Staring how we look sobre la mirada.pdf - artecolonial

FACES 107
by allowing a starer to maintain face. Partridge sagely describes an interpersonal
dynamic between starer and staree: “They have usually come to help
you, but you may well find that you have to help them” (Partridge 1990,
17). The active agent here is the staree who saves the face of a starer lost in
a muddle of “shock and concern,” attraction and avoidance, identification
and differentiation.
STAREES AT WORK
Partridge explains that the first element in taking control of a staring encounter
is for starees to sense the stare. This preparedness arms a staree
with proper relational tools to manage expected staring encounters with
great effectiveness. The second element in this process is to decide how to
oversee the dynamics of the stare itself when it inevitably arrives. The third
element is manipulating the eyes of the starer to end, extend, or relocate the
stare. Finally, a staree can and often must engage in conversation to manage
the encounter. Partridge offers: “You will have to keep up the conversation
until you judge it right to help them ask the big question: What happened
to you?” (Partridge 1990, 89). Of course, a staree will have a variety of ready
and fluent answers to “this inquisition” — like Macgregor’s interviewee who
said he was in the war—so the encounter can move forward (Partridge 1990,
90). Managed properly by the staree, staring can be an intentional prelude
leading to mutually affirmative face-to-face social interactions.
In addition to maintaining the starer’s face, staring encounters can provide
unusually faced people with an opportunity for self-development. Since
face-work is more exacting for them, they must learn to develop ways of
presenting themselves to others, as Partridge suggests. Rather than causing
narcissism or self pity, having an unorthodox face can take one out of one’s
self because of the responsibility to the other that comes from having to justify
one’s looks to the world. Since staring violates often unquestioned social
conventions, a productive unruliness can ensue when the predictable structure
of face-work gives way. Partridge posits, for instance, that the starer is
actually frightened by the staree, by the influence a stare has over a starer’s
eyes. To enlist the potency bestowed by someone’s fear and convert it into a
form of personal authority inflected by either generosity or command can
enlarge the self in ways that are psychologically beneficial and socially effective.
What Partridge calls “successfully bring[ing] some people back from
their recoil” or “turn[ing] the sympathy to constructive uses” requires substantial
psychological acuity and facility (Partridge 1990, 93, 94). Having a
stareable face can shape one in more profoundly positive and productive