Tattoo Temple

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Tattooing the Body, Marking Culture

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JILL A. FISHER

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Literature on American tattooing appears in varied forms, from the scholarly journals of anthropology, history and sociology to newspaper stand magazines that can be construed as ‘soft’ pornography. What this spectrum of literary forms has in common is a relative marginalization in which American tattooing is
perceived as part of a deviant subculture and not a topic of serious intellectual interest. Academics involved in this research have referred to colleagues’ attitudes about research on tattooing as a deviant interest in deviance. In addition, many academics have an agenda of legitimating the practice of tattooing by explicating its social and cultural patterns.

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Although much of this work is important scholarly investigation, I have found that many authors romanticize the practice of tattooing in ways that often do not correspond with their analyses. This article will, in part, respond to the tensions between analyzing and romanticizing tattooing as cultural practice(s). The purpose of this article is to explore the complex relationship between power and the physical and social practices of tattooing in the late capitalist state.

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Beginning with the history of tattooing as a cultural practice – from ancient Greece through the colonial period to contemporary USA – I will highlight the temporal and geographical changes in the practices and perceptions of tattooing. My hope is that its history in Western civilization will offer insights into the ways
in which tattooing is practiced in the late 20th-century USA. In addition to creating a historical narrative, I will also situate the sociocultural practice of tattooing the body for the tattooist and the ‘tattooee’. This  investigation into body inscription will serve as a means to elucidate the contemporary practice of tattooing as one that is simultaneously physical and social, with multiple levels of constructed meaning. And finally, I will explore the ways in which tattooing acts as a cultural signifier in the late 20th-century USA. I will  attempt to show how tattooing as a form of body modification can be analyzed as a form of resistance
to or a symptom of a culture that has commodified the body.

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From Stigma to Tatau to Late Capitalism

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The history of tattooing is somewhat difficult to trace. Although the word ‘tattoo’ did not emerge until James Cook’s voyage to Polynesia in the 18th century, the practice of indelibly inking the body has a much longer history. Jones (2000) posits that the Greek word stigma(ta)1 actually indicated tattooing and that evidence suggests that this word was then transmitted to the Romans.2 Of course, this linking of tattooing and stigma has contemporary value when considering the current meaning of ‘stigma’ in English. It marries the process or mark of tattooing with its interpretation, indicating that the meaning of stigma today may come from the ancient practice of tattooing.

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In spite of the uncertainty surrounding names associated with the practice of tattooing, Jones suggests that the Greeks were not the first to tattoo. He writes: Cultures which were familiar to the ancient Greeks  practised what we would call tattooing. . . . Tattooing in its social aspect, whether as a mark of high status or as pure decoration, the Greeks associated with ‘barbarians’ of the uncivilized kind, and never adopted it. (2000: 15)

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The way in which tattooing was adopted by the Greeks was as a punitive or proprietary action. In other  words because the Greeks associated stigmata with their rival neighbors, its social importance was degraded and, subsequently, stigmata were used for marking ‘Others’ within Greek culture, such as criminals and slaves. This association between social others and tattooing was then transmitted from Greece to the Romans. Gustafson (2000) interprets the use of tattooing by the Romans as a state control mechanism. Using a Foucauldian framework to think through social control, he quotes from Discipline and Punish, ‘But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (Gustafson, 2000: 24).

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By indelibly marking the unconsenting bodies of criminals and slaves, the Roman state could more
easily control their movements by means of the external mark upon these individuals. Their bodies would act as agents of the state emitting a visible sign of their social role. Both Jones (2000) and Gustafson (2000) are interested in the visibility and messages of these tattoos. Jones has posited that the act of tattooing the foreheads of slaves and criminals must have been common up until the 4th century, when Roman Emperor Constantine explicitly forbade inscribing the face with tattoos. Constantine suggested that the hands or calves should be tattooed instead. His reasoning, as Jones interprets the texts, is that ‘the face, which has been formed in the image of the divine beauty, will be defiled as little as possible’ (Jones, 2000:
13).

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Gustafson (2000) has identified three types of penal tattoos. The most common inscribed the name of the crime on the criminals’ bodies. The other two were inscriptions of the name of the emperor under whom the crime was committed and the name of the punishment that the criminals were given.

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Established as a punitive or proprietary symbol in Greece, tattooing continued through the Middle Ages in Europe as a means to mark the bodies of criminals, and thus tattooing as a social practice in Western civilization became intertwined with criminality and deviance.4 Introduced as a practice of the enemy in ancient Greece, tattooing’s reintroduction into European culture was through similar circumstances during the 18th century. The colonialist projects in Africa, Asia and the ‘New World’ (re)presented tattooing as a practice of the primitives who would become the colonized (i.e. Africa and Asia) or the enemies of colonization (i.e. Native North and South Americans). How did this re-emergence of tattooing influence the social and cultural patterns of tattooing in Europe and what would become the USA?

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Published in 1769, James Cook’s memoirs of his travels to the South Sea Islands introduced the word tatau into the English language from the Polynesian word referring to the practice of inscribing the skin with indelible ink. This word quickly morphed into ‘tattoo’ in English and spread through other European
languages, including French and Spanish. It is very unclear in the literature if penal tattooing practices were still occurring at the time the word was introduced into the language. There is evidence, however, that prisoners were ‘tattooed’ at the end of the 18th and in the early 19th century.

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After tracing the evolution of the word tatau into European languages and documenting the early anthropological work on body modification in the colonies, there is little scholarly work in history or other disciplines examining tattooing practices in Europe or the USA from 1770 to 1860 (Bradley, 2000; Caplan, 2000a). It is probable that during this period sailors were returning to their homelands with tattoos that they had received on their voyages. There is also some indication that tattooists were practicing in Europe and the USA, but who they were and what their tattooing methods were remain unclear. One of the first explicit references to tattooing that offers insight into 18thcentury practice was during the American Civil War. Alan Govenar (2000) has found evidence that tattooing was an acceptable practice for soldiers, especially tattoos that were overtly political and were symbols of allegiance to their ‘side’ in the war. In his article, Govenar suggests that the American Civil War was the first instance in which soldiers were systematically tattooed with symbols of the military or their cause.5 One way in which to interpret this mass tattooing practice is that the Civil War was an event in which people were struggling with their positions in a politically confusing time. Other than the color associated with the military uniforms, what were the differences between Confederate and Union men who were caught in the war? Perhaps through creating specific war images, and inscribing them on the bodies of soldiers, the opposing armies could create difference between otherwise very similar men. Changes in the social practices of tattooing were also significant for prisoners. During the 1880s, criminologists in France and Italy became interested in a cryptography of tattoos. They believed that tattoos were bodily inscriptions of the crimes and offenses of criminals and deviants, and consequently, they set out to decipher the meaning of the imagery (Caplan, 2000a). Thus tattoos were seen as physical indicators of criminality. By the late 19th century, in France and Italy, tattooing as a social practice had changed only a little from 2000 years before. The most important change had been from non-consensual tattooing of prisoners to mark their bodies with their crimes, to voluntary tattooing which was perceived by the state as evidence of their crimes.

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Ironically, during this same period, England and the USA were experiencing a tattoo ‘craze’ in ‘fashionable society’ in spite of the long-standing association of tattoos with criminality (Bradley, 2000). Until the 1880s, criminals, sailors and the working class were the major groups that were tattooed. Suddenly, toward the
end of the 1880s, tattoos became fashionable and spread through the upper classes of England and the United States. Tattoos remained fashionable for the next decade or two. In spite of more socioeconomic groups seeking tattoos during this time, there was no sense of class unification through tattooing. Those in the lower classes receiving tattoos were still interpreted by the tattooed wealthy as deviant. In part, this attitude was based on tattoo imagery and designs, which changed quickly during this period. Bradley clarifies this point: On the most basic level, tattoos acted as a badge of social and cultural differentiation that separated the tattooed from the non-tattooed. On a deeper level, however, social and cultural
homogeneity did not unite the tattooed, for the subject matter and aesthetic style of the tattoos created a fault-line that divided the classes. (Bradley, 2000: 148)

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One of the characteristics of the new design was the addition of the ‘ethnic’ tattoo. This generally meant designs that were influenced by Japanese tattoos. Coming to symbolize for the wealthy a (usually false) message of worldliness, these tattoos indicated that its bearer had traveled and consumed other cultures.
This physical appropriation of another culture was seen as a class commodity in which one’s social standing could be based on the consumption of other cultures, a form of what I call cultural cannibalism. Thus, the design of the tattoo was crucial for sending specific class messages for the wealthy, while tattoo designs
were generally chosen based on personal experiences or characteristics among the working class. One way of (over)simplifying this class difference can be summed up as follows: in the wealthy class, the purpose of tattoos was to impress, and in the working class, tattoos were to express.

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One of the questions that is worth exploring about the upper-class interest in tattooing is why tattooing become fashionable at this precise historic moment in these locations. One of the most interesting events that parallels the tattooing trend is the development of the electric tattoo machine. With dates of this technology’s emergence varying from as early as the 1870s to the 1890s to its US patent in 1901, most authors cannot agree when the electric tattoo machine actually came into use in the USA (Blanchard, 1994; Bradley 2000; Govenar 2000; Sanders, 1989). One of the reasons that the date is so uncertain is that it came into use quietly. Designed and used privately for years before being patented, the electric tattoo machine was the tool of one individual before it was diffused into the tattooing trade. Although the date is uncertain, there is consensus as to the inventor: New York City tattooist Sam O’Reilly. Building his design from Edison’s 1876 electric stencil pen, O’Reilly called his device the ‘tattaugraph’ (Sanders, 1989).

