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Stuck in the Tearoom: Facial Reconstruction and Postapartheid Headache
Author(s) -
Schramm Katharina
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.13384
Subject(s) - temporalities , face (sociological concept) , indigenous , politics , colonialism , race (biology) , power (physics) , aesthetics , history , democracy , diversity (politics) , sociology , gender studies , political science , law , anthropology , social science , art , ecology , quantum mechanics , biology , physics
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 ]