Apprehending the Criminal: The Production of Deviance in Nineteenth Century Discourse

ISBN-13: 9780822312710 / Angielski / Miękka / 1992 / 288 str.

Marie-Christine Leps

Opis

In this wide-ranging analysis, Marie-Christine Leps traces the production and circulation of knowledge about the criminal in nineteenth-century discourse, and shows how the delineation of deviance served to construct cultural norms. She demonstrates how the apprehension of crime and criminals was an important factor in the establishment of such key institutions as national systems of education, a cheap daily press, and various welfare measures designed to fight the spread of criminality.
Leps focuses on three discursive practices: the emergence of criminology, the development of a mass-produced press, and the proliferation of crime fiction, in both England and France. Beginning where Foucault's work "Discipline and Punish" ends, Leps analyzes intertextual modes of knowledge production and shows how the elaboration of hegemonic truths about the criminal is related to the exercise of power.
The scope of her investigation includes scientific treatises such as "Criminal Man" by Cesare Lombroso and "The English Convict" by Charles Goring, reports on the Jack the Ripper murders in "The Times" and "Le Petit Parisien," the Sherlock Holmes stories, Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," and novels by Zola and Bourget.