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This device was seen as an important improvement for tattooing because: The electric tattoo machine (patterned after the rotary mechanism of a sewing machine) not only quickened the process and decreased the pain involved, but facilitated greater detail and subtlety in coloration and shading. With the increased technical proficiency in tattooing itself, the quality of the drawings and paintings on which they were based also improved. (Govenar, 2000: 215)

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Although the machine had the potential for creating better-quality drawings, it was seen as a means of deskilling the tattooist because it was ‘easier’ to inscribe the designs well. In addition to inventing the first tattoo machine,9 O’Reilly and his partner Lew Alberts designed and sold tattoo designs and stencils through mail order. This was also interpreted as deskilling the tattooist and as standardizing tattoos. O’Reilly is also credited with bringing Japanese designs to the United States. Sanders (1989) reports this event in the following terms:

For a brief time in the 1890s the Japanese master Hori Chyo was enticed by a $12,000 a year offer from a New York millionaire to practice in America and two other Japanese tattoo artists were brought to New York under the sponsorship of Samuel O’Reilly. (Sanders, 1989: 16) O’Reilly learned the Japanese designs and had high sales volumes of his sheets of Japanese tattoo designs (Blanchard, 1994).

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The upper class had their phase of fashionable tattooing at the end of the 19th century, which corresponded temporally to these three advances in tattooing associated with O’Reilly: the electric tattoo machine, availability of design sheets and stencils, and access to Japanese designs and styles in tattooing. These three
elements provided a less painful tattoo with more designs from which to choose, with more detail in the image than previously achieved. Situated by these changes in the tattooing process, the upper class craze of the late 19th century can be understood within its historic context. The brevity of the wealthy’s fascination
with tattoos may be due to two factors: a simultaneous increase in the number of social ‘deviants’ getting tattoos during this same time period and an increased visibility of ‘vulgar’ tattooed bodies.

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Although the middle class did not have a similar involvement in tattooing at the end of the 19th century as did the wealthy, there was a concurrent movement among the working class and among entertainers. A growing interest in the circus spectacle or ‘freak show’ added to the upsurge in tattooists’ business. As more and more men and women covered their bodies in indelible images, tattooing became more and more associated with vulgarity and deviance. Furthermore, as more individuals decided to tattoo themselves to earn money from public spectacle, these performers were forced to increase the number and diversify the
design of their tattoos. Tattooed women in the circus found themselves wearing more revealing costumes in order to show how much of their bodies were actually tattooed, leading some critics to describe this as a ‘peepshow within a freak show’ (Mifflin, 1997).

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As the 20th century progressed, these performers complained that their bodies were becoming less profitable. By the 1940s, the tattooed ‘freak’ was no longer able to draw a crowd. The tattoos were still perceived as vulgar by the general population, but the novelty of seeing someone’s body covered with
tattoos had worn off (Govenar, 2000). The military also became publicly opposed to tattoos, due in part to the erotic images soldiers chose as tattoos, but also due to fears that tattooing was a public health hazard. Few cases of communicable diseases were documented as transmitted through tattooing, but even today, tattooing has an aura of risk about it. Although military officials tried to warn soldiers about the danger of being contaminated by tattoo needles, it seems that the numbers of military men being tattooed did not decline. While serving an important role in soldier bonding or group identification perhaps, the tattoo was not publicly accepted and had  ‘negative social value’ when soldiers returned to civilian life (Govenar, 2000).

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Govenar (2000) associates this rejection of the military man’s tattoo as part of the American Return to Normalcy movement of the 1950s in which conformity and rejection of the war played a large part. The tattoo was a symbol of the breach that the Second World War had caused in society. During these years after the war, tattooing was primarily associated with the working class, gangs and drunks. At the same time, however, tattooing became one of the most common forms of teenage rebellion,12 and tattoos were widely depicted in film and advertisement with nationally recognized figures like Popeye and the Marlboro man having tattoos.

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Tattooing as a fashion or as a craze re-emerged during the late 1960s and 1970s with the hippie and rock star subcultures. This trend has had its peaks and lulls during the past 35 years, but it has sustained itself as a movement. Cutting across diverse social and class groups, there are more people today who get tattoos, and yet there is still a relative marginalization of the practice within the larger culture. It is perceived as a social marking that, if not inscribed on the bodies of deviants, then constitutes a deviant practice on the bodies of individuals. Before turning to an analysis of the practice of tattooing as a symptom of late capitalism, I will first situate the individual who becomes a tattooist and the individual who gets
tattooed in a sociological framework.

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Tattooing and the Profession of Modifying Bodies

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This article has concentrated solely on the social and cultural perception of tattoos as they exist on the body. This second section of the article will explore the profession of tattooist. I will outline the trade, discuss the ethical decisions in tattooing, and raise the issue of tattooist as artist or service provider.
With men making up about 85 percent of tattooists, tattooing is predominantly a male occupation in the USA. Although women tattooists generally make the same salary as men tattooists, and have the same degree of professional security, the occupation is very difficult for women to enter. Learning the trade is based almost solely on an apprenticeship model, in which trade secrets are passed from the tattooist to the novice by working closely together. Tattooing equipment is easy to acquire (with sufficient funds, around $500–1000), but the techniques are not so obvious. Finding a tattooist who is willing to teach and work with an apprentice can be crucial to establishing oneself in the trade, and women are often discouraged from serving an apprenticeship.

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Trade secrecy in tattooing is due in part to the lack of vertical mobility of the profession. Tattooists’ aspirations tend to fall into one (or both) of two categories: owner of a profitable shop and recognition as an artist. Because tattooists can only expect horizontal mobility (i.e. changing from one shop to another or changing cities), the tattooists, after establishing themselves, have little opportunity to increase their status or their income (Sanders, 1989). Thus, training too many novices in the trade can negatively impact the tattooist because this could lead to decreased profits from sharing the client base. The skill of the tattooist, however, is not confined to his/her ability with the tattooing needles. Often these people need to have an acute business interest due to much economic uncertainty. Business is sporadic, depending on time of the day, day of the week, and season of the year. In order to maintain their shops, tattooists have to plan for this uncertainty and develop ways in which to compensate for their time waiting for clients in the shop. For example, many tattooists require a deposit when clients come in to make an appointment. This helps guarantee that the client will come back, come at the designated time and day, and if he/she does not show up, the tattooist is still compensated for the time spent waiting. Another important aspect of tattooing which is harder to learn is the tattooist’s interpersonal skills. Many clients are frightened when they come for tattoos, and the tattooist must repeatedly answer the same questions: Will it hurt? What does
it feel like? How much does it cost?

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In addition, many clients have very specific ideas about the image that they will have tattooed, and the tattooist will have to negotiate these desires with the cost, feasibility, and the long-term psychological
and social welfare of the client. In his book, Sanders (1989) quotes at length from an interview with a tattooist regarding this last point. The tattooist relates the case as follows:

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The girl came in and she said she wanted – a really stupid name – ‘Larry Joe Vitelli’ tattooed
around her nipple on her breast. This girl was extremely fragile. I sensed that immediately. She
was not, in the American sense of the word, a beautiful girl. . . . She wanted this ‘Larry Joe
Vitelli’ tattooed on her nipple. So I spent about 20 minutes trying to talk her out of getting this
guy’s name tattooed on her because I just don’t think it is a good idea . . . although I will do
vow tattooing because I think it is a valid tattoo image. I do my best not to do it, first. Then I
realize that it is futile to try to talk them out of it – love has its way of blinding the logical person.
So I didn’t want to do this tattoo and [the artist/proprietor] comes out because this girl is
protesting because she wants this tattoo. He says, ‘You’re going to do this tattoo because that
is what I hired you to do and that is what she wants. So you do it.’ Ok. So I thought, ‘Here I
am in a moral dilemma. I don’t want to do this tattoo because I know that this girl has problems
emotionally and I’m forced into it or I’m going to blow my position here.’ So I decided I’ll do
the tattoo. So I start to do the tattoo and I’m half way through it – I got ‘Larry Joe’ on there –
and she starts making passes at me . . . sexual sort of come on things. Here I am writing ‘Larry
Joe Vitelli’ on her and she wants to get sexually involved with me. So I said to her, ‘Well, you
and Larry must have quite a relationship to do something like this. I mean, this is a really
intimate kind of thing – having your breast tattooed with this guy’s name. You’ll never be able
to jump in bed with anyone else without them seeing “Larry Joe Vitelli” written there.’ I said,
‘You must have quite a relationship: you must really care about each other.’ She goes, ‘Yeah, I
really love him but I have no idea how he feels about me.’ I’m in the middle of tattooing this
on her. I didn’t trust my own intuitions. I didn’t follow my own standards. I compromised . . .
I felt sick, nauseous . . . I’ll never do anything like that again! That was a real lesson for me.
(Sanders, 1989: 79–80)

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These types of moral choices in which the tattooist has to decide whether to do the tattoo or risk having the client go elsewhere are not only relevant to this sort of psychological case. Whether or not to inscribe individual names on the bodies of clients is often placing the tattooist in the position of a therapist, but there are other ethical choices the tattooist must make regarding tattoo design. Clients might request tattoos of swastikas or overt racist or anti-social phrases, and the tattooist must learn to negotiate with these clients or refuse to do the tattoo. Most of the time, tattooists are unwilling to do tattoos that they are morally opposed to because they are fearful of getting a reputation for this type of tattoo, having to do more of them, increasing their own occupational stigma, and perhaps losing other business as a result.

