When we face a face, we may ask: what are you thinking about? or what is bothering you? Deleuze posses such questions in his book, Cinema 1 . The question assumes that the face actualizes or express or hides emotions and feelings that generally testify the state of a person. Thus, the face is space bursting with meaning but the meaning of the face depends on the particular scopic field in which the face is made to appear. How the face appears in both a political as well as commercial concern. Deleuze says that there is nothing behind the face. What does he mean. We all have several faces. I have a Indian, Christian, Goan, as wells as other faces that give me social location. Although, I have one physical face, some where all these faces meet and facialize and create me as a subject. All the faces anchor in me and constitute me as a subject. I am the subject who has a face that belong to the chain of signifiers.
It is only when the face(s) is placed in the discourses of visibility only then what the face(s) is facing can be represented on revealed. In the realm of the visible a face is an unique image and belongs to an unique subject. Face, therefore, tells us something about the subject. The face is a signifier. But as signifier it does not plainly speak for the subject. It also speaks for itself. Deleuze, thus, teaches us that the face thinks but the content of its thought is not in line with meaning production and cannot be placed in the order of things from which knowledge can be extrapolated. From Lacanian point of view we may say that when the face thinks but its thought is not yet part of the signifying chain or structures of language. Yet there is a face that facializes … symbolizes and orders the body . Face is a site of the political. It territorializes and positions a standpoint. This is why Deleuze wishes to defacialize and escape the mechanisms of signification and subjectivation. He does not abandon the face but looks for a face taken over by the organs (nose, mouth, tongue, eyes , ears etc.). This dismantling of the face dislocates the face from the symbolic order and linguistic structures which make the face and the subject appear as a whole invested in knowledge. What Deleuze wishes to do can happen. The several faces that converge to make me fight lose their faciality as the symbolic universe where they belong might collapse.
Face to Deleuze is political and dismantling the face is also political. Face gives an image or signification to the subject in the scopic realm. This image is political and therefore, Deleuze strives to dismantle it. He seems to employ a defacing strategy. Face as an image of the subject is produced by the signifier , language and logic of authority and is given a demarcated territorialized space . My face as a Goa, Indian man etc belong to a definite symbolic order. Thus, a subject is a facialized and produced by the order of signifiers. Lacan will tell us that it is in the gaze or the eyes of the other that face finds it place in the chain of signification and finds its place in the symbolic order. From Lacan’s point of view we can see how in the face of the mother that the child find a point of reassurance, a point that enables her to belong to the order of things in which it finds itself as thrown. Faced with the face of the mother, the child constructs the image of its own body. The eye of the other constitutes the subject and gives him/her a face. This means the person does not have a face. The face is given by the other and is facialized by the chain of the signifiers/ symbolic order. Each face does have an internal particular identity. This means my face escapes my control and is placed in the government of the other. This perhaps why we need recognition of the other because face is given and received within the space of the symbolic order. Hence, the face can be displaced by changes in the field of the visible realm constructed by the chain of signifiers.
The gaze of the other that give a person a face is imagined by the person in the field of the other. it is in the scopic regime that face lives and have its being and thus it is crucial for everyday life of a person. But when this field of the other reaches a vanishing point, the subject of the face becomes unstable and anxious. At this point, the subject returns an anxious gaze. It is a gaze that looks for self-affirmation. Lacan says at this point, the subject asks: what does the other wants? What Do they want form me? In contemporary India, under the regime of the majority the symbolic order has changed. I as having a face of a Christian becomes displaced and face a return gaze that is looking for self-validation . It as this point of rapture that I raise the question: what does the majority what from me? Majority is not a real person or group as Lacan will tell us. It operates as an imaginary big other. The return gaze is a point of disruption is also a point renewal. The return of the gaze may enable the subject to re-engage or reassess his/her own with the chain of signifiers and may look to fly into another order of signifiers. Thus, the subject could requestion the self and search for a new bond of belonging. Thus, the subject under the return of the gaze faces its own blackhole, the possibility of dissolution of his/her face. Yet is lao become point where one can refacialize one’s face. In the Deleuzean sense face can metamorphize by re-arranging its organs ( eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, etc.) It means it can fly into another order of signifiers or retain its space in the old chain of signifiers with full courage of determination. Deleuze in fact opens possibilities for the subject of the face to embrace the trail of constant becomings rather than stay with the face/mask given by the symbolic order. Deleuze wants us to be defcialized free subjects and not frozen ones that are chained to the symbolic order. When we free our face, we will free our body. Body under the regime of face is a machine for production of meaning. Body freed from the regime of the face will be restored as a landscape for sensation.
