Beauty and the Beast by Taussig Michael

Author:Taussig, Michael [Taussig, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Published: 2012-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

Till all that is divine in woman

Grows cruel, courteous, smooth, inhuman,

Crucified ’twixt a smile and whimper3

To bring sex into the fray is to engage with that “immense reservoir of electrical energy” that is Baudelaire’s crowd. Nevertheless Baudelaire’s sketch of the flaneur is but one half of the picture, the half that concerns the observer. For to look is only half the story. The other half is the look on the face and the movement of the body of the person aware of being looked at.

The truth is that the people the flaneur espies are aware—extremely aware—of being looked at. It is a game. For not only are the observed aware of being observed, but with the dispensation in female fashion of revelation and concealment, their awareness of being observed has moved from a passive into an active realm of display that takes advantage of the observer’s conceit that he, like the fabled flaneur, is seeing without being seen seeing.

Scotoma indeed! laughed my friend. Such an interesting word! But where does that put your wish to write a history of beauty? What sort of history can be built on seeing as not seeing as the basis of knowing beauty? He paused and in a somewhat mocking tone asked, Is that your kaleidscope with consciousness?

It was as if he could read my thoughts and wanted to play with the scotoma. The person being looked at but not being looked at, he said with painful deliberation, pretends to be not looked at and puts on a wooden face. Think about it! he exclaimed, carried away by his image. Wooden faces are now the rage as these exaggerated breasts pop up all over Colombia, like tulips in Holland! One part of the body stands out; another, the face, withdraws into a mask of stolidity. Not only does the person being looked at adopt a wooden face, but the person looking does as well. Her face is saying that she doesn’t see you not looking at her. It reminds me, he said, of a game of peek-a-boo like adults play with children, hiding their face behind their hands only to expose it at the last minute, like Virtual U.

Time is running out. I hurry to the terminal to catch a bus out of town. It is dangerous to travel these parts at night. People are milling around the ticket counter. The ayudantes yell and drag confused travelers this way and that, with conflicting promises as to which bus will leave first. In this immense reservoir of electrical energy a young woman stands by the door of my bus, as if about to get on. But stock-still. She seems to be waiting for someone. Her gaze is vacant. Her face is wooden. With her blouse worn so low so as to reveal the areola of one breast, she doesn’t see the seeing in the midst of the collective, scotomized reality. At the last minute she gets into the bus. Alone. Was she waiting for someone? Or

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