The Art of Identification - Forensics, Surveillance, Identity

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.

About the author

Rex Ferguson is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Birmingham.Melissa M. Littlefield is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.James Purdon is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of St Andrews.

Product details

• Authors: Rex Ferguson
• Assisted by: Rex Ferguson (Editor), Ferguson Rex (Editor), Melissa M. Littlefield (Editor), James Purdon (Editor), Purdon James (Editor)
• Publisher: University Presses
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 29.10.2024
• EAN: 9780271090580
• ISBN: 978-0-271-09058-0
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 19 mm
• Weight: 367 g
• Illustrations: Raster,schwarz-weiss
• Series: AnthropoScene
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Society; Media Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, SCIENCE / Biotechnology, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / Social Aspects, LITERARY CRITICISM / Modern / General, biotechnology, Literary studies: general, Ethical issues: scientific & technological developments, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Privacy & Surveillance