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As stated above, tattooists have little opportunity for vertical mobility, and so many individual tattooists aspire to receive recognition as artists. This is one of the most severe tensions for many tattooists. Can their craft be considered art when it is based on a skilled service and profit-driven? Many people, especially
those in the art world, argue that it is not an art. How can tattooing be art when most of the work done is based on standardized designs that the clients choose from the wall of the tattoo shop? Many tattooists themselves do not argue with this.

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Some tattooists have a concept of mutual artistry for which they often strive (Sanders, 1989). This can best be characterized as a process in which the tattooist and client design a tattoo based on the individual personality of the client and based on the client’s body, using the natural contours of the body to make a more beautiful tattoo. This process is often restricted by the client’s cost considerations and his/her desire to know exactly how the finished product will look in the end. Are these clients seeking art? How do they choose not only a tattoo, but also a tattooist? What are the ways in which they envision the ink on their body? The next section will examine the ‘tattooee’ and their role in the social and cultural patterns of tattooing in the USA.

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Inscribing the Body: A Demographic of Tattoos

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Historically, men have been much more likely to get tattoos than have women, especially men who are members of particular groups, such as the military or motorcycle gangs. Recently, however, this trend has reversed, with about 60 percent of tattoo clientele being women (Mifflin, 1997). This particular change is
difficult to explain, and it seems that it may not be so much that women are reversing the stereotype, but rather that tattooing is equalizing between the sexes. One of the enduring sex differences in tattooing is the location of the tattoo. Most women choose a location on their bodies for the tattoo that they will be able to conceal relatively easily, whereas men often choose a location they will be able to reveal relatively easily. The torso, especially the hips, buttocks, or breasts, is the most common location for women, while men usually place their first tattoos on their arms.

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Tattooing is generally a peer activity with about 64 percent of tattooees coming to the shop with friends or family…. Several authors compare the decision to be tattooed with impulse shopping. Groups of friends are together, someone suggests getting tattoos, and they go to the nearest tattoo shop or one that someone may have heard of before. The vast majority of clients never research the process of tattooing nor the reputation or skill of the tattooist. Linking impulsiveness with tattooing creates a fascinating tension. By definition, tattoos are permanent. The choice of tattooist and design, therefore, should be a process
rather than a capricious act. This impulsiveness can mean that the individual does not receive a well-designed tattoo, but in spite of the spontaneity of the act, the tattoo generally conveys multiple meanings for its bearer.

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Both Blanchard (1994) and Sanders (1989) identify four primary overlapping functions of the tattoo. First, the tattoo functions as ritual. In a culture in which there are few rituals or rites of passage outside religion, the tattoo can serve (as it did for indigenous people who practiced tattooing) as a physical mark of a life
event. These life events are interpreted as significant by the bearer, if not by society, and can vary from the winning of a sporting event or competition to the completion of a divorce to the remission of cancer (becoming a ‘cancer survivor’). The tattoo also functions as identification. By inscribing established symbols on the body, the tattooee is identifying him/herself as part of a given group. Groups can be as broad as ‘American’ to the very specific, such as a family or partner’s name.

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A third function of tattooing is protective. The tattoo can be a symbol or talisman to protect its bearer from general or specific harm. Sanders (1989) relates an interview with a man who had a tattoo of a fierce and angry bee inscribed on his arm. The man told Sanders that he was allergic to bees and had been stung so
much that his physician feared the next sting might prove fatal. Having decided he needed protection against bees, the man decided to get a bee tattoo/talisman to frighten the bees from stinging him again. Finally, the fourth function of tattoos is decorative. Regardless of their particular psychosocial function for the individual, tattoos are images (even words become images as/within tattoos). By modifying the body with tattoos, the individual has chosen to add permanent decoration to his/her body.

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Having this decorative function, tattoos are often associated with exhibitionism. Although there is indeed an element of desire to reveal tattoos, there is often an equally profound desire to conceal tattoos. Revealing the tattoo has several functions, including showing the individual’s stylishness, identifying a group to which they belong, and demonstrating their rebelliousness. The desire to conceal can stem from the deeply personal meaning of the tattoo for the individual or from the deeply embedded social stigma. While the tattooed person enjoys the positive attention from his/her peers generated by the tattoo, most of these same people feel embarrassed about the negative reactions they get from others, especially when this reaction is coming from friends and family. People with tattoos try to avoid and resent questions such as ‘Why would you do that to yourself?’ or ‘Do you know what kind of people get tattoos?’

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Even as tattooing becomes more prevalent in the USA, there is still a persistent taboo on tattoos. People with tattoos often feel that they should cover their body markings in public or risk social rejection. Tattooing remains a marginalized occupation, in spite of its record for professionalism and safety. Why is it that the tattoo can be so enshrouded by a myth of deviance, and elicit such disgust? What are the meanings that American culture has constructed for the social practice of tattooing? And how does this practice negotiate the social and cultural space in the USA to build personal meaning for the individual marked
by tattooing?

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Dermagraphics: The Tattoo as Cultural Signifier

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The previous sections of this article have traced the history of tattooing in Western civilization, with a particular focus on the USA, and analyzed the characteristics of the tattooing profession in addition to examining individuals who acquire tattoos. Although this is a productive way of understanding the social role of the tattoo on a micro-level, the above work does not interpret the tattoo as a cultural phenomenon.

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The remaining section of this article will position work from a semiotic model using tattooing as the signifier, the concept of body modification as the signified, and a socially ‘dis-eased’ body as the sign. By comparing tattooing with other forms of body modification, particularly socially sanctioned forms, I will interrogate the social and political construction of tattooing as a symbol embedded with cultural meaning.

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American culture is replete with manifest contradictions about the body. The late capitalist economy has created a structure in which our lives and bodies have been violently commodified. The notion of flexibility has translated into bodies as a demand to reshape the identity through capitalism. Bombarding society with
messages about the body has resulted in a cultural obsession or fixation with the body. Through advertising and other forms of popular culture, Americans accept the requisite need to commit themselves to ‘body-work’ or suffer social stigmatism and rejection.

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While demographically America is becoming overweight, the ideal body is exerting more demands and more restrictions – thinner, more muscular, healthier – on the individual. And there are a million products marketed to help Americans reach this goal. Why is it that a culture that abhors permanent body modification, such as tattooing, infibulation and cicatrization, can simultaneously encourage incremental, semi-permanent and often expensive body modifications, such as clothing, make-up, hair trends, dieting and muscularity?

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Fashion, by definition, has a fear of commitment. Consequently, the permanence of tattoos is terrifying. Permanence is a ‘bad word’ within late capitalist economies, which are dependent on and nurture change. Often in the form of (or rhetoric of) technological improvements, ‘change’ is commodified and packaged
as another product that is more fashionable, that is more advanced, that will help Americans ‘reinvent’ themselves. Semi-permanent body modifications are ideal in a capitalist structure because there is always already space for the next body modification. Hair grows, bodies expand, clothes fade. Resistance is everything because there are always new (pre-packaged) battles to wage.

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As fashion, tattoos have taken hold of the American imaginary and transformed tattooing culture. Mark Taylor (1997) writes about the tattoo as being the symbol of the ‘postmodern primitive’. He discusses it as a cultural abandonment of the centuries of resistance to ‘primitive desires’ and ‘savage impulses’. He  highlights the use of tattoos as fashion to play at being pre-fashion and tribal (group identity). What Taylor does not discuss is the prevalence of the ‘temporary tattoo’ (all the faddish advantages of the tattoo without any of the permanence) and the transformation of the tattooist to laserist (one-stop shopping of tattooing the skin and of removing them with new laser technologies).

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The postmodern primitive can play at permanence when it is fashionable without any danger of commitment. In this culture of body fixation, boundaries are drawn of inclusion and exclusion based on the body. Americans form communities and friendships around athletics, gym membership, weight loss and behavioral support groups (quit smoking, drinking, disordered eating, etc.). Reinscribing boundaries, tattoos
are marks of inclusion in different groups – fashionable, conforming, deviant. And as society focuses increasingly on the material body, individuals feel alienated from their own commodified bodies. This alienation stems from experiencing the world with rather than through the material body. Identity is
fixed on what we are, rather than what we are becoming. The tattoo can serve as an indelible identity marker inscribing the boundaries of possibility for the body.

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Before continuing this contemporary analysis of tattooing, it is essential to ask how this placement of the tattoo as a signifier of a socially dis-eased body operates within the historical perspective provided above. I think that this analysis can hold up, especially when contrasting voluntary tattooing, a comparatively recent
phenomenon, with the centuries of involuntarily inscribing bodies. Susan Benson’s work (2000) on tattooing emphasizes that, historically, groups whose bodies are regulated by the nation-state have been the most likely to have tattoos. She describes the recent predilection of prisoners, the military and the working
class to tattoo their bodies. This tendency can be described as a reclaiming or reappropriation of the body.

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That is, in conditions of general repression and strict control of the body, these groups need to re-exert ownership of their own bodies. Accepting tattooing as a symptom in this context, it follows that the socially dis-eased body is suffering from a loss of agency due to the complex power of the state over the functioning of the body. Or in other words, the body has been infected by the state. Expanding this model of state control over the body, why has tattooing become so common in the middle and upper classes? If tattooing remains a cultural reappropriation of the body, from whom or what are Americans reclaiming
their bodies? The body is becoming commodified to such an extent that legal, ethical, political and social questions have arisen about the body as property. If the American body is a commodity, tattooing and other forms of permanent body modification can be construed as a way in which the individual reclaims some
power over his/her own body.

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Benson writes on this point:
What is distinctive in contemporary tattoo practices is the linking of such assertions of permanence to ideas of the body as property and possession – ‘a statement of ownership over the flesh’, as one individual put it – indeed as the only possession of the self in a world characterized by accelerating commodification and unpredictability, ‘the one thing you get in a culture where you are what you do’. (Benson, 2000: 251).

