Inhabiting the Face: From Fake to Deepfake

The face has had a privileged status in visual media, enrapturing cinematic audiences with its beauty and intensity of emotion. Yet, the study of the face and its social relevance is also the subject of pseudo-sciences like physiognomy and eugenics. This article examines how the media help to capture the intimate details inscribed within the face in what I will argue is an artificial discourse of authenticity, identity, and intimacy by looking at how media have affected the way we perform such functions like self-identification and socialization. I attempt to trace how new technological developments in face recognition and artificial intelligence affect the way we inhabit our own faces, and how media have made it possible for us to inhabit the face of another (as with the deepfake or data analytics).