Forensic Science

Forensic science is a broad field, encompassing a range of sciences, that exists to meet the demands of the legal system. It emerged as a distinct field in Europe and the United States at the end of the 19th century in response to legislative changes that increased the status of evidence over and above testimony. The shift toward evidentiary trials called for a class of experts able to identify, collect, and document evidence left at crime scenes. In cases of suspicious death, their expertise extended to the study of the corpse in order to make formal identifications and secure evidence to assist the investigative process. Forensic science is, therefore, a specialized knowledge that is intimately connected with death and, since its rise in the 19th century, has shaped the law, reinforced the value of evidence, and mediated cultural attitudes toward human remains. Further, the cultural and political role of the dead body itself has been transformed as a consequence of the power [Page 457]of forensic technologies to invest it with a singular truth-telling power.

From Sherlock Holmes to CSI

The detective novel developed as a genre in the 19th century alongside forensic science and played a crucial part in educating the public about the potential for the new science to assist law enforcement agencies. Famously, Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, adopts a forensic approach to solve mysteries and track down criminals, and he is often seen analyzing footprints, fingerprints, and other trace evidence left at crime scenes. Not only did Doyle's narratives help to popularize scientific theories and techniques, but on occasion they even anticipated the use of procedures in scientific police practice. Their fantasies of social control created a fecund ground for the eventual adoption of the actual technologies, such as fingerprinting.

This entanglement of forensic science with narrative is not unique to the fin de siècle but is a notable feature of the 20th and early 21st centuries. For example, novels by Patricia Cornwell center on a forensic scientist, the Chief Medical Examiner Kay Scarpetta, and the U.S. television series, CSI: Crime Scene Investigators and its spinoff shows have achieved global popularity. Forensic science—its empirical methods and technologies—is, thus, peculiarly resourceful for crime narratives and, in turn, such narratives help legitimize it, raising its profile and rendering it accessible to a wide audience. It therefore stands out from other sciences, whose purposes and practices remain more obscure for the public, as a result of the prominent position it holds in popular culture. In fact, the prevalence of forensic science in fiction and television dramas has given rise to a condition termed the “CSI effect.” This refers to the public's raised expectations of the field in legal situations, national and international, in turn contributing to further increasing the status awarded to material evidence in trials and bolstering the authority of forensic scientists.

Undoubtedly, one of the main factors determining such an abiding and widespread cultural interest in forensic science is its unique power to make sense of suspicious deaths. Although it is an ever-expanding and evolving field, including specialist areas as diverse as ballistics and entomology, autopsy is, perhaps, the practice that has come to epitomize it in the popular imagination. An autopsy is a medical procedure conducted by a pathologist involving the examination of both the exterior and interior of a corpse to determine the cause of death. Hence, a degree of ambivalence surrounds the forensic pathologist: His or her knowledge can assist criminal cases and grieving families, yet it is acquired by transgressing cultural taboos, violating the body, and awakening age-old fears of interiority. The popular interest in forensic science is a feature, therefore, of a broader fascination with the corpse and transgression of the body's boundaries, with expressions of the provisionality of identity. It is also a manifestation of an intense cultural desire to explain suspicious deaths. Forensic science offers the hope that the dead have not died in vain by paving the way for greater understanding of particular medical conditions and for justice.

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