"I Scratched My Body but Is My Identity": Tattooing as Multiliteracies Practice

• In Event: "Mirror, Mirror on the Walls": Co-Interrogating Heteronormativity, Bodies, Masculinities, and Power in Multiple Educational Contexts

Abstract

Purpose
The main goal of this paper is to interrogate the concept of masculinity as a Colombian Canadian heterosexual Latinx emerging scholar in Language and Literacies Education. I seek to problematize the validity and legitimacy of what it means to be a man (Fuller, 2012) within a Macho (chauvinistic) culture. I utilize the tattoos on my body as identity texts for personal historical data to understand the role I play within the academic world and in society throughout my life.

Theoretical framework
I draw on New Literacy Studies (NLS) (Knobel & Lankshear, 2007) to understand how individuals can bring their identities and stories in the form of a text to challenge and confront masculinity. NLS investigates the relationship between human practice and the production, distribution, exchange, refinement, negotiation and contestation of meanings. Here, new literacies are conceived differently from traditional pencil and paper literacies, and thus deserve its own theoretical framework that accounts for the social practices and evolving contexts beyond traditional conceptualizations of what a text means (Gee, 2015).

Methodology
I attempted to connect my personal experience in body modification to my current scholarly work. As such, I envisage tattoos as texts that articulate the tensions and politics between propriety, professionalism, “deviance,” gender roles, and heteronormativity. I engaged this idea as a research project with the following questions:
● How has my body been used as a platform for (multi)literacy practices?
● How have tattoos shaped my personal and academic identities through time and space?

Photos of tattoos from different parts of my body were collected and synthesized. A form of photo elicitation (Rose, 2016) was used to record my reflections on the meaning behind each tattoo. I subsequently analyzed these through critical discourse and text analysis (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000; McKee, 2003).

Argument
Preliminary findings account to three different areas: Tattoos as a multi/literacy practice, tattoos as resistance and tattoos as an identity to question masculinity and heteropatriarchal normativity. I argue that tattooing my body for more than 30 years has been a performative act to be visible within a Macho (chauvinistic) culture in Latin America. In this paper, I present the relationship and tensions between tattoos, identities, and spaces as New Literacyscapes to redefine meaning (Leander, 2003). This includes collective imaginings and productions of roles, modes of dress, style, language, emotions, and beliefs. The body vis-a-vis the tattoos on the skin is a stage for a masculine performance that conversely hinder the true potential of individuals due to the taboo spirit within some conservative sectors of the social sciences and humanities (aka the academic world).

Scholarly significance

This work-in-progress research posits with cautious optimism how personal stories can be made constructive to conceptions of body and skin as a canvas for identity text that asserts, amplifies, legitimizes and/or problematizes masculinity in society and in the academic world – knowledge necessary to advance curriculum based on equity, inclusion, and diversity (Barnett, 2020; Florian et al., 2010; Fuentes et al., 2021).

Author

• Yecid Ortega, Queen's University - Belfast
  Presenting Author