Journal articles on the topic 'Expulsion thesis'

Lamb mortality within the first 72 hours of life greatly affects sheep breeding, especially in extensive rearing, resulting in important economic losses and involving animal welfare. Prolonged fetal expulsion phase can influence maternal behaviour, and the extended period of hypoxia during birth can also affect the behaviour of the neonate. Limited information exists regarding the necessary duration of the fetal expulsion phase for these changes in maternal behaviour to occur or for the resulting hypoxia from prolonged delivery to either be reversed or cause sequelae that affect lamb viability. Behavioural disturbances of both the mother and the neonate prevent establishing a proper mother-lamb bond. This thesis aims to investigate the required time for the duration of the fetal expulsion phase to have consequences on both maternal and offspring behaviour. For early detection of foetal hypoxia, the effectiveness of a non-invasive and easy-to-use tool, a pulse oximeter, was evaluated and compared with venous blood gas analysis. The prolonged duration of parturition affected the behaviour of both dams and lambs, disrupting the mother-lamb bond and leading to a higher percentage of abandonment. A linear correlation between the duration of delivery and poor maternal behaviour was observed in primiparous ewes, but not in multiparous ones. The pulse oximeter successfully detected lambs with low oxygenation at birth, which would allow to establish therapeutic or management measures to improve survival. Reducing the duration of the foetal expulsion phase through programmed parturition assistance improved maternal behaviour and lamb vigour in primiparous ewes, enabling the establishment of an appropriate mother-lamb bond and potentially enhancing neonatal survival.

This essay argues that there is an important sense in which Foucault gets law wrong—that the pursuit of Foucault's own objectives had the unintended consequence of inhibiting a fruitful interrogation of the place of law in modernity. His immediate concern was with the emergence of distinctive manifestations of modern power that constitute a new configuration, the disciplinary society. The most distinctive feature of his account of the historical emergence of modernity was his expulsion of law from modernity. This “expulsion of law” is found in his metahistorical thesis that law constituted the primary form of power in the premodern era, and that although law lingers on in the doctrine of sovereignty, it is supplanted by discipline and government as the key embodiments of modernity. The essay proposes an exercise in retrieval, a “retrieval of law,” to recuperate much in Foucault's thought that is suggestive for our understanding of law's role in the constitution of modern society. It rejects Foucault's opposition of law and discipline and makes use of his treatment of government and governmentality toward that end. It argues that a more adequate grasp of the place of law in modernity can be developed by establishing that law and discipline are complementary and characteristically combine in the ubiquitous presence of regulation as the mark of the modem condition.

<strong>Resumen</strong>: En este art&iacute;culo proponemos un recorrido sistem&aacute;tico por distintas producciones, que ubicamos dentro de lo que puede considerarse la academia de habla inglesa, que tienen por objeto la relaci&oacute;n entre Foucault y el derecho, con la finalidad de caracterizar el debate que ellas habr&iacute;an configurado. Al presentarlas y problematizarlas, mostramos c&oacute;mo diversas posiciones, a un lado y otro de lo que se denomin&oacute; &ldquo;tesis de la expulsi&oacute;n&rdquo;, comparten similares equ&iacute;vocos que terminan dificultando la comprensi&oacute;n del fen&oacute;meno jur&iacute;dico en nuestras sociedades.&nbsp; <strong>Abstract</strong>: In this paper we offer a review over different productions, placed within the Anglo-Saxon academy, which have as their object of inquiry the relationship between Foucault and law, with the aim of caractherizing the debate they would have configured. By presenting and problematizing them, we show how different positions, on one side and the other of the so called &ldquo;expulsion thesis&rdquo;, share similar misunderstandings that end up making it difficult to comprehend the legal phenomenon in our societies.&nbsp;

- Nicola Bombacci was an important PSI's leader during the First World War and the biennio rosso (1919-1920). After his expulsion from the PCd'I, of which was one of the founders, he approached fascism and became one of the last supporters of it since he had been shooted by partisans and died in Como Lake, and had been exposed in Loreto Square beside to Mussolini. After a short historical mention of the Bombacci's political life, these pages will analyse deeper the question of the passage from the left to fascism in interwar Italy, through the analyse of his political language. The method executed in order to analyse the question foresees the use of a biography by dates and the identification of the political interpretation's categories, which permit to carry out a comparison between the social-communist and fascist period. In conclusions, the article proposes a thesis of interpretation: the political passion.Parole chiave: Fascismo, Nazione, Rivoluzione, Classe, Guerra, Passione politica Fascism, Nation, Revolution, Class, War, Political passion

In 1956 the American University in Cairo (AUC) committed itself to the formidable task of transforming a purchased personal library into a specialized university library supporting research and teaching in a new curriculum in Islamic art and architecture. The library’s original owner, K. A. C. Creswell, the eminent British historian of Islamic architecture, became at age 77 the university’s first professor in the discipline. An agreement that he would have exclusive use of the library during a three-year teaching period set the pattern for later years. Until 1973, while Creswell remained in Cairo, the uncatalogued library, though used by Islamic art faculty and their thesis-writing students, was barely accessible to other Islamic art students and faculty in related fields. Secrecy surrounding the library’s purchase hindered the university’s dealings with Creswell. When the Suez War interrupted final arrangements, Creswell’s exemption from the government-ordered expulsion of British nationals, and permission to move the books to the university, were secured by telling the government of Egypt that the library was Creswell’s gift to AUC.

