08.25.17/Detachment

This video was created seven years after the San Fernando Massacres. The cold, digital voice narrating the events and non-events (failed identifications), and the blurred bodies of the victims are a reminder of the affective detachment that forensic scientists develop in order to work in the midst of an unrelenting surge of death and disappearance. A few minutes before observing my first necropsy at INCIFO, students and technicians made bets (without my knowledge) on whether I would vomit or faint. The head of the genetics lab was worried that I had just eaten a sandwich. Forensic experts cultivate their composure in the face of disturbing sights; it is a hard won ability that they do not expect to find in those untrained in the field. My observations of necropsies at INCIFO have been without incident. But the daily headlines of violence and newfound mass graves continue to trouble me deeply, and I find analytic distance from ongoing events difficult to achieve. At the same time, I have come to acknowledge, as does Mafe Olarte-Sierra, that affect and emotions when researching violence produce knowledge. Involvement and attachment are two productive antonyms of detachment.

 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25729861.2018.1543569)