Katia Schwerzmann

In this article, I show why it is necessary to abolish the use of predictive algorithms in the US criminal justice system at sentencing. After presenting the functioning of these algorithms in their context of emergence, I offer three arguments to demonstrate why their abolition is imperative. First, I show that sentencing based on predictive algorithms induces a process of rewriting the temporality of the judged individual, flattening their life into a present inescapably doomed by its past. Second, I demonstrate that recursive processes, comprising predictive algorithms and the decisions based on their predictions, systematically suppress outliers and progressively transform reality to match predictions. In my third and final argument, I show that decisions made on the basis of predictive algorithms actively perform a biopolitical understanding of justice as management and modulation of risks. In such a framework, justice becomes a means to maintain a perverse social homeostasis that systematically exposes disenfranchised Black and Brown populations to risk.

In this article, I show why it is necessary to abolish the use of predictive algorithms in the US criminal justice system at sentencing. After presenting the functioning of these algorithms in their context of emergence, I offer three arguments to demonstrate why their abolition is imperative. First, I show that sentencing based on predictive algorithms induces a process of rewriting the temporality of the judged individual, flattening their life into a present inescapably doomed by its past. Second, I demonstrate that recursive processes, comprising predictive algorithms and the decisions based on their predictions, systematically suppress outliers and progressively transform reality to match predictions. In my third and final argument, I show that decisions made on the basis of predictive algorithms actively perform a biopolitical understanding of justice as management and modulation of risks. In such a framework, justice becomes a means to maintain a perverse social homeostasis that systematically exposes disenfranchised Black and Brown populations to risk.

Graphische Markierungen bilden das Fundament unseres epistemischen und ästhetischen Umgangs mit der Welt. Die medialen Umwälzungen im digitalen Zeitalter haben die Relevanz des Graphischen sogar noch potenziert. Die "Theorie des graphischen Feldes", die an der Kreuzung von Philosophie, Ästhetik und Medientheorie verortet ist, bietet eine neue Reflexion über den Akt des Markierens in einer Zeit, die als jene der Entmaterialisierung von Information und Medien gilt. Über die Opposition zwischen medialer Transparenz und ästhetischer Opazität hinaus, auf die die neueren philosophischen Diskurse über das Graphische gemeinhin verweisen, geht es in dieser Theorie darum, die Körperlichkeit des Graphischen bis in dessen digitalisierte Form aufzuspüren. Das Graphische entsteht somit aus dem Kontakt dreier Körper: dem einschreibenden Körper, dem Trägerkörper und dem Markierungskörper. Die Untersuchung der berührenden Interaktion dieser Körper mündet in eine Theorie des graphischen Feldes, die es erlaubt, sich einerseits für die eigene Theoriebildung in den existierenden philosophischen Diskursen zu orientieren und andererseits graphische Phänomene zu kartographieren.

The sensory dimension of writing, which is never fully neutralised in the process of semiosis, remains aporetic in Derrida’s philosophy. I show how Barthes’ observations on pseudo-writing lead to his understanding of writing as a gesture, opening up post-structuralism to the body as absolutely non-repeatable, as the opposite of semiosis. The examination of Barthes’ account of the relationship between writing and the body leads to an aesthetic of physical responsiveness, which challenges the distinction between work, creator and viewer. In this regard ‘seeing’ can neither be reduced to the infinite decoding of signs nor to an immediate perception, but rather can be understood as the playful contact with signs. Barthes’ notion of writing contributes to overcoming the limits of Derrida’s account of the sensory quality of writing without jeopardiz- ing the philosophical gain of deconstruction.