The Blooming of the Self on the Skin

reflections on tattoos and visibility regimes

Abstract

This article aims to discuss interventions in the human body from the perspective of communication, consumption and psychoanalysis. Tattoos are fertile phenomena for revisiting the limits and configurations of contemporary visibility regimes. In particular, we investigated aesthetic interventions over scars as attempts at resignification and corporal expression through the BBC Three program: A Tattoo To Change Your Life. The production of meanings through such inscriptions manifests the celebration of a moral commitment, grounded on a bodily condition as a subterfuge for construction and recognition of subjectivities.