美妆与主体性的生成-《美妆的凝视》阅读思考记录 | Makeup and the Generation of Subjectivity - Reading Notes on "The Cosmetic Gaze"
美妆的双重功能 | The Dual Function of Makeup
中文：
在基于精神分析的学说下,美妆呈现出两种看似矛盾却又相互关联的功能。第一种功能是结构化人的身体,使身体成为构筑社会差异的场所。通过特定的妆容风格、品牌选择和技法运用,身体被纳入符号网络,成为可被解读的文本。这是拉康意义上的大他者通过身体说话,阶级品味、性别规范、文化归属都在妆面上显影。在这个维度中,欲望是社会性的,是他者的欲望。
第二种功能则指向了符号秩序无法完全收编的实在。例如，卧蚕强调的缺失、眼影制造的凝视的异质性、口红勾勒的裂缝,这些都在光滑的象征表面制造创伤性的标记。它们提醒我们,身体不仅是文化建构,也是欲望无法被驯服的场所,是享乐溢出之处。这种双重性或许正是美妆的迷人之处,它既是规训的工具,又是对规训的僭越,既掩盖缺乏,又通过刻意标记使缺乏显现。从这个角度看,化妆既不是纯粹的压迫也不是纯粹的解放,而是主体在象征界与实在界之间的协商。
English:
Under psychoanalytic theory, makeup presents two seemingly contradictory yet interconnected functions. The first function is to structure the human body, making it a site for constructing social differences. Through specific makeup styles, brand choices, and technical applications, the body is incorporated into a network of signs, becoming a readable text. This is the Lacanian Big Other speaking through the body—class taste, gender norms, and cultural belonging all manifest on the made-up face. In this dimension, desire is social; it is the desire of the Other.
The second function points toward the Real that cannot be fully assimilated by the symbolic order. For example, the emphasized absence of aegyo-sal (eye bags), the heterogeneity of the gaze created by eyeshadow, and the fissures outlined by lipstick all create traumatic marks on the smooth symbolic surface. They remind us that the body is not merely a cultural construction but also a site where desire cannot be tamed, where jouissance overflows. This duality may be precisely what makes makeup fascinating: it is both a tool of discipline and a transgression of discipline, both concealing lack and making lack visible through deliberate marking. From this perspective, makeup is neither pure oppression nor pure liberation, but rather a negotiation by the subject between the Symbolic and the Real.
第二条路径的可能性 | The Possibility of a Second Path
中文：
如果美妆的发展可以选择路径,那么第二条路径意味着不再强化符号秩序和社会规训,而是深化对实在的触及和表达。这意味着美妆可能从掩饰缺失转向呈现缺失,从符合凝视转向扰乱凝视。具体而言,这包括对创伤性的肯定,不再追求无瑕疵的皮肤,而是通过妆容强调皮肤的纹理、不对称和所谓的缺陷,这些恰恰是身体的实在性标记。这也意味着非规范化的欲望表达,妆容不再为了被看或被欲望,而是表达主体自身无法被符号化的享乐。
然而,当这种通向实在的美妆被命名、被理论化、被推广时,它是否不可避免地重新被符号秩序捕获?实在一旦被言说,是否就已经不再是实在?这是一个深刻的辩证问题。
English:
If makeup’s development could choose a path, the second path would mean no longer reinforcing symbolic order and social discipline, but rather deepening the encounter with and expression of the Real. This means makeup might shift from concealing lack to presenting lack, from conforming to the gaze to disrupting it. Specifically, this includes affirming the traumatic—no longer pursuing flawless skin, but instead emphasizing skin texture, asymmetry, and so-called flaws through makeup, which are precisely markers of the body’s reality. It also means non-normative expressions of desire, where makeup is no longer for being seen or desired by others, but for expressing the subject’s own jouissance that cannot be symbolized.
