The Art of Identification : : Forensics, Surveillance, Identity / / ed. by Rex Ferguson, James Purdon, Melissa M. Littlefield.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English
• MitwirkendeR: Butchard, Dorothy,; Chu, Patricia E.,; Ferguson, Rex,; Finn, Jonathan,; Gowland, Rebecca,; Hausken, Liv,; Houlbrook, Matt,; Lederer, Rob,; Littlefield, Melissa M.,; Mangham, Andrew,; Purdon, James,; Stewart, Victoria,; Thompson, Tim,
• HerausgeberIn: Ferguson, Rex,; Littlefield, Melissa M.,; Purdon, James,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: AnthropoScene: The SLSA Book Series ; 9
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (262 p.) :; 3 illustrations

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part 1 Genres of Identification -- 1. Charming Faces and the Problem of Identification -- 2. Identity Noir -- 3. “The Ghosts of Individual Peculiarities” Murder and Interpretation in Dickens -- 4. “A Puzzle of Character” Francis Iles and Narratives of Criminality in the 1930s -- Part 2 The Body Captured -- 5. The Art of Identification The Skeleton and Human Identity -- 6. Becoming More Biological Ruth Ozeki and the Postgenomic Ethnoracial Novel -- 7. Identification Made Visible Photographic Evidence and Russell Williams -- Part 3 Surveillant Technologies -- 8. The Face in the Biometric Passport -- 9. The Bourne Identifi cation Rex Ferguson -- 10. Identifi cation and the “Intelligent City” -- 11. Jennifer Egan and the Database -- Contributors -- Index