Forensic Fantasies: Book Launch & Discussion

Join us for the presentation of Basak Can’s book "Forensic Fantasies: Doctors, Documents, and the Limits of Turth in Turkey".

Join us for the presentation of Basak Can’s book Forensic Fantasies: Doctors, Documents, and the Limits of Turth in Turkey. The session will be introduced by Dr Kathryn Claire Higgins (MCCS) and the conversation with the author will by moderated by Hazal Ozvaris (CRA & VC) and Dr Lee Douglas (CVA & Anthropology).

Forensic Fantasies: Doctors, Documents, and the Limits of Truth in Turkey, by Basak Can (Sociology, Kok University), examines the uneasy relationship between medicine, truth, and state violence in Turkey through an ethnography of forensic medical documentation. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with forensic doctors, human rights organizations, public hospitals, and archival research on medico-legal reports, the book asks why forensic evidence—widely assumed to reveal the truth of torture and constrain state violence—so often fails to do so, even as faith in its power persists. The book introduces the concept of “forensic fantasy” to describe the shared belief, held by state officials, doctors, and human rights activists alike, that medical documentation can objectively expose violence, deliver justice, and compel political response. Tracing how this fantasy animates both denial and resistance, the book shows how forensic medicine operates simultaneously as a technology of governance and a site of ethical and political investment. Rather than opposing facts to fantasies, the book argues that truth-seeking in human rights politics is itself structured by fantasy. Through case studies ranging from torture documentation and prisoners’ health to the Gezi protests, Forensic Fantasies demonstrates how an economy of evidence reshapes political subjectivities, limits the effectiveness of legal redress, and redefines the boundaries of legitimate violence in an era of authoritarianism and post-truth politics. The book offers a critical intervention into debates on forensic expertise, human rights, and the politics of evidence, highlighting both the world-making power and the limits of truth in contemporary struggles against state violence.

Event co-sponsored by MCCS, Visual Cultures, and the Centre for Visual Anthropology.

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