War Ink: Sense-Making and Curating War through Military Tattoos

Abstract

Veterans have long sought to make sense of and capture their wartime experiences through a variety of aesthetic means such as novels, memoirs, films, poetry and art. Increasingly, scholars of IR are turning to these sources as a means to study war experience. In this article we analyze one such sense-making practice that has, despite its long association with war, largely gone unnoticed: military tattoos. We argue that military tattoos and the experiences they capture can offer a novel entry point into understanding how wars are made sense of and captured on the body. Focusing on a web archive-'War Ink'-curated and collected for and by US veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, we analyze how tattoos perform an important 'sense-making' function for participating veterans. We focus on three recurring themes-loss and grief, guilt and anger, and transformation and hope-demonstrating how military tattoos offer important insights into how military and wartime experience is traced and narrated on and through the body. The web archive, however, not only enables a space for veterans to make sense of their war experience through their tattoos, the archive also does important political work in curating the broader meaning of war to the wider public.

Employment Interview Screening: Time to Face the Ink

“…Some military personnel may have a tattoo that is honoring a fallen member of the unit or memorializing the time they spent in a given country during war time. Military personnel may use tattoos to memorialize the events that they have been exposed to or to make sense of the duties they performed during wartime (Dyvik & Welland, 2018;Sanders, 1988). Religiously affiliated tattoos and military tattoos have significant meaning to the tattooed individual.…”

Tattoos and Information: Mapping the Landscape of Tattoo Research

“…Narratives and memory tattoos as literacy artifacts (Kirkland, 2009), as culturally acquired “sign vehicles” (Kosut, 2000), and as “bodily writing” which may need to be both interpreted and translated (Lei, 2009; Sullivan, 2001) tattoos as means to negotiate memory, trauma, mourning and memorializing the dead (Brouwer & Horowitz, 2015; Davidson, 2017; Dyvik & Welland, 2018; Hill, 2020; Steadman et al, 2019) …”

“…• religious and ethnic identification (Meinardus, 1972), pilgrimage tattoos (Diktaş, 2020;Kurrat & Heiser, 2020); trade or artisan tattoos (Caplan, 2010;Newman, 1998), immigrants tattoos (Hiramoto, 2015) • identity formation and communication among prisoners (DeMello, 1993;McCarron, 2008;Phelan & Hunt, 1998;Shoham, 2009;Vegrichtová, 2018) Narratives and memory • tattoos as literacy artifacts (Kirkland, 2009), as culturally acquired 'sign vehicles' (Kosut, 2000), and as 'bodily writing' which may need to be both interpreted and translated (Lei, 2009;Sullivan, 2001) • tattoos as means to negotiate memory, trauma, mourning and memorializing the dead (Brouwer & Horowitz, 2015;Davidson, 2017;Dyvik & Welland, 2018;Hill, 2020;Steadman et al, 2019) Theme 3: Tattoos Information Seeking and Presentation Through Archives and Libraries…”

Interweaving of Unique Stories Nested in Flesh: A Perspective Analysis

“…Sense-making practice is common even in the past. The study of Dyvik and Welland (2018) on military tattoos and the experiences they capture give way to the understanding of reasons of war, its causes, and how they are etched in the body. The loss and grief, guilt and anger, and transformation and hope are all demonstrated in tattoos.…”