Forensic sciences and human rights: political strategies and technologies in Brazilian redemocratization

Abstract

The object of this research project is the way in which the process of Brazilian re-democratisation has been linked to forensic work on the analysis and identification of disappeared political victims of the dictatorship (1964-1988). The aim of the project is to investigate, through contemporary political philosophy and, in particular, the concepts of governmentality and political technologies (Foucault) and connections, networks and translation (Latour), the possibilities for politics to be realised through the encounter with forensic sciences, when discursive and representational aspects seem to merge with functional and technical characteristics, as well as an action in which humans and technical objects connect and act in a hybrid way. Our hypothesis is that these conceptual tools help us to understand how the connections between the sciences, the knowledge of social struggles and the politics of memory and truth have led to the emergence of strategies of control and resistance in the face of experiences of reconciliation and overcoming past violence. The research is based on the context in which the Brazilian state's attempts to unravel the history of forced disappearance through forensic science point to the realisation of a democratic policy driven by government techniques, functional mechanisms and social practices of resistance, with important impacts on the processes of national reconciliation and the elaboration of memories about the violent past. We believe that this approach can help produce analyses that invest in the values of democracy and human rights.