Inspecting Pieces, Producing Papers: About Traces and Criminal Expertise Techniques

Abstract

This article seeks to unveil the many narrative, graphic and formal layers that give rise to the forensics reports on rape and sexual assault crimes, produced by the Legal Medical Institute of Campinas ( Instituto Médico Legal - IML), between 2004 and 2005. Therefore, I start from the graphic model that shapes these papers – its layout-form – to gradually show the narrative formula contained in them: pieces of flesh . Finally, by following these paths, I intend to show how the criminal materiality of rape and sexual assault is confused with the materiality of the sex of girls, boys and women who are taken care of at this institution.

Concerning the artifices practiced in documenting the documentation: on writing, testifying and learning to file

“…is because, as Peirano (2006: 36) states, a document 'groups together a range of information, legally defined by a certain state body', therefore, the immediate object of my research request, the reports, also contained important identification information given that they indexed name, surname, affiliation, age, ID, place of birth and address on the same physical platform. Indexing performed through a succinct paragraph that opens the forensic report and provides the personal 'qualifications' of the victim in the first few lines (Nadai 2022).…”