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Thesis ID: CBB001561589

Identifying Traces: Technologies of the Forensic Narrative (2005)

Michigan State University
Roof, Judith
Pollak, Ellen
Publication date: 2005
Language: English

Publication Date: 2005
Edition Details: Advisors: Roof, Judith; Ellen Pollak
Physical Details: 155 pp.

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This project takes as its starting point the contemporary cultural fascination with the "forensic" and asserts that since the discovery and later acceptance of DNA identification techniques in the early nineties, the forensic mode of narrative has fast become one of the most dominant truth-telling paradigms of our time. By positing that the tracing of empirical evidence can always lead to whole truth, forensic narratives control historical account by fixing the truth of events and identity. Indeed, if the central problematic of the forensic narrative is the problem of identity, then that narrative is necessarily bound up in the history of identification devices such as photography, fingerprinting and DNA profiling. This history is chronicled by the texts under examination in this dissertation. Each of the forms of identification discussed in this project--from the mug-shot to the DNA profile--is surrounded by popular discourses that illustrate the fascinating ways in which the forensic narrative takes shape within the cultural imaginary. These discourses also reveal the instabilities that inhere within that narrative. Identifying Traces tracks this fascinating interplay between the concepts of identification and elusive individuality, and also demonstrates the intrinsically multi-discursive construction of the forensic paradigms of narrative and identification.

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Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/09 (2006): 3436. UMI pub. no. 3189720.

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