UC Irvine: Michael and Stacy Koehn Public Lecture in Critical Theory

Authenticating Figures: Algorithms and the New Politics of Recognition

Originally planned for March 2020, but canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak, UCI Critical Theory is proud to now present this event virtually. 

What does recognition mean in an era of pervasive data capture and automatic pattern detection?  Tracing the historical move from “pattern discrimination” to “pattern recognition,” this talk unpacks the logic and politics of recognition at the core of systems designed to automatically identify and classify users. It argues for the centrality of the humanities in understanding how we have become characters in a drama called “Big Data.”