Staring how we look sobre la mirada.pdf - artecolonial

102 SCENES OF STARING
and make sense of faces. As newborns, we learn very early to recognize our
mother’s face. Adults can discriminate among thousands of faces. Our capacity
to stare interpretively at faces is a fundamental form of social capital
that enables human flourishing. People adapt facial recognition strategies
to fit their situations. African Americans, for example, tend to develop superior
emotion recognition compared to whites (Zebrowitz 1997, 28). The
supposed intuition and emotional fluency of women may develop from their
traditionally subordinated status. Blindness or low vision asks us to rely on
alternative sensory clues that staring provides to the sighted. In contrast,
certain brain injuries or conditions such as autism may inhibit people from
recognizing emotion on another’s face, creating social disability. Prosopagnosia,
a brain injury causing the inability to recognize faces, often prevents
people from knowing they are being stared at and leaves them unable to
sustain human relationships (McNeill 1988, 86). The staring relationship is,
then, a central arena in which we recognize the inner lives of one another
and are recognized in turn.
The visual architecture of recognition—of distinguishing among faces
and their meanings—abounds with challenges. Constancy and homogeneity
pose problems for visual perception of faces. What cognitive psychologists
call the “object constancy problem” involves the difficulties in
recognizing objects as perspective, lighting, distance, and other contextual
factors change over time (Rhodes and Tremewan 1994). In other words,
how do I know my mother both when I am at her breast and when she
is across the room chatting with her friends? Moreover, how can I know
my mother both when she is laughing and frowning? The “homogeneity
problem” arises in visual cognition when objects share a configuration. The
visual patterning of faces is very similar. What makes a face a face is its
regularity, its predictable shape, allocation, and arrangement of features. In
philosophical terms, homogeneity determines the face’s essence. Our cognitive
task is to differentiate among similar configurations, to recognize
a face as a face but also as a specific face. Reading and recognizing faces
demands negotiating between the universal and the particular, between the
parts and the whole. The problem of the typical face is recognizing it as a particular
face. The problem of the distinctive face is recognizing it as a face. The
problem of the distinctive feature is how it affects perception of the whole.
The problem of the facial gestalt is how to find the nuances of individual
features. The intense visual work of staring at faces is then both a cognitive
and an epistemological undertaking. When we look at another person, we
seek to know much. Is this a face? Do I know this face? Whose face is this?
Does this face know me? What is this face’s response to me? What does this
face mean? Does this face matter to me? What relation do I have to this face
now and what will it be in the future?