Engineering Race: Statistics, Data and the Design of a Racialised Future

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 2019, 7 PM

HEAD – Genève, Boulevard Helvétique 9, 1205 Genève, seminar room 27, 2nd floor

Image from page 133 of "Statistical studies in the New York money-market; preceded by a brief analysis under the theory of money and credit, with statistical tables, diagrams and folding chart" (1902) — Image from page 133 of “Statistical studies in the New York money-market; preceded by a brief analysis under the theory of money and credit, with statistical tables, diagrams and folding chart” (1902)

The crisis of data and the growing dissent toward algorithmic interruptions in daily life are part of a larger crisis of enumeration and the engineering of individual and collective social bodies. It is widely thought that our present desire for data finds its origin in contemporary modes of computation, namely machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence technologies. To the contrary, the conditions for these technologies were set forth by Western fixations on classification, data aggregation and mathematics. In this intervention, I will discuss the role that symbolic mathematics have played in the production of truth. Ultimately, I seek to problematise the contemporary space of the digital as always already predicated on the wider logics of human sorting and racialisation. I argue that we must return to mathematics and the engineering of individual and collective bodies in order to address contemporary forms of algorithmic oppression.