Achille Mbembe

If we remember our language, if we do not forget that we can speak, then we are freer, we are not forced into things and rules. Language is not a tool: it is our face, the openness in which we are. The face is the most human of things. Man has a face and not simply a muzzle or a front, because he dwells in openness, because in his face he exposes himself and communicates. This is why the face is the place of politics. Our unpolitical time does not want to see its own face, it keeps it at a distance, masks and covers it. There must be no more faces, but only numbers and figures. The tyrant, too, is faceless.

       Achille Mbembe