The Face as Fingerprint : Mediation, Silence, and the Question of Identity in Ingmar Bergman’s « Persona »

Abstract

This volume is dedicated to readings of the borderline informed by Psychoanalysis. My essay is an exception to that rule. In it, I analyze Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) with an eye to the dangers of a one-way conversation. Interestingly, Persona dramatizes an inversion of a typical psychoanalytic session, for here the patient says nothing and her nurse confesses. The aftermath of this inversion and its consequences are explored with the help of the Italian feminist, Adrianna Cavarero, the Danish Philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, and the Serbian performance artist, Marina Abramović. Enjoining a debate within psychoanalysis from the border regions of existential and feminist philosophy, I argue that the silence of an interlocutor creates a mask screening the speaker from the mutual recognition needed for a healthy sense of identity. This essay argues the case for conversation.