Facecraft

Abstract Having witnessed the end-point of eugenics in the violent, state-sanctioned genocide of Nazi Germany, it is impossible to discuss racial categories today without the knowledge that racialization is a dehumanising process that can lead to devastating consequences. Yet in spite of a willingness to acknowledge that race is a social construction, it often continues to be treated in everyday life as a real categorical difference. This article explores the modern dynamic between whiteness and racialization, highlighting a relationship between the studied objectivity of the scientific gaze and the supposed neutrality or non-racialised identity of whiteness. The way in which race functions as a technology of control becomes evident through the analysis of two key novels: Passing (1929) by Harlem Renaissance writer Nella Larsen and The White Girl (2019) by Australian First Nations author Tony Birch. With their depiction of racial passing, both novels challenge received ideas about race and skin colour, exposing the face as an important site where the sumptuary codes of race play out. This article considers the racial masks that people wear and the relational implications of ancestry on people’s faces.