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Not only a culture of ‘you are what you do’ but also a culture of ‘you are how you look’. If involuntary tattoos were a form of control over the body by the state from ancient Greece to Nazi Germany, voluntary tattoos may be viewed as a cultural appropriation and reinterpretation of a historically regulating technology in order for the individual to re-establish control over their body. Or, in Foucauldian terms, the classical model placed identity or selfhood internal to the body, while the state remained external. In this condition, the state needed to mark the body to control it. In the modern model the state has displaced selfhood by taking the former position of identity and is internalized (docile body) while the self has become external. In this modern condition, identity or selfhood imposes external inscription (i.e. tattoos) to tame the unruly body-state.

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Historically, multiple meanings have been embedded within the practice of tattooing in the West. As tattooing has changed in form and function from the neighboring tribes’ influence on ancient Greek tattooing, to contemporary American practices of body modification, tattooing has remained both a fascinating and repelling practice. Tracing the history of tattooing in Western civilization, I have attempted to illustrate the patterns of interaction between tattooing practices and social and cultural perceptions of tattooing. By examining changes in both practice and perception, most notably changes in technology or cultural patterns, the struggle between the physical and social body can be analyzed in terms of the individual in opposition to the state or culture. Tattooing appears then as a means to reappropriate the physical body from the socially dis-eased body, as a means to resist the cultural forces that have commodified the body, and continue to do so. And yet it cannot be seen as a ‘cure’ and, therefore, must not
be romanticized because it is still operating within the ‘infecting’ cultural patterns, within the American state and capitalism. As a service, tattooing has its parallels with more acceptable types of body modification, such as hairdressing and other aesthetic forms, and so must be understood within its tense complexity.

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As a continued social practice, tattooing has and will persist as a symptom of the complex relationship between the physical and social body.

...

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Notes
1. The root ‘stig-’ means ‘to prick’.
2. Jones (2000) makes clear that stigma(ta) is commonly read as the equivalent of ‘brand’ especially
in Christian literatures. He argues that the practice of branding humans was almost unknown to the
Greeks and Romans. Furthermore, he insists, ‘Animal-branding was universal, and is virtually never
designated by the word stigma but by a word denoting a burn or a stamp’ (Jones, 2000: 2). For the
purposes of this article, I will accept Jones’s argument that the stigma in Ancient Greece and Rome was
indeed denoting today’s concept of tattooing.
104 ! Body and Society Vol. 8 No. 4
3. As well as penal tattoos and slave tattoos signifying ownership, Jones also indicates that early
Christians would tattoo emblems of Christ on their bodies as proof of their religious devotion.
4. Some scholars (Caplan, 2000a; Fleming, 2000; MacQuarrie, 2000) have examined the use and
social role of tattoos in Celtic traditions. There are some scholars who argue that it was not done at all,
others who argue that tattooing was a decorative practice in traditional Celtic culture until the spread
of Christianity, and still others who argue that it was introduced as penal inscription from contact with
the Romans (after the introduction of Christianity). There is consensus among most scholars, however,
that tattooing practices had virtually disappeared in the British Isles until the voyages of discovery and
colonization.
5. Govenar (2000) continues his analysis to show how soldiers’ tattoos quickly moved away from
motifs of battle and nationalism and toward erotic designs. He demonstrates that by the First World
War, the military authorities were discouraging tattooing because of this change in imagery. He writes,
‘For example, women in tattoos were nude and posed in a sexually suggestive manner, while in the nineteenth
century women in tattoos were usually clothed . . .’ (2000: 214).
6. Of course the ironic thing about tattooing as fashion (which I will discuss further below) is that
fashion is by definition dynamic and often quickly changing, while tattoos are indelible, permanent.
We will also see the increased interest in developing tattoo removal technologies as the fashionableness
of tattoos for the wealthy began to decline in the early part of the 20th century.
7. My intention in answering this question is not to invoke a causative model, but to show simultaneous
historic events that might have influenced an upper-class interest in tattooing that did not exist
prior to the late 1890s.
8. Unfortunately, the tattooing techniques that were used prior to the spread of the electric device
are not described in any of the sources I have read. In part, this may be due to a lack of standardization
in tattooing techniques. What we can surmise from descriptions of how the machine improved
tattooing is that it was a previously painful process and there was less control over fine details of the
image.
9. Charlie Wagner, another New York City tattooist, built a better design of the electric tattoo
machine which was patented in 1904. Contemporary tattoo equipment has changed very little since
Wagner’s design (Sanders, 1989).
10. Although the Nazis’ use of tattooing of prisoners in the concentration camps is currently one of
the most visible historic uses of tattooing. I was not able to find a link to American perceptions of
tattooing in the literature. It may have added to the general public distaste for tattooing during the
1950s, but I do not have any evidence that this was the case.
11. While the medical establishment was quite adamant about the dangers of tattooing during the
mid-1930s through the 1960s, doctors were eager to learn ways in which tattooing could be used in
medicine. Plastic surgery adopted tattooing techniques to achieve pigment coloration for patients who
had skin grafts or transplants. Also, after the Second World War, some physicians lobbied for tattooing
Americans’ blood types and allergies on their bodies, so that in the case of nuclear war, physicians
would be able to provide better care for their patients. Even today, groups of physicians are interested
in tattooing problem patients, such as individuals who have Munchausen syndrome, so as to provide
universal identification of these individuals.
12. Govenar documents some of the changes of tattooing as a social practice in respect to teenagers.
He wrote:
From the few references in the New York Times in the 1930s, it is clear tattooing was also
becoming popular among teenagers, a fact which angered middle-class parents and prompted
the New York Assembly to pass a law in 1933 making it a misdemeanor to tattoo a ‘child’ under
the age of sixteen. (Govenar, 2000: 221)
13. Sanders (1989) reports that summers are the busiest season, while demand is quite low in the
winter.
Tattooing the Body, Marking Culture ! 105
14. Price and pain are largely dependent on the location of the body in which the tattoo will be
placed, as well as on the difficulty or complexity of the design.
15. In addition, according to some tattooists, people seeking tattoos often do so in the hope that the
tattoo will somehow transform their lives.
16. I was not able to find comparable data about the rates of tattooing by racial group or by class.
There are many articles discussing how skin color can limit the types (i.e. colors) of tattoos the individual
can request. There was also a mention that there was only one woman who was African
American tattooing in the United States during the 1970s (Mifflin, 1997).
17. I will ignore the tattoo removal techniques for the moment.
18. There do seem to be major class differences in reactions to tattoos. Although people may be
surprised to learn that their doctor or lawyer (male or female) has tattoos, they are generally more
accepting (or at least less derisive) of the tattoos (Mifflin, 1997).
19. I have introduced this semiotic framework as a heuristic to think through the role of symbols in
our interpretations of material reality. What I try to show here is that the practice of tattooing transcends
the bounds of the material body in its symbolic role in society.
20. This stigmatism and rejection take both externalized and internalized forms in their impact on
the individual.
References
Benson, S. (2000) ‘Inscriptions of the Self: Reflections on Tattooing and Piercing in Contemporary
Euro-America’, in J. Caplan (ed.) Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American
History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Blanchard, M. (1994) ‘Post-Bourgeois Tattoo: Reflections on Skin Writing in Late Capitalist Societies’,
in L. Taylor (ed.) Visualizing Theory: Selected Essays from V.A.R., 1990–1994. New York:
Routledge.
Bradley, J. (2000) ‘Body Commodification? Class and Tattoos in Victorian Britain’, in J. Caplan (ed.)
Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Caplan, J. (2000a) ‘ “National Tattooing”: Traditions of Tattooing in Nineteenth-Century Europe’, in
J. Caplan (ed.)Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Caplan, J. (ed.) (2000b) Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fisher, J.A. (2002) Sociopathologizing Patients: The Social Construction of Munchausen Syndrome.
Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Fleming, J. (2000) ‘The Renaissance Tattoo’, in J. Caplan (ed.) Written on the Body: The Tattoo in
European and American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Govenar, A. (2000) ‘The Changing Image of Tattooing in American Culture, 1846–1966’, in J. Caplan
(ed.)Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Gustafson, M. (2000) ‘The Tattoo in the Later Roman Empire and Beyond’, in J. Caplan (ed.)Written
on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Jones, C.P. (2000) ‘Stigma and Tattoo’, in J. Caplan (ed.)Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European
and American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
MacQuarrie, C.W. (2000) ‘Insular Celtic Tattooing: History, Myth, and Metaphor’, in J. Caplan (ed.)
106 ! Body and Society Vol. 8 No. 4
Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Mifflin, M. (1997) Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo. New York: Juno
Books.
Sanders, C.R. (1989) Customizing the Body: The Art and Culture of Tattooing. Philadelphia, PA:
Temple University Press.
Taylor, M.C. (1997) Hiding. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Jill A. Fisher is a doctoral student in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Her work focuses primarily on the body in medicine through
projects on stem cell research, Munchausen syndrome and medical experimentation on humans.

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Social Semiotics, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2000

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Essence, Identity, Signature: Tattoos and Cultural Property

.STEPHEN PRITCHARD
This paper examines a range of problems centring on the theorization of cultural identity and cultural property by reference to debates about the appropriation of the Maori tattoo, or ta moko, and the authenticity of contemporary Maori tattooing practices. Through a consideration of the relationship between cultural identity and tattooing, and the question of whether tattooing is an effect of a specific identity or  constitutive of that identity, it addresses the paradox inherent in attempts to protect indigenous, cultural  and artefacts from (mis)appropriation: that is, that to re-articulate such non-Western cultural phenomena in
terms amenable to their repositioning as property is precisely to render them meaningless or useless, in  terms of their contextually specific uses and significance. Against the background of these issues, the use of ta moko as a form of signature or authorizing mark of identification is taken to highlight issues  concerning the complex relationship between the attribution of certain cultural practices, characteristics or properties,  to a certain group, and the notions of authorship and authority that underwrite such designations.

