Every society has to answer for its morgue
February 21, 2016 9:12 AM   Subscribe

CSI: Dixie — a digital history project of coroners' inquests from South Carolina during the 1800s.
If we must make do with the records we have, we don't have to make do with the archives we have. We can build our own archives -- alternative archives like CSI:D -- an archive of the unfortunate, the murdered, and the suicidal. The point is not to expose for the sake of exposure. We do not reproduce crimes; we work to 'solve' them by owning them and answering for them. In this, we cannot be self-righteous. As historians, we keep the dead's judgments against the living, and the living's judgments against the dead. We are mere clerks in the reckoning, the process that comes between truth and reconciliation.
Slate piece by Rebecca Onion about the project, which is led by historian Stephen Berry.
posted by metaquarry (3 comments total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
 
Holy shit, this piece is amazing. Four murders, two elections, three trials (two show) a fugitive capture and duel. It gives me such a better understanding of some of the forces in play during Reconstruction.

Great find.
posted by Diablevert at 10:28 AM on February 21, 2016


"They were not interested, in the same way we are, in justice," Berry writes. "They were interested in something more supple—a satisfactory conclusion." The documents collected in CSI:Dixie were the results of inquests that tried to resolve each local death in a way that would ensure stability in the community.

Is it REALLY much different today? (See previous post on Public Defenders) That's the thing about the CSI TV shows and the entire "CSI trope", that there is such a thing a "scientifically perfected justice" (one of my favorite long GIFs)
posted by oneswellfoop at 12:19 PM on February 21, 2016


The entries under "abortion" and "infanticide" give you a pretty good look at a pre-contraception world (especially with a high rate of rape of slaves and poor women, etc.) Sad but fascinating. We need more of this kind of history.
posted by emjaybee at 12:37 PM on February 21, 2016


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