In decadent phases, the tattoo became associated with the criminal--literally the outlaw--and the power of the tattoo became intertwined with the power of those who chose to live beyond the norms of society. Kathy Acker Empire of the Senseless tattoo can be understood as a wound--at once a mark that abjects the bearer, and an assertion of control over abjection. Juliet Fleming The Renaissance Tattoo TATTOOS ARE PERMANENT MARKINGS made by inserting ink into the layers of skin to change the pigment. In the quotation above, Juliet Fleming describes the tattoo as a self-inflicted wound;' and indeed the word tattoo is taken from the Samoan word tatau, open wound. Skin, flesh, body: none are synonymous, but they are all inseparable from one another. Flesh precedes in a sense the body, while skin covers flesh. Although this essay focuses on prison tattoos, it should be noted from the outset that the tattoo, in any environment, is typically seen as unnatural. I suggest that in literature, and my focus here is on contemporary literary texts, the tattoo is always represented as unnatural. George Burchett, one of England's best-known tattooists for more than fifty years, writes in the opening pages of Memoirs of a Tattooist: Only heaven knows exactly when the first man, or half man, first added some ornament to his body, or a woman to hers. Not long after, I feel sure, the first primitive attempt was made at putting a permanent decoration, or magic sign, on the skin. If so, it would be a proud claim for tattooing that it was one of man's first conscious acts which distinguished him from the rest of the animal kingdom. (10) Similarly, Pasi Falk writes of tattooing: irreversible reshaping of the body and its permanent marking manifests the stable and static character of relations in society. It also indicates a specific relation to the body as raw material-clay to be moulded and a surface to draw on. This does not imply contempt for the body nor does it express particular adoration of the natural body image. body is an unfinished piece of art to be completed. It must be transformed from nature to culture. (99) While any division between nature and culture needs to be distinguished from the idea of naturalness, in which nature is turned into a cultural, artificial construction, it is interesting to note that both Burchett, who left school at twelve, and Falk, a professional sociologist, agree on the essential unnaturalness of tattooing--its orientation toward the cultural rather than the natural, its fundamental disdain for naturalness. In literary texts the tattoo is always used to depict a (Western) character's movement away from the toward the cultural or from the real to the artificial. In their essay Pain and the Mind-Body Dualism: A Sociological Approach; Gillian Bendelow and Simon Williams suggest that At the hermeneutical level, pain and suffering give rise to the quest for interpretation, understanding and meaning (87). In Angela Carter's postapocalyptic novel Heroes and Villains, Marianne looks at the most striking of her husband's tattoos: She parted the black curtains of his mane and drew her hands incredulously down the ornamented length of his spine. He wore the figure of a man on the right side, a woman on the left and, tattooed the length of his spine, a tree with a snake curled round and round the trunk. This elaborate design was executed in blue, red, black, and green. (85) Marianne has no interest in interpreting the tattoo; it is the act of being tattooed that engages her. She asks her husband 'Was it very painful?' and follows this with 'Why did you let him mutilate you so?' (86). In Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, however, Ishmael has no interest in the pain that the heavily tattooed Queequeg must have suffered. …