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In a general discussion about tattooing and social reproduction, Alfred Gell suggests that:

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As a technical means of modifying the body, tattooing made possible the realization of a particular type of `subjection’ which, in turn, allowed for the elaboration and perpetuation of social and political relationships of certain distinct kinds 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 (1993: 3).

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Gell describes the way the tattoo marks both the division and the link between the body and culture. Read as either a sign of affiliation within a social order, or pathologized as an `infantile’ , `self-destructive ’ or `oppositional’ manifestation of the interface between the individual and society, the tattoo is often taken as a key to insights into identification and socialization. It marks the body; it inscribes, constructs, and invests it within a variety of psychical, cultural and political fields. It may well be, however, that to read the tattoo simply as a metaphor for the inscription of culture or society on the body, as an assignment, impression or
shaping of external social and cultural contexts on individuals, is to obscure the complexity of the line the tattoo marks.

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Taking Gell’ s concern with social and cultural reproduction as a starting point, one might argue that the tattoo reveals something about a site of production, not merely a process whereby individuals are `individuated’ or subjects `subjected’ , but simultaneously the constitution of the subject in terms of culture, and of culture in terms of the subject, since the line the tattoo traces between the two is neither completely one nor the other. Insofar as it marks a distinction or point within a system of relations, the tattoo traces a precarious line between bodies, `the corporeal’ or `the material’ , and systems of meaning, the understanding bodies or `the incorporeal’ ; not merely a line or inscription that ties together and individuates subject and culture, but rather a marking or inscription that precedes and exceeds the individual act, event, `thing’ or idiom, insofar as it is meaningful, while not being reducible to a generalizable system of relations or terms, insofar as it is a specific mark that is irreducibly singular.

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To this extent, and with reference to representations of non-Western tattooing in a variety of institutional and academic discourses, I will argue for the `in-betweenness’ of tattoos; for the fact that they are neither fully inside nor outside the body, neither purely one’ s own nor another’ s, but rather a kind of split between the individual and the general, the empirical and the structural. Through a consideration of the way these issues and questions play into a specific cultural/ political field, that of the relation between Maori and non-Maori `tattooing’ , in the context of debates concerning authenticity, authority and the protection of cultural and intellectual property, I will argue that rather than undermining notions of identity and `property’ , this `in-between-ness ’ sustains their possibility.

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The inverted commas that frame the word `tattooing’ here indicate this difficult but, perhaps, necessary dependence upon a general term, which emerges the moment we bring together a variety of different practices under the one heading `tattoo’ . This difficulty is itself aligned with and related to our earlier concerns about the relationship between the singular, specific and particular, and a range of concepts or notions concerning a system or `grammar’ that necessarily transcend any particularities. The assumption of a particular `marking’ under some less specific genera thus raises significant questions about the grounds of identification.

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The point of this line of questioning is to illustrate the way debates, which have often been presented as matters of truth or knowledge, fail to consider how such terms give identity; it asks what opening or origin makes this type of truth possible. Rather than dissociate the singular attribution from the essential generality of `the name’ , the very idea seems to suggest an aporia between a particular `thing’ , where
the term `thing’ already betrays the singularity of that which it names, and the `sense’ it is given through its expression, explication or denotation. Thus, the problem, as I have outlined it, concerns the structure of the `mark’ : the relationship between the essential abstraction of every common noun or name and the particular or individual `thing’ named; and the attribution of a `property’ , both in the sense of ownership and an attribute or quality, and authority with respect to such `property’. The introduction of the term `property’ may seem problematic, insofar as it imposes a particular concept or category upon something not `properly’ understood in this manner. However, thinking the conceptualization of `markings’ in terms of the`properness’ of property can be useful insofar as it in¯ effects our discussion with a broad range of indigenous concerns, which establish a relationship between the dispossession, displacement and destruction of indigenous peoples and their cultures, and the representations which provided the justificatory foundation for such acts; in short, the violent reduction and translation of indigenous beliefs and interests into European derived categories or concepts. Moreover, the etymological and conceptual connection between questions concerning the possession or owning of property, property as quality, nature or disposition and the notion of `properness’, describes how the way in which the determination of a thing, such as a tattoo, identity or culture, might be understood in the context of discussions about identity
and cultural politics, especially in the shadow of debates about essentialism.

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`Given’`properties’ , on the one hand, presuppose, as a condition of its possibility, a system of recognition or attribution, while on the other, they are something essential, in-itself or originary. Regardless of whether the answer is essentialist or anti-essentialist, the question concerns the way a certain cluster of attributes is given as belonging together. How is it that someone or something can `belong’ to a culture? Putting aside, for the moment, the issue of how the definition of culture and identity become the chief stakes in this question, one cannot and should not assume that what counts as belonging in one culture corresponds to belonging in another. The question of who a `tattoo’ belongs to, or of the `proper’ place of a particular `marking’ , is thus in no way a straightforward matter. Here, the alternative runs between the view that the
`tattoo’ is the expression of a particular position, a distinctiveness that belongs to a particular person or persons, and that it necessarily exceeds a particular instance, belonging equally, in a sense, to determinations beyond a single site. The opposition foregrounds a problematic relation between a specific form of marking, ta moko, and what appears to be its general conditions of possibility, the possibility of its legitimate use and the possibility of its misuse or appropriation.

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As I have shown, where tattoos have marked out cultural boundaries, as they do with distinctions between the Western and the non-Western practices or `objects’ , it is relatively easy to see how these concerns feed into debates about essentialist and anti-essentialist conceptualizations of identity. The mark here, the tattoo, stands for a sort of difference that can either be thought of in relation to another, as that which is constituted through language, community, society or culture, or as that which is different in itself, as a distinctive and essential mark. Familiarity with these debates gives good reason for caution, since the positions designated `essentialist ’ and `anti-essentialist ’ are often cast so as to correspond to alleged differences between `Western’ and `non-Western’ interests and beliefs. And yet, there is good reason to suspect that things are far more complicated and complex than this reading suggests. While the corrective is in many ways necessary and important, the problem need not present itself as a choice between essentialism or antiessentialism, or `the West’ and `the-non-West’ .

Consider, for example, two concerns related to indigenous cultural practices. On the one hand, against the strict and limiting confines imposed upon the category `indigenous’ by `preservationists ’ , `traditionalists ’ and conservative scholars of anthropology and history, some assert the need to recognize the legitimacy and creativity of indigenous expressions, practices and beliefs, as re-positioned, re-articulated or re-formulated within `the contemporary’ .

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For example, Bill McKay suggests that, in the case of questions about the identity of Maori art, the association of `Maori-ness’ with the past, with that which is to be distinguished and defined against all things non-Maori, fails to reflect Maori beliefs or interests: Pakeha [European/New Zealander derived] definitions polarised debate, trapping Maori into western constructs involving notions of authenticity such as the absence of change in `traditional’ cultures [this framework has] allowed no place for risk and response to changing circumstances (McKay 1996: 24).

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Proponents of this position tend to argue for a conception of culture that is permeable, transformative, dynamic and creative. Indeed, such a conception of culture seems essential if it is to be relevant and meaningful within the current context. Moreover, as Peter Shand has noted, notions of Maori art based upon
normative de® nitions of the `traditional’ or the `authentic’ run the `risk of introducing a prescriptive element into Maori art’ (1998: 38). This observation has led to considerable criticism of legal and legislative approaches to indigenous property. Cecilia O’Brien, for example, has cautioned that `[o]ne must be certain that heritage legislation does not exclude ª the use by indigenous people of items which in their
view are part of their lifeº .’ (1997: 71).

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On the other hand, there is a need to protect indigenous cultural and intellectual property from improper use and appropriation. This would require a notion of culture as definable, manageable and policeable. The problem is that the legal and legislative mechanisms in place for the protection of indigenous property generally require and assume a fixed, already given and accepted notion of what is or has been, thus privileging the past over `the contemporary’ , or `the modern’ , and placing authority with institutional bodies that are not indigenous or even under the direction of indigenous people, concepts or beliefs. Here, the central concern for either position relates to the identification of what is indigenous, but one argues for
the necessity of transgression, growth and incorporation, while the other seeks to prohibit and protect against the `traf® c’ between cultures. Thus, while these concerns are undoubtedly related, with respect to their concern about indigenous empowerment and self-determination, they appear to move in opposite directions with respect to the way culture or identity is defined in a variety of contexts.

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This opposition not only parallels the more theoretical opposition already outlined between essentialism and anti-essentialism; insofar as in one instance, culture seems to be de® ned as autonomous and self-defining, in the other, as structured within a system of relations; it also reveals what Gayatri  Chakravorty Spivak has called `the unavoidable usefulness of something that is very dangerous’ (1994: 156).

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To be more specific, on the one hand, we have a position that seems to allow for the possibility of dynamic change and growth, and yet is able, at least formally, to distinguish between indigenous and non-indigenous in `border-line cases’ , between Europeanized-indigenous objects and indigenized-European objects. On the other, we have a position that provides the basis for clear definition of what is or is not `indigenous’ , but in doing so severely restricts and limits the scope and territory of indigeneity, and disadvantages indigenous peoples within `non-traditional’ contexts, in the present. This paper takes the consideration of some of these concerns, in reference to a variety of debates relating to representation of `the Maori tattoo’ and the definition of `Maori-ness’ within legal and anthropological discourses, as a way into a broader debate about the theorization of identity and cultural boundaries. Despite the attempts of anthropological and historical studies to delimit and define the object or practice of `Maori tattooing’ or ta moko, the practices themselves often seem to defy clear and unproblematic categorization and classification.

