Lucas D. Introna, Helen Nissenbaum: Facial Recognition Technology. A Survey of Policy and Implementation Issues (2009)

Facial recognition technology (FRT) has emerged as an attractive solution to address many contemporary needs for identification and the verification of identity claims. It brings together the promise of other biometric systems, which attempt to tie identity to individually distinctive features of the body, and the more familiar functionality of visual surveillance systems. This report develops a socio-political analysis that bridges the technical and social-scientific literatures on FRT and addresses the unique challenges and concerns that attend its development, evaluation, and specific operational uses, contexts, and goals. It highlights the potential and limitations of the technology, noting those tasks for which it seems ready for deployment, those areas where performance obstacles may be overcome by future technological developments or sound operating procedures, and still other issues which appear intractable. Its concern with efficacy extends to ethical considerations.

Report of the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response, New York University
April 2009
60 pages

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A. Kiarina Kordela: $urplus: Spinoza, Lacan (2008)

“Maintains that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the proper continuation of the line of thought from Spinoza to Marx.

Opposing both popular “neo-Spinozisms” (Deleuze, Negri, Hardt, Israel) and their Lacanian critiques (Zizek and Badiou), Surplus maintains that Lacanian psychoanalysis is the proper continuation of the Spinozian-Marxian line of thought. Author A. Kiarina Kordela argues that both sides ignore the inherent contradictions in Spinoza’s work, and that Lacan’s reading of Spinoza—as well as of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Wittgenstein—offers a much subtler balance of knowing when to take the philosopher at face value and when to read him against himself. Moving between abstract theory and tangible political, ethical, and literary examples, Kordela traces the emergence of “enjoyment” and “the gaze” out of Spinoza’s theories of God, truth, and causality, Kant’s critique of pure reason, and Marx’s pathbreaking application of set theory to economy. Kordela’s thought unfolds an epistemology and an ontology proper to secular capitalist modernity that call for a revision of the Spinoza-Marx-Lacan line as the sole alternative to the (anti-)Platonist tradition.”

Publisher SUNY Press, 2008
SUNY Series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature
ISBN 0791470202, 9780791470206
195 pages

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Michel Foucault: The Politics of Truth (1997/2007)

“In 1784, the German newspaper Berlinische Monatschrifte asked its audience to reply to the question ‘What is Enlightenment?’ Immanuel Kant, following Moses Mendelssohn, took the opportunity to investigate the purported truths and assumptions of his ‘age of reason.’ Two hundred years later, Michel Foucault released a response to Kant’s initial essay, positioning the philosopher as the initiator of the discourse, and critique, of modernity—a credit traditionally accredited to Nietzsche. The Politics of Truth takes this initial encounter between these two philosophers, Foucault and Kant, as the framework around which these different lectures and unpublished essays are assembled. Ranging from reflections on the Enlightenment and revolution to a consideration of the Frankfurt School, this collection offers insight into the topics preoccupying Foucault as he worked on what would be his last body of published work, the three volume History of Sexuality. Foucault’s examination of Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” is the most “American” moment of Foucault’s thinking. It is in America that he realized the necessity of tying down his own reflection to that of the Frankfurt School. Edited by Sylvère Lotringer, The Politics of Truth contains transcripts of lectures Foucault gave in America and France between 1978 and 1984, the year of his death.”

Edited by Sylvère Lotringer
Introduction by John Rajchman
Translated by Lysa Hochroth and Catherine Porter
Publisher Semiotext(e), 2007
Foreign Agents series
ISBN 1584350393, 9781584350392
195 pages

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