Modified Bodies

Modified bodies are constantly-evolving maps. I speak from a position of modification: my days at Tech were marked through tattooing and piercing. Just as my body was marked, these modifications serve as navigation points, reminders of where I’ve been and a guide to where I want to go next. One of my tattoos – my favorite – is an astrolabe, above which is written “man is not lost.” It is this tattoo – an outgrowth of a passion for mapping fostered by former Georgia Tech professor Ron Broglio – that inadvertently articulated my own notions about tattooing and its relationship to intimate geography. Mapping is an endeavor that serves to contextualize bodies in physical space at a given moment in history. Lewis and Clark, for example, generated a map of the Western US particular to their own endeavor. Their pursuit – like many bred out of a post-Scientific Revolution impulse of dominion over nature through science and technology – marked the territories they “discovered” in particular ways, superimposing a burgeoning American, gendered ideology from East Coast to West. This example serves as a point of comparison for tattooing: we make our own declarations as we map ourselves through consensual body modification. These declarations are specific to place and time but also transcend space and time, creating a real-live, real-life artifact of our history, our selves.

My next tattoo? A leg-band below the knee with the text “terra incognita,” further homage to the connection between body modification and mapping, mapping and gender, and gender and bodies. This will have to wait, however, until my body finishes another transformation: the birth of my second child, due in August.

Alunnae – Jessica

originally posted March 2013