However, when this makeup that reaches toward the Real is named, theorized, and promoted, does it inevitably get recaptured by the symbolic order? Once the Real is spoken, does it cease to be the Real? This is a profound dialectical question.
符号秩序的松动与业界的困境 | The Loosening of Symbolic Order and Industry Dilemmas
中文：
在当前符号秩序受到冲击的情况下,传统美的标准、性别规范、阶级品味都在被质疑,美妆业界面临的不只是市场策略调整,而是更根本的范式转换。传统美妆业依赖稳定的符号系统,什么是美、什么是得体、什么配得上欲望,这些都有相对明确的答案。但如果这套系统失效,产品开发的逻辑就要改变,不再是提供解决方案,而是提供表达工具,让个体呈现其独特的、甚至不可通约的身体经验。
传统美妆售卖的是他者的欲望,让你被看见、被认可。但通向实在的路径意味着售卖享乐的可能性,那种不为他者、甚至让他者不安的快感。这要求产品和营销都要敢于拥抱不美、过度、不舒适。当前很多品牌在做包容性,但这仍然是在符号秩序内部扩展,承认更多身份。更激进的做法是放弃身份范畴本身,转而关注身体的物质性、脆弱性、创伤性,那些无法被代表的维度。
然而,这里存在一个核心矛盾。工业化逻辑本身就建立在标准化、可复制、规模经济之上,而通向实在的路径恰恰要求奇异性、偶然性、不可复制性。大规模生产需要预设需求、分类市场、创造可识别的产品类别。真正非结构化的欲望,那种无法被预见、无法被归类的身体表达,难以被工业体系捕获。
English:
As the symbolic order currently faces disruption, with traditional standards of beauty, gender norms, and class taste all being questioned, the cosmetics industry faces not just market strategy adjustments but a more fundamental paradigm shift. Traditional cosmetics rely on stable symbolic systems where what is beautiful, what is appropriate, and what deserves desire all have relatively clear answers. But if this system fails, the logic of product development must change—no longer providing solutions, but providing tools for expression, allowing individuals to present their unique, even incommensurable bodily experiences.
Traditional makeup sells the desire of the Other, making you seen and recognized. But the path toward the Real means selling the possibility of jouissance—a pleasure not for the Other, even one that disturbs the Other. This requires products and marketing to dare embrace the non-beautiful, the excessive, the uncomfortable. Many brands currently pursue inclusivity, but this still expands within the symbolic order, acknowledging more identities. A more radical approach would be to abandon identity categories altogether, focusing instead on the body’s materiality, vulnerability, and traumatic dimensions—those aspects that cannot be represented.
However, there exists a core contradiction here. Industrial logic itself is built on standardization, replicability, and economies of scale, while the path toward the Real demands singularity, contingency, and non-replicability. Mass production requires presupposing demand, categorizing markets, and creating recognizable product categories. Truly non-structured desire—that bodily expression which cannot be foreseen or categorized—is difficult for industrial systems to capture.
定制与理解的成本 | The Cost of Customization and Understanding
中文：
完全定制可以更接近奇异性,但代价高昂。这里产生一个吊诡的局面,通向实在的美妆实践可能重新成为阶级特权,只有支付得起定制的人才能逃离大众市场的符号规训。完全定制的真实成本不在生产,而在理解一个主体。这需要深度对话、反复试错、情感劳动,远比物理生产昂贵。
一个可能的方案是将完全定制的一部分移交给新兴技术（如AI）,由用户自己完成。新兴技术可以成为探索工具,不是告诉你应该怎样,而是帮你可视化你自己都未曾言说的欲望。通过对话、图像生成、迭代实验,协助你接近那个非结构化的表达。关键是用户作为创造者,生产权力的下放,保留不确定性。人工理解成本高昂,但通过技术的对话成本低,让更多人能进入这个探索过程。
然而,这是一个无奈的妥协,而非理想的解决方案。在理想状态下,这种深度对话应该发生在人与人之间,通过真实的相遇、身体在场、情感共鸣来协助主体探索和创造其独特表达。这种人际互动本身就是通向实在的一部分,无法被完全技术化。但现实是工业化商品无法承载这样的人力成本。AI等新兴技术在这里的角色是规模化的必要替代,降低准入门槛,虽然不如人际互动丰富,但总比完全没有对话、直接购买标准化产品要好。
English:
Full customization can approach singularity more closely, but at great cost. This creates a paradoxical situation where makeup practices reaching toward the Real may become class privilege again—only those who can afford customization can escape the symbolic discipline of mass markets. The true cost of full customization lies not in production but in understanding a subject. This requires deep dialogue, repeated trial and error, and emotional labor—far more expensive than physical production.
