Abstract

In this article we propose three examples where the body appears as a surface of inscription. In the first instance, starting from some Claude Levi-Strauss reflections, with reference to the tribal tattoos specific of the Amazonian and of the North-WesternAmerican regions, we intend to exhibithow writing negates the bare life and reveals itself as a powerful dispositive of qualification and production of “life forms”. The second instance, dealing with the tattooed corpse of Epimenides, drives us to the literal place of birth of the body, that figures for the first time as body-sign. In the last instance we study the contemporary massive phenomenon of tattooing and we notice the ambiguous, to the extent of saturation and reversal, undertaking of the imperative toward liberty aiming at self-improving, within the theoretical frame and values of the body-capital and human resource. We conclude trying to demonstrate that the radical exposure to the seizure from the part of the contemporary reductionisms stands, basically, on the body-sign, that reveals itself to be a long duration form.