The Myth of the Good Life

Abstract

The concept of the ‘post-colonial’ became a part of political discourse in the 1960s and the account of structural inequalities that resulted from the continuing assumption of colonial power was more widely discussed. It was not that colonial power had not been subjected to critical views. But what remained was a political belief, across much of the west, in the unambiguously positive possibilities of development and progress. This chapter discusses this highly problematic vision of what constitutes the ‘good life’, the measure of an endorsed set of expectations about how to live. Not acting, and continuing not to act, became an important part of discussions about moral responsibility. And for detective fiction this posed the new issue of villains who do not have identities.