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Index

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2025

Anca Parvulescu
Anca Parvulescu
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis

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Face and Form
Physiognomy in Literary Modernism
 , pp. 190 - 196
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025
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This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

Index

Abe, Kōbō, 11
The Face of Another, 13, 20, 125–126, 160
Adorno, Theodor, 3
aesthetics
aesthetic education, 98
racial tropes and, 34
affect, 26
affect theory, 124
Agamben, Giorgio, 134
aging, 62–64, 72
AI (artificial intelligence), 165
alienation, modernity and, 107–108
ambiguity, 57
Andrésen, Björn, 24, 40, 117
androgyny, 27
animal features, figure of, 70–71
anti-imperialism, 78
anti-Semitism, 29, 47
Aperture Foundation, 77–81
apps, 121
Arendt, Hannah, 134
art history, physiognomy and, 45
Artaud, Antonin, 21
artist, face of the, 35–40
asymmetry, facial, 8, 16, 29, 43, 86, 121, 138
Auden, W. H., 157
Auerbach, Erich, 93, 95, 97
Aumont, Jacques, 18
“authenticity effect,” 76
autobiography, 7, 16, 85
“auto-facial-construction,” 39–40, 63–64, 80, 91, 100, 124
Balázs, Béla, 9, 25–26, 41, 137
The Visible Man, 25–26
theory of modernist physiognomy after physiognomy, 26
Balzac, Honoré, 36
Barthes, Roland, 18, 87, 91
Bataille, Georges, 5
Baudelaire, Charles, 14, 75, 77
Baxter, Charles, 6
beauty, 51, 58, 68, 145
Beckett, Samuel, 114
“Behind the Mask, Another Mask” exhibition, 119
Bell, Vanessa, 85
Belting, Hans, 18
Benhaïm, André, 49–50
Benjamin, Walter, 3, 9–10, 35, 44–45, 49, 54, 75–76, 97, 124
Arcades Project, 65
“cult of remembrance” and, 60
on impact of photography, 59
reading of Proust, 53, 62
“Short History of Photography,” 25
bias, 20, 167, see also racial bias
biography, 78–79, 81, 84
face as object of, 65
faux, 93–98
modernist, 67
biometrics, 13, 123–124, 167
Blanchot, Maurice, 62
Bloch, Ernst, 9–10
Bloom, Harold, 139
Bolton, Christopher, 108, 114
Borges, Jorge Luis, 16
Born, Wolfgang, 36–37
Boscagli, Maurizia, 18, 91–92, 162
Botticelli, Sandro, 53–54, 56, 58, 145
Brandt, Kim, 112–113, 116
Brassaï, 59
British Empire, 81
Britishisms, 55
Buck-Morss, Susan, 75–76
Butler, Judith, 123, 134
Cahun, Claude, 119–120
Cameron, Julia Margaret, 80, 120, 153
Campt, Tina M., 112
capitalism, 91
Caughie, Pamela L., 124–125, 151
celebrity culture, 18, 91–92
Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quijote, 63, 77
character, 58
character reading, 82
face reading and, 75
physiognomy and, 70
Chiyo, Uno, 107
chronophotography, 49
cinema, 4, 9, 24–25, 77, 94, 115
cinematic faciality, 26
international language of, 26
Lavaterian physiognomy and, 26
Soviet, 25
Clearview AI, 122–123
Clifford, James, 163
close-ups, 9, 18, 24–27
Coetzee, J. M., 103
colonialism, 12
cosmetic arts, 24, 40, 76, 80, 107, 165
cosmetic surgery, 15, 24, 39, 63, 77, 103, 108, 112–113, 120, 141, 165
COVID-19 pandemic, 2, 13–15, 109, 120–121
crossdressing, 80
the dandy, 37
Darwin, Charles, 79
Daston, Lorraine, 3
De Man, Paul, 7, 92, 95, 118
deadpan, creative use of, 124
Death in Venice (film adaptation), 40–42
defacement, 7, 9
deformity, 4
Deleuze, Gilles, 7, 17–18, 44–45, 74, 117–118
Felix Guattari, 17–18, 51, 117–118
on face as icon, 163
reading of Proust, 53
theory of cinematic faciality, 26
