Weekly Reflection Post for 9/15 Class

Sarah Wagner’s To Know Where He Lies attempts to consolidate and explain how science is intimately involved with such emotionally charged subjects such as genocide and missing loved ones.  Two aspects of To Know Where He Lies were especially interesting for me.  The first, and the more pervasive of the two, is the juxtaposition of cold, hard facts with personal stories and memories from the Wagner or people she interviewed.  This is especially evident when Wagner uses Bosnian words; for instance on pages 68-69 Wagner systematically and factually describes the goals and circumstances of different Srebrenica advocacy groups (including the Women of Srebrenica) and then switches to a small reminiscence of conversations with a leader of the Women of Srebrenica and how she would spend time with her “sipping coffee out of a fildjan.”  Wagner also frequently used the terms nestali and nije dosao when describing the missing peoples, placing cultural meaning into what would otherwise be lists of disturbing but faceless facts.  By doing this, Wagner takes away much of the distant, scientific feeling of her research and creates a relatable and cultural façade over her facts.  This mimics what happened in Bosnia, where at first technology dehumanized the bodies through secondary mass graves and then DNA technology works to reattach personhood to skeletal remains.  This is especially relevant to this class since Wagner is essentially taking something from the world of science and technology, research, and stripping it of what makes it scientific so that it can be accessible to cultures outside of science and technology, including the Bosniaks about whom it is written.

The second aspect comes from a moment in chapter one where Wagner describes a scene from a play based on the violence in Srebrenica.  On pages 36-37, she provides the scene about a family’s response to Srebrenica being a UN safe area which includes a father character with very little knowledge of science and technology putting blind trust in technology.  This provides an interesting example of how people outside any culture of science and technology view those who belong to cultures with extensive access to and knowledge of science and technology.  Essentially, this man believes that all wrongs can be fixed with this mysterious technology and that, since the technology is on his side, he is invincible to attack.  This view represents a unique culture of science and technology—the culture created by exclusion from science and technology.

Michael Lynch and Sheila Jasanoff’s “Contested Identities: Science, Law and Forensic Practice” details the use of DNA identification technology such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) or Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphisms (RFLPs) in criminal trials, specifically the O.J. Simpson trial due to its large presence in the mainstream media.  The most interesting part of this article is that it shows how reluctant the criminal justice system is when it comes to using new forensic technology.  In both the Castro and the Simpson case, judges and juries were unwilling to trust this new form of data.  This was not limited to the judicial system, but also included the public and even the scientific experts, who were divided on both the cases.  This seems to underline a seemingly inherent distrust people have for technology—people would much rather put their trust in another human capable of reasoning for himself than to trust blindly in minuscule molecule or a computer program, especially when it involves such important aspects of life like law and order.