Subversive Bodies: Life, Death and DNA in Contemporary Mexico

• In Event: Technology, Violence, and Resistance: Feminist, Decolonial, and Intersectional Perspectives

Abstract

Subversion is the art of transforming the familiar into the uncanny. This paper critically engages with notions of civic epistemologies, public reason and co-production of law and science to give subversion, surprise and the strategic use of law by those in positions of power (or vulnerability) its proper place in the STS analytical repertoire. In order to achieve my critical intervention, I will compare the crafting and regulation of two genetic bodies, the Mexican Genome Project, and a citizen-led forensic DNA database to search for the more than 36,000 disappeared in Mexico. A close ethnographic look at both case studies reveals that unilateral self-assertion acts, geared towards collecting biodata of human populations, have characterised the way in which savvy political actors have subverted the order of global genomics, or forensic science in order to produce the ‘good genomic body’. In a polity in which law is part and parcel of a struggle for power, influence and recognition literature exploring the simultaneous coproduction of ‘nature/culture’ and ‘law/science’ through sanitised narratives of democratic deliberation not only fails to capture complexity but leaves outside of its scope fascinating, though problematic, relationships between law and science.

Author

• Ernesto Schwartz Marin, Exeter University