To Know Where He Lies, Part 2

In “To Know Where He Lies,” Sarah Wagner aims to show that the use of DNA technology in post-conflict Srebrenica was not as straightforward or objective of a process as many would assume of the implementation of a scientific technique.

She starts by presenting the unique challenges that the Srebrenica killings presented in terms of victim identification. After depositing the remains in mass graves, the Bosnian Serb forces systematically exhumed and reburied those remains in other locations so that many bodies were disarticulated and scattered across multiple sites. While this didn’t require new technological inventions, it was an innovation in dehumanization, and it required a countervailing innovation if postmortem identification was to be attempted. This was the context in which DNA technology was applied and I think it makes for a very interesting case study to examine how new and old technologies interact with the human/social elements in aftermath of such a traumatic period.

A common theme we’ve discussed in class--the presentation of science as truth/objective fact--is also explored here in which DNA technology is seen as the deciding factor in the identification process while memory is relegated to a secondary position. Wagner explains the many fallacies that human memory can suffer, e.g. the women who remember the height of their sons by where they are next to a door-frame, but she also concludes that “[it is] fruitless, indeed, mistaken, it was to draw value distinctions between the perceived objectivity and subjectivity of the forms of knowledge that bring about an identification” (150). I agree that all these different types of knowledge (qualitative, quantitative, post- and ante- mortem) are clearly each useful in their own way and serve to complement each other, but I’m more hesitant to say that we can’t make any judgments about their objectivity or even compare their relative value.           

I had assumed for most of the reading that identification was a universally desired outcome that would bring closure to families of victims. Wagner explains that this isn’t always the case when imagination is such a powerful coping mechanism for those immediately dealing with the loss of loved ones. It’s easy to look at the situation in retrospect, knowing that most of the Bosniack men and boys who were taken away were murdered, and say that these women should be able to accept their family members’ fates. However, we have to remember that the survivors did not have comprehensive knowledge of the situation immediately after the war and that a mass killing is experienced totally different when it’s a personal tragedy. “It is not that she doesn’t want to; it’s that she can’t. She is not ready to accept it” (172). In all this discussion of what science can contribute to post-conflict nation-building, the human impact still needs to be seriously considered in all its complexity to determine what the actual value is of this technological innovation.