Si bien el discurso oficial, aceptado prácticamente por todos los Estados, habla de una migración “regular, ordenada y segura”, lo cual ha quedado sellado en el Pacto Global de las Migraciones, la movilidad humana contemporánea difiere mucho del deseo de los gobernantes, tanto en el perfil como en las vías utilizadas para llegar al destino. El presente artículo pasa revista a algunos “paisajes migratorios” en varios lugares del planeta, que han tenido como correlato la respuesta estatal de mayores controles, apelando al discurso de la soberanía nacional. Se plantea la tesis de que en esta nueva etapa del neoliberalismo estamos presenciando el surgimiento de políticas de control con rostro (in)humano de carácter neofascista, sobre todo con el ascenso al poder de Gobiernos nacionalistas y de extrema derecha, que impulsan y practican la xenofobia, el racismo y la aporofobia. Esto ha resultado en un incremento de la deportación, judicialización de la migración, expulsión, confinamiento, construcción de muros, extorsiones, secuestros, desapariciones, tortura y muerte.&#x0D; Abstract&#x0D; Although the official discourse, accepted practically by all the States, speaks of a "regular, orderly and safe" migration, which has been sealed in the Global Compact for Migration, contemporary human mobility differs greatly from the desire of the rulers both in the profile and in the routes used to reach destination. This article reviews a number of 'migratory landscapes' in several places on the planet that have had as a correlate the State´s response to greater controls, appealing to the discourse of national sovereignty. The following thesis is proposed: that in this new stage of neoliberalism we are witnessing the emergence of control policy with an (in) human face of neo-fascist character, especially with the rise to power of nationalist and far-right governments that promote and practice xenophobia, racism and aporophobia. This has resulted in increased deportation, judicialization of migration, expulsion, confinement, construction of walls, extortion, kidnapping, disappearances, torture and death.

This article considers the relationship between two human rights discourses (and two specific legal regimes): refugee and asylum protection and the evolving body of international law that regulates expulsions and deportations. Legal protections for refugees and asylum seekers are, of course, venerable, well-known, and in many respects still cherished, if challenged and perhaps a bit frail. Anti-deportation discourse is much newer, multifaceted, and evolving. It is in many respects a young work in progress. It has arisen in response to a rising tide of deportations, and the worrisome development of massive, harsh deportation machinery in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa, among others. This article's main goal is to consider how these two discourses do and might relate to each other. More specifically, it suggests that the development of procedural and substantive rights against removal — as well as rights during and after removal — aids our understanding of the current state and possible future of the refugee protection regime. The article's basic thesis is this: The global refugee regime, though challenged both theoretically and in practice, must be maintained and strengthened. Its historical focus on developing criteria for admission into safe states, on protections against expulsion (i.e., non-refoulement), and on regimes of temporary protection all remain critically important. However, a focus on other protections for all noncitizens facing deportation is equally important. Deportation has become a major international system that transcends the power of any single nation-state. Its methods have migrated from one regime to another; its size and scope are substantial and expanding; its costs are enormous; and its effects frequently constitute major human rights violations against millions who do not qualify as refugees. In recent years there has been increasing reliance by states on generally applicable deportation systems, led in large measure by the United States' radical 25 year-plus experiment with large-scale deportation. Europe has also witnessed a rising tide of deportation, some of which has developed in reaction to European asylum practices. Deportation has been facilitated globally (e.g., in Australia) by well-funded, efficient (but relatively little known) intergovernmental idea sharing, training, and cooperation. This global expansion, standardization, and increasing intergovernmental cooperation on deportation has been met by powerful — if in some respects still nascent — human rights responses by activists, courts, some political actors, and scholars. It might seem counterintuitive to think that emerging ideas about deportation protections could help refugees and asylum seekers, as those people by definition often have greater rights protections both in admission and expulsion. However, the emerging anti-deportation discourses should be systematically studied by those interested in the global refugee regime for three basic reasons. First, what Matthew Gibney has described as “the deportation turn” has historically been deeply connected to anxiety about asylum seekers. Although we lack exact figures of the number of asylum seekers who have been subsequently expelled worldwide, there seems little doubt that it has been a significant phenomenon and will be an increasingly important challenge in the future. The two phenomena of refugee/asylum protections and deportation, in short, are now and have long been linked. What has sometimes been gained through the front door, so to speak, may be lost through the back door. Second, current deportation human rights discourses embody creative framing models that might aid constructive critique and reform of the existing refugee protection regime. They tend to be more functionally oriented, less definitional in terms of who warrants protection, and more fluid and transnational. Third, these discourses offer important specific rights protections that could strengthen the refugee and asylum regime, even as we continue to see weakening state support for the basic 1951/1967 protection regime. This is especially true in regard to the extraterritorial scope of the (deporting) state's obligations post-deportation. This article particularly examines two initiatives in this emerging field: The International Law Commission's Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens and the draft Declaration on the Rights of Expelled and Deported Persons developed through the Boston College Post-Deportation Human Rights Project (of which the author is a co-director). It compares their provisions to the existing corpus of substantive and procedural protections for refugees relating to expulsion and removal. It concludes with consideration of how these discourses may strengthen protections for refugees while also helping to develop more capacious and protective systems in the future. “Those guarantees of liberty and livelihood are the essence of the freedom which this country from the beginning has offered the people of all lands. If those rights, great as they are, have constitutional protection, I think the more important one — the right to remain here — has a like dignity.” Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 19522 “We need a national effort to return those who have been rejected … and we are working on that at the moment with great vigor.” Angela Merkel, October 15, 20163

