The Face: A Cultural History
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.
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Ms. Bound-Alberti, a British historian of medicine who experiences prosopagnosia (more commonly known as face-blindness), writes with verve and illuminating detachment about the relationship between face and personhood ... At times Ms. Bound-Alberti’s social concerns can border on the tendentious—and distract from the strength of her argument ... Intriguing and maddening.
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.
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