The tattoo as a document

Pages18-35
Published date08 January 2018
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2017-0043
Date08 January 2018
AuthorKristina Sundberg,Ulrika Kjellman
Subject MatterLibrary & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet
The tattoo as a document
Kristina Sundberg and Ulrika Kjellman
ALM, Uppsala, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how tattoos can be considered documents of an
individuals identity, experiences, status and actions in a given context, relating to ideas stating that archival
records/documents can be of many types and have different functions. The paper also wants to discuss how
tattoos serve as a bank of memories and evidence on a living body; in this respect, the tattooed body can be
viewed as an archive, which immortalises and symbolises the events and relationships an individual has
experienced in his or her life, and this in relation to a specific social and cultural context.
Design/methodology/approach To discuss these issues, the authors take the point of departure in the
tattoo practice of Russian/Soviet prisoners. The tattoo material referred to is from the Russian Criminal
Tattoo Archive. The archive is created by FUEL Design and Publishing that holds the meanings of the
tattoos as explained in Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopaedia Volume I-III. The authors exemplify this
practice with two photographs of Soviet/Russian prisoners and their tattoos. By using a semiotic analysis that
contextualises these images primarily through literature studies, the authors try to say something about what
meaning these tattoos might carry.
Findings The paper argues that it is possible to view the tattoo as a document, bound to an individual,
reflecting his/her life and a given social and cultural context. As documents, they provide the individual with
the essential evidence of his or her endeavours in a criminal environment. They also function as an
individuals memory of events and relationships (hardships and comradeships). Subsequently, the tattoos
help create and sustain an identity. Finally, the tattoo presents itself as a document that may represent a
critique of a dominant society or simply the voice of the alienated.
Originality/value By showing how tattoos can be seen as documents and memory records, this paper
brings a new kind of item into information and archival studies. It also uses theories and concepts from
information and archival studies to put new light on the functions of tattoos.
Keywords Archives, Documentation, Documents, Memory, Evidence, Tattooing
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Among Russian/Soviet prisoners, tattoos have long played a significant role as evidence of
the individuals criminal orientation and personal characteristics. For example, a tattoo of a
spider web with a spider walking down or up indicates the prisoners desire to leave or not
to leave criminal life behind; a tattoo of a knife through the neckindicates that the prisoner
committed murder in prison, while little bells around the ankles mean he has served
his sentence in full (FUEL, 2017a, b).
This study aims to investigate how tattoos can be considered documents of an
individuals identity, experiences, status and actions, relating to ideas stating that archival
records/documents can be of many types and have different functions (Briet, 2006, p. 10;
Buckland, 1991, p. 357; Lund, 2012, p. 743). The study wants to discuss how tattoos serve as
a bank of memories and evidence on a living body; in this respect, the tattooed body can be
viewed as an archive, which immortalises and symbolises the events and relationships an
individual has experienced in his or her life. The study also wants to propagate that tattoos
are bound to individuals, the primary reason being that the tattoos are carved into the skin
of its bearer and stay (if not removed) with the mortal body of that particular individual.
It goes without saying that the meaning of the tattoos are lost when the body dies, it is the
bearer who gives them their intrinsic meaning. This individual aspect of the tattoo is
complemented by an understanding of tattoos as a communicative tool within a group of
people. In this regard, the focus is on the social functions of documents, i.e., the role
documents play in the social life (Frohmann, 2004), how they organise communicative
actions within a community (Brown and Duguid, 1996) and also how they enforce power in a
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 74 No. 1, 2018
pp. 18-35
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-03-2017-0043
Received 29 March 2017
Revised 8 August 2017
Accepted 9 August 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0022-0418.htm
18
JD
74,1
social context (Smith, 1974, 1990). Thus, we see the tattoo as a document taking an active
part in the construction and reflection of an individuals identity, experience, actions
and status. And, we see this construction as conditioned by the communicative
community at hand.
We shall mention some important previous studies on tattoos to get an insight in the
nature of this practice. Naturally, there are many studies on the historic and social/cultural
significance of tattoos (Rubin, 1988; Sanders, 1988; Sanders and Vail, 2008; Fedorenko et al.,
1999; Doss and Ebesu Hubbard, 2009; Falk, 1995; Fisher, 2002; Braunberger, 2000;
Guest, 2000; Jones, 2000; Gustafson, 2000; Oettermann, 2000; McCarron, 2008; Connor, 2004;
Arnshav, 2014), but this study primarily gives consideration to studies connecting tattoos to
isolation and criminality. The studies of Caplan (1997, 2000a, b) have been valuable.
She demonstrates that in a western context, tattoos have always characterised marginalised
individuals, or the other, and that this perspective became cemented when eighteenth-
century sailors took on Polynesian tattoo culture and the marked bodies of the savages.
Moreover, this encounter gave Europeans the word tattoo, from the Polynesian root tatu,
tatau to markor puncture(Caplan, 2000a, pp. xi-xxiii).
Caplan also describes how in Europe in the nineteenth century, tattoos became part of
the practice that emerged in conjunction with the documentation of identity, for example,
in connection to the development of passports, identification cards and birth certificates in a
legal context. Even in medicine, tattoos came to play a role as identity markers. Both in
emerging criminology and forensic medicines, tattoos were viewed as identifiers of a certain
type of person: the criminal (Caplan, 1997, pp. 106-142). Italian Cesare Lombroso was one of
the criminologists who highlighted the significance of tattoos for identifying criminals:
his criminology practice was indeed based on the idea that groups and individuals could be
categorised based on external characteristics and that the criminal archetypecould be
recognised through certain facial features, hair thickness, the dimensions of the ears and
head, and also the presence of tattoos (Caplan, 2000b, p. 156f; Lombroso, 2006, pp. 1-36).
Tattoos have not only functioned as identification markers, but also as identity markers.
Margo Demello has shed light on the significance of tattoos among American prisoners
when it comes to demonstrating belonging to a certain group in a prison context. In her
paper The Convict Body: Tattooing Among Male American Prisoners, she reports on
the double function of tattoos and the problems that can arise when criminals are to be
reintegrated into society, when these inscribed identity markers are revealed as prison
tattoos (Demello, 1993, pp. 10-13). Michael P. Phelan and Scott A. Hunt also show how
tattoos contribute to constructing identity. In the paper Prison Gang MembersTattoos as
Identity Work: The Visual Communication of Moral Careers, they demonstrate how one
can follow an individualscareerwithin a criminal organisation, for example, through his
or her tattoos (Phelan and Hunt, 1998, pp. 277-298). These latter two studies, thus, emphasise
the function of the tattoo as an identity-creating phenomenon and will form a referential
framework to our study.
Not much has been written on tattoos and archives but one important study to mention is
Kirsten Wrights (2009) paper Recording a very particular Custom: tattoos and the
archive. Here, she addresses the question of how records of tattoos traditionally are created
and arranged in archives. She concludes that the conventional way, by which they normally
are treated, prevents a proper understanding of the tattoos, i.e., of the creation of the
tattoos, the context in which they are created, the surrounding rituals and how they function
as a form of recordkeeping(Wright, 2009, p. 109).
Some previous studies on the body and archives deserve to be mentioned. One is Inge
Baxmans (2009) At the Boundaries of the Archive: Movement; Rhythm, and Muscle
Memory: A Report on the Tanzarchive Lepzig. Baxman states that, since it is the written
culture that has been appreciated as the primarily knowledge form in the western culture,
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The tattoo as
a document

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