Facial Recognition and Posthuman Technologies in Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Robert Darcy

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.24.10

Authors

Robert Darcy University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.24.10

Keywords:

Shakespeare’s sonnets, facial recognition, Dark Lady, fair youth, Nature, Time, posthumanism, biometrics, face, Woody Bledsoe

Abstract

The human face, real and imagined, has long figured into various forms of cultural and personal recognition—to include citizenship, in both the modern and the ancient world. But beyond affiliations related to borders and government, the human face has also figured prominently into biometrics that feed posthuman questions and anxieties. For while one requirement of biometrics is concerned with “unicity,” or that which identifies an individual as unique, another requirement is that it identify “universality,” confirming an individual’s membership in the species. Shakespeare’s sonnets grapple with the crisis of encountering a universal beauty in a unique specimen to which Time and Nature nonetheless afford no special privilege. Between fair and dark lies a posthuman lament over the injustice of natural law and the social valorizations arbitrarily marshaled to defend it.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Robert Darcy, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA

Robert Darcy is a professor of English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he teaches early modern literature. He is the author of Misanthropoetics: Social Flight and Literary Form in Early Modern England.

References

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1998.
Google Scholar

Agamben, Giorgio. “No to Bio-Political Tattooing.” Le Monde 10 January 2004.
Google Scholar

Agamben, Giorgio. States of Exception. Trans. Kevin Attell. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2005.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226009261.001.0001

Bledsoe, Woody. “I Had a Dream: AAAI Presidential Address, 19 August 1985.” AI Magazine 7.1 (1986): 57-61 https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1986.tb02176.x
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1986.tb02176.x

“A Brief History of Facial Recognition.” 26 May 2020. NEC: Orchestrating a Brighter World https://www.nec.co.nz/market-leadership/publications-media/a-briefhistory-of-facial-recognition/ Accessed 5 July 2021.
Google Scholar

Campana, Joseph, and Scott Maisano, eds. Renaissance Posthumanism. New York: Fordham, 2016.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823269556.001.0001

Colebrook, Claire. Death of the Posthuman: Essays on Extinction, Vol. 1. Ann Arbor, MI: Open Humanities Press, 2014 https://doi.org/10.3998/ohp.12329362.0001.001 Accessed 15 July 2021.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.3998/ohp.12329362.0001.001

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “Year Zero: Faciality.” A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. by Brian Massumi, 167-91. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987.
Google Scholar

Foucault, Michel. Dits et écrits. Vols. 3-4. Paris: Gallimard, 1994.
Google Scholar

Hokama, Rhema. “Love’s Rites: Performing Prayer in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Shakespeare Quarterly 63.2 (2012): 199-223 https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2012.0032
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2012.0032

King, Martin Luther, Jr. “I Have a Dream.” 28 August 1963. NPR. 18 January 2010 https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety Accessed 15 July 2021.
Google Scholar

Knapp, James A., ed. Shakespeare and the Power of the Face. 2015. London: Routledge, 2019 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315608655
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315608655

Latour, Bruno. “An Attempt at a ‘Compositionist Manifesto.’” New Literary History 41.3 (2010): 471-90.
Google Scholar

Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993.
Google Scholar

Levinas, Emmanuel. “The Face.” In Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne UP, 1985. 83-92.
Google Scholar

Liggett, John. The Human Face. New York: Stein & Day, 1974.
Google Scholar

Loh, Maria H. “Renaissance Faciality.” Oxford Art Journal 32.3 (2009): 341-63 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcp032
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxartj/kcp032

McCoy, Richard C. “Love’s Martyrs: Shakespeare’s ‘Turtle and Phoenix’ and the Sacrificial Sonnets.” Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, eds. Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 188-208.
Google Scholar

Mordini, Emilio, and Sonia Massari. “Body, Biometrics and Identity.” Bioethics 22.9 (2008): 488-98.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8519.2008.00700.x

Nardizzi, Vin. “Shakespeare’s Penknife: Grafting and Seedless Generation in the Procreation Sonnets.” Renaissance and Reformation 32.1 (2009): 83-106 https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v32i1.9591
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v32i1.9591

Perkowitz, Sidney. “The Bias in the Machine: Facial Recognition Technology and Racial Disparities.” MIT Case Studies in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing https://doi.org/10.21428/2c646de5.62272586. 5 February 2021 15 July 2021.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.21428/2c646de5.62272586

Raber, Karen. Shakespeare and Posthumanist Theory. Arden: London, 2018.
Google Scholar

Raviv, Shaun. “The Secret History of Facial Recognition.” Wired 28.2 (February 2020) https://www.wired.com/story/secret-history-facial-recognition/ Accessed 19 July 2021.
Google Scholar

Rogers, Mary. Review of Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist, by Joanna Woods-Marsden, and The Image of the Individual: Portraits in the Renaissance, by Nicholas Mann and Luke Syson, eds. Renaissance Studies 14.3 (2000): 375-78.
Google Scholar

Schmitt, Carl. Political Theology. Trans. George Schwab. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.
Google Scholar

Seamon, John G. “Dynamic Facial Recognition: Examination of a Natural Phenomenon.” American Journal of Psychology 95.3 (1982): 363-81 https://doi.org/10.2307/1422130
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1422130

Shakespeare, William. The Sonnets. Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al., 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2016. 2241-303.
Google Scholar

Shannon, Laurie. “Poor, Bare Forked: Animal Sovereignty, Human Negative Exceptionalism, and the Natural History of King Lear.” Shakespeare Quarterly 60.2 (2009): 168-96.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.0.0076

Sorel, Charles. The Extravagant Shepherd. Translated by John Davies. London: Newcomb, 1654.
Google Scholar

Swarbrick, Steven, and Karen Raber. “Introduction: Renaissance Posthumanism and Its Afterlives.” Criticism 62.3 (2020): 313-28 https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.62.3.0313
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.13110/criticism.62.3.0313

Taylor-Alexander, Samuel. “How the Face Became an Organ.” Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology. 11 August 2014 http://somatosphere.net/2014/how-the-face-became-an-organ.html/ Accessed 15 July 2021.
Google Scholar

Tsui, Jenna. “Why Gender Neutral Facial Recognition Will Change How We Look at Technology.” https://www.technologynetworks.com/informatics/articles/whygender-neutral-facial-recognition-will-change-how-we-look-at-technology-332962 Accessed 15 July 2021.
Google Scholar

Tyson, Neil deGrasse. “A Mind-Expanding Tour of the Cosmos with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Robert Krulwich.” 92nd Street Y. 92YOnDemand.org. 10 May 2017. YouTube https://youtube.com/watch?v=AyAK3QBnMGQ Accessed 15 July 2021.
Google Scholar

Williams, Damien Patrick. “Fitting the Description: Historical and Sociotechnical Elements of Facial Recognition and Anti-Black Surveillance.” Journal of Responsible Innovation 7, sup. 1: 74-83 https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2020.1831365 Accessed 15 July 2021.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23299460.2020.1831365