The Senseless Machine
Toward a Crip Reading of (No-touch) Hands and Human Value from Eugenics to Biometrics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37062/sf.62.27823Nyckelord:
biometrics, AI imaginaries, apocalypticism, existential media studies, crip theoryAbstract
Combining crip theory and existential media studies, the purpose of this theoretical essay is to critically interrogate a biometric palm-reading device that turns the hand into a means for payment – connecting its datafied veins to one’s assets – by unpacking its specific “techno-logics” and probing its forceful yet ambivalent sociotechnical imaginary. Palm recognition technology relies on the annulment of touch which calls forth, and depends on, what we call the existential–phenomenological chasm. The argument is that as hands are reduced to touch-free functionalist components, the realities of the embodied existential self are made invisible, and so is a fuller perceptual field of being human in diversity and disability. The chasm thus reinforces the ableism of the normate, instrumental hand, while also invoking dark genealogies of measuring bodies in culture. We caution that if biometrics were to be turned into a primary signifier of human identity and value ascription, this would reactivate eugenic hauntings with consequences for “human value”. This fact calls for “cripping” the senseless machine, subjecting it to the crucial work of crip technoscience.
Referenser
Adams, R., B. Reiss & D. Serlin (Eds.) (2015) Keywords for disability studies. New York University Press.
Ajana, B. (2013) Governing through biometrics: The biopolitics of identity. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Andrejevic, M. & N. Selwyn (2022) Facial recognition. Cambridge: Polity.
Banner, O. (2019) “Disability studies, big data and algorithmic culture”, 45-58 in K. Ellis, R. Garland-Thomson, M. Kent & R. Robertson (Eds.) Interdisciplinary approaches to disability: Looking towards the future, 2. New York: Routledge.
Levine, P. & A. Bashford (2012) “Introduction: Eugenics and the modern world,” in P. Levine and A. Bashford (Eds) The Oxford handbook of the history of eugenics, Online edition: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195373141.001.0001
Beal, T. (2018) The book of revelation: A biography. Princeton University Press.
Berg, M. (2022) “Digital technography: A methodology for interrogating emerging digital technologies and their futures”, Qualitative Inquiry 28 (7):827–836. https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004221096851
Bowker, G. & S. Leigh Star (2000) Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Boston: MIT Press.
Browne, S. (2015) Dark matters. Durham: Duke University Press.
Burckhardt, M., D. van Geenen, C. Gerlitz, S. Hind, T. Kaerlein, D. Lämmerhirt & A. Volmar (Eds) (2022) Interrogating datafication: Towards a praxeology of data. Biefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”. New York and London: Routledge.
Butler, J. (2005) Senses of the subject. New York: Fordham University Press.
Butnaro, D. (2023) Exoskeletal devices and the body: Deviant bodies, extended bodies. London: Routledge.
Campolo, A. & K. Crawford (2020) “Enchanted determinism: Power without responsibility in artificial intelligence.” Engaging Science, Technology, and Society 6(1):1–19.
Chun, W.H.K. (2021) Discriminating data: Correlation, neighborhoods, and the new politics of recognition. Boston: MIT Press.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2021) “Time machines: Artificial intelligence, process, and narrative”, Philosophy & Technology 34 (4):1623–1638.
Couldry, N. & U. Meijas (2019) The costs of connection: How data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism. Stanford University Press.
Crampton, J.W. (2019) “Platform biometrics”, Surveillance & Society 17 (1/2): 54-62.
Crawford, K. (2021) Atlas of AI. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Davies, L.J. (1997) “Constructing normalcy: The bell curve, the novel and the invention of the disabled body in the nineteenth century”, 3-16 in L.J. Davies (Ed.) The disability studies reader (2nd edn). London: Routledge.
Dolezal, L. (2020) “Disability as malleability: The prosthetic metaphor, Merleau-Ponty and the case of Aimee Mullins”, in D. Butnaro (Ed.) Medial Bodies between Fiction and Faction: Reinventing Corporeality. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Donnelly, K. (2020) “We have always been biased: Measuring the human body from anthropometry to the computational social sciences”, 20-33 in A. Kaminska & D. Grondin (Eds.) Biometrics: Mediating bodies, PUBLIC, 60.
Dreyfus, H.L. & M.A. Wrathall (2009) “A brief introduction to phenomenology and existentialim”, 1-6 in H.L. Dreyfus& M.A. Wrathall (Eds.) A Companion to phenomenology and existentialism. Chichester: Blackwell.
Ellis, K. & M. Kent (2010) Disability and new media. London: Routledge.
Fairhurst, M. (2018) Biometrics: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Flusser, V. (1991) The shape of things: A philosophy of design. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Forlano, L. (2016) “Hacking the feminist disabled body”, Journal of Peer Production 8 (January):
Forlano, L. (2019) “Posthuman futures: Connecting/disconnecting the networked medical self” in Z. Papacharissi (Ed.) A networked self and human augmentics, artificial intelligence, sentience. London: Routledge.
