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Facing the skin: layers and counter-mirror subjectivities

Subjectivity volume 30, pages 130–151 (2023)Cite this article

Abstract

The body as a thick and complex materiality has been populating social sciences in the last three decades in a critical mode toward both naturalism and social constructionism. The body has been progressively theorized in terms of what is established, even though flexible. In other words, as the structural metaphor of knowledge. The co-construction of bodies is not reduced to the politics of mirroring, truth-discovery, and what I was interested to highlight is how the cosmetic and photographic tactile gaze operates on the body as a tabula rasa. The focus on the skin allows precisely to challenge the flat/flattering approach to the body that negates its multilayered subjectivity. How does the beauty labour transform the body and attitudes in YouTube skincare culture and cinema? How does the photographic rupture shape the embodied reactions of new digital identities? The present study investigated visual culture through which the skin has become a subject-matter per se in cinema and YouTube.

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Data availability

Data discussed in this paper are available online, on YouTube and on-demand on Amazon and other streaming platforms.

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  1. University of West Georgia, Carrollton, USA

    Rosa Traversa

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  1. Rosa Traversa
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Correspondence to Rosa Traversa.

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Traversa, R. Facing the skin: layers and counter-mirror subjectivities. Subjectivity 30, 130–151 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41286-023-00157-8

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