Giorgi Vachnadze, Biometric Technology And The Theory Of Human Capital, Non, 8 July 2023
Authentication and Verification: Defining the Problem
Throughout his career, one of the central concerns for Foucault’s work was to investigate, analyze and offer a genealogical account of truth-telling as a mode of subjectivation. The notion of Biopolitics implies many different ways of conceiving the modern problem of truth-politics and its historical constitution. It is important to understand that truth can no longer be spelled with a capital “T”; it has now become the object of calculation, production and fabrication. Truth has become a consumer-product, it remains relevant only in so far as it can catalyze the accumulation of capital. The modern practices of truth-extraction take one of their more hideous forms, when they begin to operate on human subjects. Biometric technologies are beginning, or perhaps have already begun to play a role of increasing importance in this process. The old Marxist problem concerned with the commodification of human labor has now reached a new level when the body itself risks becoming another item on the menu. One that employers will soon be able to select, compare, assess through risk and purchase for profit. The anthropometric, medico-legal artefacts will allow for the conversion of persons into human-material, a series of bio-mass units with market-value attached to each one. The workers’ average life-expectancy i.e. their health, has a direct impact on the longevity of the firm. It will therefore be “in the interests of” both employees and managers that the company would have access to their medical files. And this is only one out of numerous similar possible scenarios.
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