AbstractThis article addresses two questions related to the discrimination of homosexuals in the British Armed Forces as illuminated in the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the cases Smith and Grady v. the United Kingdom and Beck, Copp and Bazeley v. the United Kingdom. First, how does the military organization obtain knowledge about its subjects? Two works by Michel Foucault concerning the thematic of confession—The Will to Knowledge and About the Beginning of the Hermeneutics of the Self: Two Lectures at Dartmouth—provide a foundation for answering this question. Second, what happens when this knowledge obtained by the military organization comes into contact with the legal system? In relation to this question, Foucauldian theories of law are discussed, namely the so-called ‘expulsion thesis’ and ‘polyvalence theory’. It is argued that the production of knowledge in the context of these cases is intertwined with the technique of confession. However, the confession does not only operate at the level of the military organization but also as an internal practice of the individual. When this knowledge then encounters the legal system, it appears that the law puts up a certain resistance towards other forms of power, e.g. disciplinary power. It is argued that this resistance is due to the law’s ‘strategic openness’, i.e. the possibility to harness the law to different strategic purposes, due to which law can never be fully subordinated by external powers.

The article is devoted to problematic issues of hostage-taking and proper negotiation. It examines the basic requirements for a human negotiator, his psychological readiness and negotiation skills in various situations. Various negotiation models are recommended. Hostages and kidnappings remain one of the most dangerous types of terrorist activity [1, p. 391]. It is known that the success of a special operation to free hostages depends on a number of factors, among which, according to experts, negotiations are important. In addition, the role of the negotiator is special, since the result of a special operation largely depends on the complete abandonment of the crime (respectively, saving the lives of both hostages and employees of special units carrying out an anti-terrorist operation to free hostages and neutralize terrorists). On the one hand, on the other hand, the attack that causes the least damage to the aforementioned people. The relevance of developing an integrated system of requirements for a negotiator, including requirements for his personal characteristics and abilities, is beyond doubt. As practice shows, the proof of this thesis is the tendency to promote hostage crimes. The scale of the latter ranges from crimes of a criminal nature (from the «desperation» of people trying to avoid being detained by law enforcement agencies) to large-scale terrorist acts (taking hostages to influence the socio-political situation in their country and abroad). The list of demands for hostages ranges from the possibility of avoiding justice to the presentation of impossible demands, such as the expulsion of a military contingent from any country, region, etc.

Literary ethics criticism regards literature as the specific ethical expression of human society at a particular stage of history, regarding literature as “the art of Ethics”. Ethical Literary Criticism takes it as its duty to explain the ethical function of literature, aiming at explaining the ethical phenomena in literature and making value judgments on them. In his Paradise Lost, which is regarded as “a monument in the history of European literature”, Milton explores ethical issues and considers the boundaries between good and evil in the classic Genesis stories of Satan's failure to rebel and Adam and Eve's expulsion from Paradise after stealing the forbidden fruit. As the edifying significance of literature gradually diminishes, the ethical thoughts embodied in literary works change with the times and break through the limitations of the times at intervals; in contemporary times, Kazuo Ishiguro, a Japanese writer with a “dual identity”, observes and participates in the life of Josie's family from the perspective of the AI in his novel Klara and The Sun, recounting insights into love and humanity and reflecting abundant ethical reflections on identity and moral goodness and evil, which shares some similarities with Paradise Lost written in the 17th century. Therefore, the thesis focuses on the three dimensions of self-internal, self and other, and self and morality attempting to show the ethical reflections on self-identity cognition, the relationship between man and other, the boundary between good and evil, and rationality and irrationality in Paradise Lost and Klara and The Sun, in order to reveal ethical changes of the times and explore the ethical ideals shared by Milton and Kazuo Ishiguro.

