FACIAL RECOGNITION: TECHNOLOGY, RACISM AND CONSTRUCTION OF POSSIBLE WORLDS

Abstract

Racism and technology are important societal mediators, hierarchizing groups and reproducing privileges and exclusions. They can, however, make reports of inequalities unfeasible, due to the “myth of racial democracy” or the idea of technology neutrality. We discuss the effectiveness of the articulation between racism and technology due to a double opacity: denial of racism and political denial of technology. We bring facial recognition as a sociotechnical apparatus that, articulated with black bodies and Brazilian realities, sometimes produces invisibilities, sometimes re-emphasizes visibilities. The theoretical research brings together concepts from Brazilian social thought, dealing with racial relations and marginal criminology, as well as authors from the field of Science, Technology and Society (STS), who help us to explain the non-neutrality of technology and the politicization of algorithmic management. We conclude by the necessary amplification of dissonant voices that denounce racism in the production of supposedly neutral techniques, in a cosmopolitical proposition, in order to be able to “decide with” the people who are recognized or made invisible.