Witness Bodies. Towards a Political Sociology of the Treatment of Human Remains – CORTEM
Bodies as Witnesses (CORTEM)
A Political Sociology of the Government of Human Remains
Analysing current controversies over «problematic« corpses
CORTEM focuses on the government of dead bodies that are today considered problematic enough to be the center of political controversies: bodies of the victims of mass murders, of immigrants who died in the course of their migration, or bodies of inmates who where executed in uncertain conditions. The common feature of these bodies is to belong to a historically infamous class of human remains – remains of enemies, of criminals, of the poor or of strangers in the broader sense – that have traditionally remained away from the honors states reserve to their ordinary citizens. The CORTEM project starts with an empirical observation regarding these bodies: they have become today the object of multiple controversies at various levels – national, local, and increasingly transnational. The main objective of our research is then to propose a sociological analysis of these disputes and to show how they foster the emergence of new collective actors who take over the expertise, the labelling, and more generally the government of these bodies sovereign states usually refuse to consider. In doing so, these actors collectively claim a right to deal with these remains beyond state sovereignty, and beyond the historical state monopoly over lethal violence and the treatment of the bodies such violence produces. This main objective is declined in a series of pratical tasks : CORTEM members will first identify the experts who get involved in these controversies, and the technologies and knowledge they rely on – wether medical, legal or religious, to name a few. The activity these actors deploy to identify and label bodies will then be closely analysed. Finally, we will describe how these groups of experts are mutually connected at a transnational level – through the circulation of the experts themselves, but also of the know-hows and technology they use.
CORTEM brings together four scholars from various disciplines – two anthropologists, a sociologist and a political scientist – who will contribute from their own perspective to common fields of research: the sociology of controversies, the sociology of expertise, and the political sociology and anthropology of violence and death. To address these themes, they will draw on multi-sited empirical fieldwork (European Mediterranean area, North America, East Asia, West Africa) and combine the analysis of archives and written documents with interviews and ethnography. Four studies are currently under completion: - Nicolas Fischer (political science, CNRS/CESDIP/Université de Versailles St Quentin, coordinator) : legal, medical and pharmaceutical controversies over executions by lethal injection in the United States, at a national and a transnational level. - Florence Galmiche (anthropology, CJJ/Université de Paris) : Exhumations and repatriation of the bodies of Korean victims of the Japanese colonization, and the controversies they trigger. - Carolina Kobelinsky (anthropology LESC/Université Paris X) : The treatment of migrants who died in the course of their migration (Spain and Italy). - Milena Jaksic (sociology, ISP/Université Paris X) : The mass crimes comitted in West Africa (Ouganda) before the International Penal Court of The Hague (Netherlands).
After one year of collective work, CORTEM can already register several notable results: - A regular collaboration between CORTEM and the professionnals of the French Paris Institute of Forensic Medicine, along with the members of ANR project MECMI. This cooperation allows regular contacts with institutional actors and activists currently involved in the treatment of problematic bodies (forensic practitioners, magistrates, police officers or organizers), to discuss their current problems and possibles solutions, and finally to organize joint scientific events (conferences). - The identification of a developing transnational field for the circulation of technology, knowledge and experts in the treatment of human remains. These actors are notably connected by the Humanitarian forensic action network, which regular meetings are important occasions for fieldwork and study. - The publication for a large audience of information on our reseach through the CORTEM website (https://cortem.hypotheses.org/). This information notably includes critical book reviews, podcasts audio files, and a series of “portraits” of professionnals dealing with human remains.
Our perspectives are conform to the CORTEM initial plan, but are also amplified by our recent results. Members of CORTEM will first carry on their individual research, and will also be conducting a specific research on the Humanitarian forensic action network. This analysis will contribute to the overall coherence of the various fieldwork conducted by all scholars within the project – as this network brings together actors whose work we also observe in our particular fieldwork in Europe, America and Asia.
Articles :
- Fischer, N. Le droit des contrats contre la peine de mort. Les controverses contemporaines autour du commerce international des produits nécessaires aux injections létales aux Etats-Unis, soumis à Critique Internationale, juin 2020.
