Mala cara: Normalidad y alteridad en la percepción y en la representación del rostro humano

So as to reasonably discuss about otherness, one should first define normality. The normality of patterns determining the perception and representation of human visages must be defined in relation to both the human neurophysiology of face perception, resulting from the biological evolution of the species, and the influence of a visual species on it. Structural semiotics, particularly the plastic analysis of visual configurations, can be adopted as methodology so as to ascertain that which a cultural semiosphere considers as its kernel of normality in the perception and especially in the representation of visages. Only in relation to such kernel can the distance from it of visages that a visual culture considers as other, abnormal, or even illegal, be measured.