- character, mimesis, marx -

A character mask (German: Charaktermaske) in the Marxian sense is a character masked or disguised with a different character. The term was used by Karl Marx in various published writings from the 1840s to the 1860s, and it is related to the classical Greek concept of mimesis (imitative representation using analogies) and the Roman concept of persona. The notion of character masks has been used by neo-Marxist and non-Marxist sociologists, philosophers and anthropologists to interpret how people relate in societies with a complex division of labour. As a critical concept, bearing character masks contrasts with the concept of "role-taking" because "social roles" do not necessarily assume the masking of behaviour, and character masks do not necessarily assume agreement with roles, or that the roles are fixed. Peter Sloterdijk comments: 

"Besides the critique of mystified consciousness, Marx's theory harbors a second far-reaching variant of ideology critique, which has shaped the critical style of Marxism, its polemical sharpness: the theory of the character mask."

The concept of character masks refers to the circumstance that, in human societies, people can take on functions in which they “act out” roles, whether voluntarily chosen, by necessity, or forced. In those roles, some or all of their true characteristics and intentions may be partly or wholly masked, so that they appear different from what they truly are - “public face” and “private thoughts, interests and emotions” diverge. This implies that persons and their relationships may no longer be quite what they seem to be, and there is a difference between their personal and functional relationships. 

Marx uses the term "character mask" analogously to a theatrical role, where the actor represents a certain interest or function. His concept is both that an identity appears differently from its true identity (it is masked or disguised), and that this difference has very real practical consequences (the mask is not simply a decoration, but performs a real function and has real effects, even independently of the mask bearer).