סמינר מחלקתי 9.7.24: ליאור לוי Fanon's Masks and the Politic of the Face

הנכם מוזמנים לסמינר המחלקתי שיארח את ד"ר ליאור לוי (אוניברסיטת חיפה)

Masks, form, critique - Fanon's Masks and the Politic of the Face

Abstract: To be rendered faceless is to be denied the singularity connoted with the human face. But what about being given a mask instead of a face? Turning to the specific form of the mask in Frantz Fanon’s Peau noire, masques blancs, I use it as a critical tool, one that exposes the violence embedded in the philosophical notion of the face, as well as the notion of the person. In using he mask as a critical tool, I follow the roots of the term “critique” in the ancient Greek Krinein, which denotes cognitive activities such as “inquire,” “decide,” and “judge”; yet judgement itself is linked to the activity, also connoted by the Greek term, of “separating” or “distinguishing,” calling to mind the ability to give specific shapes to things as a precondition for judgment. Judgement operates on the forms by means of which things come to stand out, both as what they are and as different from one another. Acts of formation by means of separation or distinction can – indeed often do – also involve an undoing of forms, of given shapes and meanings. Keeping in mind the relationship between critique and form, I think of the mask as a weapon that cuts through discursive philosophical registers, using it to rethink the universal ethics of the face, as it is developed by Jean-Paul Sartre and Emmanuel Levinas, drawing attention instead to the politics of the face, in which the alleged impartiality of faces and persons is grounded.