<p><font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">“man's soul has become something one could taste directly, with the tongue, like a peeled </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">peach”. </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">Kobo Abe's surrealist novel, “The Face of Another” revolves around the glaring idea of </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">nature, and identity, revealing the canker eating away at the soul (?), “the fundamental </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">emptiness of content” of the modern man. </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">The story revolves around a chemist who, (in a certain Frankensteinian strain) disfigures his </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">face in an experiment. </font><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">Ashamed, he tries to reintegrate into the society as well as win the </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">affections of his wife through the aid of a prosthetic mask provided by his doctor. </font><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">The </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">employment of the mask, however, allows him to delve deep into what appears to be at the</font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">surface. </font><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">He records his stories in a series of notebooks, and as readers/ voyeurs we gain </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">access into his process of thoughts. </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">The novel problematizes the idea of identity and perception through the various ruminations </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">of the narrator – “is what you think to be in reality your real face, or is what you think to be </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">your real face really a face?”- allowing one to ponder over the nature and extent of self- </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">fashioning. </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">Through the gradual (de)generation of the narrator into a “faceless” eye where he can observe </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">the world unobserved, the novel provides a good entry point into understanding how identity </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">and perception are “affected” and augmented through the use of masks and prosthetics –</font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">“simulations of real skin” that underscores the “somatic limit of experience”, fueling the </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">“pain of inadequacy both in the eyes of others or before others, and in our own estimate” </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">(Morgan, 46).</font></font></p>
<p><font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">The aim of my paper is to further explore the contours of identity and perception as they are </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">afforded through augmented and fragmented “realities” and shaped through the affective ideas </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">of disgust and shame. </font><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">I am interested in understanding Baudrillard's cautions against the </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">corrosion of reality or the image through representation, and how the only way to restore the </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">veracity of reality is via “critique or effective action to access the hidden fact of the real”- this </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">knowing of the self as a vista that is made available to the protagonist who realizes that his </font></font><br />
<font style="vertical-align: inherit;"><font style="vertical-align: inherit;">wife’s face is a “mask” too.</font></font></p>