Fritsch, K. (2016) “Accessible”, 23–28 in K. Fritsch, C. O’Connor & A.K. Thompson (Eds.) Keywords for radicals: The contested vocabulary of late capitalist struggle. Chico: AK Press.
Frosh, P. (2018) The poetics of digital media. Cambridge: Polity.
Garland-Thomson, R. (1997 [2017]) Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature. New York: Columbia University Press.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2017a) “Eugenic world building and disability: The strange world of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go”, Journal of Medical Humanities 38 (2):133–145.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2017b) “Building a world with disability in it”, 51-62 in A. Waldschmidt, H. Berressem & M. Ingwersen (Eds.) Culture-theory-disability: Encounters between disability studies and cultural studies. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Gates, K. (2011) Our biometric future: Facial recognition technology and the culture of surveillance. New York: New York University Press.
Goggin, G. & C. Newell (2003) Digital disability: The social construction of disability in new media. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Goggin G. & K. Ellis (2015) Disability and the media. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Haggerty, K.D. and R. Ericson (2000) “The surveillant assemblage”, British Journal of Sociology 51 (4):605–622. doi: 10.1080/00071310020015280
Hamraie, A. & K. Fritsch (2019) “Crip technoscience manifesto”, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 5 (1):1–33.
Han, B.-C. (2017) In the swarm: Digital prospects. Boston: MIT Press.
Heynen, R. (2020) “Biometric aesthetics: Towards a critical theory of the biometric body”, 109-125 In: Aleksandra Kaminska and David Grondin (Eds.) Biometrics: Mediating Bodies, PUBLIC, 60.
Horning, R. (2012) “Notes on the ‘Data Self’”, The New Inquiry https://thenewinquiry.com/blog/dumb-bullshit/, 2 Feb 12.
Ihde, D. (1974) “The experience of technology: Human-machine relations”, Cultural Hermeneutics 2 (3): 267–279.
Ihde, D. (2002) Bodies in technology. University of Minnesota Press.
Jain, S.S. (1999) “The prosthetic imagination: Enabling and disabling the prosthesis trope”, Science, Technology and Human Values 24 (1):39.
Joas, H. (1997) G. H. Mead: A contemporary re-examination of his thought. [1980]. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Kafer, A. (2013) Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press.
Kaminska, A. & D. Grondin 2020. “Introduction”, 7-13 in Aleksandra Kaminska and David Grondin (Eds.) Biometrics: Mediating Bodies, PUBLIC, 60.
Klein, N. (2020) “How big tech plans to profit from the pandemic”, The Guardian, 13 May, 2020.
Lagerkvist. A. (2022) Existential media: A media theory of the limit situation. Oxford University Press.
Lagerkvist A. (2021) “Embodiment: The digital afterlife”, 221-230 in Heidi Campbell & Ruth Tsuria (Eds.) Digital Religion 2.0. New York: Routledge.
Lim, M. (2020) Hands: Medium and massage. https://handsbook.ca/
Lupton, D. (2016) The quantified self: A sociology of self-tracking. Cambridge: Polity Press.
McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding media: The extension of man. New York: McGrawHill.
McQueen, A. (2017) Political realism in apocalyptic times. Cambridge University Press.
McRuer, R. (2017) “No future for crips: Disorderly conduct in the New World Order; or, disability studies on the verge of a nervous breakdown”, 63-78 in A. Waldschmidt, H. Berressem & M. Ingwersen (Eds.) Culture-theory-disability: Encounters between disability studies and cultural studies. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.
Magnet, S.A. (2011) When biometrics fail. Durham: Duke University Press.
Maguire, M.( 2009) “The birth of biometric security”, Anthropology Today 25 (2):9–14.
Mead, G.H. (1932 [2002]) The philosophy of the present. Edited by Arthur E. Murphy. New York: Prometheus Books.
Mead, G.H. (1934 [1967]) Mind, self & society: From the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Edited by Charles W. Morris. Lund: Argos.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1946 [2011]) Phenomenology of perception. Milton Park: Routledge.
Mills, M. & J. Sterne (2017) “Afterword II dismediation— Three proposals, six tactics”, 365-378 in E. Elcessor & B. Kirkpatrick (Eds.) Disability media studies. New York University Press.
Mitchell, D. & S.L. Snyder (2001) Narrative prosthesis: Disability and the dependencies of discourse. University of Michigan Press.
Mitchell D.T. & S.L. Snyder (1997) The body and physical difference: Discourses of disability. University of Michigan Press.
Mordini, E. & S. Massari (2008) “Body, biometrics and identity”. Bioethics 22 (9):488-498.
Mullaney, T.S., B. Peters, M. Hicks & K. Philip (Eds.) (2021) Your computer is on fire. Boston: MIT Press.
