Abstract
This study examines how newspaper accounts of criminality conceal and illuminate particular types of monstrosity in the postbellum United States. The paper offers an analysis of Gothicism—which typically frames the criminality of marginalized groups—as a technique of racial domination in narrative sites that construct knowledge on criminality and punishment. Analysis reveals a paradoxical lens of Gothicism in which oppressive groups can conceal monstrosity within a colonial context. The analysis of gothic accounts of criminality challenges the ways in which denial shapes modern monstrosity.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Agozino, B. (2003). Counter-colonial criminology: A critique of imperialist reason. London: Pluto Press.
Agozino, B. (2004). Imperialism, crime and criminology: Towards the decolonisation of criminology. Crime, Law and Social Change, 41(4), 343–358.
Botting, F. (1996). Gothic. London: Routledge.
Brown, M. (2009). The culture of punishment: Prison, society, and spectacle. New York and London: NYU press.
Butler, J. (2006). Precarious life: The powers of mourning and violence. London and New York: Verso.
Cohen, S. (2001). States of denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. Cambridge: Wiley.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1992). Black reconstruction in America. 1935. Reprint, New York: Atheneum.
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press.
Foucault, M. (1977/1995). Discipline and punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.
Foucault, M., Bertani, M., Fontana, A., Ewald, F., & Macey, D. (2003). “Society must be defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–1976 (Vol. 1). New York, NY: Macmillan.
Gabbidon, S. L. (2015). Criminological perspectives on race and crime. London: Routledge.
Garland, D. (2005). Penal excess and surplus meaning: Public torture lynchings in twentieth-century America. Law & Society Review, 39(4), 793–834.
Gordon, A. F. (2008). Ghostly matters: Haunting and the sociological imagination. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Greek, C. (2007). The big city rogue cop as monster: Images of NYPD and LAPD. In C. Picart & C. E. Greek (Eds.), Monsters in and among us: Toward a gothic criminology (pp. 164–198). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Greek, C. (2016). Globalization and the rise of the Behemoth. In S. Machura, M. Yar, S. Boyd, C. Menkel-Meadow, O. Kamir, P. Robson, & M. C. Niles (Eds.), Framing law and crime: An interdisciplinary anthology. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Hallsworth, S., & Young, T. (2008). Crime and silence: Death and life are in the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18: 21). Theoretical Criminology, 12(2), 131–152.
Halttunen, K. (1998). Murder most foul: The killer and the American gothic imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Holland, S. P. (2000). Raising the dead: Readings of death and (black) subjectivity. Durhma, NC: Duke University Press.
Ingebretson, E. J. (1998). The monster in the home: True crime and the traffic in body parts. Journal of American Culture, 21(1), 27–34.
Linnemann, T. (2016). Proof of death: Police power and the visual economies of seizure, accumulation and trophy. Theoretical Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480615622533.
Linnemann, T., Wall, T., & Green, E. (2014). The walking dead and killing state: Zombification and the normalization of police violence. Theoretical Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480614529455.
Lombroso, C. (1871). White man and colored man: Lectures on the origin and variety of the human races. Padua: F. Sacchetto.
Lombroso, C., Gibson, M., & Rafter, N. H. (2006). Criminal man. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Matza, D., & Sykes, G. (1961). Juvenile delinquency and subterranean values. American Sociological Review, 26(5), 712–719.
Mbembe, J. A. (2003). Necropolitics. Public Culture, 15(1), 11–40.
Neocleous, M. (2005). Gothic fascism. Journal for Cultural Research, 9(2), 133–149.
Picart, C. (2006). Crime and the gothic: Sexualizing serial killers. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 13(1), 1–18.
Picart, C. (2012). Race and serial killing in the media: The case of Wayne Williams. Speaking of Monsters (pp. 173–191). Palgrave Macmillan US: New York, NY.
Picart, C., & Greek, C. E. (2007). The compulsions of real/reel serial killers and vampires: Toward a gothic criminology. In C. Picart & C. E. Greek (Eds.), Monsters in and among us: Toward a gothic criminology (pp. 227–255). Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Pinedo, I. C. (2004). Postmodern elements of the contemporary horror film. In S. Price (Ed.), The horror film (pp. 85–117). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Rafter, N. (2008). The criminal brain: Understanding biological theories of crime. New York and London: NYU Press.
Rafter, N., & Ystehede, P. (2010). Here be dragons: Lombroso, the gothic, and social control. In M. Deflem (Ed.), Popular culture crime and social control (pp. 263–284). Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing.
Seidman, S. (1991). Postmodern anxiety: The politics of epistemology. Sociological Theory, 9(2), 180–190.
Seidman, S. (2012). Contested knowledge: Social theory today. West Sussex, UK: Wiley.
Smith, P. (2003). Narrating the guillotine punishment technology as myth and symbol. Theory, Culture & Society, 20(5), 27–51.
Sothcott, K. (2015). Late modern ambiguity and gothic narratives of justice. Critical Criminology, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-015-9287-2.
Sykes, G. M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22(6), 664–670.
Tatum, B. L. (2000). Toward a neocolonial model of adolescent crime and violence. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 16(2), 157–170.
Tatum, B. (2002). The colonial model as a theoretical explanation of crime and delinquency. In S. L., Gabbidon, H. T. Greene & V. D. Young (Eds.), African American classics in criminology and criminal justice (pp. 307–322). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Valier, C. (2002). Punishment, border crossings and the powers of horror. Theoretical Criminology, 6(3), 319–337.
Valier, C. (2004). Introduction: The power to punish and the power of the image. Punishment and Society, 6(3), 251–254.
Wagner, B. (2010). Disturbing the peace: Black culture and the police power after slavery. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wright, M. W. (2011). Necropolitics, narcopolitics, and femicide: Gendered violence on the Mexico-US border. Signs, 36(3), 707–731.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Higgins, E.M., Swartz, K. The Knowing of Monstrosities: Necropower, Spectacular Punishment and Denial. Crit Crim 26, 91–106 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-017-9382-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-017-9382-7