Necessary concepts for a basic understanding of Forensic History - By Dale de Kock

Written By: Dale de Kock

Category: Essay

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, Dale de Kock presents an enlightening essay titled "Necessary concepts for a basic understanding of Forensic History." Through this work, de Kock delves into the intricate world of forensics, exploring its foundational concepts and their application across various disciplines. This submission falls under the Essay category, offering a thought-provoking examination of how forensics shapes our understanding of evidence, human rights, and the environment.

About the Work

Dale de Kock's essay intricately examines the interplay between forensics and broader societal concepts. By exploring themes like forensis, prosopopoeia, and environmental violence, de Kock provides a comprehensive analysis of how evidence is gathered, interpreted, and presented. The work highlights the profound impact of forensics on both legal and humanitarian fronts, emphasizing the importance of humanisation amidst instrumentalization.

Necessary concepts for a basic understanding of Forensic History

Original Submission by Dale de Kock

Necessary concepts for a basic understanding of Forensic History

Dale de Kock

Forensics is a complex amalgam of disciplinary techniques and concepts that aid in the specific tasks that each discipline requires, whether that be discerning the validity of evidence or humanising those who are missing or dead in the wake of disaster or war. As such, there are a range of constituent concepts that are paramount in understanding what 'forensic' is. In this piece, I will outline five that I believe are important in my own understanding of forensics: forensis versus forensic; prosopopoeia; environmental violence and its perpetrators; instrumentalization of the 'non-human'; and humanisation in the wake of instrumentalization.

Forensis versus Forensic

To fully understand what forensics is, one must first define it. Weizman's definition is quite apt, where he described 'forensic' as the application of science and medicine within the realm of academia, referred to here as the 'forum'. The field and the forum have been thought of as separate, mutually exclusive entities in the purely physical sense, but actually are mutually abstract places of gathering, interpreting and proliferating evidence in order to accomplish a certain forensic goal, whether that goal is strictly legal or it stems from a humanitarian background. Zuzanna Dziuban describes forensics as applying science and technology to investigate occurrences, tabulate facts and present them before a court of law.

As for forensis, its Latin translation is “pertaining to the forum”, 'forum' as defined above, and has been hegemonically thought to only pertain to the legal realm. However, Weizman states that it must return to its Roman roots, where it pertained to multiple fora. What forensis has become in contemporary academia is the cross-examination of the relationship between the field and the forum and how the two interact with the events that they shape and are shaped by to present a certain form, or forms of evidence.

The presentation of this evidence has now fallen upon the forensic sensibilities of contemporary academia to present a coherent argument for or against a particular event or force within a certain context. This forensic sensibility is now preoccupied with assessing the authenticity of certain forms of evidence, namely human testimony and photographic or video evidence. The reason for this is that there has been a debate between the two categories since the introduction of photographs as a category of evidence all its own, as put by Susan Schuppli in her piece “Can the Sun Lie?”. This piece interrogates the latter of the two forms, and assesses whether the sun, taken here to represent the natural forces of nature and indeed many other things out of the control of humans, is capable of “lying” in photographic and video evidence. The sun can “lie” as a result of the air pollution that humans have spewed out for as long as the Anthropocene has gone on, as she states in her piece based on information gathered in the Arctic tundra, where the angle of sunlight refracting off the ice and snow is off due to an increase in temperature in accordance with global warming, as well as a multitude of chemical pollutants altering the angle of refraction within the ice and snow. As a counter to this question, Weizman speaks on human testimony being rife with inaccuracy, as a possible result of trauma in the case of survivors of violence, but also because of bias and deceit. In addition to Schuppli's point about the possible inaccuracies of the sun and how it can alter and be altered, the inaccuracy of human testimony contributes to a very slippery slope that the forensic, and those who practise within the realms of the forensic, must navigate in order to assess the validity of testimonies in courts of law.

Another concept imperative to understanding what 'forensic' is in contemporary context, is the notion of the forensic turn, a concept that both Weizman and Dziuban speak on. The forensic turn is described as the period where forensics became more mainstream in terms of who utilised it and for what. In Dziuban's words, the forensic turn occurred in the 1980s, where the use of forensics became dominant in investigating mass death, whether because of genocide, wars or political violence. Although, in terms of strictly academic utilisation, forensics is now a more widespread set of teachings and methods, it still comes as a surprise to some that forensics can apply to many other disciplines besides law. This is, I feel, characterising a need for a second forensic turn, one in which the greater public is educated on the ubiquitous reach that forensics has within many disciplines.