In the article, the author raises controversial questions concerning the functioning of the Norwegian institution Barnavernet, seen from both Polish and Norwegian perspectives. A diplomatic conflict, in which the Norwegian representatives recognized the Polish consul Sławomir Kowalski as persona non grata in Norway, constitutes a pretext for discussion. The main thesis of the article is the indication of the different and deep mental characteristics of Poles and Norwegians, which determine the image and evaluation of the institution’s functioning. It is constituted by: (1) the trust, especially bridging trust, significantly low in Poland and very high in Norway; (2) the very Polish “culture of complaining” staying in opposition to affirmativeness of Norwegians; (3) the act of giving more significance to the country while solving the family conflicts in Norway and leaving those conflict, especially the issues concerning children, in the area of responsibility of the family only; (4) mentality based and built on tradition and the past in Poland and the orientation directed towards the future in Norway; (5) high level of social consent to violence in Poland in opposition to Norway, where violence is additionally seen in more sophisticated and differentiated way. The latest research of brain physiologists concerning experiencing violence and fear by the child, especially in the early period of its life proves that the changes in the child’s brain have destructive, and what is even more important, permanent effect. In some way, this fact reinforces the practice of taking away children from their biological families. On the other hand, the trauma of being taken away is not noticed by the Norwegians. In a sense, the diplomatic conflict resulting in expulsion of the Polish consul from Norway can begin the freshening corrections in the functioning of this institution.

The article analyzes the speech of S.S. Khoruzhy, published in 1990 in the “Literaturnaya Gazeta” under the title “Philosophical Steamer. How it was”. The metaphor he found has become popular and is actively used by modern critics of Soviet history. in 1922, S.S. Khoruzhy presented the expulsion of a group of Moscow and St. Petersburg intellectuals, among whom there were 13 philosophers, sociologists and jurists, as a spiritual catastrophe of Russia and even as the “end of Russian philosophy”. On the contrary, in the proposed article, this event is assessed as only a political action aimed at excluding from the public life of Soviet Russia all those who remained in the same unscientific ideological positions, defended the bourgeois values of university autonomy and freedom of speech, stating this in public speeches not understanding the new socio-political reality. The article emphasizes that the value confrontation in the public consciousness of Soviet Russia could turn into a political confrontation, which could threaten the country and the authorities with a new round of civil war. A parallel is drawn between the state of public consciousness of Soviet Russia in the 20s and the USSR in the 80s – early 90s of the twentieth century, when “glasnost” and “perestroika” became the beginning of the death of the USSR. The article challenges the thesis of S.S. Khoruzhy about the “end of philosophy” in Russia. It is argued that the establishment of the monopoly position of Marxist materialism and the exclusion of any non-Marxist philosophy from cultural life was simply the beginning of a new stage of Russian philosophy, forced to develop in its prescribed theoretical form. Meanwhile, thinkers of the Russian diaspora noted the presence of positive heuristic possibilities in Soviet philosophy, but in the absence of a philosophical dialogue they could not fully develop. The transformation of philosophy in Soviet history reminds the author of the time of Peter the Great, when one of the directions of European philosophy was given state patronage and Russian philosophical thinking left behind “love of wisdom” as a passed stage.

In the first century, Jews were expelled from Rome on various occasions. Ancient literary sources offer contradictory information on these expulsions. As a result, scholars have offered different reconstructions of what really happened. In contrast to earlier scholarship on the subject, this article seeks to place the expulsions of Jews from first-century Rome into the larger framework of Roman policy toward both Jews and other non-Roman peoples. It is argued that the decision to banish Jews from Rome resulted from pragmatic and not from specifically anti-Jewish considerations: Roman magistrates just wanted to maintain law and order. It is then suggested that the reasons underlying the decision to expel Jews from Rome were essentially the same as those triggering expulsions of other groups such as Isis worshipers, devotees of Bacchus, or astrologers. Such evidence serves to illustrate the two main theses of this article. First, it is argued that in late Republican and early Imperial times, Rome never developed a systematic "Jewish policy." During this period, Rome rather responded to situations when confronted with disputes over Jewish rights. This conclusion then serves to bolster the second thesis of this paper, namely that in the first century, Rome never pursued a consistent policy of tolerance (or intolerance) toward its Jewish subjects.

