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Bodies of Inscription Bodies of Inscription: A Cultural History of the Modern Tattoo Community by Marge DeMello Duke University Press 222 pp.; $16.95, paper

Written on the Body Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History edited by Jane Caplan Princeton University Press 319 pp.; $19.95, paper

Contra many cultural conservatives, there's nothing inherently risible or intellectually sloppy about the prospect of scholarly engagement with computer games, or Barbie, or the vogue for tattoos. What matters is the quality of the thinking. These two new books on tattoos show on the one hand how a good deal of academic theorizing goes off the rails and, on the other, how much we can profit from first-rate scholarly reflection on matters of contemporary cultural interest.

Marge DeMello's Bodies of Inscription, a dissertation-turned-monograph that aspires to a wider readership as well, proposes to explore the "discursive processes and practices by which tattooed people now imagine themselves as a community." By "tattoo community" DeMello means not simply anyone who has a tattoo but rather those who "actively embrace the notion of community and who pursue community-oriented activities."

Buried in DeMello's jargon is an interesting question: How have tattoos, which Americans once assigned to the working class, become acceptable to doctors and lawyers, to kids of teachers and accountants? (Not universally acceptable, I hasten to add; just ask the mother of anyone I have dated.)

DeMello's answer to this question isn't clearly developed, but she suggests in a roundabout way that middle-class Americans have accepted the form of tattooing while rejecting the content of traditional American tattoos. So instead of naked ladies, American flags, and tributes to Mother, we are seeing a lot of "Eastern" images: Chinese ideograms (or pseudo-ideograms), yin-yang symbols, ankhs. Perhaps the tattoo craze owes something to the much noted spiritual questing of contemporary Americans.

Unfortunately, DeMello's analysis is riddled with confusion. Most troubling is her misreading of Benedict Anderson's influential book, Imagined Communities, which has long shaped scholarly discussion about nationalism. It is not clear if DeMello has read beyond Anderson's title, for she attaches Anderson's name to ideas that are nowhere in his book—to wit, that no communities exist outside the discourses that imagine them into being. DeMello, of course, is not the first scholar to peddle this notion. Imaginitis has infected history, sociology, and comparative literature alike.

While some of the essays in Written on the Body, a collection edited by Jane Caplan, are as jargon-laden and silly as Bodies of Inscription, others redeem the volume. Particularly worthy of attention are Mark Gustafson's essay on tattooing in the Roman Empire and Charles MacQuarrie's look at Celtic tattooing.

Gustafson, who teaches classics at Calvin College, shows that Greeks and Romans thought tattoos were barbaric, and did not regard them as decorative, but were quite happy to use them as punishments for slaves and criminals. Much of the available evidence about punitive tattooing involves Christians—such as the story, which comes down to us from Theodoret, of "a deacon of Damascus … who had been sent to Egypt, had shown support for those hardy souls who persisted in the Nicene faith, and was outrageously condemned to to hard labour in the copper mines of Palestine." The deacon was marked for the mines with a tattoo on his forehead.

But Christians also participated in voluntary tattooing. A monk in the 480s, for instance, had the following phrase inscribed on his thigh: "Manim, the disciple of Jesus Christ." Procopius of Gaza, writing in the late 400s, talks of Christians whose arms were marked with a cross or the name of Christ.

How did Christians get from the censure of tattoos in Leviticus, and Greco-Roman disdain, to tattoos proclaiming Christ's glory? Gustafson suggests that the transformation began with Paul, who, in Galatians 6:17, says "I carry the marks of Jesus tattooed on my body." Though conceding that Paul speaks metaphorically, Gustafson argues that he is "deliberately invoking the degrading practice of punitive tattooing. Throughout his letters, Paul embraces the role of slave of God and of Christ, and thus embraces humilation, extreme obedience, and bodily suffering. The effect was deeply subversive of earthly authority, a paradigm shift."

In "Insular Celtic Tattooing: History, Myth, and Metaphor," Charles MacQuarrie shows that Celtic Christians approved of some tattoos while disparaging others. MacQuarrie suggests, for example, that the marks famously referred to in the Life of Saint Brigit might well have been tattoos. (A group of warriors approached Brigit and asked her blessing on a raid. She refused to sanction the raid, instead beseeching God to prevent them from being hurt or hurting anyone. And, noticing that the men bore "evil marks," she also asked God to remove them from their bodies.)

The 786 Report of the Papal Legates concluded that if one is tattooed out of pagan superstition, "it will not contribute to his salvation any more than does circumcision of the body to the Jew without belief of the heart," but if one "were to undergo this injury of staining for the sake of God," he would be rewarded. Good justification-by-faith readers may wince at the implication that tattoos can help you get into heaven, but we can perhaps at least rest easy in the assurance that tattoos are not intrinsically evil.

Lauren Winner is the author, with Randall Balmer, of a book on American Protestantism forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

NOTE: For your convenience, the following products, which were mentioned above, are available for purchase:

• Bodies of Inscription, Marge DeMello
• Written on the Body, Jane Caplan

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