What's in a face? And how much power does it hold? The Face begins in the historical West, where we learn how humans have interpreted faces and connected specific features with ideas of morality, social hierarchy, psychology, and so much more, setting the stage for the cultural biases that now inform our everyday interactions across the globe.
A cultural unpacking of our most scrutinized organ ... The trouble with analytic histories that situate themselves across all recorded time is that a unifying argument can seem elusive ... Here the richness of the research more than compensates for whatever rhetorical weaknesses.
Well-researched, yet conversational ... Bound-Alberti shows a keen eye for how history and technology shaped, and continues to shape, and reshape, the idea of what a face is and how it is used ... More a survey than it is a polemic—its subtitle says as much ... Leaves us thinking about the notion of facehood, challenging how assumptions (of others, of ourselves) are made, and how our faces are racialized, and gendered before we even speak.
An expansive exploration of the human face and the extraordinary burden it has been made to carry ... Bound-Alberti is keen to stress the social and cultural implications, rather than condemn individuals ... The book reveals how historical biases continue to affect the marginalised ... It is a shame that The Face veers, chapter by chapter, into the abstract ... Still, The Face is a meticulously researched and unsettling book, and Bound-Alberti’s overarching message is poignant.