The article analyzes the problem of democratic peace. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson declared that the world must be made safe for democracy. It is believed that democratic countries are not at war with each other. The experience of the First World War showed that democratic leaders think in terms of honor, victory, and national pride. The people are often agitated by demagogues, so they can approve an unnecessary and unprofitable war. The authors showed that the thesis that the global spread of democracy can be a universal insurance against large-scale armed conflicts is controversial. The informational and psychological opposition of Western democrats to authoritarian regimes has become the mainstream of modern international relations. As a result of this fact, a hybrid world conflict takes place in the format of sanctions, expulsion of diplomats, special information operations. The purpose of the article is to highlight the problem of the realism of the theory of democratic peace under the conditions of the crisis of the post-bipolar system of international relations. Under a democratic political regime, power is given to an entity elected by the people, who must return it to the people after the end of their term in power. Any information about the activities of the government discredits it. Representative democracy requires that the leader's decisions are subject to careful scrutiny, that the leaders tell the truth and are ready to bear responsibility for the decisions made. Incompetence undermines the essence of representative democracy. The ailment of democratic states is the reduction of the effectiveness of governments. Attempts to implement the theory of democratic peace in practice tend to fail. The reasons for this are not only in the famous irony of history, which cancels out the titanic efforts of social engineers and directs them in the opposite direction, but also in the impossibility of spreading a uniform form of political system on a global scale. The Chinese project will restore a bipolar system in which the USA will play the role of the USSR. In the coming years, the Chinese project will collide with the American one.

&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;The motif of &amp;ldquo;the escape from paradise&amp;rdquo; has recently become one more time the subject of historical poetics. This motif is opposed to &amp;ldquo;the expulsion from paradise&amp;rdquo; accepted in Western literature. In the perception of scholars the motif of &amp;ldquo;the escape from paradise&amp;rdquo; in 19th century literature took a paradoxical form of &amp;ldquo;loneliness&amp;rdquo; (Dmitriev, Pushkin, Ostrovsky and Batyushkov) and then was designated as a &amp;ldquo;moving&amp;rdquo; model of a Russian man&amp;rsquo;s life who escapes from Paradise&amp;nbsp;&amp;mdash; a &amp;ldquo;homeostatic&amp;rdquo; society (L.&amp;nbsp;N.&amp;nbsp;Gumilev). The transformation of the motif from a &amp;ldquo;stable&amp;rdquo; model to a &amp;ldquo;moving&amp;rdquo; one led to formation of a new Russian character&amp;nbsp;&amp;mdash; a &amp;ldquo;homeless wanderer&amp;rdquo; mentioned by F.&amp;nbsp;M.&amp;nbsp;Dostoevsky in his &amp;ldquo;Pushkin Speech&amp;rdquo;. The article puts forward a thesis that under the influence of wandering a part of Russian society feel inclined for Old Russian forms of world outlook that incites person&amp;rsquo;s searches for life paradise in his own soul. This trend appears in the pilgrimage and theological literature of the 19th century. The transformation of the ratio between the &amp;ldquo;stable&amp;rdquo; and the &amp;ldquo;moving&amp;rdquo; towards the Old Russian ideal of wandering brings man to the saving paths of evangelical commandments. The theme of &amp;ldquo;escape in the desert&amp;rdquo; is closely related to the theme of &amp;ldquo;Mental Paradise&amp;rdquo;. In this regard, the key plot of the popular collection &amp;ldquo;Mental Paradise&amp;rdquo; popular in the 17th century and released in Wallay Iversky Monastery in 1658&amp;ndash;1659 is considered. Based on the manuscripts the article shows how the motives of &amp;ldquo;Paradise&amp;rdquo; and &amp;ldquo;escape in the desert&amp;rdquo; having preceded the trends and having been developed in the 19th century leading to the prosperity of pilgrimage literature, are presented in literature of pre-Peter Russia.&lt;/p&gt;

Race-based educational segregation has a long history in the United States and continues to exist even though prohibited by law. Recent manifestations of race-based educational discrimination are found in the overrepresentation of black students in special education programs, their subjugation to high rates of exclusionary discipline, and their underrepresentation in gifted programs. This study used the ProQuest Education database and selected search terms to retrieve records of publications and examine trends in professional literature during four decades. Patterns were found in scholarship related to disproportionate representation of black students in special education programs and the use of exclusionary suspension and expulsion with black students as well as the underrepresentation of black students in gifted programs. The most scholarship was found related to gifted programs, in which blacks were underrepresented, and the amount of scholarship progressively decreased as the level of segregation of black students increased from special education placement to suspension and expulsion. Further, the absolute amount of scholarship and the percentage of works published in scholarly journals were inversely related to the number of search terms with negative connotations used, including special education, minority, and poverty. Use of search terms with negative connotations was positively associated with the percentage of scholarship done by students in the form of dissertations and theses. Conclusions note scholarly findings of reduced adult outcomes caused by inequitable access to educational opportunities and encourage additional research into effective provision of culturally responsive teacher preparation and continuing education as alternatives to reliance on zero-tolerance and other policies that increase educational segregation of black students.

