Not directly, that is. For all cultural activities inform us of our origins. Or on the focusing of that edge into a point, in the curious activity of body-piercing . We are privileged to observe the emergence within our own culture of a sacrificial phenomenon of the sort that ethnologists have traveled thousands of miles and endured unspeakable conditions to experience in medias res in societies they can never fully understand. The pioneer Australian ethnologists Spencer and Gillen , in order to become more fully integrated into Aboriginal culture, underwent an initiation rite that included subincision of the penis.
Body art compels our interest because it is sacrificial, or in other terms, irreversible .
A paste-on tattoo is as trivial as a sculpture made out of modeling clay. A hole in one's anatomy, on the other hand, is a serious matter. The body has many nooks and crannies, and we cannot help but identify with what happens to them and in them, since our bodies are mutually mimetic. Considering the number of different places to pierce and the various types and sizes of jewelry wearable in them, piercing encodes a message of considerable informational content. No corporeal activity, except perhaps tatooing, which in men at least is not new, has the capacity to generate so much information.