ABSTRACT
This chapter provides concluding remarks on Tahitian tattooing. Tattooing, once revitalized in Europe in the eighteenth century and in Japan in the seventeenth century, became widespread among people who could be considered ‘marginal’ such as sailors, soldiers, criminals, show performers, prostitutes and gangsters in Europe, the United States and Japan. Tahitian tattooing has become an emblem of cultural identity and a part of global culture. Like tattooing in the pre- and early contact period, the contemporary practice of tattooing is embedded in ideology and social systems. If the Tahitian tattooed bodies are ‘networks of social signification’ in Grosz’s term, and embedded in the contemporary social systems, this process of making meanings and referring to them becomes more complicated in a cross-cultural situation. Through tattooing Tahitians interpret the meanings of global and non-Tahitian cultures, and relate themselves to these cultures in the local context.
