“…But whereas the reflective face expresses common qualities—noses, eyes, and parts that can be compared—the intensive face is about the tendencies and trajectories of the face. The film theorist Rushton (2002, 230) puts it as follows: The intensive face pulsates, bends, and creeps around its own surface. It is composed of the sum of its parts; that is, instead of the facial unity of the whole being the dominant mode, as it is with the reflective face, in this case the separate and multiple parts of the face take on a life of their own .…”
The face, just like DNA, is taken to represent a unique individual. This article proposes to move beyond this representational model and to attend to the work that a face can do. I introduce the concept of tentacularity to capture the multiple works accomplished by the face. Drawing on the example of DNA phenotyping, which is used to produce a composite face of an unknown suspect, I first show that this novel technology does not so much produce the face of an individual suspect but that of a suspect population. Second, I demonstrate how the face draws the interest of diverse publics, who with their gaze flesh out its content and contours; the face engages and yields an affective response. I argue that the biologization of appearance by way of the face contributes to the racialization of populations. [race, phenotype, material‐semiotics, facial typologies, forensics genetics, DNA phenotyping]
“…But whereas the reflective face expresses common qualities—noses, eyes, and parts that can be compared—the intensive face is about the tendencies and trajectories of the face. The film theorist Rushton (2002, 230) puts it as follows: The intensive face pulsates, bends, and creeps around its own surface. It is composed of the sum of its parts; that is, instead of the facial unity of the whole being the dominant mode, as it is with the reflective face, in this case the separate and multiple parts of the face take on a life of their own .…”
The face, just like DNA, is taken to represent a unique individual. This article proposes to move beyond this representational model and to attend to the work that a face can do. I introduce the concept of tentacularity to capture the multiple works accomplished by the face. Drawing on the example of DNA phenotyping, which is used to produce a composite face of an unknown suspect, I first show that this novel technology does not so much produce the face of an individual suspect but that of a suspect population. Second, I demonstrate how the face draws the interest of diverse publics, who with their gaze flesh out its content and contours; the face engages and yields an affective response. I argue that the biologization of appearance by way of the face contributes to the racialization of populations. [race, phenotype, material‐semiotics, facial typologies, forensics genetics, DNA phenotyping]
This paper traces the centrality of the human face in the construction of modern individuality. It argues that the face of individuality no less than that of typology, is mired in and born of historical and political conditions that are subsequently disavowed in order that the individual (and the face she bears) is rendered a product of nature, an instantiation of the universal. Attempting to denaturalize and defamiliarize the authority invested in the face, this paper maps out three interrelated arguments: that the human face is historically produced; that its history is closely tethered to the production of modern subjectivity, and that its status as a purveyor of meaning relies upon the reiteration of preexisting norms through which it can be “read.” And yet, while this paper turns to the nineteenth century to trace the novel privileging of the face as an extension of selfhood, interwoven through this history is the figure of the “effaced” Muslim woman and the Muslim terrorist type.
“…Dance scholar André Lepecki (2007) suggests that, although described as an "abstract" machine, faciality should not be understood as a universal mechanism, but as an assemblage of concrete ideas, signs, and expressions that are transformed into "active powers ( pouissance)" (121). Rushton (2002) suggests that the coding of the abstract machine creates "faces" that are transparent and readable, and he observes how the saturation of mediated faces that surround us in print and on screen exemplify this semiotic operation: "This excess of productions from the assembly line of the facial machine-of uniform production, of commodification-is a symptom of a quest for uniform perfection and the infinite reproducibility of the human" (223).…”
Section: The Facial Machinementioning
confidence: 99%
“…Film theorist Richard Rushton (2002) suggests that the coding of the abstract machine creates “faces” that are transparent and readable, and he observes how the saturation of mediated faces that surround us in print and on screen exemplify this semiotic operation: “This excess of productions from the assembly line of the facial machine—of uniform production, of commodification—is a symptom of a quest for uniform perfection and the infinite reproducibility of the human” (223).…”
Although the face possesses potent social and symbolic meaning, the “dancing face” is rarely addressed in dance scholarship. In spite of its neglect, the face participates choreographically in the realization of aesthetic codes and embodied conventions that pertain to different dance styles and genres. I therefore turn to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's (1987) theory of “faciality” to understand the semiotic coding of the face in relation to the Busby Berkeley chorus girl. Although their work offers an important critique of universalist theorizations of facial expression, I argue that “facial choreography” offers scope to dismantle the legibility of the face that is produced through the overcoded “abstract machine of faciality.” To do so, I introduce the concept of a “choreographic interface” to explore how facial expression enters into a choreographic relationship with other faces and bodily territories. With this in mind, I explore two dancing bodies that engage the face in ways that complicate existing modalities of facial expression. I analyze a hip-hop battle and a neo-burlesque striptease number to show how the mobility and ambiguity of facial choreography opens a dialogic space through which meaning is generated and social and political critique take place.
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