The Making Sense
Making Faces, Performing Persons
Smiles were in short supply in the darkest days of the Covid-19 pandemic, and in large part because so many were concealed beneath masks. In societies that have no modern tradition of wearing masks or veils, the unfamiliar sight of concealed faces can be disconcerting. This is not because we are unable to see the flesh of the face – a lifeless face can be quite as disconcerting as any mask – but rather because artificial face coverings conceal our arts of face making. The face is, after all, the only part of the body that we commonly talk of in terms of “making” and of being “made up”. The very word “face” derives from the Latin facere – to make or to do. In this section, we consider the psychological power of face-making and the exploitation of that power in political performance. We will also consider, more deeply, how physical face-making parallels rhetorical crafting of persona in politics, law, and society at large.
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‘Faces in Places blog’ (Read)
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“Trump explains jab at Fiorina’s face: I’m an ‘entertainer'” CN (Read)
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Albatel Ltd v HMRC [2019] UKFTT 195 (TC) (16 March 2019) (Read) Para. 193
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Kameron Virk and Nesta McGregor, “Blackfishing: The women accused of pretending to be black” (Read)
Marcel Marceau I The Maskmaker [1975] (Watch)
LAW HUMANITIES