ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I summarize and elaborate on the arguments about the theoretical significance of biometric registration that I have made in other work: the pervasive biometric infrastructures currently under development on the African continent represent an important break with the long, global history of documentary government based on writing. Drawing on my earlier studies of Galton's biometry and its applications in South Africa, the chapter shows that the automated and mathematical qualities of biometric identification give it material features and capacities that are the opposite of literary government. These rapid, and immaterial, features are also driving claims for the universal and reliable forms of identification that are aimed at the informational weaknesses of postcolonial African societies. Unfortunately, and perhaps predictably, the grand plans across the continent for the biometric panopticon are collapsing into digital schemes that resemble the old model of ‘hegemony on a shoe-string.’
