moot point, though, whether libidinal recharging really fits the case,
in the Polynesian context, because the concept of libido is not universally
appropriate for understanding cultura1 representations of se.xualityoutside. our
own system. I have not come across any evidence of the skin as a pressun~ed
container of accumulated libido in the Polynesian sources, and I do not thmk
they thought of desire in quite that way. None the less, the linkage between
tattooing and the expression of se;\.Llalityis clear enough. How should OI~e
interpret this linkage? It is altogether too simple (not to say circular) to put thiS

down. to. the tact tlldt :attooiflg bcautifiesthe I>d

d th
,I ','
t' h
.
,(j v an
us provokes th
al lIura,lOn 0 t c opposite sc'x, Why should marked ki
'
.
e
unmarked skin docs not?'
s n provoke deSIre that

ce::

,'l~rked, pattcrned, or scarred skin draws in the

'
~xcrClses the power of fascination, and lowers
~f the onlooker,
Isolates and follows the mazy pathwavs of th I'
dC ences. The eye
. .' "h
'
J'
e (eslgn an eventually so t
spca".
t e body
' . th 0
',' . ell!crs
.
. of the other , because th"c p ccuI"lanty 0f tatto'
1< ISJI1S11!c
the skin rather than on its surl'.ace Th
'
omg tS at
'
,"
"
1;',
us to Vl(:wa tattoo is al d
to h e III a pOSItIOnof seduction' it prov k
h '
rea y
k' 1 .
,0
es, not an aest etlc rcspon b
dm~. of, b(IJdil)I',look~ng
which is intrinsically sexualized especialh' w~eenu~ a
eSI~'11IS oca !Zed III a wav wh' h f]
'..
.
e
bod~ (i,e, in the light of tu~ctionl(6),re ects on the erotic posSIbilities of the
, !\ot only is the act of looking a' a tattoo an a
m~ltcment) to sexual intercourse. but the technical SCh:~ogu; (and. hence an
a further series of anal(j<neswhl'c'htend t
ds h
a.o tattoomg sets up
b' ,
owar t c same d Th 'h
tattoo cyokes imagery of eex 'J 'b"
"
en,
e slg t of a
. . ." ua su !ectlOn plercmg a d f]
h' h
equally resonant seen hom the perspecti ' f 'h ' n
ux, w IC are
ve
er
arisc from the manner in which t'lttooe are d eJt\r sex; these resonances
I
.
ma e, ; .ore narrowly th
.
ana ogy between tattooing and defloration which will b d',.
d'i ere ISan
cven as the onlooker's eye is drawn into th bod, ; ISCusse ater. Thus,
fascination exerted by th~ design the 'ti. e, f) 0 the other through the
,
.
,
nnge 0 resonances of the tatt .
process remforces this sexualized looking Th
I'
b
" oomg
tattooin<Tin other words . , t"
. e re atIon etween eroticIsm and
b'
, ISm nnSlC,
Function 8 (Registration). Psvchoanal . lith,
'.
.
conceptualized in terms of
,',
?t!ca y,. e regIstration functIon is
registration 01 separation fro th
th
pre-emptive castration to divert antici ated
t
m. e.mo er and/or
longings (BetteJheim 1955) 0 "
~ th (pa,emal) retribution for Oedipal
,
' n_e agam ere ISno need t
tJi
.
tIOn to a narrowly psychoanalytic definition Perh
h 0 res . Cl r~gls~away of conceptualizin~ this fu~ction which'.
ta,PS t e, m,ore I.llummatlng
'.
' ,
IS no mconslStent WIth
h
dynamlc
mterpretations, but which d
.
. p~c 0consider the skin as a kind of external::: no~;~qwre th~m e.lther, IS to
present, inbuilt, system of 'memory plac~~ates
a kind of ev~rthe person as a locus of remembe;ed events Co
. ~r r~COnslTUctlng
encountered as a pretext for tattooing and stili .' rnme~ratlon IS fre~uently
mhutilatihon,a,s will be ~iscussed lat:. Recent ~~~~ s~~ K::~~r sC(i~g) ahnd
s o\\n ow Important It is to co'd
"
as
embodiment and cause of memori~1 a~d ~rtal~ types of Ocean~c art as the
art, as well as scul ture
..'
ere ISno reason to thmk that body
, h
p
, pamtlng, etc. cannot be profitablv
analysed m' thoIS
I~~

~~7,'

But there is another and rather more eneral . 'n

attached to rcgistration which needs t b g 1 SIgnJ cance that can be
mark of any kind-on the s."
0 . e s~ t out. Any tattoo-indeed
a
produced it, and hence a S}~~o;:car;:i~~a~;~~ft:::li~u::lc~~:~rsf:aWcthich
.
ors,

~.II
__

iliira.'