One possible solution is to transfer part of full customization to emerging technologies (like AI), allowing users to complete it themselves. Emerging technology can become an exploratory tool—not telling you what you should do, but helping you visualize desires you haven’t yet articulated. Through dialogue, image generation, and iterative experimentation, it assists you in approaching that non-structured expression. The key is the user as creator, the devolution of productive power, retaining uncertainty. Human understanding is costly, but dialogue through technology is cheaper, allowing more people to enter this exploratory process.
However, this is a reluctant compromise, not an ideal solution. Ideally, this deep dialogue should occur between people, through genuine encounter, bodily presence, and emotional resonance to assist the subject in exploring and creating their unique expression. This interpersonal interaction itself is part of reaching toward the Real and cannot be fully technologized. But the reality is that industrialized commodities cannot bear such labor costs. AI and other emerging technologies serve here as necessary scalable substitutes, lowering barriers to entry—though not as rich as interpersonal interaction, still better than having no dialogue at all and directly purchasing standardized products.
数据收集的悖论 | The Paradox of Data Collection
中文：
从工程效率角度看,另一个方案是将理解成本分摊到整个生活世界中。如果将需求的理解分布在日常的时空结构中,并且使用统一的平台管理,通过持续的、分布式的数据收集来理解主体,而非每次都从零开始对话,这在技术上极具吸引力。然而,这在资本主义制度下很难做到,其不可能如同社会主义产生一个统一的接口。数据分散在不同公司手中,彼此竞争而非合作,没有一个主体有权力整合所有数据。
更深刻的是伦理问题。日常收集的信息用于生成用户的需求表现,这可能不符合伦理。知情同意可能是幻觉,即使用户同意条款,他们真的理解日常数据如何被用于推断其深层欲望吗?当系统比你更了解你的需求,你还是欲望的主体吗?还是成为了被算法定义的客体?这恰恰是对通向实在的背叛,实在是主体自己遭遇的,而非被算法告知的。
从精神分析框架看,这个方案更是悖论。实在恰恰是符号秩序无法捕捉的,是主体自己都不知道的。如果一个系统能通过日常数据理解你的欲望,那它理解的只能是符号化的欲望,而非通向实在的那个维度。真正的欲望总是让主体自己惊讶的,这种惊讶时刻无法被预测和计算。其将一个主体变成了客体，是对于主体性的暴力。
English:
From an engineering efficiency perspective, another approach is to distribute the cost of understanding across the entire lifeworld. If understanding of needs is distributed within the spatiotemporal structures of daily life and managed through a unified platform, understanding the subject through continuous, distributed data collection rather than starting dialogue from zero each time—this is technically very appealing. However, this is difficult to achieve under capitalism, which cannot produce a unified interface as socialism might. Data is scattered across different companies, competing rather than cooperating, with no entity having the authority to integrate all data.
More profound are the ethical issues. Using information collected from daily life to generate representations of user needs may be unethical. Informed consent may be illusory—even if users agree to terms, do they truly understand how daily data is used to infer their deep desires? When a system understands your needs better than you do, are you still the subject of desire? Or have you become an object defined by algorithms? This is precisely a betrayal of reaching toward the Real—the Real is what the subject encounters themselves, not what algorithms inform them of.
