Ataya: HUMA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series

Speaker: Keith Breckenridge (University of the Witwatersrand, WiSER)

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Bio: Keith is a Professor and acting Co-Director at Wiser and holds the Standard Bank Chair in African Trust Infrastructures. He writes about the cultural and economic history of South Africa, particularly the gold mining industry, the state and the development of information systems. For the last twenty years he has written about biometric identification systems and their political effects, especially on the African continent. One of his several books is ‘Biometric State: the Global Politics of Identification and Surveillance in South Africa, 1850 to the Present’ (Cambridge, 2014) which shows how the South African obsession with Francis Galton's universal fingerprint identity registration served as a 20th century incubator for the current systems of biometric citizenship being developed throughout the South. His other book projects include ‘Biometric Capitalism’, ‘Power Without Knowledge’ and ‘Mining, Power and Politics in South Africa’. Keith has a B1 rating from the National Research Foundation. 

Topic: During the 1920s many African colonies were pushed on to the economic path that leads towards biometric capitalism – a distinctive form of financial capitalism dominated by behaviourally-assessed individual credit, informal firms without collateral and monopolisation. In this paper I examine the South African elements of this history, by following the origins, goals and implementation of the Glen Grey system, and its aftermath. The history of prohibitions on land mortgage and alienation for Africans was paired with the state’s meticulous survey, debt-subsidy and richly distributed infrastructures for white maize farmers in the same decade. The paper suggests that trust, as many scholars have suggested, is substantially a product of the “economy of promises” between borrowers and lenders, but that it also requires a fraught balance between the obligations of debt and the democratised protections provided by the state. 

How Ataya works: One presenter and their work – in exchange with the audience. Each Ataya session engages with selected work by the presenter (a text, artwork, performance, even food). The presenter introduces their work and grounds the subsequent discussion with the participants. For best engagement, we recommend participants to view the work (made available in advance on our website) before the session. More on the Ataya Series

Lunch will be served at 12:30 SAST (GMT+2).

Register to attend: send us an email at huma@uct.ac.za

Attending online? Register to join via Zoom: https://uct-za.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvf-ihqDsrGdTsq_hP1Iv8WbrM1iiv3sCE  

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