Providing expert testimony in asylum proceedings for mentally ill Mexicans, we are regularly asked to reduce individual subjects to diagnostic categories and an entire country to one of its most dysfunctional institutions. How, attorneys and judges ask us, does Mexican “culture”—through its institutions and psychiatric hospitals—treat the mentally ill? To adjudicators of asylum claims, there must be a clear and often singular “truth.” As Nikolas Rose has argued, however, “Truth is always enthroned in acts of violence.” This essay grapples with a question inherent to this work: to whom—and to what truths—are anthropological expert witnesses responsible?

中文翻译：

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专家见证的真相与责任

在为患有精神病的墨西哥人提供庇护程序中的专家证词时，我们经常被要求将个体受试者减少到诊断类别，并将整个国家减少到其功能最失调的机构之一。律师和法官问我们，墨西哥的“文化”——通过其机构和精神病院——如何治疗精神病患者？对于庇护申请的裁决者来说，必须有一个明确且通常是单一的“真相”。然而，正如尼古拉斯·罗斯（Nikolas Rose）所说，“真相总是以暴力行为为宝座。” 这篇文章探讨了这项工作固有的一个问题：人类学专家证人对谁——以及对什么真理——负责？