This article examines a project of facial reconstruction of human remains from an archaeological excavation that took place in 1994 in the inner city of Cape Town, South Africa. The initiators of the project envisioned it as an opportunity to translate the power of scientific knowledge to a lay audience, conveying a postapartheid, postracial vision of unity in diversity. However, this translation failed, and the faces got stuck in limbo. I demonstrate how the logic of face resisted a linear translation whereby past could be juxtaposed with present, death with “bringing back to life,” or slavery, colonialism, and apartheid with a new nonracial democracy. Instead, all these different temporalities were collapsed in the practice of face‐making and the politics surrounding it. I argue that it is important to pay attention to such failed translation as an avenue to understanding race as an ongoing and troubling matter of concern. [facial reconstruction, race trouble, Indigenous human remains, postapartheid South Africa]

中文翻译：

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卡在茶室里：面部重建和后种族隔离头痛

本文研究了1994年在南非开普敦内城进行的考古发掘中的人脸残骸重建项目。该项目的发起者将其视为将科学知识的力量转化为非专业受众的机会，传达了种族隔离之后，种族隔离后的团结愿景。但是，翻译失败，面孔陷入困境。我展示了脸部的逻辑如何抵抗线性转换，即过去可以与现在并置，死亡与“复活”并列，或者奴隶制，殖民主义和种族隔离与新的非种族民主并存。取而代之的是，所有这些不同的时间性都在做鬼脸的实践及其周围的政治中崩溃了。我认为重要的是要注意这种失败的翻译，因为这是将种族理解为一个持续而令人担忧的问题的途径。[面部重建，种族麻烦，土著人遗体，种族隔离后的南非]