The human face, I propose, consists of three dimensions: the visible, static sur-face, the mobile second dimension, which communicates thoughts, emotions, and states of mind, and the invisible third dimension, the face as pars-pro-toto for the whole person who owns the face. In Emmanuel Levinas’ theory of ethics, the human face stands at the center: We encounter each other face-to-face, he argues, and it is the other’s face that calls for my ethical response to the holiness of his/her wholeness and essence. When we encounter a facially disfigured person, we usually fail to respond ethically because we concentrate on the disfigurement. The second dimension, as a result of the disfigurement, is usually impaired and thus incapable of communicating in such a way that we can “read” the face. With our gaze fixed on the disfigured part of the face, we lose sight of the person as a whole. Metaphorically speaking, we could even say that we “kill” the person. In Willa Cather’s short story “The Profile,” young beautiful Virginia marries a portrait painter after he has finished her portrait in profile. The left side of her face is severely disfigured because it was burnt. Her husband is waiting impatiently for her to talk about “it” and the suffering it must cause her, but she behaves as if it did not exist and even likes to dress extravagantly. In my analysis of the story I will illustrate how he fails to respond to his wife’s face’s invitation to interact with it and get in touch with the wholeness of her person that it stands for. Instead, he reduces her to the disfigurement. When he finally names the scar, he metaphorically “kills” her and their marriage.
About the presentersGudrun Maria Grabher
Full Professor of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, where she chaired the Department of American Studies for 13 years. She has a PhD in American Studies, and MA degrees in German Philology, in Philosophy, and in English. She taught as a guest professor at the American Studies Department at the University of Notre Dame, IN, in 2007. Her special fields of interest are American poetry, American literature and philosophy, literature and the arts, medical humanities; law and the humanities. She is currently working on a book about facial disfigurement in American narratives.