Body Narratives: A Psychoanalytic Reading on Tattoos, Piercings and Scarifications

Abstract

This article begins with a historical perspective on body markings, highlighting the communicative character of these practices. While ancestral origins held universal meaning in these marks, contemporary times present the body as a potential emitter of individualized messages related to a time before the acquisition of verbal language. The purpose of this text is to problematize contemporary body markings as practices that retain a potential for addressing others, in the form of inscriptions on the body. We draw on psychoanalytic studies concerning the origins of the psyche and the bodily ego, a moment in which sensoriality and the body stand out as a privileged means of communication. Based on contributions regarding a non-verbal narrative from the beginning of life, which remains active throughout our existence, we reflect on the presence of a narrative potential in current body inscriptions. For the communicative character to be effectively experienced, an intersubjective encounter with a potential recipient, willing to listen to the body in its non-verbal dimension, will be necessary. In this sense, contemporary body markings can be understood as possessing great communicative potential, but its ability to become a message will depend on the construction of subjective sharing.