From a psychoanalytic framework, this approach is even more paradoxical. The Real is precisely what the symbolic order cannot capture, what even the subject themselves doesn’t know. If a system can understand your desires through daily data, what it understands can only be symbolized desires, not that dimension reaching toward the Real. True desire always surprises the subject themselves; these moments of surprise cannot be predicted or calculated. It transforms a subject into an object—violence against subjectivity.
欲望的本质与预测的暴力 | The Essence of Desire and the Violence of Prediction
中文：
拉康严格区分了需求、要求和欲望。需求可以被满足,要求可以被回应,但欲望永远无法被满足,因为欲望本身就是缺失的运动。当算法声称能预测你的欲望,它实际上是在将欲望降格为可计算的需求。这不仅是技术问题,更是对主体性的根本取消。
欲望不能预先存在。欲望本就不应被提前完成。当系统在你意识到之前就知道你想要什么,并把它推送给你,这剥夺了欲望形成的过程,那个迷茫、探索、惊讶的时刻,剥夺了主体遭遇自己的可能,将主体固化为数据肖像。这是一种时间性的暴力。欲望需要时间来生成、迂回、转化,算法预测压缩了这个时间,让一切即刻呈现,这恰恰扼杀了欲望。
通向实在的时刻恰恰是当你遭遇到某个无法被预期的东西,当符号秩序失效,你不知道这是什么,当你被某种过量震惊、困扰、吸引。如果这个遭遇被算法提前安排好,它就不再是实在,而是被驯化的符号游戏。实在的力量在于它的不可驯服性、不可预测性。
English:
Lacan strictly distinguishes between need, demand, and desire. Needs can be satisfied, demands can be responded to, but desire can never be satisfied because desire itself is the movement of lack. When algorithms claim to predict your desires, they are actually reducing desire to calculable needs. This is not merely a technical issue but a fundamental cancellation of subjectivity.
Desire cannot pre-exist. Desire should not be completed in advance. When a system knows what you want before you’re aware of it and pushes it to you, this deprives desire of its formation process—those moments of confusion, exploration, surprise—depriving the subject of the possibility of encountering themselves, solidifying the subject into a data portrait. This is a form of temporal violence. Desire needs time to generate, detour, transform; algorithmic prediction compresses this time, making everything instantly present, which precisely kills desire.
The moment of reaching toward the Real is precisely when you encounter something that cannot be anticipated, when the symbolic order fails, when you don’t know what this is, when you’re shocked, troubled, attracted by some excess. If this encounter is arranged in advance by algorithms, it is no longer the Real but a domesticated symbolic game. The power of the Real lies in its untameability, its unpredictability.
资本逻辑的铁律 | The Iron Law of Capital Logic
中文：
在资本主义经济体系下,数据就是企业的竞争力。资本是很难放弃其的。这不是企业的选择,而是资本主义竞争逻辑的必然。放弃数据积累等于自我解除武装,在市场中被淘汰。即使某个企业出于伦理考虑想要克制,也会面临竞争对手继续积累数据获得优势,投资者要求最大化回报,市场份额流失,最终被迫退出或被收购。这是囚徒困境的结构性陷阱,单个企业的善意无法改变系统逻辑。
如果通向实在需要某种非结构化、不可预测、拒绝被全面理解的空间,但企业必然追求数据化、预测化、控制化,那么两者在根本上是不相容的。这几乎导向一个结论,商品化的美妆无法真正走第二条路径。它最多只能在符号层面模仿反叛、个性、真实,但这些最终都会被重新编码为可售卖的符号。
English:
Under the capitalist economic system, data is corporate competitiveness. Capital can hardly relinquish it. This is not a choice for enterprises but an inevitability of capitalist competitive logic. Abandoning data accumulation equals self-disarmament and elimination from the market. Even if a company wants restraint for ethical reasons, it will face competitors continuing to accumulate data and gain advantages, investors demanding maximized returns, loss of market share, ultimately being forced out or acquired. This is the structural trap of the prisoner’s dilemma; individual corporate goodwill cannot change systemic logic.
