Tattooing and Resistance. With Alice Bloch

Stigma is nothing new. In Ancient Greece the word meant ‘tattoo’ and referred to writing on people’s skin as a means of punishment and control. Recognising that, says sociologist Imogen Tyler, is a game changer; it means we can start thinking about how stigma literally marks and divides us - and start thinking about how to resist.

Here, Imogen hears from sociologist Alice Bloch about her research with descendants of Holocaust survivors who have chosen to tattoo themselves with the numbers inked on their ancestors at Auschwitz. Such an act, she says, is about love - and resistance to stigmatisation. Alice also reflects on her work with adult children of refugees - and how stigma makes silences that weave through generations. Plus: how stigmatising undocumented migrants serves capitalism, but makes for a poorer society.

A powerful conversation about stigma and subversion, solidarity and resistance.

Read more about Alice here. Her research on descendants of Holocaust survivors and the concentration camp tattoo is funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research grant in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Credits

Host: Imogen Tyler
Guest: Prof. Alice Bloch
Executive & Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler 
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music & Artwork: Bruce Bennett

Episode Resources:

By Alice Bloch and co-authors:

• How Memory Survives: Descendants of Auschwitz Survivors and the Progenic Tattoo (2022)
• Talking about the Past, Locating It in the Present: The Second Generation from Refugee Backgrounds Making Sense of Their Parents' Narratives, Narrative Gaps and Silences (2018) 
• Inter-generational Transnationalism: The Impact of Refugee Backgrounds on Second Generation  with Shirin Hirsch (2018) 
• Living on the Margins : Undocumented Migrants in a Global Britain  with Sonia McKay (2016)

Further reading :

• The Stigma Machine of the Border in Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality  Imogen Tyler (2020)
• If This Is a Man  Primo Levi (1959)
• The Generation of Postmemory : Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust  Marianne Hirsch (2012)
• Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language  Eva Hoffman (2008)
• Modernity and the Holocaust  Zygmunt Bauman (2000)
• The British Citizenship, Race, and Rights lectures  Connected Sociologies

Find extended reading lists and learn more about The Stigma Conversations at The Sociological Review