The Art of Identification

Forensics, Surveillance, Identity

By: Rex Ferguson (Editor), Melissa M. Littlefield (Editor), James Purdon (Editor)

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Paperback | 2 October 2024

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262 Pages

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22.86 x 15.24 x 1.52

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Since the mid-nineteenth century, there has been a notable acceleration in the development of the techniques used to confirm identity. From fingerprints to photographs to DNA, we have been rapidly amassing novel means of identification, even as personal, individual identity remains a complex chimera. The Art of Identification examines how such processes are entangled within a wider sphere of cultural identity formation.

Against the backdrop of an unstable modernity and the rapid rise and expansion of identificatory techniques, this volume makes the case that identity and identification are mutually imbricated and that our best understanding of both concepts and technologies comes through the interdisciplinary analysis of science, bureaucratic infrastructures, and cultural artifacts. With contributions from literary critics, cultural historians, scholars of film and new media, a forensic anthropologist, and a human bioarcheologist, this book reflects upon the relationship between the bureaucratic, scientific, and technologically determined techniques of identification and the cultural contexts of art, literature, and screen media. In doing so, it opens the interpretive possibilities surrounding identification and pushes us to think about it as existing within a range of cultural influences that complicate the precise formulation, meaning, and reception of the concept.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Dorothy Butchard, Patricia E. Chu, Jonathan Finn, Rebecca Gowland, Liv Hausken, Matt Houlbrook, Rob Lederer, Andrew Mangham, Victoria Stewart, and Tim Thompson.

Industry Reviews

"While there is now a growing literature on identification, there is no volume, as far as I know, so firmly rooted in literary studies, as compared to historical approaches. The Art of Identification makes a significant, original, and novel contribution to the literature." -Simon Cole,author of Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification "In a world increasingly dominated by technological forms of human surveillance, identification, and profiling, it is ever more important to examine how such processes affect how we feel and understand ourselves and others. The exciting essays in The Art of Identification are a signal contribution to this task. The collection will fascinate humanities scholars, scientists, and AI ethicists alike." -Edward Higgs,author of Identifying the English: A History of Personal Identification 1500 to the Present

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