Abstract This article purports to examine and critically discuss some of the current proposals put forward by scholars to respond to the European Union (EU) rule of law crisis, which call into question, in different ways, the role of general international law. After outlining the state of the debate on the relationship between customary law and EU legal order (Section 2), the article considers some provocative arguments recently made on the alleged “implied withdrawal” of backsliding members via Article 50 TEU, through the prism of the 1969 Vienna Convention Law of Treaties (VCLT) (Section 3). Subsequently, the attention turns on the interplay between general international law and Article 7 TEU, the special mechanism for the enforcement of EU values. The article explores a radical proposal, namely, that of setting aside Article 7 TEU and imposing sanctions grounded on customary international law (Section 4). These theses advocate for the suspension or expulsion of recalcitrant members based on the fall-back on the “safety valves” for parties to treaties in international law, namely Articles 60-62 VCLT. Against this theoretical analysis, the article draws some final remarks on the approach followed in practice by the Union to manage its internal crisis and reflects on the implications of this approach from the perspective of the law of International Organizations and the concept of EU autonomy (Section 5).

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not existed since the beginning of time. Hatem Bazian explores the roots of the conflict, locating the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project under the tutelage of British colonial efforts. Bazian’s text is a look at and beyond first-hand accounts, an investigation of and critical analysis of settler practice in relation to similar texts such as Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Alan Dowty’s Israel/Palestine, and Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Hatem Bazian’s Palestine…it is something colonial is not an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Readers should possess a basic understanding of the conflict and history of the region over the last century. Nor does this text provide the reader with an unbiased look at the timeline of events since the inception of the Zionist movement. Palestine…it is something colonial instead is a rich critique of the Zionist movement and British colonialism. It investigates the way British colonialism influenced Zionism and how Zionism adopted colonial ideas and practices. Bazian locates Zionism as a settler colonialist movement still at work today, which historically planned and systematically executed the removal of Palestinians from their land, with the aid of the United Kingdom and (later) the United States. Bazian examines Ottoman collapse, the colonization of Palestine by the British, Israel’s biblical theology of dispossession, as well as British colonial incubation of Zionism, Zionism as a Eurocentric episteme, the building of Israel through ethnic cleansing, and the Nakba, all of these culminating in legalized dispossession. Throughout the text, Bazian is able to tie each chapter to the present state of affairs and remind the audience of the trauma of a people forcibly removed. Bazian opens with the straightforward assertion that “Palestine is the last settler-colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19th early 20th centuries and still unfolding in the 21st century with no end in sight” (17). In chapter one, “Dissecting the Ottomans and Colonizing Palestine,” Bazian navigates the biased historiography of the fall of the Ottoman empire, linking the collapse of the empire to the colonizing forces of Europe which sought to ensure access to the newly discovered oil in the region as well as to Asia and Africa. Bazian masterfully steers the reader through the history of European intervention, and in particular on behalf of Christians as ethnic minorities in the Middle East. Europe is historically anti-Jewish; at the turn of the century, Zionism was determined to solve Europe’s “Jewish Problem” and maintain a stronghold in the Middle East, he writes. In chapter two, “Israel’s Biblical Theology of Dispossession,” Bazian explores the biblical roots of Zionist ideology. The chapter opens with a discussion of a contemporary Bedouin tribe being expelled in the Negev. Bazian writes that “the biblical text gets transformed into policy by the Zionist state, by which it then normalizes or makes legal the wholesale theft of Palestinian lands and expulsion of the population”(57) using legal documents such as the Levy Report. These policies create “facts on the ground” which lead to “legalized expulsions.” The Bible was central to the historical development of the European Christian