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In many cases, boundaries were constructed according to preconceived notions of `Maori-ness’ or  `primitiveness ’ , with little if any attention to the complexity of the practices themselves. As Rangihiroa Panoho argues: `[t]here is a whole underexposed history of innovative and aggressive Maori adoptions of Pakeha forms, design, technology and materials, particularly from the nineteenth century’ (1992: 124). Some explanation for this tendency may be found in the fact that, since cultural identities are defined in terms of their differences, `the traditional’ tended to be defined as that which appeared unmarked by European influence and contact.

And yet, because definitions are cast in these terms, `traditional’ practices are always already marked by their opposites, or by the system in which they are `positioned’ . This is, of course, not an argument against the primacy of `the indigenous’ within such a determination, and in no way disputes their legitimacy or connection to practices and beliefs existing prior to or independently of European contact or in¯ uences. My concern here is not to reveal the `true’ nature of such beliefs or practices, with the articulation and circulation of the `authentic’ or `the Maori’ `within the true’ , as Foucault might say, in contexts that are not entirely Maori, never purely a matter of `internal relations’ and not only indigenous, but rather a
matter between what is and what is not a definition that, by necessity, involves another (see Durie 1998).
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As for cultural boundaries, it is particularly interesting to note how ta moko was identified as `Maori’ within colonial representations, a term that functioned as both a name and an adjective: at times it denoted and marked out a distinctive racial or cultural category or group of people, while at others it named a particular mode or style, a way of living or behaving, within a particular context. It may be because of this double-sense of the term `Maori’ , along with the conceptualization of `Maori’ in terms of an evolutionary continuum, that it became possible for practices such as ta moko to performatively articulate identity rather than merely express or re¯ ect it. Thus, whileMaori `became’ increasingly `Europeanized’ , wearing  European clothes, using European tools, implements and weapons, and adopting European laws and beliefs, there was, to a certain extent, a `Maorization’ of things European. This was not restricted to the re-territorialization of objects: so-called moko found its way onto the bodies of those once deemed `European’ , runaway sailors, beachcombers, traders and adventurers, who `became’ native. Despite the tendencies of early scholars to emphasize the distinctiveness of Maori culture and, more particularly, moko, the line that divided `the European’ from `the Maori’ could be crossed in both directions.

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Consider, for example, the cases of Barnet Burns and Fredric Manning. Burns, a `once English’ trader, was captured by a group of Maori and tattooed because they believed that such a marking would create an unbreakable, sacred link between himself and the tribe: `it was to make sure I stop along with them, bring
them trade, fight for them, and in every way make myself their friend’ (1844: 9). As a result of this `initiation’ , his appearance and the manner in which he had lived for the remainder of his time in New Zealand, his narrative is told, not from the position of a once captive Englishman, but from that of `a New Zealand Chief’ . Similarly, Fredric Manning, an early European settler who had `taken’ to the Maori way of life, published his account of early New Zealand society and settlement in Old New Zealand anonymously as `by a Pakeha Maori’ (1964).

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While these claims cannot be taken as unproblematic insofar as they reflect European notions about the nature of culture and identification, they tie together the notion of transgression and cultural appropriation in a manner that makes it difficult to calculate loss or gain in any clear or simple way. Considering the case of such tattooed `Europeans’ , Nicholas Thomas observes: tattooing transposed to a white man’ s face became diagnostic of the condition of the so-called Pakeha Maori, or white Maori, the resident castaway or indigenised settler, who personified the ¯ otsam and jetsam of the colonial Pacific.

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These are awkward terms for an awkward condition, a condition understood by various obscure nineteenth-century beachcombers, and most recently by the character Baines in the film The Piano, as marked by both cultural loss and gain. Or, if cultural markings aren’ t quite or aren’ t just a set of owned and disowned things, perhaps they present neither gain nor loss. (1995: 93).

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Here, then, between the rhetoric of loss and gain, we find the difficulty of understanding the dynamics of identification, appropriation and dispossession throughout colonization and settlement. If one accepts that European contact significantly changed the meanings of things `Maori’ , how is it possible to define moko as something identifiably Maori, as property able to be protected, without defining it a way that articulates `Maori-ness’ against `European-ness’ and, as a result, significantly reduces and closes off possible identifications and articulations of `Maori-ness’ , in a manner relevant to contemporary Maori, some of whom know little about `pre-contact’ culture? Phrased in another way, how might one simultaneously
acknowledge the destruction and loss caused by colonization, affirm a relation with the past, with tradition, but also af® rm creative, legitimate gains within the present when the `authentic’ and `legitimate’ is so often firmly positioned as `past’ , a `before’ to much of what defines the terms of both `today’ and the future?

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Consider, for example, Simon During’ s description of `contact’ : Postcolonial identity politics tends towards paradox and irresolution because, with the coming of Europeans, the narratives, signifiers and practices
available to articulate the needs and wants of the colonised are at once inscribed within Eurocentric modernity. Thus, the moment of arrival opens out in a scene of forgetting and misrecognition. Crucial signifiers of precolonial Maori language soon began to lose their meaning, because they depended for their sense upon practices that were disrupted by European settlement. There is now no consensus as to what certain words `mean’ (1989: 764).

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The significance of the distinction between the pre-colonial and the colonial is in some respects obviously justified here; there can be no denying that contact would have changed things considerably or that colonialism was very destructive in many respects. And yet, one must question the way During’ s description characterizes contact so overwhelmingly in terms of Maori loss and European gain. It may be true that European contact significantly altered the meaning of all things Maori, as the shift in the meaning of the word `Maori’ itself demonstrates: meaning `normal’ before contact, from the time Europeans arrived, it began to function as a term for the indigenous population or tangata whenua as distinct from others (see Durie 1998).

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However, there seems good reason to doubt both the instantaneous-ness of any change in meaning, and the relation of loss and gain During (1989) implies, as if `signifiers’ began to `lose their meaning’ before a blow was struck, before negotiation or communication, before property was taken, before any physical or material imposition, as if the mere appearance of the Europeans was sufficient to bring about the beginning of the end, as if European modernity unfolded like a homogenizing blanket that smothered and radically reconfigured the axes of identification and meaning. The effect of construing the relation between European and Maori thus is to subsume all Maori actions and beliefs after contact within the tide of Europeanization,
as if there could be no identity, no agency, from then on which was not already Europeanized.

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As Thomas has noted, this tendency to view colonization as a one-way process, with Europeans as the active agents who bring the indigenous, the passive victims, into modernity, marginalizes those who: Must negotiate identities in urban contexts, with non-traditional social relations, institutions, jobs and ¼ is [therefore] inappropriate in so far as it is strongly associated with the past, rather than the contemporary circumstances within which they, like everyone else, have to operate. (1994: 196). Such a view seems to place far too great an emphasis on a division derived from `contact’ , between the (pure) precolonial and the (impure) colonial and, as Thomas notes, while the idea that identities are articulated relationally `must be true as a universal proposition’ : It is evidently not true that indigenous peoples, or any others, need
constantly to express their identities in relation to colonizers rather than each other, or in relation to other indigenous peoples or non-indigenous peoples other than the colonizers. (1997: 13).

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In a sense, During’ s position favours a `Rousseauean’ nostalgia, a mournful preoccupation with loss over an affirmative assertion of life, incorporation and growth; a preference for a determination of identity that is never locatable and always deferred, rather than a positivity that finds its difference, initially, at least in-itself. As Panoho has argued in the context of debates about change in indigenous art: `Te ao Maori; the Maori world has always been in a state of flux; the boundaries between Maori and Pakeha art and culture have always been transmutable’ (1992: 124).

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With reference to Gisbourne chief Raharuhi Rukupo’ s innovative style and use of steel chisels, in the carving of the meeting house Te Hau ki Tauranga in 1842, and the appropriation of Catholic symbols within meeting houses under the supervision and in¯ uence of Te Kooti in the 1870s and 1880s, Panaho goes on to note that: Te Kooti’ s late nineteenth-century meeting houses, like Rukupo’ s, reflect a strong sense of Maori identity and reveal an openness to aspects of Western culture which helped make sense of a changing world. These houses were built in a time when the Pakeha believed the Maori to be a dying race. But in contrast to this pessimism, Rongopai (Waituhi, 1887) and Tokanganui o Noho (Te Kuiti, 1873) meeting houses abound with innovative appropriations and present a Maori culture alive and bubbling with creative energy (1992: 125).

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It is useful here to reconsider the prevalence of the sort of incommensurable opposition between the `primitive’ or `the native’ and `the modern’ or `the civilized’ , implied by During, in terms of the way `the authentic’ functions. While it may be granted that the pre-modern and the modern are often taken as  mutually constitutive, and thus ultimately problematic, rather than `given’ , nevertheless, one must wonder about the implications of this distinction insofar as it often translates into a distinction or opposition between the indigenous and the non-indigenous, marking a kind of incongruity between performances of indigeneity and the contemporary, and therefore placing severe limitations on the possibilities of expression, performance or the re-positioning of the indigenous in the contemporary context.
Even an approach that would treat Maori culture as a construction articulated against European culture would perhaps fail to recognize the structures of authority which would validate its own `take’ on the truth of culture and the metaphysical presumptions this entails.

