Reading/Writing Autopsy: A Dirty Theory of the Science of Death

Abstract

The recent emergence of a sub-genre of television crime drama which centres on the work of forensic pathologists, positions the unruly iconography of the televisual autopsy in the foreground of the cultural imagination. There has been some academic interest in the commercial and televisual success of CSI (Crime Scene Investigation), its sibling shows and their British and Australian counterparts. Conventional readings suggest that these shows bring the science of forensic pathology into popular discourse and through that process reinforce the veracity of science and its ability to narrate, with a degree of moral authority, the ‘truth’ of death. This paper challenges the kind of ideological critique implicit to these analyses, and it does so through the lens of Brian Ott's recent exposition of dirty theory. Dirty theory proposes an approach to cultural analysis rooted in erotics, a perspective which enriches and supplements, rather than replaces or supersedes the hermeneutic and interpretative approaches of art, literary and ideological criticism. From the perspective of dirty theory, the televisual autopsy and related techniques of anatomical inspection provide an occasion for transgressive pleasure which undermines, albeit momentarily, (hegemonic) ideologies of science. The rather banal and nonchalant ways in which television pathologists respond to everything from severed heads to charred bones, raise a number of complex issues concerning the cultural logic of late modernity—a logic which, on the one hand, represents (dead) bodies as indifferent objects available for dispassionate, scientific analysis; and on the other, celebrates the grotesque body and its functionality as Other to perfection, rationality, order and discipline. This tension is routinely played out in the drama of televisual autopsy and the forensic investigations associated with it; a critical reading of the UK television drama series, Waking the Dead, provides, then, an important starting point for thinking about a dirty theory of the science of death.

Keywords:

• Television crime drama
• forensic pathology
• dirty theory
• transgressive pleasure
• anatomical display

Acknowledgements

The author is very grateful to her colleagues at Newcastle University for their invitation to join the Sociology of Health and Life Sciences Research Cluster in Sociology, School of Geography, Politics and Sociology. Their interest in the topic of this paper, and their lively and invigorating discussions of autopsy and postmortem have been extremely helpful in stimulating ideas and thinking through the merits and disadvantages of different frameworks of analysis. The author is also indebted to the two anonymous Science as Culture reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft, and their invaluable input to the finalised article.

Notes

See www.bodyworlds.com (accessed 5 July 2008).

In 1997, in response to the cloning of Dolly the Sheep, the bioethicist, Leon Kass published an article which suggested that a negative emotional response of repugnance or disgust toward some thing, idea or practice, was a strong indicator of its potential harmfulness and justified a rejection of that thing (Kass, 1997).

Importantly, this would include Mikhail Bakhtin's (1984 [1965]) poststructuralist elucidations of Rabelasian ribaldry and bodily excess; Julia Kristeva's (1982) psychoanalytical notion of abjection and its evocation disgusted fascination; Stephen Lyng's (1990, 2005) sociological concept of edgework and its denotation of the transgressive pleasures of voluntary risk-taking; Jack Katz’ (1988) existential criminological work and its emphasis on the sensual, pleasurable and existentially invigorating thrills of illicit behaviour; and Judith Butler's (1990, 1993) delineation of the transgressive potential of sex/gender performance, epitomised by the figure of the drag queen.

At its most basic, jouissance is the French word for extreme pleasure, with an overtone of sexual bliss. However, jouissance as a concept has a complex genealogy which this footnote cannot even begin to elaborate. Georges Bataille, Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud, Frederic Jameson, Julia Kristeva, as well as Roland Barthes have, at different times and in the context of diverse theoretical and disciplinary frameworks, advanced particular formulations of the concept. For a good overview see Flowers MacCannell (2003).

For a critical debate on the limitations of ‘media effects research’ see Barker and Petley (2001).

These are downloadable from the Waking the Dead website at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/wakingthedead/. Material used in this analysis was accessed on 25 June 2008. Viewers’ comments were only available for Series 5 and 6.