Author(s) :

Neelan Subhas.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

This article explores the contemporary relevance of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the abstract faciality machine. Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of faciality explains the construction of significance and subjectivity in facial interactions. Although faciality has coded and demarcated the body into a fixed site for subjectivity, sites of faciality extend far beyond the one-dimensional coded face. Post-faciality enables a digital view of faciality, where the face as a digital object is an independent entity, and interactions with this entity generate potentiality. Through interactions with the digital face, positive and negative responses are produced, but positivity is limited to specific circumstances. In facial surgery, politics, architecture, and the digital realm, faciality and post-faciality demarcate the face. To deconstruct faciality and post-faciality, certain interactions must be prioritized to produce either becoming-animal or becoming-post-face, creating positive lines of escape from faciality, but the efficacy of each method is largely dependent on the specific instances of each deterritorialization.