Question

Essay on the face is an index of character

Answer 1

If the face is the force that humanizes transcendence, what does it mean, exactly, to be faceless? Masks are worn for entertainment and tribal rituals, serving social functions from manifesting duende, to performing a second self, to channeling one’s ancestors. They also serve in BDSM and war (to say nothing of public health epidemics) to humiliate and objectify the “other,” reducing her to an animal or pure spectacle. After months of sadomasochistic rituals, the character “O,” in Anne Desclos’ The Story of O, is presented to a crowd wearing an owl mask, a chain attached to her labia piercing—journalist François Chalais accused the novel of “bringing the Gestapo into the boudoir.” Whether beaten beyond recognition, masked, or erased, the face is the signature of our humanity and singularity, its genetic imprint, as well as the experience it reveals.