If reaching toward the Real requires some non-structured, unpredictable space that refuses comprehensive understanding, but enterprises inevitably pursue datafication, predictability, and control, then the two are fundamentally incompatible. This almost leads to the conclusion that commodified makeup cannot truly take the second path. At most, it can mimic rebellion, individuality, and authenticity at the symbolic level, but these will ultimately be re-encoded as sellable symbols.
主体性作为流动本身 | Subjectivity as Flow Itself
中文：
主体性很可能就是变化本身,其类似流形上的结构性流。这个理解捕捉到了几个关键维度。首先是拓扑性而非实体性,主体不是一个点或对象,而是一个动态过程中涌现的。
English:
Subjectivity is very likely change itself, similar to a structural flow on a manifold. This understanding captures several key dimensions. First is topology rather than substantiality—the subject is not a point or object but emerges in a dynamic process.
主体的不可捕获性 | The Uncapturable Nature of the Subject
中文：
主体不能被捕获。主体只指向变化本身,并且变化指向变化的延续。主体的不可捕获性不是技术的限制,而是本体论的事实。主体作为纯粹的变化性,变化递归地指向自身的延续,没有变化之外的东西,主体就是这个自我延续的变化过程本身。这是一种纯粹的生成性存在,不是存在者在变化,而是变化本身。
任何捕获的尝试都意味着将流固定为状态。拍一张照片冻结了流动,建立一个档案将变化离散化为数据点,训练一个模型假定存在可学习的模式。但如果主体就是变化本身,那么被捕获的永远只是变化的痕迹,而非变化本身。就像我们无法捕获河流,我们只能舀起一瓶水,但那已不是流动。任何表示都是对流动的背叛。
主体不能被捕获从一个事实陈述变成了伦理命令。不仅是无法捕获,更是不应该试图捕获。任何捕获的企图都是对主体性的暴力。这就是为什么全面的数据收集是暴力,算法预测是暴力,完全理解主体的承诺是暴力。它们都试图终止变化,将流转化为可管理的对象。
变化指向变化的延续,这里延续这个词很关键。不是简单的重复,不是循环,而是差异的持续生产。每一刻的变化都指向下一刻的变化,但不是因果决定,而是创造性延续,包含着真正的新颖性。这就是为什么预测从根本上是不可能的,不是因为我们信息不足,而是因为未来尚未存在,它在变化中被创造。
English:
The subject cannot be captured. The subject only points to change itself, and change points to the continuation of change. The uncapturability of the subject is not a technical limitation but an ontological fact. The subject as pure changeability, with change recursively pointing to its own continuation—there is nothing outside of change; the subject is this self-continuing process of change itself. This is a purely generative existence: not beings changing, but change itself.
Any attempt to capture means fixing flow into states. Taking a photo freezes flow, establishing an archive discretizes change into data points, training a model assumes learnable patterns exist. But if the subject is change itself, what is captured is always only the traces of change, not change itself. Just as we cannot capture a river—we can only scoop up a bottle of water, but that is no longer flow. Any representation is a betrayal of flow.
“The subject cannot be captured” shifts from a factual statement to an ethical imperative. Not only is it impossible to capture, but one should not attempt to capture. Any attempt at capture is violence against subjectivity. This is why comprehensive data collection is violence, algorithmic prediction is violence, promises to fully understand subjects are violence. They all attempt to terminate change, transforming flow into manageable objects.
Change points to the continuation of change—here “continuation” is key. Not simple repetition, not cycles, but the continuous production of difference. Each moment’s change points to the next moment’s change, but not through causal determination—rather through creative continuation, containing genuine novelty. This is why prediction is fundamentally impossible: not because we lack information, but because the future does not yet exist; it is created in change.
