Biopolitics of a Face

BIOPOLITICS OF A FACE **Move to Second Panel** Intro to Biopolitics: Foucault ! • Foucault described traditional sovereign authority as “essentially the right of the sword.” The ! state creates a social stasis through its institutionalization of policies to “let live or make die.” • The new regime of biopolitics is a regime of power over people as a species, as biological and ! anatomical beings. Importantly establishing, “regulatory mechanisms must be established to establish an equilibrium, maintain an average, establish a sort of homeostasis.” • Discipline, the manufacture of modes of being **contrast bases on microfocus**, gives way ! to the biopolitical project of manufacturing lives. Coupled to a commitment to liberal pluralism, this produces “a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads [faces?] that, while they might not be infinite in number, cannot necessarily be counted.” **Move to Third Panel** The Meaning of a (M)ask: Taussig ! • In Michael Taussig’s Defacement he examines the human face as a site of biopolitical ! contestation. As a juridical instrument, the face is the “evidence that makes evidence possible.” • Identity, ethics (Levinas), and subsequently state-care come together at the face. The citizen is ! marked, recognized, and interpellated through the face. • As part of the homeostasis that the state instantiates, facial identity is forced upon citizenship. ! Taussig states provocatively “It would be hard to imagine a face more dead from which life has been sucked than photo-ID state certifying portraits.” • In light of this, the Mask represents a dual movement against state power; first, against the ! provisional face identified by the state. The Mask initiates a new face, one that is unbounded from the original interpellated subject. **Move to Fourth Panel** Preforming the Mask: Tonkin and Anthropology ! • Anthropologists make a distinction between a ‘mask’ and the ‘Mask.’ The former being the ! physical object itself: be it plastic, wooden, metal, etc. It is an inanimate object that has no properties beyond its physicality. The Mask, however, is a mask-in-action, it is the projection of its persona into the world. BIOPOLITICS OF A FACE • Research into ceremonial Mask usage often highlights the becoming-together of wearer and • ! mask. The result, is not a person playing at or pretending an identity, rather it is the emergence of a different identity altogether. Now, we might think that ‘modern’ westerners are too cynical or pragmatic to believe that they become something other than they are. But the question is raised then, why the Mask? • We must conclude that, similar to Marx’s commodity fetishism, while we believe that Masks ! hold no particularly special or magical properties we act as though they do. Deploying Masks at times of need or crisis as though they offer protection, guidance, or some type of supernatural authority. • What then becomes of the Masks that appear in protest zones? Their performative nature ! (re)iterates an opposition, exactly what to is contingent upon their locality. It is safe to say, however, that certain Masks have a more universal adversarial nature. • For instance, the presence of ‘V’ Masks from OWS, to the Arab Spring, the Indignados, and ! Quebec student protests (to name just a few), has firmly established it as a signature antiestablishment motif. Whatever the nature of the person behind the flimsy Mattel-plastic face, the Mask is solidarity, and resistance. • This is the second movement alluded to above. Not only has the face been reclaimed from its ! state-imposed death, but it’s resurrection is openly hostile towards the status quo. **Move to Fifth Panel** Sovereign Reassertion: Bill C-309 ! • How can we be certain that this challenge to sovereignty is recognized by the state? The ! introduction of Bill C-309 in 2011 sought to amend Section 66 of the Criminal Code and was a clear warning shot to protestors. • Under amended Section 65, arrest for participation in a riot while wearing a Mask brings a maximum sentence of ten years in prison; a Masked person who partakes in an unlawful assembly risks imprisonment up to five years under the amended section 66. • These new punishments are far more aggressive than the current penalties for participating in a riot or unlawful assembly: two years and summary conviction respectively. • One must also remember that under Canadian law, the threshold for declaring an assembly (eg. a protest) unlawful is remarkably low. Section 63 of the CC indicates that an assembly may be declared unlawful when three persons “of any common purpose,” cause others in the vicinity of the gathering to “fear, on reasonable grounds” that those assembled will “disturb the peace tumultuously” or cause others to do so. BIOPOLITICS OF A FACE • And while the addition of this new section may not be evidence enough for some of the state’s fear, the final nail comes when one recalls Section 351(2) of the Criminal Code. On the books for decades, this section indicates that anyone who wears a Mask “with intent to commit an indictable offence” can be imprisoned for up to ten years. • Bill C-309 would, then, appear redundant. That is, if one did not realize that the state is making explicit its claim to sovereignty over the face.