Noa Vaisman (University of Chicago, USA)
Legal Subjects, Ontologies and DNA: Human Rights in Post-Dictatorship Argentina
In August 2009 the Supreme Court of Argentina pronounced its position regarding the verification of identity using genetic material (shed DNA) found on personal objects. The Court’s statement was presented in response to the case of Guillermo and Emiliano Prieto, whose identity had been in question since the early 1980s. The two young adults are, in all likelihood, children of disappeared who were themselves disappeared as infants by the military regime that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983. Separated from their biological kin and their genetic past their identity was altered when they were inscribed as the natural offspring of a member of the Armed Forces and his wife.
In 1982 the case first arrived in the courts but due to the refusal of the appropriating couple and later the individuals themselves the brothers’ identity was never verified. Until 2006 identification of genetic ties was based on DNA extracted from blood samples, however, in recent years other techniques using shed DNA that was left on clothes and other personal objects were developed. The use of these techniques was debated by the Magistrates in 2009. The Court’s statement ratifies its decision from 2003 against compulsory blood tests but allows for DNA identity tests to be carried out on DNA extracted from tissue found on objects in the home of the victim. This legal decision raises many questions, specifically: What are an individual’s rights to identity and to his DNA? How are legal subjectivities constructed and in what ways are they different from the individual’s understanding of his identity? What does this decision tell us about justice and the demand for accountability and truth in the context of post-dictatorship social rebuilding? In this paper I address the above questions using ethnographic material and legal documents from the Supreme Court of Argentina.
In 1982 the case first arrived in the courts but due to the refusal of the appropriating couple and later the individuals themselves the brothers’ identity was never verified. Until 2006 identification of genetic ties was based on DNA extracted from blood samples, however, in recent years other techniques using shed DNA that was left on clothes and other personal objects were developed. The use of these techniques was debated by the Magistrates in 2009. The Court’s statement ratifies its decision from 2003 against compulsory blood tests but allows for DNA identity tests to be carried out on DNA extracted from tissue found on objects in the home of the victim. This legal decision raises many questions, specifically: What are an individual’s rights to identity and to his DNA? How are legal subjectivities constructed and in what ways are they different from the individual’s understanding of his identity? What does this decision tell us about justice and the demand for accountability and truth in the context of post-dictatorship social rebuilding? In this paper I address the above questions using ethnographic material and legal documents from the Supreme Court of Argentina.
