TY - JOUR
T1 - Dismantling the face
T2 - landscape for another politics?
AU - Edkins, Jenny
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - The face is central to contemporary politics: it is photographed, pinned down, stored, documented, and presented as proof of identity in passports and ID cards. Automatic face recognition and face-processing systems are key to biopolitical control. However, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the face is a particular politics, and dismantling the face is also a politics. This paper explores what it might mean to dismantle the face, and what politics this might entail. It examines prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, as described by Oliver Sacks and exemplified by Chuck Close’s paintings, which see the face as landscape. It asks whether the use of grid and screen in Close’s portraits amounts to a dismantling of the face, and compares his approach to that seen in Francis Bacon’s heads. It argues that Close’s portraits trace a politics of becomings, a distribution of the sensible where we cannot, and do not, know who we are.
AB - The face is central to contemporary politics: it is photographed, pinned down, stored, documented, and presented as proof of identity in passports and ID cards. Automatic face recognition and face-processing systems are key to biopolitical control. However, Deleuze and Guattari argue that the face is a particular politics, and dismantling the face is also a politics. This paper explores what it might mean to dismantle the face, and what politics this might entail. It examines prosopagnosia, or face-blindness, as described by Oliver Sacks and exemplified by Chuck Close’s paintings, which see the face as landscape. It asks whether the use of grid and screen in Close’s portraits amounts to a dismantling of the face, and compares his approach to that seen in Francis Bacon’s heads. It argues that Close’s portraits trace a politics of becomings, a distribution of the sensible where we cannot, and do not, know who we are.
KW - politics
KW - faciality
KW - prosopagnosia
KW - face-blindness
KW - Gilles Deleuze
KW - Félix Guattari
KW - Oliver Sacks
KW - Chuck Close
KW - Francis Bacon
KW - portrait
KW - faceless
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2160/9135
U2 - 10.1068/d16312
DO - 10.1068/d16312
M3 - Article
SN - 0263-7758
VL - 31
SP - 538
EP - 553
JO - Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
JF - Environment and Planning D: Society and Space
IS - 3
ER -