Saving Face: Disfigurement and the Politics of Appearance

Notes

>> 217 Notes Notes to the Introduction 1. Peiss (2011) provides a historical account of the processes through which consumption of beauty products and services transformed over time into an overarching “beauty culture” in the United States. Specifically, Peiss highlights the role of women in establishing beauty regimens as women increasingly entered public life beginning in the Victorian era. 2. Taussig 2012, 5. 3. American Society of Plastic Surgeons 2010. 4. Dohnt and Tiggemann 2006. 5. Psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s (1939) famous doll experiments demonstrate a correlation between racial identification as black and lower self-image. Specifically, the Clarks showed how both white and black children attributed positive traits to white dolls and negative traits to black dolls. Kiri Davis’s (2005) recreation of the experiments captured in her film A Girl Like Me illustrates how self-image is racialized, such that that black girls disproportionately self-report feeling unattractive. Notes to Chapter 1 1. The word “disfigurement” is a thoroughly problematic term. Understood through a disability studies lens, the label reifies social stigma. At the same time, I use the term strategically throughout this book to socially and semantically situate the faces in the institutional contexts I analyze here. This term is widely used in the medical sites this book explores. Rather than taking the term for granted, I analyze the construction of “disfigurement” as an operative category that shapes social meanings of and responses to atypical faces in various contexts. As such, I regularly mark the term by placing it inside quotations to signal that its meaning should not be taken for granted. I discuss the tensions implicit in use of the term more thoroughly in chapter 2 and the appendix. In order to contest the power of such language, I alternate the term “disfigurement” with other words including facial difference, visual difference, facial atypicality, visual uniqueness, and atypical appearance. The facial appearances referenced throughout this book might be different than what is understood as the norm, but one central idea explored here is that language reinscribing social norms implicitly devalues difference. For more discussion of subversive language to talk about facial difference, see Garland-Thomson 2009. 2. Grealy 1994, 154. 3. Grealy 1994, 152. 4. Grealy 1994, 7. 5. Grealy 1994, 155. 6. Lehmann-Haupt 2002. 218 > 219 33. Macgregor 1990. 34. Macgregor 1974, xxiii. 35. New York Times 2002. 36. Kemp 2004, 73. 37. Clarke et al. 2003. 38. Clarke et al. 2010. 39. Bishop (2011) includes an extensive discussion of the politics and ethics surrounding brain death criteria. 40. Timmermans 1998; 1999. 41. Berger 1972. 42. Martin 1995; 1999. Notes to Chapter 2 1. While stigma and dramaturgy retain sociological currency, Goffman’s notions of face and face-work are surprisingly absent in recent sociological surveys of his theoretical contributions (Burns 1991; Smith 1999; West 1996). 2. Goffman 1967, 5. 3. Goffman’s notion of face follows a theoretical lineage in symbolic interactionism wherein sociality is conceptualized through metaphors of the body, specifically the visual processes of seeing another human or one’s self. Charles Cooley’s (1902) theory of the “looking glass self” established a framework for thinking about the relationship between the self, and by implication the body, and others. For Cooley, the looking glass self describes a process wherein individuals constitute a self through other’s responses, opinions, and feedback. It is a process that relies on reflection, through which individuals incorporate a sense of self thoroughly determined through others via social interaction. Goffman’s theory of facework is an extension of this very premise, and provides a more elaborated way of thinking about how self and society are formed in concert. 4. Goffman 1967, 5. 5. Goffman 1967, 12. 6. Manning 1992. 7. Goffman’s concepts of face and face-work are taken up in linguistics, specifically in politeness theory. Brown and Levinson’s classic work on politeness (1987) relies on Goffman ’s concepts of face and face-work, specifically in their articulation of face threatening acts (FTAs). Rather than emphasizing face-work as an ongoing practice central to the creation of social reality, they understand face-work as a strategy deployed by individuals in the service of politeness. Francesca Bargiela-Chiappini (2003) argues that Brown and Levinson dilute Goffman’s concepts and that face and face-work are not simply methods of politeness, but tools for creating social order. Other linguists and communication researchers continue to engage Goffman’s work in studying interpersonal communication dynamics (Heisler et al. 2003...