Morbid Subjects: Forensic medicine and sovereignty in Siam

2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 394-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
QUENTIN (TRAIS) PEARSON
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Medicine ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Forensic Evidence ◽  
Medical Jurisprudence ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead

AbstractThis article examines the question of Siamese sovereignty in the era of high imperialism through the lens of medical jurisprudence. Although Siam (Thailand) was never formally colonized, it was subject to unequal trade treaties that established extraterritorial legal rights for foreign residents. In cases where a foreign resident was suspected of having harmed a Siamese subject, the Siamese state had to appeal to foreign consular officials to file charges against the suspect. Standards of forensic evidence were crucial in such cases. While medical jurisprudence helped to bolster racial privilege in other colonial legal jurisdictions, this article argues that these disputes rendered the dead and injured bodies of Siamese subjects into potentially powerful pieces of leverage against foreign residents and their political representatives. The dead bodies of Siamese subjects became grounds for challenging foreign courts and asserting Siamese sovereignty.

Morbid Subjects

2020 ◽  
pp. 110-129
Author(s):  
Trais Pearson
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Medicine ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Asian Immigrants ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Affiliation ◽  
Medical Jurisprudence ◽  
Unnatural Death ◽  
Racial Privilege ◽  
Stark Contrast

This chapter reveals how Siamese state officials came to see unnatural death as a specter of foreign violence against Siamese bodies and how they appealed to medicolegal science to address this problem. In stark contrast to other colonial legal jurisdictions, where medical jurisprudence helped to bolster (white) racial privilege, the chapter argues that medicolegal concern rendered the dead and injured bodies of Siamese subjects into potentially powerful pieces of leverage against foreign residents. These residents often enjoyed extraterritorial legal privileges from the consular officials and institutions who protected them. To consider the broader conditions that helped to make unnatural death and forensic medicine a forum for political contestation in Siam, the chapter highlights two such factors: extraterritorial legal rights and the associated problem of differential standards of medicolegal evidence in foreign consular courts and the registration of Asian immigrants in Siam as the political subjects of foreign powers. Both cases offer surprising evidence suggesting that under certain conditions political affiliation transcended racial difference in the colonial world.

Management of the dead during coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak: Practices and perceptions of forensic practitioners from India

2021 ◽  
pp. 002580242110258
Author(s):  
Vikas P Meshram ◽  
Tanuj Kanchan ◽  
Raghvendra S Shekhawat
Keyword(s):  
Infection Control ◽  
Forensic Medicine ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
The Body ◽  
Local Administration ◽  
Protective Equipment ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has mandated a response from administrative agencies and the health sector globally, however, the number of cases and deaths continue to rise. While management of the living is paramount, the management of the dead is also important. Guidelines for managing the dead have been issued and implemented by various local administrations, in accordance with national and international guidelines. This questionnaire-based research aims to develop an understanding of the knowledge, perceptions and practices of forensic practitioners from India as regards the management of the dead during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. This Pan-India study included 278 forensic medicine experts (249 males and 29 females) working in various hospitals and medical institutions across the country. The questionnaire included various issues involving the management of dead bodies in cases involving coronavirus disease 2019, such as infection control practices, body screening, handling and autopsy, disposal practices, local administrative policies, and available infrastructure and resources. We found that guidelines are mostly being followed across India, barring disparity in issues relating to testing in the dead bodies, the role of local administration in the body disposal, and the use of personal protective equipment while handling bodies and during autopsies. Mortuaries now need to be upgraded, and general infrastructure requires improvement. Periodic training of all stakeholders and assessment of facilities are recommended.

Art. III.—On the Methods of Disposing of the Dead at Llassa, Thibet, etc.

1873 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-35
Author(s):  
Charles Horne
Keyword(s):  
The Subject ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead

In the year 1857 one of the travelling Llamas from Llassa came to Lahoul, in the Kûlû country on the Himalêh, and hearing of the mutiny was afraid to proceed. Major Hay, who was at that place in political employ, engaged this man to draw and describe for him many very interesting ceremonies in use in Llassa, amongst which was the method there employed in disposing of dead bodies. This so exactly confirms the accounts given by Straboand Cicero, and is, moreover, of itself so curious, that I have transcribed it, with as many passages relating to the subject as readily came to hand; and as the Llama was a very fair draughtsman, I have had facsimiles made of his drawings to illustrate this paper. I will first give the extracts, and then the account of the Llama.

scholarly journals Finding the dead: bodies, bones and burials from the 1845 Franklin northwest passage Expedition

Polar Record ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 197-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas R. Stenton
Keyword(s):  
Human Remains ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Northwest Passage ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
Failed Attempt ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Back River

AbstractOn 22 April 1848, after three years in the Arctic, and 19 months spent ice-bound in northern Victoria Strait, the 105 surviving officers and crew of the Franklin Northwest Passage expedition deserted HMSErebusand HMSTerroras the first step of their escape plan. They assembled at a camp south of Victory Point on the northwest coast of King William Island and made the final preparations for the next step, a 400 km trek along the frozen seashores of King William Island and Adelaide Peninsula to the Back River. All of the men died before reaching their destination, and their remains have been found at 35 locations along the route of the retreat. These discoveries have played a central role in reenactments of events thought to have occurred during the failed attempt to reach the Back River and to the disastrous outcome of the expedition. This paper presents a summary of these findings and examines the criteria used to attribute them to the Franklin expedition. It is suggested that approximately one-third of the identifications have been based on information that is inadequate to confidently assign the human remains as those of Franklin expedition personnel.

