The Art of Identification: Forensics, Surveillance, Identity

Published by Penn State University Press 2021

The Art of Identification

Forensics, Surveillance, Identity

Edited by: Rex Ferguson , Melissa M. Littlefield and James Purdon

Volume 9 in the series AnthropoScene: The SLSA Book Series

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271091372

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

Ferguson Rex :

Rex Ferguson is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birmingham.Purdon James :

Melissa M. Littlefield is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Reviews

“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

“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

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Rex Ferguson, Melissa M. Littlefield and James Purdon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part 1 Genres of Identification
1. Charming Faces and the Problem of Identification Matt Houlbrook Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2. Identity Noir James Purdon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
3. “The Ghosts of Individual Peculiarities” Murder and Interpretation in Dickens Andrew Mangham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
4. “A Puzzle of Character” Francis Iles and Narratives of Criminality in the 1930s Victoria Stewart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	82
Part 2 The Body Captured
5. The Art of Identification The Skeleton and Human Identity Rebecca Gowland and Tim Thompson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	101
6. Becoming More Biological Ruth Ozeki and the Postgenomic Ethnoracial Novel Patricia E. Chu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
7. Identification Made Visible Photographic Evidence and Russell Williams Jonathan Finn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
Part 3 Surveillant Technologies
8. The Face in the Biometric Passport Liv Hausken Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
9. The Bourne Identifi cation Rex Ferguson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	182
10. Identifi cation and the “Intelligent City” Dorothy Butchard Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
11. Jennifer Egan and the Database Rob Lederer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 262
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 3
- Images: 3
- Other: 3 illustrations
Keywords: Identification; Identity; Literature; Cultural Studies; Cinema; Twentieth-Century

eBook

Published: July 12, 2021
ISBN: 9780271091372