Prosopopoeia

Keenan's “Getting the dead to tell me what happened: Justice, Prosopopoeia and Forensic Afterlives” is a pertinent starting point for defining and discussing prosopopoeia. Keenan defines it as “the attribution of a face and a voice to something inanimate” and continues to state that the best way to remain objective in the realm of human rights forensics is “to let the bones speak for themselves.” Prosopopoeia is used in forensics for two reasons: for humanitarian purposes and the humanisation of the missing and the dead; and the validation or voiding of evidence presented in a legal case, oftentimes in cases of human rights violations. Keenan's definition is accompanied by the comparison between human remains and photographs, in that both can be imprinted in various ways and those imprints can only become visible when catalysed by various forces. These forces, whether human or otherwise, would assist those without a voice to be able to 'speak'. Interpreters would be required to decipher the imprints on both human remains and photographs, and in some cases one interpreter would be at odds with another over the meanings and stories behind the imprints, contributing to the contest surrounding pieces of evidence.

Osteobiographies are 'stories' embedded in bones that allow for interpreters to tell a specific story based on certain imprints that they can decipher based on prior knowledge in certain disciplines. For example, a radiologist might notice the telling effects of radiation on the calcium in bones that a dentist might not, while the dentist would notice the enamel, or lack thereof, on teeth and be able to tell a different story.

One phenomenon that prevails in contemporary society, even more than it prevailed during the time of slavery, for example, is the use of prosopopoeia to speak on behalf of those who cannot speak but are not dead. Keenan states that there are some cases where evidence is not self-evident and must thus be proven by the interpreters mentioned above. One such instance is our very humanity. Keenan, stating that it is both inconsequential and a cause for concern, goes on to say that, even as self-evident members of humanity simply by means of biology and societal conception, that humans must still argue that they are, in fact, human. Non-self-evident humanity is cause for discussion, both in philosophical and forensic spheres, as it effectively diminishes the work that has already been put into arguing for human rights through effective denial of the a priori humanity of all.

I believe that prosopopoeia is so important to the forensic, not just for allowing the dead to be able to speak through another person, but also for affording inanimate objects an opportunity to speak for themselves. As with forensic architecture, buildings themselves can have similar osteobiographical potential, in that there are several telling forces that can be interpreted that can tell a story that only forensic architects will be able to interpret. Forensic architecture owes its beginning to building surveyors and has learned from them how to analyse structure and infrastructure, as well as the changing nature of buildings themselves.

In addition to the forces at work in architecture and those who interpret them, there are instances of forces at work that those who are versed in the sciences of nature: botany, geology, forestry etc. will be able to decipher. This will be covered in more detail in the next section, where the interaction between environmental and human violence is explored.

Environmental violence and its perpetrators

Here, 'environmental' violence is not simply to be taken as the natural environment that humans must coexist with. I refer to the 'environment' as any structure or space that is occupied by humans and can be subjected to some form of violence. As such, I shall be expanding upon the discipline of forensic architecture that I prefaced in the previous section, which Weizman defines and explores by contextualising it through real world events and the further strengthening and disseminating of forensic information regarding architecture and infrastructure. Additionally, I will be speaking on the concept of ecocide that Hannah Martin covers in her piece “Defoliating the World'', and how humans have contributed to the almost complete eradication of natural, untouched nature on earth, as well as returning to Schuppli's “Can the Sun Lie?” to look more closely at the interaction between human emissions, sunlight and the Arctic. I will then contrast the two environments and their experience with violence with the nature of human violence, as a preface to the next section, where I will deal with human remains and propaganda.