theory of faciality, 51
desire, 33, 52
Dickens, Charles, 6
difference, 14, 111
digital culture, facialized, 13
“digital veil” (face swap), 124
disability
tropes of, 29
disfiguration, 7
Doane, Mary Ann, 18
Döblin, Alfred, 27
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 105
doubling, 68, 102
Dreyfus affair, 145
“drone poetics,” 124
Du Bois, W.E.B., 101
Duffy, Enda, 18, 91–92, 162
Eagan, Jennifer, 16
effacement, 98
self-effacement, 91
strategies of, 18
Ekman, Paul, 17
ekphrasis, 19, 23–24, 30, 33, 44, 52–53, 59, 79, 96
gender and, 33–34
in Mann, 30–35
physiognomic, 30–35
queerness and, 31, 33–34
Elizabeth I, 70, 150
Elizabethan period, 67, 69
emojis, 13
Enlightenment, 34
eugenics, 159
Europeanness, notion of, 40
eye(s), 9, 29, 68, 86
“face hunters,” 122
face perception, 124, see also face reading
face reading, 65–66
AI and, 165
character construction and, 75
evading, 124
modernist challenge to tradition of, 94
face transplants, 17, 103–104, 119, 160
face(s), 9
aesthetic significance of, 9, 11
aging, 62–64
as analogy to art, 98
as battleground for politics of race, 13
biometric surveillance and, 122
centrality to modernity, 9
character and, 103
as commodity, 13, 15
constructedness of, 18
digital, 18
face capital, 15
forgetting of, 85–86
as form, 5–9
history of, 3, 11
inhumanity/divinity of, 51
as intermedial, 11
lost, 103–104
as mask, 117
memory and, 19, 49
modernist, 7–13, 99–101
multiplicity of, 50, 75
naked face, 109
as object of biography, 65
of the other, 17
quotation of, 52
race and, 14, 82, 122
representation of, 1
subjectivity and, 13
technologization of, 120
travels within global modernism, 114–119
face-as-book, trope of, 65–66, 143, 148
Facebook, 13, 15, 121
facelessness, 10, 14, 150
faceprints, 14
facial alienation, 108
facial authenticity, gender and, 107
“facial destiny,” 10–11, 84
facial expression, 110, 115
facial feminization surgery, 77, 141
facial inscrutability, 4, 124
facial legibility, 159, see also face reading
facial recognition technologies, 4, 14, 20, 122–125, 167
evading, 124
racial bias in, 123–124
facial transformation, 57–58
discourse of, 39–40
facial transplants, 161
faciality, 17–18
machine 17
modernist, 84, 88
racial difference and, 20
as semiotic system, 117
theory of, 51, 118
tropes of, 51
facialization, 17–18, 48–49, 51–56, 64, 66, 70, 117, 119, 122
as mode of self-invention, 19
modernist, 39
photography as machine of, 59
proper names and, 95–96
Proust and, 51
racial, 111
strategies of, 24
flânerie, 75, 154
flâneur, 10, 28, 35, 76
flâneuse, 76
Foucault, Michel, 91
Fry, Roger, 92, 153
Garbo, Greta, 141
gender
ekphrasis and, 31, 33–34
facial authenticity and, 107
gender dynamics, 78
orientalizing of gender norms, 81
performance of, 77
performing gender norms, 74
theory of gender performativity, 74
Genette, Gérard, 49–50, 61, 142
genius
language of, 89–90
maleness of, 89
masculinity and, 97
genre, 43
geriatrics, 63, see also aging
geromodernism, 64
Gikandi, Simon, 87–88
Gilman, Sander, 4, 28–29, 39, 141
globalization, 119
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 24–25, 29, 36, 89, 140
Goffman, Erving, 17
Gombrich, Ernst, 88, 156
Gray, Richard T., 24
Grealy, Lucy, 16
haikus, 118
handwriting, 55, 145
Hemingway, Ernest, 87, 90
Herring, Scott, 63–64
homoeroticism, 33–34
human facial exceptionalism, 151
imagetext, 31–32, 53
imperialism, 13, 110, 112, 162
Instagram Face, 122, 165
