Forensic Experts and Knowledge Practices in Transitional Justice Scenarios

This chapter explores forensic knowledge, which has become central in transitional justice scenarios in societies transitioning either from war to peace or from dictatorships and authoritarian regimes to democracy. Focusing on forensic experts’ knowledge production in the transitional justice process in Colombia after the peace agreement between the government and the FARC guerrilla group in 2016, this chapter attends to the production of sites of forensic interest. It argues that these sites are social and techno-legal interventions of forensic experts’ knowledge practices that sustain transitional justice efforts at victim reparation, justice, and truth-telling by protecting human remains of potential victims of the armed conflict. In doing so, forensic experts make specific victims knowable. Therefore, forensic experts and their knowledge practices are far from being passive witnesses. The chapter shows how forensic experts visibly partake in setting out the terms of the transition that is meant to occur, while at the same time participating in the making of present conditions of possibility and future-making practices for society after the transition is over.