CASS Seminar #3: Başak Can, "Health Experiences of Political Prisoners"

The third Critical Approaches in Social Sciences seminar of the Spring semester

on

April 6, Thursday

2-4 pm

at

AB2 (FEAS) 345

for

"Health Experiences of Political Prisoners in Turkey: State-making and Arbitrariness"

a paper by

Başak Can

Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Koç University

Paper abstract

This presentation examines three key moments/events where the official and non-official medico-legal apparatuses undertake a crucial role to solve a political or bureaucratic crisis concerning the health situation of the detained. The first one is hunger strikes, the second is the case of ill prisoners, and the third is obligatory pre- and post-detention examinations. In discussing these three events with a focus on the various uses of “illness clause” (i.e. humanitarian clause), this presentation shows two things: First, medico-legal encounters between physicians and detainees are mediated through the discretionary power of state officials, including but not limited to physicians. Second, legal medicine as a technology of state violence is central to understanding the intertwined histories of sovereignty and biopolitics in Turkey.