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The denial of difference is no less metaphysical than its uncritical acceptance, and locating the source of the determination of culture or identity within the realm of `the cultural’ or `the social’ seems as problematic as
biological or racial theories. In 1989, Alan Hanson, an American anthropologist, proposed that `[t]he invention of Maori culture has been going on for more than a century, taking at least two distinct forms in that time’ (1989: 890). Hanson’ s point is that `traditional culture’ is an invention constructed for contemporary purposes `which proposes a stable heritage handed on from the past’ (890).

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The point is not the simple recognition of the fact that traditions, like all cultural forms, must re-articulate and re-contextualize themselves, but that `the Maori tradition that Maoritanga invents is one that contrasts with Pakeha culture, and particularly with those elements of Pakeha culture that are least attractive’ (1989: 894). In the context of cultural politics in Aotearoa, New Zealand, this thesis was translated into the charge that Maori culture was inauthentic and Maori claims often fabricated to suit their own needs. While pointing out the obvious, in terms of the fact that culture is invented, Hanson thus grossly over-emphasizes the freedom of such invention, articulating his argument in a manner insensitive to current debates, which reduces Maori culture to an oppositional articulation to the Pakeha. The privileging of that which is  articulated through such a relation is itself highlighted by the curious manner in which he frames his debate historically. If all culture is invention, one might ask: why does he limit the date of invention to the last 100 years? Assuming he would not accept the notion of pre-contact authenticity, the only answer would seem to be that Maori `came into being’ with European contact and settlement. While this may be true as a general proposition, since Maori-ness as it as know today only became possible once settlers created the conditions of pan-tribal identification, to assume that the entire content of such identification is a mirror image of European society and culture ultimately places the determination of Maori identity with European contact, settlement and colonization.

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This notion of Maori culture as reactive conflates external and internal relations of identity, difference-to-another and difference-in-itself, and, in doing so, reduces all cultural difference to a `plane of similarity’ or an already assumed ground of identity. There is no simple or safe approach here. The affirmation of identity and culture as positive, as self-defining or self-differentiating, risks uncritically accepting the terms in which identity or culture are given through a con¯ ation of re-presentation and representation, while the characterization of colonization in terms of a kind of trafficking or exchange between cultures means that matters of ownership, authenticity and authority become difficult to determine.

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For, while hybridization may seem to open up and undermine particular identities, as it reveals their `purity’ to be fictional, as Enersto Laclau observes, `if the particularity asserts itself as mere particularity, in a purely differential relation with other particularities, it is sanctioning the status quo in the relation of power between the groups’ (1996: 27). In the context of copyright or cultural and intellectual property law, both positions seem problematic, although for obviously different reasons. The notion of a shared, entangled trajectory of culture makes it virtually impossible to establish ownership, let alone protect property, while the notion of culture as clearly de® nable and policeable seems biased toward `accepted’ definitions and categories, `what has been’ rather than `what is’ or `what could be’ .

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Moreover, as many have noted, legal definitions tend to characterize `property’ in a manner that failed to recognize Maori beliefs, practices and concerns, especially so far as cultural property is concerned. Here, we find again what might be called a politics of translation, within the context of law, a matter of the problematic relationship between an apparently indigenous `object’ and its translation into European-derived legal terms. As Shand has pointed out: `the acts and common law reflect the normative positions of Euro-centric intellectual property law, which is to say they are focused on individual rights and interests’ (1998: 17).

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The demise of traditional tattooing practices by Maori in the middle of the nineteenth century occurs simultaneously with its `revival’ among Europeans. Taken initially as a marking that defined cultural boundaries, the tattoo was `taken first, literally on the bodies and body parts of natives, and then, later, transposed on the bodies of Europeans themselves. In the first instance, the tattoo was received as an item of curiosity and anthropological interest; in the second, as a marking of opposition to `civilized’ modernity.

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This suggests, initially at least, two sets of connections: one between the opposition to tattooing by Europeans and its later appropriation; and; on the other hand; between all that Europeans had invested in
the tattoo as a sign, and its later value and potency as a sign of Maori revival and sovereignty. Here, two observations can be made. The recent revival of `primitive’ tattooing in North America, Europe and elsewhere demonstrates how the tattoo continues to be `taken’ as a sign or expression of primitivism par excellence. The term given to this, `modern primitives’ , reveals the way in which the assumed division between `the modern’ and the `primitive’ forms the primary axis of identification.

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As Peter Lentini points out: the term modern primitives refers to individual s who, in the midst of rapid
industrial and technological change and the insecurities of modernity (such as unemployment, spatial dislocation, urbanisation and its subsequent alienation), challenge western philosophy’ s notions of faith in scientific, rational and profit-driven progress (1998: 18).

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Thus, if European modernity is positioned as `good’ , then manifestations of its opposite `primitivism ’ are taken as `bad’ . If European modernity is taken to be `bad’ , then its opposite is taken to be `good’ . The key point here is that the tattoo, or more precisely certain `forms’ of tattoo, are appropriated and reduced to an assumed relation to `the West’ . In this way, the tattoo gains its power as a sign of opposition to Eurocentricism and modernity through its initial signification as that which
opposed `European Civilization’ . Indeed, this reveals some of the complexity of distinguishing between early and later `uses’ of moko, insofar as contemporary moko seems very much inflected by this sense of its oppositional power. In this sense, the capacity of moko to stand as an assertion of Maori sovereignty and authority seems to be a form or mark of identification that is, to use a Derridean phrase, already `counter-signed’ by `European modernity’ .

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The scene of exchange, of the transference of the tattoo and the alteration of the meaning it implies, of its translation, re-definition or re-positioning within another context, in terms of another law and different configurations of power, describes how interpretation, knowledge, use and appropriation are here intertwined. Thinking of the different and yet interrelated economies of meaning and value, how could
one doubt that the appropriation of moko is itself premised upon the failure and/or impossibility of reading it in its specificity, as attached to a part of a particular body?

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Despite the distinctiveness of moko or the recognition that its marks were taken to be irreducibly singular by Maori, is it not the abstraction of the moko as mere design or marking, as tattoo-in-general, the mark of `the primitive’ or `Maori-ness’ , that enables its removal from specific bodies, just as the aestheticization of moko provided the grounds for its contemplation as something apart from the body, in disregard of the bond that tied together body and marking as signature and signatory? Kant took this approach, holding that the appreciation of the true and free beauty of such `designs’ was only possible once distanced from its context, relieved of the burden of `means’ and taken as an end in itself. As he observes: `[a] figure might be beautiful with all the ¯ ourishes and light but regular lines, as is done by the New Zealanders
with their tattooing, were we dealing with anything but the figure of the human being’ (Kant 1911: 73).

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Indeed, such abstraction, re-contextualization or appropriation occurred on a remarkable scale. While anthropologists like Buckland and Tregear described moko as `ornamentation’ , `personal adornment’ (Buckland 1887: 319) or a debased form of graphics (Tregear 1890), the extensive and wide circulation of images of moko brought with it a broad range of appropriations. As Thomas notes in reference to  appropriation of kowhaiwhai and koru `patterns’ from an engraving Maori man with moko, `the head of a New Zealander’ by Sydney Parkinson: `[t]he involuted ª spiralsº and ª scroll[s]º figure in the engraving which is probably the single most extensively reproduced image from the entire visual archive of eighteenth-century exploration’ (Thomas 1995: 93).

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These appropriations are based on the denial or effacement of difference along with the corresponding assumption of some universal ground of contemplation, meaning and abstraction. It would seem that copyright, intellectual and cultural property law is also blind to such differences: just as the appropriation fails to consider the authority invested in the binding of moko to body, so too does current law recognize the object or practice only insofar as it is recognized by the law, in terms of its universi® able principles and, further, refuses to acknowledge the authority that would prohibit appropriation or misuse in Maori terms. We need to stress the relationship between the imposition of European beliefs about Maori and the question of authority that the imposition conceals. Thinking about the meaning or place of moko or Maori tattoo, one might ask how it is possible for a `tattoo’ to stand for someone or something without being separable from them. Does the functioning of moko as signature not suggest that the motif is necessarily
separable from the individual or collective to the extent that it can stand in their absence?

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For, if abstraction here enables appropriation, it also seems to enable signification generally. Indeed, one might argue that the possibility of recognition, communication and signification seems tied to the possibility, indeed, necessity, of forgery, appropriation and mis-recognition. In more precise terms, this problem ties together the question of what can be `Maori’ and what it can `represent’ or `re-present’ . Representations determine both what can count as an instance of that which is re-presented and consolidate relations of power and authority by assuming the position of representor through such an act. In the context of Aotearoa, New Zealand, for example, it might be useful to think of the re-articulation, development or in¯ uence of Maori culture in a variety of non-traditional places, contexts, or media, and the questions that might always be asked: whether this thing, act or person is actually `Maori’ and whether they are truly representative of Maori. One might think, also, of the signatures of Maori on deeds and treaties such as Te tiriti o Waitangi or the Treaty of Waitangi, and the variety of things these signatures are taken to mean or authorize. Indeed, the analogy made between moko and signature has some historical basis, as Michael King observes: Many nineteenth-century chiefs chose to sign documents such as land deeds and the Treaty of Waitangi with their moko in preference to a signature so as to increase the tapu of the document. (1978: 14).

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The signature is also a useful metaphor for the further consideration of the relationship between the possibility of protection, delimitation, development and circulation with respect to cultural boundaries, identities and property. One should note that the term signature can mean either a mark or sign that stands for something or someone in their absence and, as in science and forensics, a distinctive identifying marking or characteristic. In the first sense, then, it can be something which derives from some structure or system and is non-essential, while in the second, it is `the essential’ aspect of identity. These two meanings offer paths into either side of the essentialism/anti-essentialism debate.

