I thought this was a very sensitive and compelling analysis of the diverse socio-political impacts of DNA identification in the wake of the Srebrenica massacre. Wagner presents DNA identification as multivalent technology, the use of which means different things to individual family members, to local communities, to politicians and to international actors. Wagner is particularly compassionate in her portrayal of those intimate settings in which DNA testing helps families make sense of absence, and to construct an account of what happened to their missing relatives.
I found two aspects of the book especially interesting. First, was Wagner’s account of the ways in which DNA findings are used by political elites to construct nationalist narratives and recruited as resources for nation-building through the verification of historical fact, the apportionment of blame, and the construction of collective memories and mourning rituals.
Second, was her analysis of how in “caring for dead citizens and their surviving relatives, [the state] demonstrates competence both to domestic audiences and other states” (249). Her point that DNA identification technology adds to the state’s repertoire of techniques for the biopolitical care of its population (both in life and in death) is well made. But she does not consider the normative implications: is this enhancement of state power desirable or not? Is it ‘dangerous’ (as Foucault would ask)? And if so, how? While much of the literature on biopolitics and governmentality has a latent critical subtext, Wagner’s attention to the profound effects of identification and recovery for families reminds us of the tremendous value that such biopolitical state action can have for citizens.
Yet, on the other hand, she implicitly argues (p254) that the use of the same identification technology could strengthen a problematic metaphorical equation between calamities like genocide and natural disasters like tsunamis. She regards this as dangerous, in that it elides human responsibility for the failure to intervene. I have two criticisms of Wagner’s argument here. First, I agree that genocide can be described in terms that render it similar to a natural disaster, thereby mitigating the responsibility of the international community for nonintervention. But I’m skeptical that the use of DNA technology in both instances does much to buttress this metaphorical connection; this seems more a product of Wagner's analysis than a power effect "out there" "in the world". I’m also not sure what kind of evidence can be marshaled to support such a claim.
Second, her argument here hinges on the distinction between genocide as man-made (and therefore as preventable) and natural disasters as not man-made (and therefore unpreventable), and the attribution of responsibility for the former but not the latter. Yet her discussion of Katrina demonstrates that no such hard and fast distinction exists. Katrina was a natural disaster; but the US government is widely regarded as bearing responsibility for the deaths that resulted. After the tsunami, there was some talk about whether an Indian Ocean tsunami warning system should have been in place. My point is that it’s not automatically obvious which of these three disasters governments (or the international community) bear responsibility for preventing. Governmental responsibility emerges post hoc as a result of negotiated judgments and evaluations on matters both political (when poverty prevents people fleeing a natural disaster, the resulting deaths are the responsibility of government) and technical (a tsunami warning system would not have been effective). Government responsibility to protect citizens (or indeed non-citizens) from disasters (be they genocide, floods, or tsunamis) is not a static moral obligation, but an evolving responsibility based on changing governmental capacities and citizen expectations.
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