The volume examines how the study of facial features or expressions as indicative of character or ethnicity, has evolved from the crossroad of magic, religion and primitive medicine to present-day cultural concern for wellness and beauty. In this context, the discoveries of cranio-facial neurophysiology and psychology and the practice of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery have a centuries-old relationship with physiognomy.

As the study of outward appearances evolved from its classical roots and self-representations through 18th- and 19th-century adaptations in fiction and travelogues, it gradually became a scientific discipline. Along the way, physiognomy was associated with phrenology and craniology and promoted eugenic policies. Tainted with racial bigotry and biological determinism, it was trapped within questions of delinquency, monstrosity and posthumanism.

Throughout its history, physiognomy played both positive and negative roles in the evolution of significant aspects of the socio-cultural order in the West that merit update and in-depth study. The contributions follow a chronological and intertwining sequence to encompass physiognomic expressions in art, literature, spirituality, science, philosophy and cultural studies.

Contents

Acknowledgments
List of Figures
List of Contributors

Massimo Ciavolella, Valeria Finucci, and Megan Tomlinson – Revealing and Concealing: Physiognomy and Bodily Signs

Alain Touwaide – Physiognomy: The Origins

Bronwen Wilson – Between the Face and the Skull: Jacopo Ligozzi and the Other Side of the Mirror

Nicoletta Pireddu – Profiling Deviance, Embodying Passions: Facing and Effacing Character Norms in 19th -century Europe

Gaia Gubbini – Angelica, Clorinda and the Descriptio Puellae

Justine C. Lee – Facial Gender-Affirming Surgery: Shaping Physiognomy for Transgender and Gender Non-Congruent Individuals

Sharrona Pearl – Fugitives, Physiognomy, Surgery, and Face Recognition Technology in the Modern Surveillance State

Alain Touwaide – Modifying One’s Physiognomy in Antiquity

Romy Sutherland – Faces in Rocks and Trenches: Facial Framings and Post-Colonial Dilemmas in the Australian Cinema of Peter Weir

Éva Vígh – Reading Body Language and Physiognomic Signs in Andrea Mantegna’s Painting The Triumph of Virtue

Alfonso Paolella – The Cult of Beauty and Wellbeing in the Humana Physiognomonia and Other Works by Giovan Battista della Porta

Andreas Mayer – The French Lavater: Translating Physiognomy into Science in the Late Enlightenment and Beyond

Manuela Gallerani – The Language of Emotions: From the Physiognomy of Giovan Battista della Porta to the Neuroscience

Donald Beecher – Folk Psychology and Physiognomy: Competing Strategies for Reading Other Minds

Index

Source: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111240671/html