Abstract
In 1919, two unique texts that are crucial for the cultural history of the face were published: "The Uncanny" by Sigmund Freud and the short story "Erased Face" by Czech author Richard Weiner. While Freud depicts his failure to recognize his own face in the mirror, Weiner's text focuses on the image of a headlike "oval stub" devoid of any human features except the eyes.
The paper deals with the phenomenon of disfiguration, both in the context of the peculiar aesthetics of the "formless" and in relation to the "broken faces" (gueules cassées) who suffered massive facial injuries in World War I. The central image of a face without a face is interpreted as an intermedial figure which connects literary, visual and historical memory while heralding the aesthetics of the postmodern portrait, especially in the paintings by Francis Bacon, rendering identity through deformation.
The narrative and images of losing one's face are further discussed in connection with contemporary psychoanalysis.