._ . ,. _.

events, social obligations, individual and collective relationships impinging on

the social person, Thus a tattoo-let us say a tattOOwhich is purportedly there
at the whim of the individual-'-is always a registration of an external social
milieu, because it is only in relation to that milieu that the tattoo has meaning.
The apparently self-willed tattoo always turns out to have been elicited by
others, and to be a means of eliciting responses from others, the tattoo being
the permanent record or trace of this process of social exchange as well as one
means of conducting it.
Tattoos register the impinging social milieu on the skin: sometimes
tattooing is compulsory, in which case tattoos register power/authority
relations; in other instances it is voluntary, in which case tattoos register the
strivings of individuals in relativelyopen competition. In either case, however,
the fact that tattoo designs are permanent inscriptions means that there is an
affinitybetween them and that sense of commitment to certain overwhelming
social demands which is not lacking-which is indeed often exaggerated-in
the most 'competitive' systems. In Hawaii and New Zealand, where 's1ayes'
were kept, they were tattooed in special ways, in effect branded. This is the
extreme instance of the compulsioniauthority pole. But one cannot say that a
Marquesan chief (and we will introduce later the testimony of one chief to this
effect), the least 'constrained' Polynesian imaginable, could afford not to get
tattooed. Obligation takes many forms: subjection is inescapable, even when it
Seems to come in the guise of the most absolute autonomy, Tattooing is the
objectiw correlative and permanent reminder of the inescapable.
Function 9 (Self-destruction). From the dermatologist's point of view
tattooing is a self-inflicted skin disease; from the point of view of a psychiatJic
specialist it is masochistic self-punishment; while the sociologist of criminality
sees it as a voluntary act of social self-stigmatization. The tattooed skin may
indeed by considered as the skin turned against its owner or, more precisely,
the subject turned against himself via his own skin. This negatiye evaluation
is evidently shared by a number of the tattooed themselves. Experimental
programmes dispensing free tattoo-removal operations in prisonsd!ew-an
enthusiastic response and it is recorded that as many as 83 per cent of
affected prisoners interviewed expressed a wish that they had neyer acquired
their tattoos (Maertens 1978). This ought to occasion no surprise, since as I
have just noted, the prisoner's tattooing is the physical registration of the
objective milieu which dictates his lifestyle and criminality. What these
prisoners are really saying is that they wish they could somehow have a';oided
becoming criminals. The tattoo is the consequence of the exercist: of the
prison~r's own will oyer his body so, equally, is his incarceration. Tattooing
regarded as a fOim of self-stigmatization is not so much a special masochistic
, syndrome' as a paradigm case of the paradoxical situation in which a stigmatized existence is determined by factors beyond the subject's control while,
at the same time, the responsibility for the subject's predicament lies in-

j.

t -

has been applied externallyi prior to being absorbed into the interior. The
basic schema of tattooing is t)lus definable as the exteriorization of the interior '\'!!! ..
which ilsim\lhaneoUSJy~ IIlteritiladon oftht~.
, ',.
,:
,,,: 0'
OnecaD
tllisasa,~
of ,
d!!~.
of 1Il.!DI-layer by folding the skin.~t~i~lf,
ma
de of an o~e
and
arioutside oran inside. (For an analogous idea, cr. Mosko 1985.) This double
skin folded over on itself, creates the possibilily of an endless elaboration of
inte;acting components of the social person. The body..multiplies; additional
organs and subsidiary selves are created; spiritS, ancestors, rulers and victims
take up residence in an integument which begins to take on a life of its own.
External powers impose themselves and leave their indelible traces; they
are everted and turned back against themselves in a display of defiant subservience, passive heroism, pitiable grandeur. The character armour is in
place. It is time to turn to the task of understanding in more detail the rich
variety of forms this armour assumed in Polynesia.

esrapably with him and his own acts of will. However, the self-destruction
fun('tio~1in relation to tattooing is less salient in the Polynesian material, as
one mIght el-pect, since this analysis, applies mainly to highly stigmadZed
sllbcultures such as prison inmates, rather thlll to the generality of the
tattooed population, even in the West.

unaem.na

I trust that the exercise of looking at the tattooing implications of Anzieu's

nine functions of the skin-ego will have served to indicate some of the many
ways in which tattoos can signify. But there is still a little more which needs
sa)ing, because Anzieu is not specifically concerned with tattooing, but only
wI1hthe skm In general, and it is necessary, before turning to the detail of the
Po!vnesian material. to direct the spotlight once again on the technical aspect
of tattooing.
The defining feature of tattooing is that it is the making of indelible
pigmented traces which arc inside or underneath the skin. The tattooing-tool
goes through the skin, the ink is absorbed into the interior of the body, and
remains there, subsequently being inaccessible from the outside but still
visible, behind what seems like a transparent layer. In terms of the b~ic bodyimage of the subject, tattooing produces a paradoxical double skin.
One can see this as an artefactual skin, a protective lay!,:rlike dothes.
Tattooing (as skin-covering) is certainly in some ways cognate with dothingthe analogy frequently struck early European observers encountering tattooing
for the first time. As will be described in later chapters, the Polynesians did
not regard their tattoos as Ersatz der Kleidernng in Von den Steinen's phrase.
But they certainly did see tattoos as coverings, wrappings, shells, etc. in a wide
variety of ways, so the European perception of tattoos as clothes was not
wholly off the mark. Where the European observers were wrong was in
assuming that feelings of modesty provided the motive for becoming tattooed,
rather than a need to be protected, sealed off, defended from external threats,
i.e. armoured. This fundamental idea, so far as Polynesian tattooing is
con~ern~d, is perhaps most pithily encapsulated in the Marquesan expression
dcslgnatmg the whole-body tattooing 'suit' worn by Marquesail men:pahu tiki
('wrappings in images'). This theme will be elaborated at length later. But
despite the fundamental nature of the scheme transfers between natural
coverings (shells), artefactual coverings (clothes), and tattooing, it remains
equally important not to lose sight of the fact that the skin and the tattoo are
integrally one and indhisible. Tattooing can only be aeen when the wearer is
naked, and it would be trucr to say that it draws attention to nakedness
than that it functions to conceal it. And what tattooing reveals, beyond th;
revelation of nudity itself, is an inside which comes from the outside, which

..
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