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RUTH LEYS

How Did FearBecome a Scientific Object and

What Kind of Object Is It?

When on September 11, 2001, terrorists killed more than threethousand people in their attacks on the World Trade Center in New YorkCity, for Americans in particular the world suddenly became a much more

frightening place. Insecurity became the norm as the Bush administrationsnew Department of Homeland Security used its color-coded terror alert sys-tem to orchestrate and manipulate the publics fears. Among the many con-sequences of 9/11 has been the flow of federal funds to scientists committedto finding ways to identify terrorists before they can act. One of those is PaulEkman, a psychologist who has devoted his career to studying facial expres-sions and is working on methods of surveillance designed to read the telltaleinvoluntary facial signs that betray the potential terrorists deadly intentions.Ekmans goal is to reassure us that we dont have to be frightened by the ten-dency of human beings to dissimulate, because science can be counted on

to reliably distinguish authentic facial expressions from false ones, genuinefrom feigned.1

In this paper, I examine the theoretical assumptions and methods inform-ing Ekmans approach to the emotions and facial expression. I offer my analysisas a contribution, from the perspective of the history of the human sciences,to our understanding of one major strand of research in the United Statesthat has helped shaped the science of fear. Ekmans is not the only game intown; in fact, as we shall see, there are signs today of a growing opposition tohis research program from within psychology. But for the last thirty years

he has exerted, and indeed continues to exert, a powerful influence. Notonly do psychologists and neuroscientists routinely cite his experimental find-ings; as a consequence of the striking recent growth of interest in the emo-tions and affect in the humanities and social sciences, his work has begun toattract the attention of scholars in philosophy, political theory, cultural stud-ies, literature, and related fields. Among those who share many of Ekmans

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A B S T R A C T This essay provides an analysis of the role of posed facial expressions and of the facialimage in the development of the science of fear. / REPR ESENT A T IO NS 110. Spring 2010 The Regentsof the University of California. ISSN 07346018, electronic ISSN 1533855X, pages 66104. All rightsreserved. Direct requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content to the University ofCalifornia Press at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintinfo.asp. DOI:10.1525/rep.2010.110.1.66.

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presuppositions is the celebrated neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. In thecourse of my paper I shall be discussing an important case, investigated byDamasio, Ralph Adolphs, and others, of a young woman who, it has beenclaimed, is unable to experience fear because she has an abnormal brain.More precisely, the patient suffers from a genetic disorder that causes bilat-eral calcification of her amygdala, a subcortical group of neurons widely heldto be implicated in rapid emotional responses, especially fear. Crucial toDamasios interpretation of the case has been his use of methods developedby Ekman to test a persons ability to judge emotional expressions. In particu-

lar Damasio has employed a set of pictures of people intentionally present-ing, that is, posing such expressions drawn from Ekmans portfolio of suchitems, in order to evaluate the deficits in his amygdala-damaged patients skillin judging threatening faces.

I find Ekmans pictures at once interesting and puzzling (figs. 1 and 2).2

One of my aims in this paper is to make such images historically intelligiblewhile also bringing out what seems to me their sheer strangeness as scien-tific documents.

Emotions as Nonintentional States:Tomkinss Affect Program Theory

To begin: When in the 1960s Ekman began studying nonverbalbehavior, including facial expressions, the emotions after years of neglectwere just beginning to become a topic of renewed concern among scientists.Ekman started his investigations at a time when one psychologist in particu-lar, Silvan S. Tomkins, was proposing a new way of thinking about the affects.Influenced by several important trends in the human sciences, especiallya resurgent interest in Darwinian evolution and the rise of cybernetics, Tomkins

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FIGURE 1 (left). From Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen, Pictures of Facial Affect(Palo Alto, CA, 1976), reproduced by permission.

FIGURE 2 (right). From Ekman and Friesen, Pictures of Facial Affect, reproduced bypermission.