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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Other graphic art forms
Under the Skin investigates the role of cross-cultural body
modification in seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century North
America, revealing that the practices of tattooing and scalping
were crucial to interactions between Natives and newcomers. These
permanent and painful marks could act as signs of alliance or signs
of conflict, producing a complex bodily archive of cross-cultural
entanglement. Indigenous body modification practices were adopted
and transformed by colonial powers, making tattooing and scalping
key forms of cultural and political contestation in early America.
Although these bodily practices were quite distinct-one a painful
but generally voluntary sign of accomplishment and affiliation, the
other a violent assault on life and identity-they were linked by
growing colonial perceptions that both were crucial elements of
"Nativeness." Tracing the transformation of concepts of bodily
integrity, personal and collective identities, and the sources of
human difference, Under the Skin investigates both the lived
physical experience and the contested metaphorical power of early
American bodies. Struggling for power on battlefields, in
diplomatic gatherings, and in intellectual exchanges, Native
Americans and Anglo-Americans found their physical appearances
dramatically altered by their interactions with one another.
Contested ideas about the nature of human and societal difference
translated into altered appearances for many early Americans. In
turn, scars and symbols on skin prompted an outpouring of stories
as people debated the meaning of such marks. Perhaps paradoxically,
individuals with culturally ambiguous or hybrid appearances
prompted increasing efforts to insist on permanent bodily identity.
By the late eighteenth century, ideas about the body, phenotype,
and culture were increasingly articulated in concepts of race. Yet
even as the interpretations assigned to inscribed flesh shifted,
fascination with marked bodies remained.
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