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Julie Brown
The University of New England
Living Mementos: The Lure of the Tattoo
Embodied knowledge is a response to
the basic question of what we can know, how we know it and how we then represent
that knowledge. Embodied knowledge production then, when seen as the practice
which recognises the lived experience, is the product of the practice which
makes evident the personal or lived experience. Consciousness and perception
are already involved in the construction and assessment of this living theory
and my interest in embodied knowledge for the purpose of this paper, is in the
current trend of displaying living theories on bodies: That the difference between
being and thinking is a twist on Descartes' Dualism; I stand out therefor I
am, when in reality this attempt to prove individual uniquenss actually disempowers
women by unknowingly maintaining their position in 'the gaze'. Using this proliferation
of tattooing and body piercing especially in young women, I will show how social
theory; knowledge about the societal is approached and theorised in ways that
actually disempoer valid knowledge of the social, and how each generation mirrors
itself in an attempt at individualisation. Theories in this case are simply
pictures telling stories, personal stories, unspoken stories. Thank you Julie
Brown
<jbrown7001@yahoo.com.au>