A child disappears

Law in the courts, law in the interstices of everyday life

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3865064
AutoresVeena Das (0000-0001-7397-0815, Veena Das is at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, autor correspondente)
Ano2019
Volume53
Fascículo1
Páginas97-132
Data de publicação2019-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoContributions to Indian Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0069-9659 • E-ISSN: 0069-9667
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0069966718812544
OpenAlexW2917122979
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas22

In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of a case in which an eight-year-old girl was abducted, tortured and raped. She was recovered under somewhat mysterious circumstances. In my analysis, I knit together events inside the court as reflected the judgment and related events outside the court. I try to show, first, how legal technology produced 'facts' in court. I then take up what seemed like minor contradictions within the documents and oral testimonies, navigate the processes through which these discrepancies were ironed out in court, resulting in a narrative that could lead to successful prosecution of the case and justice for the victim within the limits of legal proceedings. However, the same minor contradictions are later shown to have a different life in the neighbourhood from which the case originated. I argue that once we undo the solidity of the narrative that the court is obliged to fix and look at each micro-event that makes up the case, we see that truth and falsity, fact and fiction, certainty and scepticism, are mutually implicated. The stable conceptual furniture that many feminist scholars have come to expect in rape cases then begins to disperse into the finer grains of what makes up the texture of the law

Art · Certainty · Economic Justice · Epistemology · Falsity · Literature · Minor (academic · Narrative · Political science · Skepticism · Sociology · Gender, Security, and Conflict · History · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Sexual Assault and Victimization Studies