The Infopolitics of feeling: How race and disability are configured in Emotion Recognition Technology

Abstract

In this article, we argue that facial emotion recognition technology (facial ERT) reproduces historical forms of pseudoscience based on the concept of quantifiable and unequally distributed emotional capacity. Drawing on Kyla Schuller’s Biopolitics of Feeling and Colin Koopman’s theory of infopower, we put forward the term ‘the infopolitics of feeling’ to describe how facial ERT encodes culturally ‘correct’ or normative forms of emotional expression that have historically been used to define and delineate what it means to be human. To make this argument, we provide a close reading of Girl Decoded, the autobiography of Rana el Kaliouby, the founder and former CEO of the leading Emotion artificial intelligence (AI) firm Affectiva. Girl Decoded, we argue pits el Kaliouby herself – portrayed as the empathetic, liberal, emotionally expressive and ideal ‘feeling’ subject – against two non-normative figures: the unfeeling autist and the inscrutable Oriental who must be ‘cured’ through Affectiva’s facial ERT.