In the modern world, ID papers are those indispensable objects without which we cannot prove we are whom we say we are. We need material proof that attests our identification since we cannot demonstrate, by ourselves, that we are this or that particular person. In this essay, the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. by the policy of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, in 2009, is examined so as to detect the mechanisms by which the processes of classification and singularization are accomplished in the modern world which include, besides identification, recognition and profiling.
ID papers; Henry Louis Gates; Recognition; Identification; Charles Peirce
