*
<br>*
<br>
<br>*Goldsmiths Department of Sociology Annual Lecture*
<br>
<br>*
<br>*
<br>
<br>*Thursday, 24th October, 4pm-6pm*
<br>
<br>Professor Stuart Hall Building LG 02*
<br>*
<br>
<br>*Goldsmiths, University of London
<br>*
<br>
<br>
<br>*Amade M’charek (Professor of Anthropology of Science, University of
<br>Amsterdam)*
<br>
<br>*
<br>*
<br>
<br>*Race, Face and Forensic Identification*
<br>
<br>
<br>**
<br>
<br>The face is evident and intricate. In everyday life the face is
<br>ubiquitous. Yet in social theory the face is rather absent. In my
<br>lecture I want to move beyond the representational model and attend to
<br>the work that a face can /do,/ and to what the face is /capable of/. I
<br>introduce the concept of the /tentacular/ to analyze how the face draws
<br>certain publics together and how it feeds on that public to assume
<br>content and contours. My examples come for the field of forensic
<br>genetics, where DNA-phenotyping is used to produce a ‘composite face’ of
<br>the unknown individual. I will show that this novel technology is not so
<br>much aimed at the /individual suspect/ but at a /suspect population/,
<br>clusters of individuals. I argue that this population is racialized
<br>through the biologization of the phenotype.
<br>
<br>
<br>This process prompts the question: what is race? To answer this, I
<br>suggest that we need to ‘care’ for race, i.e., to invent methods that
<br>are open-ended and allow us to follow race around and examine how it
<br>shifts and changes in practice. I propose the concept of /generous
<br>methods/ to show that the slipperiness of race is not simply a matter of
<br>‘multiplicity’; race is not only an ‘object multiple’. As a word and a
<br>practice, race is different ontological things altogether. Different
<br>realities: race is an object, a tool, and a theory. Three different yet
<br>connected realities, contributing to its slipperiness as well as its
<br>virulent nature.
<br>
<br>--
<br>----------------------------------
<br>
<br>Michael Guggenheim
<br>17 Popham Street
<br>N1 8QW London
<br>UK
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