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Tattooing the abject body

Asserting corporeal agency through transforming breast cancer scars into body art

ORCiD logo with link | University of Duisburg-Essen
ORCiD logo with link | Dani Tattoo Fairy Hands
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Duisburg-Essen.

Published online: 23 June 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ll.25082.buc
Abstract
This paper answers calls in Linguistic Landscape analysis to foreground corporeal landscapes (Kitis, E. Dimitris & Tommaso Milani (2015). The performativity of the body: Turbulent spaces in Greece. Linguistic Landscape, 1(3), 268–290. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Peck, Amiena & Christopher Stroud (2015). Skinscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 1(1/2), 133–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) by exploring the ways in which breast cancer survivors reappropriate their embodied selves with artistic tattoos, re-defining themselves as artified spatial agents. We report on a corpus of photography and audio/video interviews following the social networks of the second author, a tattoo artist providing pro bono work for people bearing breast cancer surgery scars. This complex dataset allows us to explore the corporeal and spatial implications of artistic post-surgery tattoos, with a focus on how scarred corporeal experiencers shape spatial practices. Resolving an apparent paradox — the embodied expressions of agency amongst individuals who lost control over their corporeality through illness and regimes of medicalisation — brings to light the processes via which breast cancer survivors assert their right to visibility and access to hegemonic bodyscapes.
Abstrakt
Dieser Artikel folgt Aufrufen, körperliche Landschaften in den Vordergrund von LL-Forschung zu rücken (Kitis, E. Dimitris & Tommaso Milani (2015). The performativity of the body: Turbulent spaces in Greece. Linguistic Landscape, 1(3), 268–290. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Peck, Amiena & Christopher Stroud (2015). Skinscapes. Linguistic Landscape, 1(1/2), 133–151. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Wir untersuchen, wie künstlerische Tätowierungen Brustkrebsüberlebenden helfen, sich ihres Körpers wieder zu ermächtigen und sich als kunstvoll gestaltete räumliche Akteure neu zu definieren. Unsere Analyse basiert auf einen Korpus von Fotografien und Audio-/Videointerviews. Ethnographische Feldforschung folgt den sozialen Netzwerken der zweiten Autorin (sowohl online als auch offline), einer Tätowiererin, die Menschen, deren Körper aufgrund von Brustkrebsoperationen vernarbt ist, unentgeltlich tätowiert. Wir untersuchen die körperlichen und räumlichen Implikationen künstlerischer post-operativer Tätowierungen. Schwerpunkt der Analyse liegt auf der Frage, wie Menschen die durch Krankheit und medizinische Behandlungsregime die Kontrolle über ihre Körperlichkeit verloren haben, ihr Recht auf Sichtbarkeit und Zugang zu hegemonialen Körperlandschaften geltend machen.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Corporeal semiotic landscapes: Legitimacy and the gaze
  • 3.Tattoos: From stigma to art and healing
  • 4.Data and methods
  • 5.Beauty over pain
  • 6.Re-covering the body
  • 7.For all to see — Empowerment and visibility
    • 7.1Access and visibility in space
    • 7.2Online spaces
    • 7.3Offline spaces
  • 8.Censuring the re-claimed female body
  • 9.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
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