Chinese Enough For Ya? Disrupting and Transforming Notions of Chineseness through Chinesenough Tattoos

• Main Author: Chan, Karen Bic Kwun
• Other Authors: Titchkosky, Tanya
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: Authenticity; Hybridity; Chineseness; Chinese; Chinese Tattoos; Tattooing; Body Modification; Flash Art; Arts Informed Inquiry; Arts Informed Research; Whiteness; Hanzi; Kanji; Diasporic Studies; Interpretive Social Inquiry; Carnivlesque; Cultural Appropriation; Chinese Canadian; Social space; Subtitling; Sense Experience; Absent Body; Third Space; Anti-fashion; Asian Studies; Asian American Studies; Asian Canadian Studies; Cultural Studies; Visual Culture; Phenomenology; 0631; 0626; 0344; 0515; 0534; 0326; 0304; 0305; 0332
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/32914

Using interpretive methods of social inquiry, this thesis explores the socio-political significance of body tattoos made of Chinese-like text, which have recently become popular Western phenomena. It theorizes how contemporary Western tattooing complicates bodily and social boundaries, providing context to interrogate ideas of authenticity. Coining the term "Chinesenough" (from “Chinese” and “enough”), I describe how many such tattoos do not reflect in Chinese what many wearers and viewers assume they do. I contrast how Chinesenough tattoos (re)produce whiteness to the multiple and contradictory Chinesenesses that are also (re)produced. Reading Chinesenough flash art on tattoo studio walls as objects constituting social space, I consider the social meaning of their English subtitles and manner of organization. I theorize the body’s absence from Chinesenough flash art while articulating my body’s sense experience of encountering the same. Finally, I produce and theorize five illustrations that carnivalize Chinesenough iconography to disrupt and transform the phenomenon.