interdisciplinarity, 17–18
interface, 121
intertextuality, 103, 108
Ishiguro, Kazuo, 165
Jameson, Fredric, 118, 125
“Japonisme,” 54, 145
Jewishness, 47, 101, 141
Joubert, Laurent, 5–6
Joyce, James, 91
Kafka, Franz, 108, 114
Karatani, Kōjin, 20, 117–118
Kōjin Karatani, 115–118
Korea, 110–112
Kosofsky Sedgwick, Eve, 33, 139
Krakauer, Siegfried, 9
Landy, Joshua, 60, 147
Larsen, Nella, 126, 159
Passing, 4, 20, 99–101
Quicksand, 99
whiteness, 125
laughter, 5–6
Lavater, Johann Casper, 25, 34, 36, 45–46, 54, 89
Leone, Massimo, 18, 151
Lermontov, Mikhail
A Hero of Our Times, 6
Levinas, Emmanuel, 17, 50–51, 134
Lewis, Wyndham, 158
life writing, 7
likeness, 32, 95–96, see also resemblance
Lindström, Kristina and Kristian Petri, 19, 24, 40–41
Loy, Mina, 12, 91
“auto-facial-construction” and, 7, 10–11, 24, 56, 63, 76, 80, 84, 90–91, 109
“Gertrude Stein,” 84
facial mastery and, 37
Lunar Baedeker & Time-Tables, 91
Stein and, 84
Lu Xun, 114
Lukács, Georg, 9
Mahler, Gustav, 36–37
Mann, Thomas, 94, 110, 114
“Brother Hitler,” 23–24
Death in Venice, 4, 13, 18–19, 22–42, 53, 64, 125, 139–140
Goethe and, 140
Marcus, Jane, 82, 153
masculinity, 80, 86, 97
mask(s), 88, 102–104, 108, 117, 119
to avoid face reading, 124
mask/true face dichotomy, 88
medical, 120
Noh masks, 117
trope of, 103, 157–158
used by Picasso, 87
of whiteness, 20
masking, 7, 14–15, 107
Meiji era, 116
memory, 19–20, 32, 44, 53, 64, 72, 87, 97
erasure from, 85–86
face and, 49
involuntary, 53, 72
perception and, 32
photography and, 146
metalepsis, 88
metamodernism, 102–103, 107, 114, 117, 119
metamorphosis, 108
mimesis, 95, 97
mirrors, 102
Mitchell, W. J. T., 31, 53, 79
modernism, 3
eugenics and, 159
faciality of, 18
global, 12, 20, 102–103, 114–119
portraiture and, 93–98
realism and, 149
struggles with facial form, 83–101
modernist studies, 18
modernity, 12, 18, 67
alienation and, 107–109
petromodernity, 108
visual history of, 67
Moore, Marcel, 119
Napoleon Bonaparte, 96–97
National Portrait Gallery, 19, 82, 89, 119, 153–154
neoclassicist aesthetics, 34–35
Ngai, Sianne, 140
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 147
Noh masks, 117
noses, 28–30, 39
Orientalism, 4, 54, 79, 81, 110
multiplicity of the face and, 50
queerness and, 54
Orlando (film adaptation), 77–78, 152
Orwell, George, 167
Ottoman Empire, 81
Ozeki, Ruth, 15–16
Passing (film adaptation), 99
Pawlikowska, Kamila, 18, 94, 149
perception, 47, 54, 68
face perception, 124
memory and, 32
shifts in, 124
photography, 4, 12–13, 19, 24–25, 48, 51, 53–54, 77, 83, 86–87, 94, 98
as evidence and documentation, 79
exhibit inspired by Woolf’s Orlando, 77–81
forensic, 112
as machine of facialization, 59
memory and, 146
photographs as props of refacialization, 62
physiognomy and, 60
power of, 12
window photography, 78
phrenology, 34
physiognomic gaze, 39, 54, 112
physiognomic reading, 73, see also face reading
physiognomy, 1–3, 20, 110
in aesthetic theory, 24
art history and, 24, 45
character construction and, 6
cinema and, 25–26
cloud physiognomy, 3
computer, 122
East Asian, 50
film theory and, 25–26
handwriting and, 145
history of, 3, 5
hybridizing physiognomic taxonomies, 110
imperialism and, 162
in Japan, 112–113
in Korea, 112
Lavaterian, 26, 34
in Mann’s Death in Venice, 22–42
microphysiognomy, 26
modernist, 24–27
Nazi propaganda and, 23
photography and, 25, 61
physiognomic criminology, 4
physiognomic desire, 123
