This is a fascinating, highly engaging book that examines the history of the social and cultural construction of the face and its evolving role in identity, representation and communication. Primarily, Western in its orientation to history and philosophy, the book does much more than the title might initially suggest. Taking its starting point in the 19th century, it devotes significant attention to charting the shifting cultural and artistic practices and technological innovations and affordances that underpin contemporary emphasis on the face. This includes developments and fashions related to portrait painting, and later photography, the increased importance of the face as a primary form of identification and as an important aspect of 20th-century democratisation. The second-half of the book is devoted more to contemporary development and deployments of the face and gives attention in particular to digital pathways of creation and dissemination in which the face occupies a central role, especially social media. The groundwork established by Zilio’s preceding historical survey provides a clear context for thinking about modern productions and representations of the face beyond popular perceptions of vacuous self-obsession. Instead, the book prompts us to reconsider many of the unconscious and naturalised ways in which societies have been encouraged to accept the modern centrality of the face as self-evident. The book engages with some complex concepts and theories that draw on perspectives from multiple contemporary academic disciplines. This aspect of the text is excellent and it is an exemplar of the productive potential that lies in genuinely interdisciplinary approaches. The intellectual depth of this book is impressive, drawing on philosophical writing, creative practice and media and cultural theory from across several centuries. At the same time, the text is accessible and straightforward and the logics of the arguments and philosophies is always clear, making this a book that could usefully be considered as a graduate level reading, as well as being important for scholars interested in social practice and the embodied nature of communication and representation. Given the complexities of the translation process, exactly how much and in what ways the clarity of the book is attributable to the skills of Robin Mackay is unclear (the book was originally published in French). However, his contribution should not be overlooked in considering the high quality of the reproduction of this text in English.

中文翻译：

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书评：Faceworld：二十一世纪的面孔

这是一本引人入胜、引人入胜的书，它考察了面部的社会和文化建构的历史及其在身份、表征和交流中不断演变的作用。主要是西方在历史和哲学方面的定位，这本书比书名最初暗示的要多得多。以 19 世纪为起点，它非常注重描绘支撑当代面部重点的文化和艺术实践以及技术创新和可供性的变化。这包括与肖像画相关的发展和时尚，以及后来的摄影，面部作为一种主要的身份识别形式以及作为 20 世纪民主化的一个重要方面的重要性日益增加。本书的后半部分更多地关注面部的当代发展和部署，并特别关注面部在其中占据核心作用的数字创作和传播途径，尤其是社交媒体。Zilio 之前的历史调查所建立的基础为思考现代产品和面部表现提供了清晰的背景，超越了人们对空洞的自我痴迷的普遍看法。相反，这本书促使我们重新考虑许多无意识和自然化的方式，这些方式鼓励社会接受面部的现代中心地位是不言而喻的。这本书涉及一些复杂的概念和理论，这些概念和理论借鉴了多个当代学科的观点。文本的这一方面非常出色，它是真正跨学科方法的生产潜力的典范。这本书的知识深度令人印象深刻，借鉴了几个世纪以来的哲学写作、创造性实践以及媒体和文化理论。同时，文本通俗易懂，论点和哲学的逻辑始终清晰明了，使其成为一本有用的研究生读物，对于对社会实践和社会实践感兴趣的学者也很重要。沟通和代表的具体化性质。鉴于翻译过程的复杂性，这本书的清晰度在多大程度上以及以何种方式归功于 Robin Mackay 的技巧尚不清楚（该书最初以法语出版）。