- Fischer, N., Jaksic, M. Morts encombrants. Pour une sociologie politique du traitement des restes humains, soumis à Cultures & Conflits [introduction d’un dossier sur le même thème], mars 2020.
- Kobelinsky, C. Les traces des morts. Gestions des corps retrouvés et traitement des corps absents à la frontière hispano-marocaine, Critique internationale, 2019, 83(2), pp. 21-39.
- Kobelinsky, C. Esseri di confine. Fantasmi e scomparsi tra i migranti intorno all'enclave di Melilla, soumis à Antropologia Contemporanea, septembre 2020.
- Kobelinsky, C. Border Beings. Present Absences among Migrants in the Spanish Enclave of Melilla, Death Studies, 2020, 44(11): 709- 717.
- Kobelinsky, C. Who cares about Ouacil ? The post-mortem itinerary of a young border-crosser, American Behavioral Scientist, 2019, 64(4): 525-539.
- Jaksic, M. Looking for the child soldier : The judicial investigation in the case of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo. Journal of Legal Anthropology www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/jla/aop/jla070703/jla070703.xml
- Le Clainche-Piel, M. Du public à l’intime : le traitement des cadavres problématiques vu par les sciences sociales, Critique Internationale, 2020, 87(2), pp. 201-216.
The CORTEM project will study the disputed treatment of dead bodies which are now at the center of numerous controversies, both at the national and international level: they may be the bodies of victims of mass murders or of natural disasters, those of migrants who died in the process of their migration, or of inmates who were executed in violent conditions. These bodies are controversial because no state agrees to deal with them, while they are on the contrary studied and qualified by experts and representatives of infra-state organisations (NGOs, international courts, United Nations agencies or churches).
Will analyse this tension over controversial human remains by assembling four studies in a cross-disciplinary perspective (connecting anthropology, sociology and political science), and working on international fields: our research will deal on corpses of the victims of mass killings in West Africa or in South Korea, on those of immigrants found dead on Mediterranean shores, and finally on the controversial bodies of executed inmates in the USA.
These studies deal with two main issues. First, they analyse contemporary shifts in the general government of dead bodies, and thus question the current limits of the state monopoly over legitimate violence. The controversial bodies we study indeed belong to the category of “infamous” bodies: those whose death is irrelevant for state authorities (in the case of immigrants), or is directly inflicted by them (in the case of mass murders or capital punishment) – but they nowadays focus the attention of actors located outside or above states. The second issue of this research is then to describe the rise of transnational controversies over the study and treatment of these human remains, and the original combination they operate between expert knowledge that is delivered by public or private actors who may for example be scientists, advocates, or lawyers. On what scenes, in what transnational organizations (advocacy forums, think tanks, international courts of justice) do these actors meet, and to what extent de they travel between them? How do these experts work together to make the bodies “talk”, and how do they collectively label those bodies – that is, how do they come to call them “victims”, while pointing to those responsible for their death? And how do they “translate” expert knowledge from one field (medicine or law for example) to another? These are a few of the questions CORTEM will answer.
The final goal of this project is then to describe the new “hybrid” collective groups, and the new realms of debate, that are currently being built around these controversies over dead bodies. It will bring scientific by analysing sociologically an issue rarely addressed – corpses and their disputed treatment – connecting them to some major evolutions of contemporary societies: namely, the globalization of political struggles, and the growing dissent over the use of state violence. In terms of methodology, it is the occasion to connect the sociologies of science and of public controversies, taking into account the materiality of dead bodies and its impact on expert activities. Finally the project will contribute to professionals, by helping the diffusion of “best practices” in the treatment of dead bodies.
Project coordination
Nicolas Fischer (Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales)
The author of this summary is the project coordinator, who is responsible for the content of this summary. The ANR declines any responsibility as for its contents.
Partnership
CESDIP Centre de recherches sociologiques sur le droit et les institutions pénales
Help of the ANR 187,534 euros
Beginning and duration of the scientific project:
February 2019
- 36 Months