Nye, D. (1996) American technological sublime. Boston: MIT Press.
Olwig, K.F., Grünenberg, K., Møhl, P., & Simonsen, A. (2019) The biometric border world: Technologies, bodies and identities on the move. London: Routledge.
O'Neil, C. (2017) Weapons of math destruction. New York: Penguin Books.
Pearl, S. (2010) About faces: Physiognomy in nineteenth-century Britain. Harvard University Press.
Peters, B. (2016) “Digital”, 93-108 in Benjamin Peters (Ed.) Digital keywords: A vocabulary of information, society and culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Peters, J. D. (1988) “Information: Notes toward a critical history”. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 12(2): 9-23.
Petrick, E. (2022) “The computer as prosthesis: Embodiment, augmentation and disability”, 399-415 in Janet Abbate and Stephanie Dick (Eds) Abstractions and embodiments: New histories of computing and society. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Pfeiffer, D. (1994) ”Eugenics and Disability Discrimination.” Disability & Society, 9(4).
Ricoeur, P. (1992) Myself as another. University of Chicago Press.
Robertson, M., A. Ley & E. Light (2019) The first into the dark: The Nazi persecution of the disabled. Ubiquity Press Uts Epress.
Rogg, M. (2024) “Twists of the smart body: Biohacks of biometric existence”, 192-199 in Marlene Bart and Johannes Breuer (Eds.) Atlas der Datenkörper 2, Bielefelt: Tanscript Verlag.
Ryan, G.W. & H.R. Bernard (2003) “Techniques to identify themes”, Field Methods 15 (1):85–109.
Salter, C. (2023) “The two-century quest to quantify our senses”, The MIT Press Reader.
Schaffzin, G. (2020) “The drafted body”, 35-49 in Aleksandra Kaminska and David Grondin (Eds.) Biometrics: Mediating bodies. PUBLIC, 60.
Schwartz, M. (2018) “On love and touch: The radical haptics of gestational surrogacy”, in Zizi Papacharissi (Ed.) A networked self and love. New York: Routledge.
Sennett, R. (2008) The craftsman. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Sharma, S. (2021) “Introduction: A feminist medium is the message”, 1–19 in Sarah Sharma and Rianka Singh (Eds.) Re-understanding media: Feminist extensions of Marshall McLuhan. Durham: Duke University Press.
Siegert, B. (2015) Cultural techniques: Grids, filters, doors and other articulations of the real. New York: Fordham University Press.
Sobchack, V. (2006) “A leg to stand on: Prosthetics, metaphor, and materiality”, 21 in Marquard Smith & Joanne Morra (Eds.) The prosthetic impulse: From a posthuman present to a biocultural future. London: MIT Press.
Torres, E.P. (2023) “Longtermism and eugenics: A primer. The intellectual lineage of Nick Bostrom’s Retrograde futurism”, Truthdig.com https://www.truthdig.com/articles/longtermism-and-eugenics-a-primer/
Turner, B.S. (2008) The body & society. London: Sage.
Valdivia, A., J.C. Serrajòrdia & A. Swianiewicz (2023) “There is an elephant in the room: Towards a critique on the use of fairness in biometrics”, AI Ethics 3:1419. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43681-022-00249
Wälivaara, J. & K. Ljuslinder (2020) “(Im)possible lives and love: Disability and crip temporality in Swedish cinema”, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research 22 (1):80–87. https://doi.org/10.16993/sjdr.629
Whittaker, M., M. Alper, C. L. Bennett, S. Hendren, L. Kaziunas, M. Mills, M. R. Morris, J. Rankin, E. Rogers, M. Salas, S. Myers West (2019) Disability, Bias, AI (The AI Now Institute: New York, November 2019).
Young, L.C. (2020) ”Foreword: The hand”, n.p. in Merlyna Lim (Ed.) Hands: Medium and massage. https://handsbook.ca/#foreword
Zuboff, S. (2019) The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. New York: Publicaffairs.
Downloads
Publicerad
Referera så här
Nummer
Sektion
Licens
Copyright (c) 2025 Amanda Lagerkvist, Jenny Eriksson-Lundström, Maria Rogg
Detta verk är licensierat under en Creative Commons Erkännande-Ickekommersiell-IngaBearbetningar 4.0 Internationell-licens.
Allt material i Sociologisk Forskning publiceras med omedelbar öppen tillgång (open access), under Creative Commons-licensen CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Allt innehåll i tidskriften är fritt tillgängligt utan kostnad och får för icke-kommersiella syften fritt läsas, laddas ned, kopieras, delas, skrivas ut och länkas. Innehållet får dock inte ändras. När innehållet används måste författare och källa anges. Upphovsrätten till innehållet tillhör respektive författare. Inga publiceringsavgifter tas ut.
