Mask
In the original, existential sense, identifying with
the mask transformed the individual into a person.
Persona, in Latin, denotes the entire semantic
phylum of the mask, from the physical object
to the role, all the way to a personality’s social
and political standing and status. In shamanism,
the mask can establish links to supernatural
forces and is a sign of respect (“Shamans and
Dancers with Masks,” in: The Shape of Things, 1999). In architecture, the building wears a public
manifestation of the mask in the form of its facade
(“Fassaden: Masken, Personen,” in: Haller,
2. Symposium Intelligent Building, 1991).
Traditional gestures relating to the mask – in
connection with its design, production, and use –
are intersubjective and historical; they play roles
in the scenario of history. And they are theatrical.
These gestures are typical both of participants
(masked people, carnival dancers, actors) and
of observers (audience, critics, theorists). The
dialectical relationship between the two can
be seen during carnival in Rio de Janeiro, for
example. The mask is also characteristic of politicians
– actors and actresses on the stage of
public events. For most authentic or “real politicians”
(Bodenlos, 1992, p. 187; translated from
the German), says Flusser, the mask is more
truthful than the personality it conceals. The
gesture of taking off the mask leads to irrationality
of catastrophic magnitude, as it did when
culture allowed its mask to fall, as at Auschwitz
(Post-History, 2013, p. 7), resulting in a “carnival
of death and the infernal” (Bodenlos, p. 29; translated
from the German).
Flusser nonetheless points to a gesture which, in
his opinion, has not yet been studied, as it constitutes
a “new,” post-historical and nontheatrical
gesture: the gesture of turning a mask around
and looking at it from the “wrong” side. This gesture
is the subject of one chapter of his phenomenological
essay on gestures (“Die Geste des
Maskenwendens,” in: Gesten, 1991).
Turning a mask around is a gesture peculiar to a
system’s functionaries, who devote themselves
to programming (for example, programming
Rio’s carnival). While the aesthetic, cultural,
and political aspects lie on the mask’s exterior
– the false “true” face that lends the individual
identity – the negative, ethical aspect appears
only on its interior, which is not meant to be
seen. This truly “false,” forbidden side reveals
the error in a negative dialectical relationship.
The gesture of turning the mask around exposes
the program in which it was designed, disclosing
its function in the drama, its origin, and its
structure. In being turned over, the mask is no
longer an object placed before the face, allowing
it to be manipulated outside theater and history
and thereby “surpassed.” The gesture of turning
the mask around is thus a gesture of playing with
history.
For Flusser, the gesture of turning a mask around radically alters the question of the subject’s identity in the post-historical era. It is no longer a question of the identity beneath the many masks the subject wears, but predominantly a question of the “I” as “that ideological hook for hanging masks by their inner sides, just as the mask appears to be that ideological exterior from which the ‘I’ is observed” (ibid., p. 133; translated from the German).
Original article by Claudia Giannetti