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In this article we explore the relational materiality of fragments of human cadavers used to produce DNA profiles of the unidentified dead at a forensic genetics police laboratory in Rio de Janeiro. Our point of departure is an apparently simple problem: how to discard already tested materials in order to open up physical space for incoming tissue samples. However, during our study we found that transforming human tissues and bone fragments into disposable trash requires a tremendous institutional investment of energy, involving negotiations with public health authorities, criminal courts and public burial grounds. The dilemma confronted by the forensic genetic lab suggests not only how some fragments are endowed with more personhood than others, but also how the very distinction between human remains and trash depends on a patchwork of multiple logics that does not necessarily perform according to well-established or predictable scripts.
that was characterised by winner-take-all outcomes. 34 What is a trial? 60 In each case the Apology purports, rather, to recount Socrates’ speech in his own defence. Of course, the extent to which these works provide accurate summaries of the trials of Jesus and Socrates, free of the interpretations of their followers, has long been controversial. 61 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Rationale of judicial evidence, specially applied to English practice’, in J. Bowring (ed.), The Works of Jeremy Bentham (11 vols, Edinburgh, 1843), vi, p. 355. 62 Jeremy Bentham, ‘Draught of a code
sketchy narrative along the normal rules of judicial evidence. Ellerington of course was initially working in an environment of orality and thus his memory, once verbally recorded, became a text governed by the ‘wider contemporary habits of explanation, description and evaluation’.46 In its various literary forms, Ellerington’s story gradually became smoother. Names, places and times of the actual ‘seditious meetings’ were added. Ellerington detailed not only the aims of the plot, but also the oaths that were taken and the alleged links with wider schemes in the country
. 44 Welsh, Strong Representations , p. 39. 45 Jeremy Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence , ed. J.S. Mill, 5 vols (London, Hunt & Clarke, 1827), vol. 3, pp. 9–10. 46
witchcraft as a form of religious treason. There is substantial evidence, however, that this reformed view of a witch’s limited agency was unable to dislodge traditional beliefs concerning witchcraft. 147 Evading theology in Macbeth 147 In 1587, the Essex Puritan minister George Gifford reported regretfully that it ‘is the common opinion among the blind ignorant people, that the cause and the procuring of harme by witchcraft, proceedeth from the Witch’,19 and examinations of judicial evidence and proceedings have led modern social historians to conclude that
beauty of the specimen’. The object of this bizarre hyperbole was, Thompson did not hesitate to say, the second most important of all ‘comparatively modern books’, surpassed only by The Wealth of Nations.1 Such exorbitant praise was, surely, intended for a seminal philosophic-radical production such as Bentham’s Rationale of Judicial Evidence or James Mill’s History of British India, or for a great Enlightenment tract from a Hume or Voltaire. In fact, Thompson’s accolades were directed at a work first published earlier in the decade, Essays on the Formation and
. 25. 72 Ibid., nos. 26, 32 and 37. 73 B. Jennings, ‘Documents of the Irish Franciscan College at Prague’, Archivium Hibernicum., 9 (1942), 173–5, 202–24, 226–9. 74 Giblin (ed.), Mission, no. 66. 75 See the minutes for minutes for 26 February 1630 and 30 September 1633 in B. Jennings, ‘Acta Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1622–1650’, Archivium Hibernicum, 12 (1959), 50–1, 74–5. 76 F. Macdonald, ‘Irish priests in the Highlands: judicial evidence from Argyll’, Innes Review, 46:1 (1995), 15–33; Macdonald, Missions to the Gaels. 77 Giblin (ed.), Mission
and W. Woodfall, 1791) – the section ‘Of proof by experts’ is principally occupied with the circumstances of one contemporary poisoning trial. Subsequent treatises make more room for poison: Leonard MacNally’s The rules of evidence on pleas of the crown (Dublin: J. Cooke, 1802), includes a chapter dedicated to ‘Evidence of medical men in cases of poison, while Jeremy Bentham’s five-volume contemporary critique of existing rules of evidence contains extended discussions of several poisoning cases: J. Bentham, Rationale of judicial evidence, 5 vols (London: Hunt
. Furgol, ‘Macdonnell, Angus, Lord Macdonnell and Aros (d. 1680)’, ODNB, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/67440, accessed 4 December 2009. 105 For a very useful summary of the mission itineraries see: F.A. Macdonald, ‘Ireland and Scotland: historical perspectives on the Gaelic dimension 1560–1760’, PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow, 1994, pp. 961–90. 106 F. Macdonald, ‘Irish priests in the Highlands: judicial evidence from Argyll’, Innes Review, 46:1 (1995), 17; Purcell, Vincentians, pp. 44, 49, 53, 57; MacGuaire, ‘Ireland and the Catholic Hebrides’, 361. There
right to say so and refrain from participating? 92 It was the right of the believer to freely express his feelings on such matters, in keeping with the spirit of the times, declared Charfi, invoking the hallowed principle of individual autonomy. To back up this position, he cited al-Ghazali (d. 1111), who coined the expression “consult your heart” ( istafti qalbak ). Charfi urged Muslims to adopt this position in order to bridge the gap between religion and life and stop the blind imitation of past rulings that have no judicial evidence. 93 Again, aware of the