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Activist masks in the Latin American social protest

Bibliographic Data

ID4473658
AuthorsBaal Delupi (0000-0001-7697-3325, University of Turin, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba , Torino , Italy, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume2023
Issue255
Pages117-129
Publication date2023-11-27
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSemiotica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-1998 • E-ISSN: 1613-3692
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/sem-2023-0166
OpenAlexW4388456621
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited1

Masks, balaclavas, eye masks, and various accessories have been consistently used to hide the face, from Greek times through the grotesque of the Middle Ages to the Latin American theatre festivals of the 1980s. In the twenty-first century, technological advances such as facial recognition, which are being used for the biopolitical control of the face, caused activists to start developing different mechanisms to cover their faces in public spaces. In other words, the mask is not used solely as a device that builds unique aesthetic-political senses but is also used to avoid being captured by surveillance cameras. The aim of this paper is to identify some of the masks used by activists in Latin American public protests, generating new signs that circulate widely in the semiosphere such as physiognomy, representation, and evocation. For this, we will return to Juri Lotman's proposal on the semiosphere and the notion of facesphere developed by José Finol, concepts that operate as epistemological and heuristic frameworks that allow understanding the concrete meaning production processes as a global dimension and not only a particular one. What faces are hidden and what physiognomies are shown in the social protest? What borders are established? What political and aesthetic meanings do they build? These are the questions that this paper attempts to answer from a perspective of cultural semiotics

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Evocation · Face (sociological concept) · Latin Americans · Meaning (existential) · Media studies · Perspective (graphical) · Physiognomy · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics) · Semiotics · Sign (mathematics) · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Anthropology · Law · Literary and Cultural Studies · Media and Communication Studies · Philosophy · Public Spaces through Art

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Citations per year0.5
Citation span2024 - 2024 (1)
Highly citedNo

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