Weizman states that buildings are not static, and are thus subject to many forces, human or environmental, that can affect their integrity. Weizman continues by defining and contextualising the role of aesthetics within architecture, which, in this case, is not what the senses are able to detect, but rather the capacity that buildings and man-made structures can be affected by slow, deliberate forces or a rapid and irreversible change. In some cases, these forces and changes can come about because of the political climate that prevails, and indeed the natural climate that the buildings have been constructed in. For example, a building can be neglected by the current political and social landscape that has no need for it and allows various other forces to act upon it, sometimes even sanctioning action against that building. The Athlone towers spring to mind: a structure that served no purpose in the current political landscape and, rather than leaving them to eventually succumb to environmental forces, the social and political climate deemed it necessary to act upon it in such a way as to ensure their safe and rapid demise. Additionally, a building could be kept up for various reasons and is rather acted upon by environmental forces without the neglect of the social and political climate. Here, there is a concerted effort to maintain, while nature continues to act in its own capacity. The buildings on UCT's upper campus are reminiscent of this, where the buildings themselves are kept clean, functional and stable, while the ivy that is so distinctive to their aesthetic can grow unimpeded.

Buildings, according to Weizman, could frame human action and shape events, in a way unique to each building and each situation that arises from and leads to that building’s changes. One of these changes, which I have briefly spoken on, is political causality, which Weizman contextualises by referring to the Rana Plaze factory collapse in 2013. This exemplifies the dehumanisation that will be spoken on in more detail in a later section, as well as the prevalence of both environmental and human violence and how they can coexist and feed off each other. Here, there is indirect human violence by way of dehumanisation of the lower class, while simultaneously ensuring the survival of the upper class by essentially ignoring their part in the collapse. There is also environmental violence, both in the sense of the environment enacting violence in the form of the cracks and the collapse, and the neglect of buildings by the political and social climate, more focused on profit than upkeep for safety.

Both Martin's “Defoliating the World: Ecocide, Visual Evidence and 'Earthly Memory'” and Weisman's “The World Without Us” exemplify environmental violence in that they describe and analyse the extent to which humans have altered the environments we live in, not always for the better. Martin furthers the notion of environmental violence as a result of the current political and social climate by way of using the War on Drugs and the aerial fumigation in Colombia to eradicate marijuana, poppy and coca plantations, and even to blanket areas in the wild where these plants naturally grow, altering and even destroying the surrounding foliage as well as the intended targets. In addition to the eradication of naturally occurring plant life to curb their illicit use in the drug trade, there are examples of illegal mining in the Amazon that have left their mark on the surrounding rainforest. What is quite dubious, at least in terms of the political climate that begets the War on Drugs and its resultant ecocide campaigns, is the predisposition of judgement that the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs has regarding plants with potentially illicit properties. As stated above, these plants were, in their natural form and habitat, eradicated through use of aerial fumigation, without regard for the surrounding areas, and even the naturally occurring plants themselves. This raises questions regarding the nature and even sentience of plant matter, remarking on how this predisposition is so ingrained into politics in contemporary society that those in power gave the order the eradication of swathes of naturally occurring rainforest, untouched by the march of civilisation, until now.

Schuppli's “Can the Sun Lie” is concerned with the use of photographs and video as items of evidence and the effect that emissions have had on the environment, using the Canadian Arctic as a case study of human emissions and microcosm for the earth itself. It exemplifies the nature of humanity's effects on the environment, and thereby on us, by placing Inuit generational knowledge of using the sun for guidance in a conversation surrounding the changing “quasi-photographic plates”, in this case looking specifically at the changing temperatures in the Arctic. Due to the troposphere warming at an increased rate and the abundance of pollutants now in the ice and snow of the far North, there has been a change in the refraction of sunlight in the ice and snow, thereby throwing this natural compass off kilter.

In contrast to the environmental violence that Martin and Schuppli speak upon, there is also the presence of human violence, more specifically the violence acted upon humans by humans. A large portion of this course was dedicated to this phenomenon of violence, but I shall be using only the most pertinent sections in the next section, which will deal with the violence of instrumentalization and dehumanisation of the missing and the dead through their use as propaganda.

