Bibliograph

Stranger faces, Namwali Serpell

Type

Label

Stranger faces, Namwali Serpell

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Stranger faces

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

1141219084

Responsibility statement

Namwali Serpell

Series statement

Undelivered lectures

Summary

"If evolutionary biologists, ethical philosophers, and social media gurus are to be believed, the face is the basis for what we call "humanity." The face is considered the source of identity, truth, beauty, authenticity, and empathy. It underlies our ideas about what constitutes a human, how we relate emotionally, what is pleasing to the eye, and how we ought to treat each other. But all of this rests on a specific image of the face. We might call it the ideal face. What about the strange face, the stranger's face, the face that thwarts recognition? What do we make of the face that rides the line of legibility? In a collection of speculative essays on a few such stranger faces-the disabled face, the racially ambiguous face, the digital face, the face of the dead-Namwali Serpell probes our contemporary mythology of the face. Stranger Faces imagines a new ethics based on the perverse pleasures we take in the very mutability of faces"--, Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

Chapter 1. Elephants in rooms. Joseph Merrick, The Autobiography of Joseph Merrick (1884) -- Chapter 2. Two-faced. Hannah Crafts, The Bondwoman's Narrative (1850s/2002) -- Chapter 3. Mop Head. Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho (1960) -- Chapter 4. Bear head. Werner Herzog, Grizzly Man (2005) -- Chapter 5. E-faced. The Oxford English Dictionary's Word of the Year (2015) -- Conclusion

Classification