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When one sees tattoos or moko in a context that is not `traditional’ , for example, the answer to the question `whose signature is this?’ could refer either to contextual, social or cultural determinants, or to `proper’ and stable `essences’ : blood, race, ethnicity, etc. Is it not the case that such tattoos, as they appear today, tend to be most prominent at the borders of culture, as a kind of marking or articulation ultimately shaped and motivated by inter-cultural politics? Might not this sort of `in-betweenness’ also be symptomatic of a type of splitting and intertwining of the Maori/ non-Maori divide? Might we not say that either side of such oppositions constitute themselves in relation to the other, such that the tattooed line, as the limit, is ultimately undone; an incision `in-between’ through which the other and the self bleed together? Perhaps the answer is, as Lacan observes, that, apart from its apparent erotic function, `[t]he tattoo ¼ has the function of being for the Other, of situating the subject in it, marking his [sic] place in the field of the group’ s relations,between each individual and all the others’ (1979: 206).

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As Grosz has noted: paradoxically, the signature is the possibility of the infinite repetition of what is unique and irreplaceable. `The drama that activates and constructs every signature is this insistent, unwearying, potentially infinitive repetition of something that remains, everytime, irreplaceable.’ The signature is
not self-contained and given, cannot be a presence-to-itself, for it always requires a counter-signature, a reception, an other to sign for it. (1995: 13 - 14).

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Once one considers both the possibility and impossibility of reversing the relationship between representation and reality, both the creative potential in representation, the way in which it performatively brings into being that which it represents, and its dependence upon some recognition, some system or code by which it can be recognized as that which must already be, then one begins to see how representation
both opens possibilities and closes them down, how it secures and destabilizes authority. In this context, we must ask what it is that authorizes such a signing. Here, we strike a paradox: representation may be constitutive, in the sense that it can performatively constitute that which it re-presents and, in so doing, effectively determine the range of possible identifications. And yet, such representation of a particular  identity, object or practice must always be recognized as that identity, object or practice, must be  recognized as a re-presentation, thus implying something always-already before, something that is repeated and repeatable. One would not want to assume that the structure of the signature and the manner in which it is recognized, legitimated or authorized is the same within Maori and non-Maori contexts. But again, perhaps the way this admission sits uneasily with my general thesis concerning the notion of a Maori or non-Maori context offers some further possibilities, such as the articulation of Maori law, of mana (authority, power or prestige), tapu (the holy, sacred or prohibited), tikanga (procedure, custom or method), as law. For, it is surely the opposite, European law articulated as universal law, which has justified and  maintained the dispossession and displacement of Maori authority in Aotearoa.

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Perhaps the most pervasive model through which the development and relationship of Western and non-Western tattooing is conceptualized, is that of economy and exchange. Here, particular signs, like tattoos, circulate within a particular system, signifying certain social and cultural relations, beliefs and interests. The meaning of such a sign, as `marking-in-general’ , would be determined by establishing
its function or value within a given system, while its operation within a cross-cultural or inter-cultural situation would be understood in terms of the ways such signs are re-signified. In other words, we would come to understand a particular `sign’ in terms of its use within a system, structure or economy. Against
the exchangist model, Deleuze and Guattari offer a reading of society and bodily inscription in terms of the `primitive socius’: We see no reason ¼ for accepting the postulate that underlies exchangist notions of society; society is not first of all a milieu for exchange where the essential would be to circulate or to cause to circulate, but rather a socius of inscription where the essential thing is to mark or be marked. There is circulation only if inscription requires or permits it. (1983: 1430).

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The significance of this point for my discussion of moko is two-fold. First, rather than assume that such markings are readily translatable or subsumable within some larger category like `tattoo’ , `graphics’ or `writing’ , that they are separable from the bodies on which they are inscribed, Deleuze and Guattari suggest that such inscriptions mark an attachment to the earth and to others, not in terms of exchange, but
as an assemblage or coupling. `Primitive’ signs would thus be `embedded’ in situations, not fully separable from bodies, specific planes, rituals, gestures and beliefs, yet not entirely fixed in their relationship to one another. The inscription, then, encodes and marks the individual within a system and in doing so  determines the terms of economy. Simple appropriation, therefore, would take the thing the
mark only in terms of its denotational value, while failing to observe its multiple connotations and efficacious power, its embeddedness.

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Second, and in a related way, the translation of such marking into the more general terms of signification
would be, in a sense, a violent reduction or imposition that assumes such terms at the expense of the singularity of the mark. The point might be, then, that any assumed ground which would make moko
translatable and transferable would represent difference at its own expense. To recognize it is to re-cognize it as that which it is not, to take it and re-territorialize it in a manner which necessarily effaces specific relations that gave it meaning or `belonging’ within indigenous culture. To see moko in terms of the exchangist model of loss and gain might already, therefore, assume a type of general inscription of value or meaningÐ to take the marking as something that falls under a genera that unites Western and non-Western graphics. The problem, therefore, is that the assumption of some ground of exchange, translation or circulation involves a violent reduction or effacement of the singularity of a particular idiom, marking or act.
However, such reduction, such separation and abstraction of the mark from the context in which it is `embedded’ , seems to be what makes the mark able to be recognizable as a mark of `such and such’ , and thus function as a signifier. In other words, the general terms of economy and exchange that reduce  difference to difference within the system of economy make `meaning’ possible.

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As Derrida has argued with the case of `writing’: The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is implicit in every code, making it into a network [une grille] that is communicable, transmittable, decipherable, iterable for a third [not just for sender and receiver], and hence for every possible user in general. To be what it is, all writing must, therefore, be capable of functioning in the radical absence of
every empirically determined receiver in general the possibility of the `death’ of the receiver inscribed in the structure of the mark. (1988: 8.)

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And yet, it is the trace of this irreducible singularity, the mark of the excluded difference, that opens the structure of exchange, signification and meaning to the line of ethical and political questioning I am interested in here. The assumed generality, that founds the possibility of exchange and circulation, masks and effaces the specific historical and empirical conditions under which a particular event or mark is given within the terms of the system. For example, formally or structurally, there may be no way to differentiate between different manifestations of `Maoriness’ within the contemporary context. An important point here is that the ambiguous category of the `newly traditional’ can be used to describe a whole range of objects and identities, from the Europeanization of things Maori to the `Maori-ization’ of things European. As During notes: Here what is `new’ in the `newly traditional’ is a struggle against injustice and loss that continue into the postcultural era where inequities in employment, health and education continue to be linked to racial difference (1989: 769).

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By situating the notion of authenticity within the socio-historical context of colonialism, During provides us with some way of differentiating between European appropriations of `the Maori’ and Maori appropriations of `the European’ , and for arguing that the relationship between Maori to Pakeha and Pakeha to Maori need not be taken to be mutually translatable, symmetrical or reciprocal. He continues: `to place them together under terms like the ª newly traditionalº is to pass over what distinguishes them’ (1989: 770). And yet, such difference could only ever be expressed in terms that exceed the specific instances concerned; it would always be a difference in relation to another. This impossibility of representing the difference that counts marks the possibility of ethics or justice; the recognition that representation is always inadequate to this task makes possible a relation to another person, group, language or system of law which is ethical.

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This finds an interesting parallel in recent thought in the field of cultural and intellectual property rights, where Maori claims are typically expressed in terms of European-derived concepts. The challenge in such thinking arises not from an attempt to find provision within the existing structures and concepts of law for
indigenous rights, but from an exposition of the law’ s narrow Eurocentric base. A central point here is that the translation of Maori concepts and beliefs into European categories and terms of law is inseparable from the establishment and consolidation of colonial hegemony. Arguing against conventional conceptualizations of property, which emphasize individual ownership and alienability, Shand insists that: For Maori [the] embracing sense of culture is guided by the concepts of mauri [life force] and wairoa [spirit] which together inform all meaningful forms or human occupation-art and design included. The result of this is that, in the wider world view, no individual can lay claim to specific things which are more properly `owned’ , which is to say held in trust for future generations, by the iwi [tribe], hapu [subtribe] or whanau [extended family]. (1998: 12).

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The translation of the relationship of things Maori into Eurocentric notions of property thus becomes `part and parcel’ of the denigration and destruction of Maori cultural practices. Indeed, Shand goes on to argue that `a loss of cultural sovereignty, whether through an inability to practice, the in flux of imitations or through the adoption of formal modes of expression by outsiders, is akin to an act of epistemic violence’ (1998: 42). The point of this observation is to underline the possibility that the relations Maori have to cultural practices, objects and systems of belief may not be characterizable in the terms available to  European-derived law.

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And yet, representation, as `impossible’ as it is, requires some form of translation if inter-cultural law is to be possible. This question of the possibility of this impossibility hinges on the `between-ness’ of the tattoo. Revealing and outlining boundaries as it crosses and transgresses, the tattoo might be considered radically `before’, in the sense Derrida (1991) gives to the term `before’ in `before the law’ as `prior to’ as well as `in front of’ a past and future beyond any present, a marking out that makes possible any relation or ground of `between’ or `inter’ . In this manner, the (im)possibility of this translation across or between cultures would not only make culture representable or any form of inter-cultural relation, but the possibility
of any just relation might also turn out to depend on the repeatability of such a `marking’.

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Monash University
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Acknowledgements
This essay has greatly benefited from the generous comments and helpful criticisms offered by Andrew Milner, Claire Colebrook, Amy Thompson and the anonymous reader for Social Semiotics.

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