Antigone’s forensic DNA database: Forensic technologies and the search for the disappeared in Mexico

Abstract

Antígone’s tragedy and the search for the disappeared has been aesthetically and politically appropriated by artists and activists in Mexico. Reflecting about the relationship between futility, forensic technologies and the notion of a victim-political subject, this paper engages with the narratives of the families that constituted the governance body of a project known as ‘Citizen-Led Forensics’ which brought to the world the first forensic DNA database created, managed and designed by relatives of the disappeared in Mexico. Our findings are the product of years of ethnography and one year of intense participatory research. We argue that it is only once technologies are not bound by principles of efficiency, market logics, or exclusive expertise, that the unexamined state-centric notions of forensic humanitarianism can be transgressed, and thus help us build new relationships between science, justice and truth.