Instrumentalization of the 'non-human'

Missing people are, sadly, part of life in contemporary society, especially with the rise in illicit immigration in the Mediterranean. As such, there are those who would instrumentalise those who have gone missing, mostly for political means. In Keenan's “Getting the dead to tell me what happened: Justice, Prosopopoeia and Forensic Afterlives”, he states that the disappearance of a person and the disappearance of that disappearance is very common in today's world, prompting many efforts to recover that person, or their remains, and the hegemonic thought that the finding of remains ends the 'missing-ness' of that particular person and the disappearance of their disappearance is uncovered. However, there is much to be done yet: identifying and notifying any family, laying the remains to rest, bringing the perpetrators to justice, proper memorialisation. All these are contributing factors in the struggle to make sure that those who go missing are remembered in entirety and perpetuity, regardless of the state of their eventual recovery.

Instrumentalization of remains is used, in the cases that Keenan presents, for political affiliation and martyrdom. However, in these cases, where a person is essentially only remembered for who they were affiliated with, it removes their humanity and their individuality. They are used for propaganda, without the consent or, sometimes, even the knowledge of their family members. Keenan furthers his point through the case of those remains of an uMkhonto we Sizwe freedom fighter, and the burial and memorialisation of the remains. In it, he remarks on the binary between “too much and too little”, where some family members feel that the memorialisation was too little to properly remember the person they knew, and others feel that the memorialisation is too much for just the remains of the person. They want their loved ones back, and no amount of celebration of their accomplishments or affiliation will make up for it.

Additionally, Keenan speaks on the conversations surrounding the nature of humanity, covered in this essay's section on prosopopoeia. It must now be characterised in relation, not to prosopopoeia, but rather to how the non-self-evidence of humanity that exists within every person contributes to their dehumanisation, both pre- and post-mortem. This preconception that people are not automatically afforded the status “human” is plain to see, especially looking back on the sheer number of examples of people having to prove their humanness. Keenan offers the example of the slave trade and the move to abolish it in Britain in the eighteenth century, but there are several instances that come to mind where the perpetrators of violence thought their victims to be subhuman. The British conquest of their colonies, various genocides, including the Holocaust, the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides, all come to mind when one thinks of crimes against humanity. This dehumanisation in the face of violence can be used as a tool for political gain to make drastic changes in the legislature of a certain state. Whether this is for good or otherwise, depends on those who would use the bodies and missing places of those who have gone.

Instrumentalization of the 'non-human' is something that I believe is studied quite often in the forensic. Here, 'non-human' is to be taken as anything that is not expressly a part of humanity, including those people who have not yet proved their belonging to humanity. Heller and Pezzani's “Liquid Traces: Investigating the Deaths of Migrants at the EU's Maritime Frontier” and Edkins' “Missing Migrants and the Politics of Naming: Names without Bodies, Bodies without Names” are two pieces which speak to the instrumentalization of 'non-human' entities in order to push toward a particular goal. These goals are the binary between border control and humanitarian aid and how it affects those who migrate across the Mediterranean, in Heller and Pezzani's piece, and the politics of naming and memorialisation, in Edkins' piece.

In “Liquid Traces”, Heller and Pezzani remark on the use of the sea as a tool to control the influx of migrants into the EU. Here, there is the instrumentalization of something that is almost wholly uncontrollable, the sea, by those who would seek to dehumanise those who require shelter in the wake of some displacement in their home countries. In Heller and Pezzani's words, this 'militarised governmentality' stems from a need for sovereignty of the uncontrollable oceans, and the deaths of migrants are a result of the inaction of a multitude of factors, not the action of the sea. I do believe that this can be debated somewhat, as the inaction of others is an action all its own, and the result, the deaths and disappearance of migrants, is a step towards the EU having sovereignty over the Mediterranean in whatever form they can achieve it. However, in the binary that exists between states' need for sovereignty and the need for a 'free sea', there is a debate surrounding accountability for migrant death and disappearance and whether it falls upon the migrants themselves or the states that constantly monitor the waters themselves. Here, there is not only the instrumentalization of the seas themselves, but also the grey areas surrounding accountability that exist because of the sovereignty/free sea binary mentioned above. These instances contribute to a greater sense of unaccountability and the victims of this are left to fend for themselves in a situation that is geared towards their journey being unsuccessful.

