Tattoos, masks, skin

Paul Connerton

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511984518.007

6 - Tattoos, masks, skin

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012

Paul Connerton

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Paul Connerton: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

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I begin with two citations, one from a nineteenth-century traveller, the other from a twentieth-century novelist.

Dr Clavel wrote an article in 1885 on tattooing in the Marquesas Islands. Tattooing had been developed there to a higher degree of elaboration than that exhibited in many societies, so ornately, indeed, that the first European travellers mistook the tattoo-marks they saw there for a form of clothing. Dr Clavel describes his encounter there with a man of awful aspect, a tribal chief who proudly displayed his body on which no visible part remained unmarked. His lips, his tongue, his gums, his palate and his genitals were all entirely tattooed. These marks the chief displayed with pride, because he considered them signs of honour.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Spirit of Mourning
History, Memory and the Body
, pp. 125 - 146

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511984518.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2011

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