The Speculative Machine of Categorization

• The technological infrastructures of borders manage the unfixable nature of identity through identification practices. While the heterogeneity of identities is a matter of possibilities, border regimes, through building upon and extending the categories of difference designed along race, gender, class, and age operate in the realm of probabilities. This process however is not smooth as there is always a gap between a body, its physical, corporeal and performative possibilities and its documentation, representation and recognition. The frequent errors in practices of identification according to categorization are not always treated by its promoters as glitches to be fixed, but rather as features that need to be made invisible or imperceptible in order to make speculation on probabilities operative. We therefore understand the border as a speculative categorization machine, and the infrastructures of border work as inherently dependent on these categories to function. Focusing on two cases of biometric passport control and automated accent recognition, the different ways in which they produce and apply categorization as their main mode of operation, as well as the different temporalities in which they occur, we ask: What happens when these categories are not recognized but rejected, overemphasized, or messed up completely by those who are subject to this speculative machine? Can these refusals re-distribute possibilities beyond recognition by exceeding the categories to which the border seeks to anchor the body? Following Denise Ferreira da Silva's figuration of “Difference without Separability” we would like to think how these three tactical engagements with categories might lead to other forms of speculation and counter-speculations where movement and encounter can be imagined without the categories of recognition.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Statsvetenskap -- Globaliseringsstudier (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Political Science -- Globalisation Studies (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Etnologi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Ethnology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik med samhällsvetenskaplig inriktning (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Systems, Social aspects (hsv//eng)

HUMANIORA  -- Historia och arkeologi -- Teknikhistoria (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- History and Archaeology -- History of Technology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialantropologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Anthropology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi -- Kulturgeografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography -- Human Geography (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

borders

biometrics

categories

colonialization

body

identity

Kulturantropologi

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)