Edkins “Missing Migrants and the Politics of Naming” explores the importance of names and attaching those names to bodies, which can be used to humanise, dehumanise and rehumanise those who have gone missing or died. Early in the piece, Edkins references the missing after instances of violence: wars, genocide, terrorist attacks, undocumented and illicit migrations and trafficking. She states that, because of the condition in which both the state and the bodies themselves can be left in the aftermath of such violence, there is sometimes a disconnect between name and body.

Edkins deals first with the 'names without bodies' portion of her piece's title and subsequently describes how 'names without bodies' and 'bodies without names' can stem from the same instance of violence and even refer to the same body. Using illicit migration, as well as the search for the missing in the aftermath of the Vietnam war and 9/11 as a case study, Edkins describes the conflict between contemporary exclusionary politics concerned more with sovereignty than humanitarianism, and the sense of personal loss that occurs when someone goes missing in this particular case. The World Wars are also a cause for debate regarding memorialisation of the dead, as the British government did not repatriate the dead, rather choosing to bury them where they fell or cemeteries nearby. Memorialisation is itself a fickle subject, especially concerning those who have died in service of their country. Those family members would have the remains of their loved ones so they could conduct a proper burial, while the political states that reign might have a plan to memorialise the dead in a way that they deem fit.

This memorialisation, however, stems from a situation where the political state seeks to memorialise the missing and the dead to garner patriotism and as a monument to 'triumphalism'. This dehumanisation of those who have died in service for their country is naturally a point of contention for the families of those who have died, and is somewhat of a moral ambiguity, in that there is the acknowledgement of these people's contribution and their deaths in service, but the impersonal nature of names on a plaque or a wall does not suffice to capture the fullness of their humanity, even if the humanity is not assured in terms of Keenan's non-self-evident humanity. Additionally, the 'non-human' associated with all people stems from the names that are used in memorials, thereby assisting in their instrumentalization, as well as adding fuel to the fire for those who dispute the methods by which the missing and the dead are memorialised.

Dehumanisation is, in general, a factor in understanding the work that forensics does, as it is directly related to the post-mortem perception and reconception of all missing and dead. Merely the presence of methods of dehumanisation assists in counteracting it, evident in Keenan's inclusion the move to abolish the slave trade in Britain in the eighteenth century, and therefore, in my opinion, is doubly tricky in instances where illicit migration is concerned, where there is a lack of visible evidence of dehumanisation and disregard for the lives of both the dead and their families.

Humanisation in the wake of instrumentalization

To begin the discussion of humanisation, I must first preface a conversation that was had in a seminar this semester, regarding Keenan's non-self-evident humanity. In this seminar, the topic of dehumanisation and rehumanisation was further expanded on by the concept that, to be dehumanised, one must be humanised. However, in line with Keenan's notion that people are not self-evidently human and have to justify their inclusion in humanity, the process of rehumanisation is illogical, as rehumanisation first requires one to be human. Therefore, I will somewhat go back on my words in previous sections, stating that the nomenclature of dehumanisation and rehumanisation are, in my opinion, detracting from the true nature of the 'human' and the 'non-human'. What accurately describes the afore-mentioned nature are instrumentalization and humanisation, at least when humans are concerned. Although, I do believe that some debate could be put forth to say that eradicating the instrumentalization of our environments is to 'humanise' them by placing them in the context of what could happen to humans if these environments were to be irreversibly altered, such is the case with Schuppli's “Can the Sun Lie” and Martin's “Defoliating the World”.

“Missing and Missed: Rehumanisation, the Nation and Missing-ness” deals with the methods in which the dead during the Apartheid regime were 'disappeared' and the identification, recovery, rehumanisation and memorialisation that occurs in the wake of their disappearances. What is quite striking is the inclusion of the connections between anti-racialism and humanisation in an African context, where the disregard for black bodies is counteracted somewhat by the Missing Persons Task Team's (MPTT) recovering and returning of their remains. In this piece, Rousseau et al. use the term 're/humanisation' to convey the blurred lines between the two concepts. As I have stated above, I believe there can only be rehumanisation if one is first considered human, in terms of Keenan's non-self-evident humanity, but Rousseau et al. frame the conversation surrounding the humanisation of remains and the people to whom they belonged in such a way as to provide a foil of sorts to Keenan's concept. While the political and social climate may not consider a person to be human and make all the effort to treat them as such, in many cases there will be a group of people, whether it be the family or an organisation like the MPTT, who consider them to be human and strive to have them seen as such by the larger majority.

