Page - 125 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

The Tattoos of Armenian Genocide Survivors | 125www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 123–143 missionary who ran a shelter in Aleppo where nearly 1,700 women and girls lived.5 Written records of eyewitness accounts will be used to round out the visual documentation.6 When it comes to the survivors’ return to Armenian communities and the work of the volunteers who were in charge of the res- cued women, I rely on research by Rebecca Jinks.7 In the next section, the concepts of “tattoo” and “regulation” will be de- fined using an approach grounded in religious studies. Subsequently, I will il- lustrate the role of gender during the Armenian Genocide, present the histori- cal context in which the tattoos originated and describe their design in detail. In the main section, I will discuss how the tattoos functioned as a means of regulating Armenian women’s bodies. More specifically, I will focus on their role in expressing processes of assimilation and exclusion that occurred both within the non-Armenian communities in which the women were forced to live and in relation to the Armenian communities to which they subsequently returned. Approaching Tattoos as a Means of Regulation Tattoos8 are bodily practices that have recently attracted considerable atten- tion in scholarly research, particularly in religious studies. Regula Zwicky con- ceives of tattoos as visually coded media that enable a revealing approach to the analysis of sources in the study of religion. She argues that two pivotal aspects characterize the tattoo: (1) it originates from an intentional action; (2) it is a permanent mark on the skin. Although nowadays methods for re- moving tattoos exist, they cannot be simply taken off or washed away; they are meant to last a lifetime. Following Fritz Stolz, Zwicky understands religion 5 Jinks 2018, 87, 115–116. 6 Svazlian 2011 collected more than 300 testimonies. The eyewitness accounts were sometimes recorded many years after the events in question and should be seen as memories. Still, they are a vital source, providing access to the stories of the tattooed women. 7 Jinks 2018 examined the treatment of tattooed Armenian women by relief workers in particular. 8 The term “tattoo” derives from the English term “tatow”, which was, in turn, borrowed from the Tahitian word ta-tatau, which can be translated as “hitting a wound”. While the technique developed independently in different regions of the world, drawings found on the body of the natural mummy “Ötzi”, which dates back to approximately 5,300 BCE, are presumed to be the oldest known examples of tattoos. See Hainzl/Pinkl 2003, 8–9 and 18–19.