The politics of the face: the scopic regime and the (un-)masking of the political subject

Abstract

Face is commonly seen as a feature exclusive to each person. It expresses subject’s feelings, thoughts and in turn represents knowledge that is otherwise deemed personal. However, face is mistakenly seen as pure expression of subject’s thoughts. This article aims to show that face is a product of governing practices of seeing and knowing. It is thus not a unique individual expression, but a mask that the socio-political order attaches to individuals as they are turned into political subjects. The article begins with a discussion of the two governing practices: the seeing (or the spectre of the visible) and the knowing (or the practice of locating faces in the socio-political field) with an aim to unveil the role face plays in the socio-political reality. The first interrogation looks at how face creates a field of recognition and opens a distinct form of political visibility: who, what and how one sees and what remains unseen. Whereas the second interrogation discusses how appearances produce meaning and how knowledge is taken off the face. Finally, the face as a knowledge producer and a mean of subject’s social recognition (identity) is put in the encounter with the idea of the anxious gaze and the work of Marlene Dumas. Instead of recognition, here a subject is met with dissociation and displacement of subject’s socio-political image. The three presented studies paint the politics of the face as an obscene governing strategy caught between endless attempts to create the face as a known, seen and governed space and illusive attempts to grasp the actual meaning of a pre-symbolised face.

Keywords:

• face
• political subject
• (anxious) gaze
• knowledge-production
• Jacques Lacan
• Marlene Dumas

Acknowledgements

The earlier version of this paper was presented at the ISA 55th annual convention in Toronto, 26th–29th March 2014. I wish to thank my co-panellists, Peter J. Burgess, Francoise Debrix, Jenny Edkins, Himadeep Muppidi, Dan Öberg and Mike Shapiro for their comments, and Aoileann Ni Mhurchu and Japhy Wilson for later engagement with this piece and the editors of Journal for Cultural Research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See also Edkins (2013b, 2013c).

2. Here, a reference is to a small ‘other’ or something that is foreign in me, rather than the big Other, which supports the coherency of the symbolic order.

3. Marlene Dumas: resources and references, Installation view of the solo exhibition Measuring Your Own Grave, MOMA New York Dec 2008 - Feb 2009. https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/vleRBAsavYXVCZ _ http://www.marlenedumas.nl/measuring-your-own-grave-moma-new-york-x/?nggpage=6#gallery/9048/385

4. Marlene Dumas: resources and references, Installation view of the solo exhibition Measuring Your Own Grave, MOMA New York Dec 2008 - Feb 2009.https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/vleRBAsavYXVCZ _ http://www.marlenedumas.nl/measuring-your-own-grave-moma-new-york-x/?nggpage=6#gallery/9048/385