Rozmyślania nad maską
Meditations on the Mask

Summary/Abstract: Instead of a typical review of a research monograph, this article proposes deliberations on selected motifs from Wojciech Dudzik’s book Maska w kulturze współczesnej Europy: Teorie i praktyka [The Mask in Contemporary European Culture: Theories and Practice] (Warsaw, 2020). Although this subjective choice of themes only partially reflects the variety of problems discussed by Dudzik, thise article situates a number of issues in broader contexts: (1) Recent research has shown a surprising ambivalence towards the pandemic face mask as a protection against infection. (2) Present-day devil masks seem to continue the ancient tradition of the mask as a fear-inducing object. (3) European performative practices ignore the insides of masks, unlike in the East, where they are important to actors, stimulating spiritual contact with previous wearers. (4) Sight bimodality is crucial for performing in a mask. (5) In the digital world, the biometric mask takes power over the individual’s bodily identity.

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