Dur­ing rough but con­sen­sual sex he accidentally caused her death, the defence argued (but then again, how could she give con­sent when her blood-alco­hol level was, as shown in the trial, extremely high?). Bar­ton admit­ted to his actions, but he said he didn’t mean them. Fur­ther­more, a laptop found with Barton’s belong­ings was not admit­ted as evid­ence, although it had a search his­tory of por­no­graphy depict­ing tor­ture. This case doesn’t just run coun­ter to our basic eth­ical intu­itions (a man bru­tally murders a woman dur­ing sexual activ­ity but he walks free because ‘he didn’t mean it’?). The most dis­turb­ing aspect is that, acced­ing to the demands of the defence, the judge allowed Gladue’s pre­served pel­vis to be admit­ted as evid­ence: brought into court, the lower part of her torso was dis­played for the jur­ors (incid­ent­ally, this is the first time a por­tion of a body has been presen­ted at a trial in Canada). Why would pho­to­graphs of the wound not be enough? Does such a dis­play not rely on the long tra­di­tion of treat­ing indi­gen­ous peoples’ bod­ies as spe­ci­mens? Could we even ima­gine the oppos­ite case, an upper-class white woman’s torso dis­played when the accused is a black or indi­gen­ous man?

SLAVOJ ZIZEK http://ift.tt/2dBj9Xb