TATTOO AS PRACTICE: CONSTRUCTED KNOWLEDGE IN THE INTERACTION BETWEEN HABITUS AND SENSITIVE KNOWLEDGE

This theoretical essay aims to develop a theoretical articulation between sensitive knowledge and habitus to understand how tattoo practice is produced, reproduced and transformed. Situated in a constructivist logic, it is argued the practice of tattooing is due to the interactions between practice and knowledge derived from human senses/perceptions and mediated by artifacts, being internalized by practitioners as a shared habitus. The knowing-in-practice process figures the relationship between sensitive knowledge, expressed by the aesthetic judgment that guides doing, and between the habitus present in the subjectivity of invisible interactions in practice. It is in the combination of a structured and structuring habitus and sensitive knowledge that the knowledge of tattoo practice is incorporated into the body and mind, becoming part of the way people perceive, interpret and act in the world.