Among investigation papers: when scanning pieces of body is to produce material evidence?

• Grant number: 13/22349-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: June 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Maria Filomena Gregori
• Grantee: Larissa Nadai
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

My doctoral research aims to put under discussion the official documents of the expertise produced by the Legal Medical Institute (LMI) of the city of Campinas in rape cases. On focusing on this material evidence, I'm continuing the studies initiated in my master's degree, in which I analyzed the official documents produced by the Defense Police Station of Campinas in cases of rape and violent indecent assault, between the years of 2004 and 2005. Now, in order to enhance, in particular, this material evidence, I will seek, in the course of this research related to the City's Center of Expertise, discuss how the terms and narrative conventions are forged in the reports, as well as the type of knowledge produced when the experts scan the bodies, transforming the pieces of flesh into official documents of the Technical Scientific Police. Inspired in more extensive anthropological studies, this doctoral project seeks to contribute to studies that take in consideration the production of official documents in State Institutions. In addition, in close relationship with this field of study, I understand this documental production as a means for access to the "State process" and to the multiple exercises of power generated in these "bureaucratic administrative management procedures". In this sense, the research aims to discuss the mechanisms of production of this type of technical writing, seeking, on the one hand, to understand the mechanisms of institutionalization of these Legal Medical Institutes, its production as scientific know-how, as well as highlight the boundaries by which what we call "State" can be imagined and tried daily through these bureaucratic acts aimed at documenting crimes. On the other hand, the research also seeks to understand these official reports and detail them, putting in evidence not only forged medical representations from these pieces of flesh, but put under reflection the moral indexers in the medical and police knowledge that give the aesthetics of these bodies/pieces - sexualized and that can be sexualized - in the form of paper place/represent through gender attributes, sexuality, class, race and generation the materiality of these bodies under expertise. In this sense, this research is in close dialogue with the field of gender and sexuality studies. Finally, this project seeks to take a closer look at the similarities and differences across these documents: what is 'conventionalized' through terms, stamps, letter variations, items completed or not, summary or detailed conclusions, and, also, what 'spare' of these narrative conventions. Small fragments that end up to interpelatte that standardized and bureaucratic procedures post in action on these "departments", which aim to fill roles while at the same time, through them, produce his scientific technique authority. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

NADAI, Larissa. Among pieces, bodies, techniques and traces: the Institute of Legal Medicine and its threads. 2018. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas Campinas, SP.