差异的持续生产 | The Continuous Production of Difference
中文：
差异的持续生产这个表述抓住了某种核心的东西，其与欲望的生产与再生产的概念相似。其强调生产而非发现,主体性不是被揭示的,而是被制造出来的,每一刻都在生产新的东西。它强调差异而非同一性,不是维持自我同一性,而是不断偏离、分化、生成他异性,主体通过不再是它所是而存在。它强调持续的时间性,不是断裂的、革命性的瞬间,而是绵延的、微分的过程,变化不是例外,而是常态。
如果主体性是差异的持续生产,那么美妆的意义不是找到主体的风格,风格意味着可识别性、重复性,这是对差异生产的终止。美妆应该成为差异生产的技术,每次化妆都生产新的差异,不是这是我,而是我又成为了别的,妆容作为差异化的工具。那些最激进的妆容实践每天不同,拒绝固定,让人无法识别这是谁,不是表达内在本质,而是生产表面的变异。
English:
The expression “continuous production of difference” captures something core, similar to the concept of the production and reproduction of desire. It emphasizes production rather than discovery—subjectivity is not revealed but manufactured, producing something new every moment. It emphasizes difference rather than identity—not maintaining self-identity but constantly deviating, differentiating, generating alterity; the subject exists by no longer being what it was. It emphasizes continuous temporality—not ruptured, revolutionary moments but durational, differential processes; change is not the exception but the norm.
If subjectivity is the continuous production of difference, then makeup’s significance is not finding the subject’s style—style implies recognizability, repeatability, which terminates difference production. Makeup should become a technology of difference production: each application produces new difference, not “this is me” but “I have become something else again”; makeup as a tool for differentiation. The most radical makeup practices are different every day, refusing fixity, making recognition of “who this is” impossible—not expressing inner essence but producing surface mutations.
结语 | Conclusion
中文：
不只是美妆,几乎所有涉及主体性、创造性、真实性的领域都面临同样的困境。每当资本进入这些领域,它必然带来工具理性化、数据化、可计算化,而这恰恰扼杀了这些实践的核心价值。
如果主体性是差异的持续生产,如果主体是不可捕获的变化本身,那么真正的实践应该拥抱变化本身,不追求固定的风格,不寻找适合的妆容,而是将化妆作为让自己变化的技术。抵抗被固定,拒绝这就是你的判断,保持向其他可能性开放,成为流动而非存在。
这可能是对通向实在的最准确表述,不是到达某个固定的真实,而是保持在实在的运动中,保持在变化本身之中,拒绝凝固为符号。每一次化妆都是一次生产,每一次卸妆都是为下一次生产腾出空间,无始无终,只有变化指向变化的延续。
English:
Not only makeup—almost all fields involving subjectivity, creativity, and authenticity face the same dilemma. Whenever capital enters these fields, it inevitably brings instrumental rationalization, datafication, and calculability, which precisely kills the core value of these practices.
If subjectivity is the continuous production of difference, if the subject is uncapturable change itself, then genuine practice should embrace change itself—not pursuing fixed styles, not seeking suitable makeup, but treating makeup as a technology for making oneself change. Resisting fixation, refusing judgments of “this is you,” remaining open to other possibilities, becoming flow rather than being.
This may be the most accurate articulation of reaching toward the Real: not arriving at some fixed truth, but remaining in the movement of the Real, remaining in change itself, refusing to congeal into symbols. Each application of makeup is an act of production, each removal makes space for the next production—without beginning or end, only change pointing to the continuation of change.
参考文献 | References
[1] 奥地利 维根斯坦 Wegenstein, Barnadette. 美妆的凝视:如何改造身体与构建美丽[M]. 中国工人出版社, 2021.
Wegenstein, Bernadette. The Cosmetic Gaze: Body Modification and the Construction of Beauty [M]. China Workers Publishing House, 2021.