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On Identification: Theory and History of a Media Practice

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Materiality of Cooperation

Part of the book series: Medien der Kooperation – Media of Cooperation ((MEKOO))

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Abstract

In digital cultures, practices of registering, identifying, and classifying can hardly be separated any longer. This text addresses the genealogy of ever more infrastructural practices and controversial technologies of identification. It provides a media history of identifying with passports and credit cards. Identification, as I understand it, is a co-operative media and data practice that always relies on more than one person. It involves human bodies and their semiotic resources right from the start and attaches them to bureaucratic systems of inscription. This includes digital identification procedures that integrate face and fingerprint recognition. Biometry thus attempts to overcome the constitutive identificatory gap between accounts, bodies, and persons.

‘Identities seek control.’ (White, 2008, p. 1)

This text is based on ideas that were developed within the framework of the Lecture and Workshop Series on Practice Theory of the CRC 1187 ‘Media of Cooperation’ at the University of Siegen. It was first published as a Working Paper in German (http://dx.doi.org/10.25819/ubsi/4437). My thanks go to Jenny Berkholz, Verena Wöbking, Tobias Conradi and Sebastian Randerath for their help with the text, Ronja Trischler for collaborative work on blockchain ethnography, Francis Hunger for helpful critique, and Friedemann Vogel and the students of a joint Siegen seminar on Signs, Media and Practices of Identification in the summer term of 2021. Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 262513311 – CRC 1187 Media of Cooperation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The following passage is based on my thoughts in Giessmann (2018a), here: pp. 104–106.

  2. 2.

    On ‘banal surveillance’, see the BANSUR research project (https://www.tuni.fi/en/research/banal-surveillance-unravelling-causes-and-remedies-privacy-paradox-bansur (access 30 March 2020)). On the history of Finnish identity papers, see also Haara and Lehmuskallio (2020), Lehmuskallio and Haara (2022).

  3. 3.

    The following is based on my observations in Giessmann (2017), here: p. 56.

  4. 4.

    On European credit card history, see Giessmann (2021).

  5. 5.

    Gilles Deleuze, in his ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ (1992), much later cites a fantasy by Félix Guattari, who imagines a city in which access to spaces is granted via electronic (dividual) cards. Ibid., p. 261.

  6. 6.

    The ID-1 format, first standardised in 1985, takes these dimensions from the US ANSI credit card standards since 1971, which in turn were a basis for the ISO standards 7810, 7811-1 to 6 and 7813.

  7. 7.

    ‘Handwriting is also an indexical sign, because unlike printed matter, it refers to its reason or author like a pointer. The juridical logic of the signature is based on precisely this indexicality, because the assertion of an authentic and physical presence of the author in the act of writing remains, even and especially when the author is no longer present—as a testamentary instrument’ (Neef, 2008, p. 43, trans. SG). The Covid-19 pandemic seems to have had a lasting impact on practices of signing though.

  8. 8.

    For this purpose, the Nigerian National Identity Management Commission has been collaborating with Mastercard. Cf. Mastercard (2014). ‘The tendency to link money and registry systems is well known from African Fintech solutions’ writes Anna Echterhölter (Blumentrath et al., 2019, p. 123, trans. SG).

  9. 9.

    Cf. Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (2010): Basel III: International framework for liquidity risk measurement, standards and monitoring.

  10. 10.

    On resistant practices to the identification of monetary transactions, see O’Dwyer (2019, pp. 147–149). O’Dwyer lists money burning, pro-cash movements, obfuscation and algorithmic accountability.

  11. 11.

    This does not apply to the increasingly numerous private, ‘permissioned’ blockchains. Cf. DuPont (2019, p. 109).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Sebastian Giessmann

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  1. Sebastian Giessmann
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Correspondence to Sebastian Giessmann .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Fakultät I: Medienwissenschaftliches Seminar, Universität Siegen, Siegen, Germany

    Sebastian Gießmann

  2. Zentrum Bildung und Digitaler Wandel, PH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Tobias Röhl

  3. Fakultät Sozialwissenschaften, Technische Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Ronja Trischler

  4. Philosophische Fakultät: Institut für Ethnologie, Universität zu Köln, Köln, Germany

    Martin Zillinger

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Giessmann, S. (2023). On Identification: Theory and History of a Media Practice. In: Gießmann, S., Röhl, T., Trischler, R., Zillinger, M. (eds) Materiality of Cooperation. Medien der Kooperation – Media of Cooperation. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-39468-4_6

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