Book contents
6 - Tattoos, masks, skin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
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.
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- Information
- The Spirit of MourningHistory, Memory and the Body, pp. 125 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011