If we posed the question what the face is, we would find many different answers. The first thing which comes to our mind is that the face is a part of the body. This aspect of the face is always mentioned first in definitions. The
Oxford English Dictionary (1989) defines face as “the front part of the head,
from the forehead to the chin”; the visage, countenance: in man and in lower animals (e.g., lion, eagle, insect).
The human face is an anatomical entity which arose through biological processes during human evolution (Henneberg et al., 2003). The evolution of the human face from its apelike ancestral form was gradual. It was regulated by three main factors: changing diets, the ability to process food extra-orally, and the development of the ability to produce spoken language (Henneberg et al., 2003).
There are different anatomic-evolutionary definitions of the face. One says that the face consists of two eyes, nostrils, and a mouth. Another definition “requires evolutionary transformation of the skull, in which a face is recognized in mammals, but not in fish, amphibians, or reptiles. The jaw is suspended from the braincase in reptiles, but mammals have: (a) three ear ossicles, (b) a secondary palate separating the airway passage from the mouth, and (c) vertical positioning of the dentary, with alterations of the jaw muscles” (Cohen, 2006: 3).
The human face, as we know it now, appeared about 200,000—130,000 years ago, with modern Homo sapiens in Africa. It differs significantly from the face of the Neanderthals, as it has flattened, the forehead has risen to house the ballooning brain, the nose juts out, the Neanderthals’ bulging browridges turn into human eyebrows, the skull is no longer moonlike and more oval, and the chin appears (McNeill, 1998). The face is “the center of our humanity” (Kuczynski, 2006: 117; Kalaga, 2006). Its mere existence makes possible our contacts with other human beings. Through the face we gather information about the world and communicate with others. It is through the face that we breathe and nourish ourselves. It is indispensable for our survival.
The view that the face is an exclusively human feature is nothing new. It was already represented by ancient thinkers. Aristotle (384—322 BC), in his Historia
Animalium, defines the face in the following way:
The part below the skull is named the face, but only in man, and in no other animal; we do not speak of the face of a fish or of an ox (Aristotle, 1965: I. vii—ix).
Several centuries later, Dante Alighieri (1265—1321) expressed a similar opinion, that the face identifies us as human beings. Dante, in his Divine
Comedy (1309—1320), writing about Abel being killed by Cain and the marking
of Cain, explains the mark on Cain’s brow:
The sockets of their eyes seemed rings without gems. Whoso in the face of men reads OMO, would surely there have recognized the M (Dante, 1920:
Purgatory, Canto XXIII, 176).
In Cain’s face, as in the face of any other man, his name is inscribed —
(H)OMO (meaning “man” in Latin or Italian). The Os represent the two eyes,
and the M is made by the lines of the cheeks or eyebrows (Synnott, 1993; Stimilli, 2005). Thus we have our name inscribed in our face, as an identification mark. Our face makes us human.
The head, and particularly its front part, the face, were always treated specially in comparison to the rest of the body. From earliest times, the head was associated with the essence of life and people treated this part of the body with great reverence. In many cultures it was believed that the spirit was located in the head and resided in the breath (Edson, 2005). “The face, as unique, physical, malleable and public, is the prime symbol of the self” (Synnott, 1993: 73). It is unique, because there are no two identical faces in the world. The face provides others with a lot of important information about the person. Looking at it, we can determine its owner’s age, sex, ethnicity and race; we can say whether he or she is beautiful or ugly, fat or thin (Zebrowitz, 1997). The appearance of a person is constantly changing over the course of his life. This includes the face, which gradually changes with age. The facial changes include the growth of the face, the loss of primary teeth and the emergence of permanent dentition during childhood, the maturation of the adult face after puberty, the loss of teeth and the formation of lines and wrinkles in old age (Henneberg et al., 2003). “Contrary to the popular belief that faces of members of various human ‘races’ differ predictably, the majority of the variation of facial metric characters occurs among members of same populations, while sexual dimorphism and population differences each are responsible for minor, though significant portions of the total facial variation” (Henneberg et al., 2003: 41). Thus, the face marks us as individuals. Each of us is different from the other.
The face is physical as the body is. Understandably, the face as the front part of the head is the anatomical feature that attracts the greatest attention. Thus the first impression of a person is, in fact, the impression made by his face. It is usually by the face that a person is evaluated at first sight. The face is also accorded primacy in our social relations. Its malleability, resulting from a great number of mimetic muscles (80), allows for thousands of facial expressions. The
facial muscles, which “are fundamentally just sphincters that regulate vision, olfaction, and ingestion,” are used for social displays — “facial expressions of emotion” and facial paralanguage (Fridlund, 1994: 80; cf. Kryk-Kastovsky, 1997). From the behavioural point of view, communication by facial expression is the necessary condition defining the face. Fish, amphibians, reptiles and birds cannot smile or frown. In contrast, mammals can suckle and chew, supported by a muscular tongue, movable lips and cheeks. Their external ears can change their positions; their movable nose is used in smelling and touching. Some mammals have facial hair — the vibrissae — on either side of the muzzle, chin, cheeks, and above the eyes, serving “as tactile organs, which are associated with musculature that allows them to move voluntarily. [...] The muscles of facial expression in primates, including humans, allow direct emotional communication” (Cohen, 2006: 4).
This special function of the face does not result only from its physical construction, but also from the fact that the face is public; it is the part of the body that is most of the time on public display. “Face makes presence” (McNeill, 1998: 237). In Western cultures it is one of the few parts of the body that remains naked (along with the hands) (Hennegerg et al. 2003; Schoug, 2001). It is the face, as well as language, that can convey messages:
A language is always embedded in the faces that announce its statements and ballast them in relation to the signifiers in progress and subjects concerned. Choices are guided by faces, elements are organized around faces: a common grammar is never separable from a facial education. The face is a veritable megaphone (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 179).
The face, however, is not only public, but also private. It stands for the self. it is “a self-image,” “a reflection of the soul.” It is “a showcase of the self” (McNeill, 1998: 4). Looking at it we can learn a lot about its owner’s inner life. The face can “tell” us something about his true self (there is a saying: the face
does not lie), or it can be a mask, put on to hide his true feelings (see also
Section 1.5.). The face, like the body, is an object which can be manipulated by the self from behind (Giddens, 1991). The face we show to others is not always our true face. We manipulate our body, and the face in particular, to be accepted by others. This ability to manipulate the face is said to be exclusive to humans.
Man is said to be a social creature. The face he constantly displays during interaction with others also has a social character. The face and facial expressions, together with other gestures, make up the fundamental content of the contextuality or indexicality which is the condition of everyday communication (Giddens, 1991; Gabryś-Barker, 2004). “To learn to become a competent agent — able to join with others on an equal basis in the 56 The face as a part of the body
production and reproduction of social relations — is to be able, which is also important, to be seen by others to do so” (Giddens, 1991: 41). Instead of talking about human communication, i.e. communication between individuals, we perhaps should talk about communication between faces (the basic form of communication is face-to-face communication). It is the face that “can send messages too elusive for science, so far, and it bewitches us with its beauty. The Trobriand Islanders deemed the face sacred, and well they might, for it is our social identity, compass, and lure, our social universe” (McNeill, 1998: 4). The variety of meanings ascribed to the word face over the centuries shows how many different functions and roles the face has played and how important it has always been both for an individual person and for social life.
The answer to the question posed in the beginning of the section, is the face exclusively human, is not simple, as there are many definitions of the face, some of which make it limited to humans and others not. However, from the anthropocentric perspective, the face is an exclusively human feature.