Unsettling forensics: novel forms of necro-governmentality and alternative knowledge practices in Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste

Abstract

The integration of forensic knowledge and associated practices into a growing number ofhuman rights and humanitarian investigations, as well as transitional justice processes has ledsome scholars to claim a “forensic turn.” This turn is marked by the rise of forensic practices as“necro-governmental” technologies that seek to deliver certainty to the living and to the stateso that a new political order can be created, a new future ushered in (Rojas-Perez, 2017, p. 19).Yet is the forensic turn truly globalized? Focusing on the cases of Timor-Leste and Sri Lanka,this article probes how states and citizens in these post-conflict settings are attempting tomanage the unsettling indeterminacies of dead and missing bodies largely without recourseto forensic expertise. These cases shed light on the novel forms of necro-governmentality andalternative modes of local knowledge production that emerge in settings where there is arelative absence of forensic expertise. They also show how the necro-governmental project offixing the meanings and identities of the dead (forensic or otherwise) is always ongoing, neverfully or finally complete. This is because the unsettling indeterminacies of missing and deadbodies allow those bodies to be drawn into intimate practices of care and mourning and morepublic political projects that can resist attempts to close off their meanings.