The subject of murder : gender, exceptionality, and the modern killer / Lisa Downing.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Downing, Lisa.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Wuornos, Aileen.

Lacenaire, Pierre François, 1800-1836.

Lacenaire, Pierre François.

Hindley, Myra.

Lafarge, Marie, 1816-1852.

Lafarge, Marie.

Nilsen, Dennis Andrew, 1945-2018.

Nilsen, Dennis Andrew.

Jack, the Ripper.

Jack.

Murderers--Press coverage.

Murderers.

Women murderers--Press coverage.

Women murderers.

Murder in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (250 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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 citizen-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.

Contents:

Murder and gender in the European nineteenth century

"Real murderer and false poet": Pierre-Francois Lacenaire

The "angel of arsenic": Marie Lafarge

The beast in man: Jack and the rippers who came after

The twentieth-century Anglo-American killer

"Infanticidal" femininity: Myra Hindley

"Monochrome man": Dennis Nilsen

Serial killing and the dissident woman: Aileen Wuornos

Kids who kill: defying the stereotype of the murderer

By way of brief conclusion.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9781299156579

1299156576

9780226003689

022600368X

OCLC:

827947221