Effacing the face : botox and the anarchivic archive

Botox is a cosmetic technology, and is thus concerned with changes to the appearance of the face and the surface of the skin. Botox is one of the many technologies that form the arsenal of an ‘appearance industry’ dedicated to reducing ‘the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles’ wherever they may appear. In this paper, an analysis of Botox and its milieu will reveal the foibles and preoccupations of a culture obsessed with the face and the surface, with youth and beauty, and with the apparent danger of aging. But Botox is about more than that, for it is is also tied up with the recording and erasure of time and memory. As such, Botox as a cosmetic technology can also be understood as a writing technology, and further, as a technology of the archive. Like many technologies, however, and like any product designed with its longevity in the market in mind, Botox is a pharmakon, it poisons as it cures, it claws back what it dispenses. Botox delivers the youthful, human face at the same time as it takes it away and replaces it with a technical simulacrum, mobilizing fantasies both of human beauty and technological transcendence, commodifying the very passing of time in this movement.