“physiognomic fallacy,” 47
“physiognomic hagiography,” 36
“physiognomic turn,” 124–125
physiognomic types, 27–30, 84, 94
Proust and, 43–64
racialization and, 34, 100, 137
realist novel and, 66
reappearance in digital world, 122–125
Simmel and, 8–9
of women, 43–64
Picasso, Pablo, 1, 7, 21, 64, 83–101, 106, 110
African period, 88
compared to Napoleon, 96–97
Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 85, 88
masculinity and, 97
masks and, 87–88
photographs of, 98, 155
portrait of Stein, 4, 13, 20, 83–93, 155
portrait of Toklas, 90
Self-portrait with a Pallete, 85
Stein’s portrait writing about, 93–98
struggle over “looking,” 93–98
Piper, David, 18, 151
Poe, Edgar Allen, 114
“The Man of the Crowd,” 6, 29, 75
portrait writing, 84, 90, 93–98
portraiture, 5, 18, 20, 79–80, 83–101
history of, 82, 86, 89
modernism and, 93–98
Orientalist, 79
of women, 82
Post, Tina, 124
postface, 123
Potter, Sally, 77–78, 152
Pound, Ezra, 75, 118, 164
prosopagnosia (face blindness), 17
prosopopoeia, 7
Proust, Marcel, 4, 11, 18, 32, 36, 87, 90, 92, 94, 97, 114
bal des têtes scene, 64
face-as-book trope and, 65
facialization in, 51–56
In Search of Lost Time, 19, 40, 43–64, 125
painting and, 145
physiognomy and, 143
physiognomy of women and, 43–64
self-styling and, 147
Simmel and, 49
theory of the face and, 47
transparent envelope principle and, 69, 72
Woolf and, 72–73
queerness, 4, 29, 31, 33–34, 46, 54, 80, 86
race, 78, see also racialization
in Kobe, 110–111
politics of, 13
racial difference, 14, 20, 77–81
racial formations, 13
racial bias, 14, 123–124
racial classification, 112
racial tropes, 29, 33–34
racialization, 47, 80, 82, 100–101, 107, 137
Ray, Man, 62, 155
photograph of Stein, 83–84, 88, 90, 92, 98
reader-response theory, 69
realism, 2, 66, 81, 149
refacialization, 44, 51, 58, 62, 64, 80, 87, 98
rejuvenation, 63–64
representation, 20, see also mimesis, see also likeness
resemblance, 32, 53, 96–97
Rilke, Rainer Marie, 9–10, 114
Rives, Rochelle, 18, 40, 63, 148, 157, 167
Ruskin, John, 53, 145
Russian literature, 115
Sackville-West, Vita, 4, 19, 67, 77, 79–82, 85, 154
Sander, August, 25, 27, 120
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 96, 134
Schmölders, Claudia, 4, 23, 27, 36, 140
Schwartz, Frederic J., 3, 45, 47, 52
science fiction, 120
sculpture, 22–23, 30–32, 34, 39, 68
Seeing Gertrude Stein exhibition, 83
self
concept of, 115
modernity and, 107–109
multiplicity of, 79, 108
plastic, 108
self-styling, 83, 85, 92, 95, 147
Sepuya, Paul Mpagi, 19, 66, 77–82, 152
Serpell, Namwali, 9
Seshagiri, Urmila, 103, 154
Shakespeare, William, 67
face as book in, 148
Othello, 78
Sherman, Cindy, 62, 147
Shih, Shu-mei, 34
Simmel, Georg, 9, 12, 17, 51, 63, 74, 77
“The Aesthetic Significance of the Face,” 7, 10, 70, 107–108, 115
on first impressions, 49
philosophy of money and, 49
sociology of the senses and, 74
“The Stranger,” 9
Sloterdijk, Peter, 38, 85, 134
Smith, Zadie, 103
social media, 15, 165
Spenser, Herbert, 118
Spinario, 22, 31–32, 34, 39, 41
spontaneity, 45, 52
staring, 29
Stein, Gertrude, 21, 64, 83–101, 114, 125
autobiographical strategies of, 92
Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, 84–87, 89–95, 98
“Composition as Explanation,” 85
celebrity and commodification of, 91–92
concept of physiognomic type and, 84
Everybody’s Autobiography, 95
“If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso,” 95–97
language of genius and, 89–90
