Response: To Know Where He Lies

Sorry for the late post about this week's reading. There were some interesting threads in this book that I could pick up, especially as it relates to our reading and discussion of Latour: Wagner embarks on a Marcus-esque journey ("follow the thing!") to trace the trajectory of human remains, which involves communicating DNA technologies to lay people, in much the same way Latour describes Pasteur selling his technology. Here, however, it seems to breakdown when survivors continue to put more stock in memories and affect than in quantitative statistics. (Who would've imagined?)

Credit: SMBC Comics

Instead of dwelling on this topic, I want to reiterate some of what I was saying today in class about how resources get doled out by wealthy nations, either to save face, or to better sleep at night, or to be saviors of the (white) human race, or to avoid complete political embarrassment. The money and resources it takes to mount a campaign of technology-based identification of human remains are only possible because the science (or Science) is putatively apolitical, supracultural, and a great equalizer. Western European powers must avoid involvement in the Bosnian (and Guatemalan and Rwandan and Syrian) genocide in order to avoid losing face politically; however, once it's over, they can swoop in with their Science because it does nothing to upset the authorities (and their allies) with whom they may want to continue to conduct business, trade, etc. There is a geopolitical angle here that I think Wagner may have missed (or maybe I missed it) that was only possible because Science is considered incapable of dirtying itself in the muck of ethno-religious conflict. (Historians of Lysenkoism would disagree.)