This was the result of an argument with a friend who is working on the
face, and challenged me to make sense of D&G's -visageite-[ tr. as faciality].
I wonder what others' reactions are? And does it also help with questions
of becoming?
I think one needs to turn one's approach to the signifier on its head.
Start not with words but with painting. When
you paint a- paysage- [note how one misses the partial homonymy with - visage-
in the tr. landscape] you produce not something natural but a human artefact.
So did Capability Brown. Now a visage to D&G is a paysage, a constructed
not natural thing. Like all masks it serves the purposes of power, and
especially the semiotic purpose of concealment. Think of a mud pack, not
only when on, but the smoothness after.
Hence this sort of face is a wall and the only
openings are black holes because they aborb the gaze of others rather
than returning it. Thus the ultimate example of the mask is the face of
Christ in religious iconography. His humanness is deleted in favour of
the conventional faciality of the patriarchal hierarchy.
So if we want a real face
we have to escape from the stratification of tradition, and fron the
rhyme/repetition of the mask visage/paysage. Only thus will we get a bodily
face, and not the blankness of the predetermined signifier. Have a look at
an article of Louis Marin I translated about 1991 for NLH - on the face of
Christ.
This may be totally wrong but it's the only way I can make sense
of it. And is this masking one of the things animal becoming
is subverting, or is it in its turn merely another form of masking?
Have fun Marie
------------------
face, and challenged me to make sense of D&G's -visageite-[ tr. as faciality].
I wonder what others' reactions are? And does it also help with questions
of becoming?
I think one needs to turn one's approach to the signifier on its head.
Start not with words but with painting. When
you paint a- paysage- [note how one misses the partial homonymy with - visage-
in the tr. landscape] you produce not something natural but a human artefact.
So did Capability Brown. Now a visage to D&G is a paysage, a constructed
not natural thing. Like all masks it serves the purposes of power, and
especially the semiotic purpose of concealment. Think of a mud pack, not
only when on, but the smoothness after.
Hence this sort of face is a wall and the only
openings are black holes because they aborb the gaze of others rather
than returning it. Thus the ultimate example of the mask is the face of
Christ in religious iconography. His humanness is deleted in favour of
the conventional faciality of the patriarchal hierarchy.
So if we want a real face
we have to escape from the stratification of tradition, and fron the
rhyme/repetition of the mask visage/paysage. Only thus will we get a bodily
face, and not the blankness of the predetermined signifier. Have a look at
an article of Louis Marin I translated about 1991 for NLH - on the face of
Christ.
This may be totally wrong but it's the only way I can make sense
of it. And is this masking one of the things animal becoming
is subverting, or is it in its turn merely another form of masking?
Have fun Marie
------------------