Larsen and, 99–101, 159
masculinity and, 97
“Melanchtha,” 4, 85, 88–89, 99
“Pablo Picasso,” 94–96
photographs of, 62, 83–84, 98
physiognomic types and, 94
Picasso, 83–87, 93–98
Picasso’s portrait of, 4, 11, 20, 83, 85–93, 155
“Pictures,” 98
portrait writing and, 90
portrait writing of, 84
Portraits and Prayers, 97
QED, 88
queerness of, 86
self-production and, 88–93
self-styling by, 90–91
Three Lives, 85, 88–89
Steiner, Wendy, 94–95, 97
Sterne, Laurence, 68, 81, 149
Strachey, Lytton, 70, 79, 150
subjectivity
modern, 94, 108
technologization of, 13
“surveillance capitalism,” 123
Swinton, Tilda, 77, 152
symmetry, facial, 8, 39, 121–122
Taussig, Michael, 17, 36
Teshigahara, Hiroshi, 106, 114
The Face of Another (film adaptation), 113
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World, 19, 24, 40, 42
Toklas, Alice B., 86, 90, 93, 98, 156
translation of Stein’s Picasso, 93
What Is Remembered, 93
Tolentino, Jia, 12, 122
transparent envelope principle, 47, 51, 69, 72
transportation, modern means of, 74–75
Turgenev, Ivan, 93
type(s), notion of, 25–26, 43, 51, see also physiognomy
Tytler, Graeme, 94, 142, 144
Van Vechten, Carl, 90, 99
Victorian era, 74
Visconti, Luchino, 19, 24
Warhol, Andy, 41
Wearing, Gillian, 119–120
Weber, Max, 34
Werth, Margaret, 1–2, 18
Whistler, James McNeill, 118
whiteness, 4, 20, 32, 68, 99–101, 107, 113
Wilde, Oscar, 6, 12, 37, 60–61, 74, 83, 91, 94, 157
windows, 75
doubling as mirrors, 78
framing attention, 67–69, 78
window photography, 78
women
compared to art, 45
physiognomy of, 43–64
in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, 43–64
types of, 52
Woolf, Virginia, 2, 61, 84–85, 101, 114, 125, 150
anti-physiognomic turn in, 149
“The Art of Biography,” 67, 70
bemoans lack of women’s portraits in National Portrait Gallery, 82, 84
“Character in Fiction,” 66
flânerie and, 75
history of portrait and, 84
Jacob’s Room, 74, 151
modernist shift in history of, 65–82
“Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown,” 82, 125
“Mrs John Stuart Mill,” 82
“The New Biography,” 67
Orlando, 4, 12, 19–20, 64–82, 85, 94, 96, 101, 125, 149, 154
Pictures,” 153
Proust and, 72–73
racial difference and, 77–81
A Room of One’s Own, 67, 82, 154
“Street Haunting: A London Adventure,” 75–76
To the Lighthouse, 66–67
“An Unwritten Novel,” 6, 66, 75, 82, 125–126
use of satire in Orlando, 81
veiled autobiography in Orlando, 85
The Waves, 62, 74, 76–77, 82, 150
writings on biography, 67
writings on visual arts and visual culture, 79–80
Zambreno, Kate, 62
Zilio, Marion, 3, 18, 121, 146, 158
zoom faces, 15
Zuboff, Shoshana, 21, 123
Zweig, Arnold, 141

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  • Index
  • Anca Parvulescu, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Face and Form
  • Online publication: 21 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009599801.011
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  • Index
  • Anca Parvulescu, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Face and Form
  • Online publication: 21 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009599801.011
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  • Index
  • Anca Parvulescu, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book: Face and Form
  • Online publication: 21 August 2025
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009599801.011
Available formats
×