Becoming unrecognisable : a study of the face, death and recognition in late twentieth century media culture

Abstract

The thesis argues that to find the places in media culture where the face transmits death, we need to look beyond the immobilised faces of the dead. Drawing on Walter Benjamin's philosophy of the image, the thesis sees the phenomenon of becoming unrecognisable as a particular practice of the image in which the face becomes a viable site for making death transmissible. It is argued that by paying attention to instances in media culture in which a face becomes unrecognisable, we can see how death is made visible as a dialectic between recognition and unrecognisability, appearance and disappearance. By examining the complexity of this particular form of dialectical image in a wide range of media - photography, television and film - the thesis shifts discussion away from questions of representation and faciality that feature so strongly in recent theorisations of the face. Focussing on questions of recognition and recognisability, the thesis proposes a way of thinking about the face that leads to a new conception of death in the media age

Date of Award	2000
Original language	English