(pers. com., 2006 - all my thanks to the distinguished colleague and friend):
“Focusing on the face is important. (...)
“What is so special about it is that (without mirrors) it is a part of the body that we cannot see, so we know we have one only because it is confirmed in the sight of others. Instead, in the space where your face ought to be (and you know it is there because you can feel it), there is the whole world.
“I think this point is central to certain shamanic/animic cosmologies: for example the round face-masks of the Alaskan Yup'ik (worn in dances where spirits enter the community) are equated with the round cosmos, conceived as a huge eye which is watching its inhabitants.”
“I was particularly struck by John Hull's book, 'On Sight and Insight' (1997), on the experience of going blind. He says somewhere that he felt as if his head was in a sack, when he could no longer see people responding, in their eyes, to the presence of his face. It was as though he did not have one.
”It is remarkable, however, how little anthropologists have written about the face and facial gestures.”
“However one point that came out of our recent research on the sociality of walking is that ’face-to-face interaction' may not be the intimate form of social relationship that it is generally held to be. In fact it is rather confrontational, and people often feel threatened if looked at directly eye to eye. Walkers reported a much greater sense of companionship if walking side by side, in the same direction. You would not, then, see your companion's face, but you would share with him/her the same view or vista ahead.
By contrast, two people standing or sitting face-to-face see quite different views, so that their experience is not shared to the same extent.”
“Focusing on the face is important. (...)
“What is so special about it is that (without mirrors) it is a part of the body that we cannot see, so we know we have one only because it is confirmed in the sight of others. Instead, in the space where your face ought to be (and you know it is there because you can feel it), there is the whole world.
“I think this point is central to certain shamanic/animic cosmologies: for example the round face-masks of the Alaskan Yup'ik (worn in dances where spirits enter the community) are equated with the round cosmos, conceived as a huge eye which is watching its inhabitants.”
“I was particularly struck by John Hull's book, 'On Sight and Insight' (1997), on the experience of going blind. He says somewhere that he felt as if his head was in a sack, when he could no longer see people responding, in their eyes, to the presence of his face. It was as though he did not have one.
”It is remarkable, however, how little anthropologists have written about the face and facial gestures.”
“However one point that came out of our recent research on the sociality of walking is that ’face-to-face interaction' may not be the intimate form of social relationship that it is generally held to be. In fact it is rather confrontational, and people often feel threatened if looked at directly eye to eye. Walkers reported a much greater sense of companionship if walking side by side, in the same direction. You would not, then, see your companion's face, but you would share with him/her the same view or vista ahead.
By contrast, two people standing or sitting face-to-face see quite different views, so that their experience is not shared to the same extent.”
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