Sentimental Science, Somaticization, and Forensic Drama

Abstract

This article examines the forensic drama Bones as reflective of forensic dramas generally, which deploy visual logics and a set of discourses that have emerged across a range of institutional spaces. These discourses tend to conflate persons with bodies, privatize and somaticize violence, obviate the confessional act, and privilege the visual mediation of the body as a way of knowing. Bones, and other contemporary forensic dramas, rearticulate older logics of the body to contemporary techniques of policing. I will argue that the convergence of these logics implies a social order where surveillance is privileged, the justice system is mechanized, and body-based modes of social sorting operate under the guise of scientific governance.

Keywords:

• Visual culture
• Somaticization
• Mediation
• Transparency
• Crime drama