Le tatouage, de la parure à l'œuvre de soi

Abstract

This work attempts to grasp what is involved in both the primitive and the contemporary practice of body tattooing. The idea is to lay out its main outlines in different contexts, to define its many aspects using psychoanalytic tools, and to propose a few points to further our understanding of the scope of its development. A return to the ancestral, tattooing allows one to use ones body as an archive, to adorn oneself, even bind oneself. Erotic adornment, or self - as - art-work, it cannot be fully grasped outside of the context of a discourse of the body of which it is one of the effects.