supremacist idea of the Holy Land. The loss of the territory conquered during the Crusades ruptured this notion, a break “fixed” through Zionism. In chapter three, “British Colonialism and Incubation of Zionism,”Bazian begins to address British colonialism and Zionism as complementary. Bazian uses primary texts from British political actors of the time, such as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Balfour, to establish the anti-Semiticinspiration for British actions of the time. Bazian also successfully uses the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Sykes-Picot agreement to establish the double dealings of the British in the Middle East in the early twentieth century. Bazian uses many primary texts in this chapter effectively, though their organization could leave readers confused. Chapter four, “Zionism: Eurocentric Colonial Epistemic,” continues the themes of the prior chapter as the colonial influence is cemented. In this chapter, Bazian explores the subterfuge and the genius propaganda selling Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” along with “making the desert bloom”—as if the indigenous Arab people were not there. Bazian frames this chapter within the Zionist ideology of the peoples living in the land being only a barrier to a Jewish state in Palestine. Bazian uses primary sources (e.g., Herzl) to defend the assertion that the removal of the Palestinian people was always a piece of the Zionist plan. Bazian also includes Jewish critical voices (e.g., excerpts from the reporter Ella Shohat) to establish the European Jewish bias against the indigenous Arab peoples, including Sephardic Jews. Bazian that these biases and the effort to remove Palestinians from their land defined the early Zionist movement and the creation of the state of Israel in chapter five, “Building a State and Ethnic Cleansing.” This chapter draws extensively on primary sources: correspondence, reports, declarations, agreements, commissions, and maps. Bazian struggles to organize these rich resources in a clear fashion; however, his analysis matches the richness of the sources. These sources establish the “legalized” systematic removal of the Palestinians from the land by the Israelis in 1948. In chapter six, “The Nakba,” Bazian uses further legal documents and first-hand accounts to trace the forced removal of Palestinians. He pays homage to the trauma while critically dissecting the process of legalizing ethnic cleansing and peddling the innocence of the Israelis to the rest of the world. Bazian profoundly concludes his chapter with the story of a Palestinian boy who witnessed the mass executions of men and women of his village and marched away from his home. The boy, now a man, closed his story with poignant words that capture the horror of the Nakba: “The road to Ramallah had become an open cemetery” (241). After the land was emptied the new state of Israel needed to legally take possession of the Palestinian-owned property. Chapter seven, “Colonial Machination,” elaborates this process: “the State of Israel is structured to give maximum attention to fulfillment of the settler-colonial project and the state apparatus is directed toward achieving this criminal enterprise” (243). The name “Palestine” is erased as a name for the land and the peoples; former colonial and Ottoman laws were twisted to support a systematic theft of the land. Bazian concludes his book with a look to the future: “What is the way forward and Palestine’s de-colonial horizon?” (276). He lays out the options available for true and lasting peace, discounting out of hand the twostate solution as impossible due to the extent of the settlements in the West Bank. He also dismisses both the options of the removal of Palestinians and the removal of the Jewish people. He instead posits a way forward through a one-state solution, leaving how this is to be done to the reader and the people of Israel/Palestine to determine. Bazian has contributed a full-bodied analysis of primary sources to defend his assertion that Zionism has always been a settler colonial movement with its goal being a land devoid of the indigenous people. The organization of the text, the lack of sectioning in the chapters, and the technical insertion and citation of primary sources could be improved for clearer reading. Bazian thoroughly defends his thesis with tangible evidence that Zionism is something colonial, and has been something colonial from the start. This is a text that complicates the narrative of what colonialism is, what the State of Israel is, and who and what Palestine is, together establishing the book as required reading for understanding nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. &#x0D; Shelby Perez Master’s Divinity Candidate Chicago Theological Seminary

