Lily Hu
Appearances
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
Well, first, I think that there's just a kind of normalization of race thinking, a normalization of eugenicist thinking.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
And just as in previous iterations of the thought, people are trying to localize the source of a societal problem to a particular segment of the population that is thought to be irrecoverably backwards or defective, and on that basis, deny them basic rights or deny them a part in our society as they are seen to pose an existential threat.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
What we get here are these stoking fears of a trans conspiracy. And that becomes a real fuel for a national project.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
You know, we live in such a visual culture where we're examining faces all the time. And so in that sense, it's not a surprise that people are trying this out just simply because... They've all become experts at the human face in the last five years. And so why not try to identify some correlations? You know, you're spending all this time collecting all this data.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
You might as well come up with some new theory about faces and personality. I mean, of course, in the end, it's not actually that playful.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
Yeah, phrenology was most ascendant as a science in the 19th century, but it really grew in prominence because it seemed to provide answers to longstanding social questions. So questions like, who are the criminals in society? Or in the American context, how are we going to incorporate the enslaved population or the free black population or the Native American population into the broader society?
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
In Europe, the questions have more to do with the degenerate type or the criminal type. And phrenology becomes a potential sort of answer to these social questions, figuring out how we're going to sort out these populations and handle them, whether those populations are those that are being colonized or even the enemy, as it were, from within.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
It turns out that you really have a difficult time finding out who is a criminal based on the shape of their skull or the look of their face. So physiognomy and phrenology is just not working from a working perspective. Like it's not able to do the kinds of things that some people expected them to do.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
There's this disciplining, right, which says you can't construct your fate. That's all biologically determined. And, you know, it's their job to police that and to enforce it as social reality. Stick around.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
Yeah, I think that the reason for that is because there continues to be real material problems out in the world that motivate this science, in quotes. Like, we need to figure out problems in the world, right? And scientists are trying to pick up those questions. For example, what explains the fact that our prisons are full of Black people?
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
Someone might try to use their skills as a geneticist to try to answer this question. And there's always going to be an audience for that kind of an answer because it serves particular political interests.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
And as long as that continues to be the case, as long as it continues to be the case that we live in a society riven with inequality, there's always going to be a contingent of people who say that the answer is in biology. The answer is not in society. The answer is not in politics. It's literally just in the bodies of these peoples themselves.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
The core of transvestigation seems to be the idea that biology is destiny, and people can tell who you really are just by examining your face and your skull. If they do enough shots of your face at different angles, they'll find out some truth about you. So I think at a core, there's this disciplining, which says, you can't construct your identity. You can't construct your fate.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
That's all biologically determined. And, you know, it's their job to police that and to enforce it as social reality.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
That's just what the OG physiognomy people were doing in the 19th century. So Francis Galton, he's the father of eugenics. He was a huge physiognomy guy. He was so interested in what the camera could tell about people that he actually invented this photographing technique to be able to identify the criminal.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
where he would do these composite photographs of different individuals, basically by overlaying photos of criminals on top of each other. He thought that that would bring out what the criminal attributes are, what the head of a criminal looks like or what the criminal nose looks like.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
And it all sounds ridiculous, but of course, fast forward to the 21st century, we're not doing that much more of a sophisticated version of it. Where instead of a composite photograph, we're running those photos through some sort of complicated machine learning system. And that's just going to draw out these telltale features of that type of person. So whether that's a criminal type or a gay type.
It's Been a Minute
Fake skull science is back - and it's still racist
So it's really just this direct through line from the 19th century to the 21st century.