Week 5 Reflections

Wagner frames the issue of unidentified bodies in Srebrenica as one that is both political and technological. According to Wagner’s sources, no other genocide in history has produced “secondary graves,” in which mass graves were re-excavated and scattered among varied new grave locations. She describes the process as a use of technology meant to be used as an instrument of power and de-humanization. This foreshadows her future arguments surrounding the use of DNA-technology as a political tool in post-war Bosnia.  I’m not sure if I completely buy into Wagner’s characterization of the secondary graves as a technological innovation. Perhaps if it was publicly perceived as such, such as perception would have laid the foundation for technological suspicion that Wagner is implying. I find it easier to believe that in the wake of genocide, it is not so much technology that inspires suspsicion, but institution.

Continuing on, we read that the newly organized Bosian government was deemed too unstable and divided to tackle the issue of body-identification, so the international community stepped in. Wagner argues that although this move seemed apolitical, the making the missing dead “socially significant” had implications towards war culpability and entitlement to reparations.

The physical processes required for obtaining DNA samples are also notable. It was necessary to disrupt grave sites to obtain partial remains, and this was a large undertaking. As a result, the objective of identifying the dead overshadowed social repair.

Wagner does make a point of highlighting the need for technological innovation; she described the pre-DNA identification processes as tedious and often fruitless. Preliminary uses of DNA testing only provided negative results, often only telling family members that a missing person was not their relative.

Then we examine the ICMP-directed series of events that lead to mass use of DNA-identification. ICMP mobilized many people and resources to gather information from the community to fill in many genetic blanks, and therefore were able to map genealogies. Wagner describes in great detail the systematic process of collection, identification, and demarcation that evolved within the laboratory.

Wagner then delves into the lived experience of the process through family-members’ eyes. She comments on the use of memory to preserve individuality and perhaps humanity throughout the DNA-identification process. Furthermore, memories went on to provide data to further the identifying process, representing an entanglement between the science and individual experience.