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1 results

  • Chapter 5 - Translated Faces

  • Anca Parvulescu, Washington University, St Louis
  • Book:
    Face and Form
    Published online:
    21 August 2025
    Print publication:
    04 September 2025, pp 102-120
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  • Summary

    This chapter extends the analysis of the modernist face to Abe’s 1964 novel, which it considers as a text of global modernism. The novel is framed by the conventions of science fiction: the protagonist, a Japanese scientist, has an accident that destroys his face. Studying physiognomic manuals which draw on both Western and Japanese traditions of physiognomy, he builds a new face, which takes the form of an all-powerful mask. This mask acquires a life of its own, prompting philosophical speculation on facial alienation and the ethics of the face. The chapter traces a dialogue between Abe’s novel and Kōjin Karatani’s Origins of Japanese Literature (1980) on the “invention” of the face in Japanese literature. For both novelist and theorist, literature offers an infrastructure for the global travels of the face as a system of signification.