From the stigmatized tattoo to the graffitied body: femininity in the tattoo renaissance

This article analyzes the spectacularly rising popularity of tattoos by showing that tattoos have become a spatial project in the largest sense: the way they participate in the creation of social space is different from that of tattoos before the Tattoo Renaissance. I explain this project as a shift from tattoos to body graffiti. In the past (predominantly male) tattoo-spheres could be located within the margins of society. Once an identity had been assumed through the adoption of a tattoo, the person could be assigned a particular geographical position within an urban sphere. Contemporary tattoos have this one-dimensional identifying function to a much lesser extent, which influences the way in which these tattoos create space. Within the new tattoo space, the skin does not wear the stigmatic mark, nor does it function as a screen of male desire, but it becomes a wall on which multiple desires are projected. In this sense, tattoos have become graffiti. I establish the particularity of the female tattoo as opposed to the masculine tattoo by focusing on an important element of the pro/contra discussion of female tattoos: the purity and ‘blankness’ of the female skin. Jean Baudrillard's concept of the blank female skin as a ‘void’ that men rush to fill with their own desires is central to this discussion. Finally, I show that the spatial function of narcissistically oriented female tattoos is at least partly established within the Suicide Girls interactive website.     

European Transfigurations—Eurafrica and Eurasia: Coudenhove and Trubetzkoy Revisited

The Eurasianist movement launched a theory according to which Russia does not belong to Europe but forms, together with its Asian colonies, a separate continent named “Eurasia” whose Eastern border is the Pacific Ocean. Similarily, in the early 1920s, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-European movement, developed, the idea of “Eurafrica.” I compare the writings of Coudenhove and those of Nicolas S. Trubetzkoy and show how the idea of Europe was used as an anti-essentialist model of a cultural community. Though both “Eurasia” and “Eurafrica” may be understood to express cultural and economic imperialism, the sophistication with which both concepts are brought forward makes their interpretation as simple derivatives of chauvinism impossible. Both Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove refuse national “egocentricity” which “destroys every form of cultural communication between human beings.” Above that, Trubetzkoy and Coudenhove agree that cultural apogees have often come about through fusion. I discuss the idea of “convergence” in the context of Bergson's and Deleuze's biophilosophies.