Synopses & Reviews
The subject of murder has always held a particular fascination for us. But, since at least the nineteenth century, we have seen the murderer as different from the ordinary citizenandmdash;a special individual, like an artist or a genius, who exists apart from the moral majority, a sovereign self who obeys only the destructive urge, sometimes even commanding cult followings. In contemporary culture, we continue to believe that there is something different and exceptional about killers, but is the murderer such a distinctive type? Are they degenerate beasts or supermen as they have been depicted on the page and the screen? Or are murderers something else entirely?
In The Subject of Murder, Lisa Downing explores the ways in which the figure of the murderer has been made to signify a specific kind of social subject in Western modernity. Drawing on the work of Foucault in her studies of the lives and crimes of killers in Europe and the United States, Downing interrogates the meanings of media and texts produced about and by murderers. Upending the usual treatment of murderers as isolated figures or exceptional individuals, Downing argues that they are ordinary people, reflections of our society at the intersections of gender, agency, desire, and violence.
Review
"This lucid and wide-ranging book sets aside conventional approaches to murder and studies it from an aesthetic perspective. According to Black, murder has been treated as an art form ever since De Quincey. Black makes the fascinating argument that the aestheticization of violence extended the Romantic theory of the sublime, and that the Romantic link between art and violence continues to find expression in episodes such as the shootings of John Lennon and Ronald Reagan—actions patterned on works of art. Well-written and often brilliant." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
andquot;Lisa Downing's latest book is an original and daring attempt to prod us to rethink our conventional, inherited, and normative conceptions of the figure of the murderer. Downing convincingly and disturbingly argues that murderers are not really 'others,' but that the subjectivities of murderers should be located on a continuum with us.
The Subject of Murder is a profoundly relevant feminist/queer contribution to our understanding of our present historical moment.andquot;
Review
and#8220;The Subject of Murder is an original, superbly researched, and important work that deserves a broad readership. It will be of interest to audiences from a wide range of disciplines, from French literature to cultural studies, sexuality studies, and queer studies; from popular culture to criminology and sociology. There has never been a book quite like it.and#8221;
Review
andquot;
The Subject of Murder is the kind of book that you didn't know you needed until you read it, and then you cannot understand how you ever thought about its subject without it! Murderers, as Downing points out, are cast as singular, exceptional, and remarkable in Euro-American cultural life. However, using a Foucauldian framework to fold murder and violence intot the set of discursive frames that produce modern human identity, Downing shows us how to see the murderer as a product of modernity rather than as the subject it wishes to suppres. A remarkable book.andquot;
Review
andquot;Lisa Downing's case studies demonstrate a remarkable intellectual dexterity in moving between the abstract ideas that shape the subjects she discusses and the materiality of the lives of those thus shaped.
The Subject of Murder is at once an intellecutal tour de force, and, like its subjects, is absolutely fascinating.andquot;
Synopsis
What connects the Romantic essays of Thomas De Quincey and the violent cinema of Brian De Palma? Or the "beautiful" suicides of Hedda Gabler Yukio Mishima? Or the shootings of pop star John Lennon and President Ronald Reagon? In "The Aesthetics of Murder", Joel Black explores the sometimes gruesome interplay between life and art, between actual violence and images of violence in a variety of literary texts, paintings, and films.
Rather than exclude murder from critical consideration by dismissing it as a crime, Black urges us to ponder the killer's artistic role-- and our own experience as audience, witness, or voyeur. Black explores murder as a recurring, obsessive theme in the Romantic tradition, approaching the subject from an aesthetic rather than a moral, psychological, or philosophical perspective. He compares cultural and artistic notions of suicide as the ultimate self-expression. And he examines contemporary instances of sensational murders and assassinations, treating these as mimetic or cathartic activities in their own right.
Combining historical documentation with theoretical insights, Black shows that the possibilities of representing violence-- and of experiencing it-- as art were recognized early in the nineteenth century as logical extensions of Romantic theories of the sublime. Since then, both traditional art forms and the modern mass media have contributed to the growing aestheticization of daily experience-- including murder, suicide, and terrorism.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-266) and index.
About the Author
Lisa Downing is professor of French discourses of sexuality at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. She is the author of numerous books including Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature, The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault, and coauthor of Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters.
Table of Contents
and#160;
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Murder and Gender in the European Nineteenth Century
Chapter 1. andldquo;Real Murderer and False Poetandrdquo;: Pierre-Franandccedil;ois Lacenaire
Chapter 2. The andldquo;Angel of Arsenicandrdquo;: Marie Lafarge
Chapter 3. The Beast in Man: Jack and the Rippers Who Came After
Part II. The Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Killer
Chapter 4. andldquo;Infanticidalandrdquo; Femininity: Myra Hindley
Chapter 5. andldquo;Monochrome Manandrdquo;: Dennis Nilsen
Chapter 6. Serial Killing and the Dissident Woman: Aileen Wuornos
Chapter 7. Kids Who Kill: Defying the Stereotype of the Murderer
By Way of Brief Conclusion . . .
Notes
Index