An Anatomy of Facelessness: On Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker Trilogy
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Øyvind Vågnes
Abstract
A significant contribution to the social history of immigration in the Nordic countries, Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker trilogy (2014–2016) is also a resonant visual-verbal reflection on the relationship between the face and the mask and its impact on the formation of individual and cultural identity. Pisket’s depiction of the hardship and alienation of the struggling immigrant is marked by a striking symbolism, and the article addresses how the three books collectively can be said to outline “an anatomy of facelessness”. The analysis revolves around three central aspects of Pisket’s depiction of the trilogy’s central protagonist: the imaginative re-appropriation of the myth of the Minotaur, the ambiguous deployment of the hooded figure, and the use of the facial portrait as an ambivalent emblem of the reservoir of individual human experience.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Íslenzkt þjóðerni: Jón Jónsson Aðils’ Iceland and the road to the future
- Det ophøjede i dansk romantik og en figurativ-filosofisk vurdering af Jens Baggesen og Schack von Staffeldts digterdyst
- The North seen from the South in the Spanish reception of Selma Lagerlöf
- Dangerous Vicinity: Theorizing the Neighbour in August Strindberg’s “The Roofing Ceremony”
- The female detective as the child who needs to know. Saga Norén as an example of potent yet dysfunctional female detectives in contemporary Nordic Noir
- Group genitive in Swedish – s-genitive as a phrase marker
- Generics in Mainland Scandinavian languages
- Nordischer Klang
- Nordischer Klang 2017: Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich. Zeichenwelten/Welten zeichnen
- Comics creation as a social experiment: Simon Gärdenfors’ playful performance
- An Anatomy of Facelessness: On Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker Trilogy
- Stripping H.C. Andersen. Peter Madsen’s Historien om en mor (or, what a graphic novel adaptation can do that its literary source cannot)
- Reviews
- Olle Ferm et. al. (Hg.):The Eufemiavisor and Courtly Culture. Time, Texts and Cultural Transfer. Papers from a Symposium in Stockholm 11–13 October 2012
- Laura Sonja Wamhoff:Isländische Erinnerungskultur 1100–1300. Altnordische Historiographie und kulturelles Gedächtnis
- Jana Krüger, Vivian Busch, Katharina Seidel, Christiane Zimmermann u. Ute Zimmermann (Hg.):Die Faszination des Verborgenen und seine Entschlüsselung – Rāði sāʀ kunni. Beiträge zur Runologie, skandinavischen Mediävistik und germanischen Sprachwissenschaft
- Jón Karl Helgason:Echoes of Valhalla. The Afterlife of the Eddas and Sagas
- Alessia Bauer, Kurt Schier (Hg.) mit einem Nachtrag von Peter Landau:Konrad Maurer, Reise nach Island (im Sommer 1858)
- Margareta Petersson & Rikard Schönström (eds.):Nordens litteratur
- Matthias Egeler:Islands in the West. Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Íslenzkt þjóðerni: Jón Jónsson Aðils’ Iceland and the road to the future
- Det ophøjede i dansk romantik og en figurativ-filosofisk vurdering af Jens Baggesen og Schack von Staffeldts digterdyst
- The North seen from the South in the Spanish reception of Selma Lagerlöf
- Dangerous Vicinity: Theorizing the Neighbour in August Strindberg’s “The Roofing Ceremony”
- The female detective as the child who needs to know. Saga Norén as an example of potent yet dysfunctional female detectives in contemporary Nordic Noir
- Group genitive in Swedish – s-genitive as a phrase marker
- Generics in Mainland Scandinavian languages
- Nordischer Klang
- Nordischer Klang 2017: Punkt, Punkt, Komma, Strich. Zeichenwelten/Welten zeichnen
- Comics creation as a social experiment: Simon Gärdenfors’ playful performance
- An Anatomy of Facelessness: On Halfdan Pisket’s Dansker Trilogy
- Stripping H.C. Andersen. Peter Madsen’s Historien om en mor (or, what a graphic novel adaptation can do that its literary source cannot)
- Reviews
- Olle Ferm et. al. (Hg.):The Eufemiavisor and Courtly Culture. Time, Texts and Cultural Transfer. Papers from a Symposium in Stockholm 11–13 October 2012
- Laura Sonja Wamhoff:Isländische Erinnerungskultur 1100–1300. Altnordische Historiographie und kulturelles Gedächtnis
- Jana Krüger, Vivian Busch, Katharina Seidel, Christiane Zimmermann u. Ute Zimmermann (Hg.):Die Faszination des Verborgenen und seine Entschlüsselung – Rāði sāʀ kunni. Beiträge zur Runologie, skandinavischen Mediävistik und germanischen Sprachwissenschaft
- Jón Karl Helgason:Echoes of Valhalla. The Afterlife of the Eddas and Sagas
- Alessia Bauer, Kurt Schier (Hg.) mit einem Nachtrag von Peter Landau:Konrad Maurer, Reise nach Island (im Sommer 1858)
- Margareta Petersson & Rikard Schönström (eds.):Nordens litteratur
- Matthias Egeler:Islands in the West. Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination
