ABSTRACT
The definition of physiognomy is ‘equivocal’. It refers to the discipline or skill of interpreting faces and expressions as keys to personality. The word also means the countenance itself, the object of interpretation. This duality is often ignored, and the ‘reading’ is collapsed into the ‘text’. A description of a face will strive to seem objective, masking the assumptions that must be made before expressions on the surface of a body can be allowed to correspond to emotions and qualities on the inside. For instance, to say a person has an ‘innocent’ face or a ‘naïve’ expression betrays many cultural presuppositions. Physiognomy as a science assumes that facial signifiers are causally related to the underlying signifieds of personality. The interpretative movement is from surface to core, but never back to the conditions of interpreting.
