Add to playlistPure Difference asks us "What is a number?" It is the debut episode in Anti-Racist Mathematics and Other Stories, a series of learning tools towards a post-capitalist education system. Using the visual tropes of a tech-conference presentation, trashy YouTube video and film essay, Peters sifts the foundations of science and mathematics, to disclose how these languages buttress power and galvanize authority.
From the notion of a ‘science of revolt’ declared by Brad Werner and contextualized by Donna Haraway, the history of the algorithm from al-Khwārizmī, Karl Marx’s mathematical manuscripts, to IBM’s present-day algorithm that is cited to distinguish refugees from terrorists, this series speculates on the make-up of technical languages and what they could become.
