FORENSIC HUMANITARIANISM BETWEEN TRANSNATIONAL EXPERTISES AND GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGIES: The case of the Peru’s ditch

Author(s)

Desirée de Lemos Azevedo ^[1]

Affiliation

^[1] Universidade Federal de São Paulo - Brasil

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais; v. 36, n. 107 2021-07-12.

Abstract

Abstract Based on reflections produced in the context of two ethnographic assessments, this article discusses the development of a national technology for the management of the bodies of disappeared politicians during the Dictatorship (1964-1985) in Brazil. Mobilizing the historical procedural method, I explore the construction of Peru’s clandestine ditch as a forensic case, highlighting the entanglement between two knowledge and power domains over the dead: one legalized and institutionalized in the police sphere and the other in transnational forensic humanitarianism. The aim is to treat the tensions interposed to the development and the exercise of a humanitarian identifying power as a result of disputes by the authorities that unfold it, illuminating the disciplinary aspects of identification. I argue that, by constituting subjects based on analytical acts and writing practices, humanitarian identification also circumscribes them as managed by knowledge and actions that give rise to government acts. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/15601-7 - Memory, truth and justice: an ethnographic study on the making of National Truth Commission in Brazil
• Grantee: Desiree de Lemos Azevedo
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• FAPESP's process: 16/15525-0 - The deceased don't all weight the same: a reflection on the political identification of bones from the Perus mass grave
• Grantee: Desiree de Lemos Azevedo
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral