Limited Ink: Of Repressence, Inkorporation, and Marineation

Classically the tattoo disrupts the bodily economy. Existing on the side of death, and therefore being un-economical (economy derives from Oikos/household), Leviticus 19:28 cautions against the tattoo, and so situates the tattoo as nothing but a tattoomb. Our cinematic exemplar Tattoo bears witness to tattooed cadaverous canvasses economically circulating within unheimlich cyberspace as the body is broken into salable tattooed pieces and the newly graduated character is himself marineated as the tattoo soaks through layers of his own being. Against this incorporation of the tattoo, the clean pre-tattooed body provides a fantasy of clear introjection.