The face as a place of transcendence of the self

interactions between theology and literature

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate the multiple interactions between the literary motif of the work The Desert and Its Seed (1998), by Jorge Baron Biza, with the theological-philosophical concepts of face and identity, which are pertinent to a possible interpretative bias of the argentine author's literature. Starting from the perspective of Old Testament writings, added to the analyzes of theorists in the theological-philosophical field, such as the frenchman Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) and the british Roger Scruton (1944-2020), the text reflects on the face as a place of transcendence of the self, dialoguing with the negative meaning present in the autofiction The Desert and Its Seed, which, instead of discussing the harmony of facial features as a synonym for the construction of the face, discusses the crisis of the loss of identity suffered by the protagonist upon having her face disfigured after suffering a serious attack from her ex-husband with sulfuric acid. In the midst of his considerations, the omniscient narrator raises questions that intimately touch a much debated conceptual field in philosophical theology: is it possible for the human face to communicate beyond itself, inaugurating a notion of identity that is independent of the presence of flesh.