mad artists and tattooed perverts: deviant discourse and the social construction of cultural categories Mary Kosut Manhattan College, Riverdale, New York, New York, USA American tattoo history confirms that definitions of deviancy are always in flux. Until the last two decades of the twentieth century, academics recognized tattooing as a semiotic representation of pathology and deviancy. Recently, tattooing was designated as a meaningful way to modify the body and a valuable cultural form. Much like the social construction of the aesthetic category of asylum art, some institutional experts are currently redrawing tattoo as aesthetically legitimate. The historical developments of asylum art and tattoo art are juxtaposed to elucidate how institutional discourses and structural changes effect the categorization of both individuals and the objects they produce. Emphasis is placed on how cultural boundaries shift over time, illustrating the relativity of deviance, changing conceptions of art, and the recently elevated status of tattoo within some milieus. The history of tattooing in America reveals how the meanings and functions of aesthetic-cultural practices traverse social Received 27 June 2003; accepted 25 January 2005 Address correspondence to Mary Kosut, School of Natural and Social Sciences, Pur- chase College, State University of New York, 735 Anderson Hill Road, Purchase NY 10577. E-mail: Mary.Kosut@Purchase.edu Deviant Behavior, 27: 73À95, 2006 Copyright # Taylor & Francis LLC ISSN: 0163-9625 print/1521-0456 online DOI: 10.1080/016396290950677 73