scholarly journals Reading Discourses of Power and Violence in Emerging Kashmiri Literature in English: The Collaborator and Curfewed Night

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-49
Author(s):  
Amrita Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Literary Texts ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Conflict Zone ◽  
Living Dead ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This essay studies two literary texts on Kashmir, The Collaborator (2011) by Mirza Waheed and Curfewed Night (2010) by Basharat Peer and analyzes the discourses of power, overt forms of violence that the works present. It first contextualizes events from the last three years that have occurred in Kashmir to present forms of violence Kashmiri subjects undergo in the quotidian of life. The essay, thus, argues that the selected literary works represent Kashmir as a unique postcolonial conflict zone that defies an easy terminology to understand the onslaught of violence, and the varied forms of power. As analyzed in the article, one finds a curious merging of biopolitics and necropolitics that constructs the characters as “living dead” within this emergency zone. For this, the theoretical trajectory of the essay is mapped out to show the transition from Foucault and Agamben’s idea of biopolitics to Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics. Thereafter, essay concludes how the two texts illustrate Agamben’s notion of the bare life is not enough to understand subjects living in this unique postcoloniality. The presence of death and the dead bodies go beyond bare life and shows how that bodies become significant signifiers that construct a varied notion of agency.

Corpses of atonement: the discovery, commemoration and reinterment of eleven Alsatian victims of Nazi terror, 1947–52

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devlin M. Scofield
Keyword(s):  
Cross Section ◽  
School Children ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Mass Grave ◽  
Wide Cross ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead

In April 1947, a mass grave containing the bodies of 11 Alsatians executed by the Offenburg Gestapo in December 1944 was uncovered in Rammersweier. In the following days, the bodies were exhumed, placed in coffins and, after a two day vigil by local residents, solemnly and publically reburied after a two confessional service in the presence of school children and a wide cross-section of local and state authorities. A roadside memorial was constructed for the victims in 1948. The bodies of the murdered Alsatians played a central symbolic role throughout the process of exhumation, commemoration, and response to the later vandalism of the erected monument in their name. This chapter argues that the meticulous attention to the remembrance activities surrounding the reburial and memorialisation of the Alsatians and the intensity of the vandalism investigation demonstrates that Badenese officials were convinced that their responses contained a symbolic resonance beyond giving eleven more victims of Nazi terror a proper burial. In effect, contemporary Badenese authorities and their Alsatian counterparts came to view the dead bodies as representative of the larger crimes of the Nazi regime, particularly those perpetrated against the population of Alsace.

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves: Using the Dead to Fight the Battles of the Living

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiffany Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
Dead Body ◽  
American Military ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Osama Bin Laden ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Nuremberg Trials

In October 2011, graphic images of a blood-stained and dead Muammar Gaddafi were sent around the internet. For some time after his death, his dead body was displayed at a house in Misrat, where masses of people queued to see it. His corpse provided a focus for the Libyan people, as proof that he really was dead and could finally be dominated. When Osama bin Laden was killed by the American military in May that same year, unlike Gaddafi, the body was absent, but the absence was significant. Shortly after he was killed a decision was taken not to show pictures of the dead body and it was buried at sea. The American military appear to have been concerned it would become a physical site for his supporters to congregate, and the photographs used by different sides in a propaganda war. Both cases reflect an aim to control the dead body and associated meanings with the person; that is not unusual: after the Nuremberg trials, the Allied authorities cremated Hermann Göring—who committed suicide prior to his scheduled hanging—so that his grave would not become a place of worship for Nazi sympathizers. These examples should remind us that dead bodies have longer lives than is at first obvious. They are central to rituals of mourning, but beyond this, throughout history, they have also played a role in political battles and provided a—sometimes contested—focus for reconciliation and remembrance. They have political and social capital and are objects with symbolic potential. In The Political Lives of Dead Bodies the anthropologist Katherine Verdery explores the way the dead body has been used in this way and why it is particularly effective. Firstly, she observes, human remains are effective symbolic objects because their meaning is ambiguous; that is whilst their associated meanings are contingent on a number of factors, including the individual and the cultural context, they are not fixed and are open to interpretation and manipulation: ‘Remains are concrete, yet protean; they do not have a single meaning but are open to many different readings’ (Verdery 1999: 28).

Ekphrasis and Decision

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-76
Author(s):  
Morwenna Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Visual Language ◽  
Dead Bodies ◽  
The Dead

This chapter shows how the technique of ekphrasis is used to provoke active responses in the audience: discernment, judgment, and decision. It begins with a series of passages from Plato’s Republic, in which the author invites his audience to gaze on corpses with a series of characters: Leontius, Gyges’ ancestor, and Er. By describing these encounters in highly visual language, Plato invites the audience to share the characters’ initial reactions (disgust, horror, amazement) and then their moment of krisis—judgment or discernment. I then show how the Cappadocians invite their audience to gaze with them on the dead bodies of saints and martyrs and the nearly-dead bodies of the starving. Again the motive is to provoke the audience to a moment of discernment, judgment, or decision.

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