Another contrast arises between Rousseau et al. and Keenan on the interconnectedness of citizenship and humanity. A symbolic offering of citizenship, as framed by Rousseau et al., exhumation and reburial is a method by which a person can be seen as human by the majority, albeit a posthumous offering and somewhat of a lacking compensation for the family of the missing and the dead.

In a more philosophical process of humanisation, Rousseau et al. refer to the humanisation of the dead in colonial museum collections and the missing-ness, not of the physical remains, but of the metaphysical person those remains belonged to in life. This is mirrored in Keenan's piece, where he refers to the empty space that is left by the absence of a loved one and the futile attempts at memorialisation that can simultaneously be too much or too little to commemorate them. While the irreplaceable person is gone, the very acknowledgement of their absence in the lives of those around them is enough to humanise them, at least for those who are not concerned with the simple recording of bodies. In the title, “Missing and Missed”, the word 'missed' is used to convey the place that a person occupies in other's lives. However, the status of 'missing' that Rousseau et al. speak on, is more in line with the political instrumentalization that I have spoken about in the section on instrumentalization in this essay, where the person in question is either made to be missing, as is the case with missing persons in the Mediterranean, or being missed, as is the case with families who wish to memorialise their lost loved ones. This back and forth thereby condemns the person, or at least their memory, to a perpetual pendulum swing between different contexts of 'missing', never resting at the bottom for more than a moment.

I believe the back and forth between humanisation and instrumentalization is so important to the forensic because it is the binary by which the forensic places itself within the world of academics: there is an instrumentalization, forensics collects, tabulates and presents facts for humanisation, and whether or not it is successful, the pendulum swings on or comes to a stop. Instrumentalization and humanisation are so ingrained within our society. Racism, segregation, unfair labour laws, slavery, genocide, disappearing all occur in the absence of what is hegemonically deemed to be 'non-human' and the instrumentalization of those 'non-humans', and forensics seeks to unravel the twisted nature of how humanity preys on itself.

Reference List

Weizman, Eyal. ‘Introduction: Forensis’ in Forensic Architecture, Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth (Sternberg Press, 2014), 9-32.

Dziuban, Zuzanna (ed). "Introduction: Forensics in the Expanded Field," in Zuzanna Dziuban (ed), Mapping the 'Forensic Turn': Engagements with Materialities of Mass Death in Holocaust Studies and Beyond (Vienna: New Academic Press, 2017, 7-35.

Schuppli, Susan. “Can the Sun Lie?” in Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2014), pp. 56-64

Weisman, Alan. The World Without Us (New York: Picador, 2007), pp. 1-24

Martin, Hannah Meszaros. “Defoliating the World: Ecocide, Visual Evidence and 'Earthly Memory'”, in Third Text, vol. 32 (2018), pp. 230-253

Keenan, Thomas. “Getting the dead to tell me what happened: Justice, Prosopopoeia and Forensic Afterlives” in Kronos, vol. 44 (2018), pp. 102-122

Edkins, Jenny. “Missing Migrants and the Politics of Naming: Names without Bodies, Bodies without Names”, in Social Research, vol. 83, no. 2 (John Hopkins University Press, 2016), pp. 359-389

Heller, Charles; and Pezzani, Lorenzo. “Liquid Traces: Investigating the Deaths of Migrants at the EU's Maritime Border'', in Forensis: The Architecture of Public Truth (Sternberg Press, 2014), pp. 657-684

Rousseau, Nicky; Moosage, Riedwaan; and Rassool, Ciraj. "Missing and Missed: Rehumanisation, the Nation and Missing-ness," Kronos, vol.44 (2018), pp. 10-32

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar celebrates diverse voices in creative writing and poetry from around the world. This prestigious competition provides a platform for participants to showcase their literary talents, offering an opportunity to explore various themes and express unique perspectives through their writing.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Dale de Kock for their insightful contribution to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. "Necessary concepts for a basic understanding of Forensic History" stands as a testament to the depth and complexity of forensic studies, enriching our understanding of its role in contemporary society.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.