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not existed since the beginning of time. Hatem Bazian explores the roots of the conflict, locating the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project under the tutelage of British colonial efforts. Bazian’s text is a look at and beyond first-hand accounts, an investigation of and critical analysis of settler practice in relation to similar texts such as Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life, Alan Dowty’s Israel/Palestine, and Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land. Hatem Bazian’s Palestine…it is something colonial is not an introduction to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Readers should possess a basic understanding of the conflict and history of the region over the last century. Nor does this text provide the reader with an unbiased look at the timeline of events since the inception of the Zionist movement. Palestine…it is something colonial instead is a rich critique of the Zionist movement and British colonialism. It investigates the way British colonialism influenced Zionism and how Zionism adopted colonial ideas and practices. Bazian locates Zionism as a settler colonialist movement still at work today, which historically planned and systematically executed the removal of Palestinians from their land, with the aid of the United Kingdom and (later) the United States. Bazian examines Ottoman collapse, the colonization of Palestine by the British, Israel’s biblical theology of dispossession, as well as British colonial incubation of Zionism, Zionism as a Eurocentric episteme, the building of Israel through ethnic cleansing, and the Nakba, all of these culminating in legalized dispossession. Throughout the text, Bazian is able to tie each chapter to the present state of affairs and remind the audience of the trauma of a people forcibly removed. Bazian opens with the straightforward assertion that “Palestine is the last settler-colonial project to be commissioned in the late 19th early 20th centuries and still unfolding in the 21st century with no end in sight” (17). In chapter one, “Dissecting the Ottomans and Colonizing Palestine,” Bazian navigates the biased historiography of the fall of the Ottoman empire, linking the collapse of the empire to the colonizing forces of Europe which sought to ensure access to the newly discovered oil in the region as well as to Asia and Africa. Bazian masterfully steers the reader through the history of European intervention, and in particular on behalf of Christians as ethnic minorities in the Middle East. Europe is historically anti-Jewish; at the turn of the century, Zionism was determined to solve Europe’s “Jewish Problem” and maintain a stronghold in the Middle East, he writes. In chapter two, “Israel’s Biblical Theology of Dispossession,” Bazian explores the biblical roots of Zionist ideology. The chapter opens with a discussion of a contemporary Bedouin tribe being expelled in the Negev. Bazian writes that “the biblical text gets transformed into policy by the Zionist state, by which it then normalizes or makes legal the wholesale theft of Palestinian lands and expulsion of the population”(57) using legal documents such as the Levy Report. These policies create “facts on the ground” which lead to “legalized expulsions.” The Bible was central to the historical development of the European Christian supremacist idea of the Holy Land. The loss of the territory conquered during the Crusades ruptured this notion, a break “fixed” through Zionism. In chapter three, “British Colonialism and Incubation of Zionism,”Bazian begins to address British colonialism and Zionism as complementary. Bazian uses primary texts from British political actors of the time, such as Lord Robert Cecil and Lord Balfour, to establish the anti-Semiticinspiration for British actions of the time. Bazian also successfully uses the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence and the Sykes-Picot agreement to establish the double dealings of the British in the Middle East in the early twentieth century. Bazian uses many primary texts in this chapter effectively, though their organization could leave readers confused. Chapter four, “Zionism: Eurocentric Colonial Epistemic,” continues the themes of the prior chapter as the colonial influence is cemented. In this chapter, Bazian explores the subterfuge and the genius propaganda selling Palestine as “a land without a people for a people without a land” along with “making the desert bloom”—as if the indigenous Arab people were not there. Bazian frames this chapter within the Zionist ideology of the peoples living in the land being only a barrier to a Jewish state in Palestine. Bazian uses primary sources (e.g., Herzl) to defend the assertion that the removal of the Palestinian people was always a piece of the Zionist plan. Bazian also includes Jewish critical voices (e.g., excerpts from the reporter Ella Shohat) to establish the European Jewish bias against the indigenous Arab peoples, including Sephardic Jews. Bazian that these biases and the effort to remove Palestinians from their land defined the early Zionist movement and the creation of the state of Israel in chapter five, “Building a State and Ethnic Cleansing.” This chapter draws extensively on primary sources: correspondence, reports, declarations, agreements, commissions, and maps. Bazian struggles to organize these rich resources in a clear fashion; however, his analysis matches the richness of the sources. These sources establish the “legalized” systematic removal of the Palestinians from the land by the Israelis in 1948. In chapter six, “The Nakba,” Bazian uses further legal documents and first-hand accounts to trace the forced removal of Palestinians. He pays homage to the trauma while critically dissecting the process of legalizing ethnic cleansing and peddling the innocence of the Israelis to the rest of the world. Bazian profoundly concludes his chapter with the story of a Palestinian boy who witnessed the mass executions of men and women of his village and marched away from his home. The boy, now a man, closed his story with poignant words that capture the horror of the Nakba: “The road to Ramallah had become an open cemetery” (241). After the land was emptied the new state of Israel needed to legally take possession of the Palestinian-owned property. Chapter seven, “Colonial Machination,” elaborates this process: “the State of Israel is structured to give maximum attention to fulfillment of the settler-colonial project and the state apparatus is directed toward achieving this criminal enterprise” (243). The name “Palestine” is erased as a name for the land and the peoples; former colonial and Ottoman laws were twisted to support a systematic theft of the land. Bazian concludes his book with a look to the future: “What is the way forward and Palestine’s de-colonial horizon?” (276). He lays out the options available for true and lasting peace, discounting out of hand the twostate solution as impossible due to the extent of the settlements in the West Bank. He also dismisses both the options of the removal of Palestinians and the removal of the Jewish people. He instead posits a way forward through a one-state solution, leaving how this is to be done to the reader and the people of Israel/Palestine to determine. Bazian has contributed a full-bodied analysis of primary sources to defend his assertion that Zionism has always been a settler colonial movement with its goal being a land devoid of the indigenous people. The organization of the text, the lack of sectioning in the chapters, and the technical insertion and citation of primary sources could be improved for clearer reading. Bazian thoroughly defends his thesis with tangible evidence that Zionism is something colonial, and has been something colonial from the start. This is a text that complicates the narrative of what colonialism is, what the State of Israel is, and who and what Palestine is, together establishing the book as required reading for understanding nuances of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. &#x0D; Shelby Perez Master’s Divinity Candidate Chicago Theological Seminary

Resumo Esta pesquisa se propôs em apreender a gestão ordinária das práticas cotidianas, a partir das memórias contadas e vividas pelas lideranças da Comunidade Quilombola “Invernada Paiol de Telha - Fundão”, desta comunidade antes do processo expulsão (ocorrido em 1974) deste território. Os processos de gestão no cotidiano do homem comum não são formatados a partir de conhecimentos acadêmicos, mas sim, são desenvolvidos de uma forma particular, a partir de suas vivências e do contexto em que vivem. Adotamos a metodologia qualitativa por meio da inserção nesta comunidade e trabalhamos com fontes orais e escritas centradas na história oral. Os resultados apontaram que “o Fundão” estabeleceu um vínculo de convivências por meio da produção de memórias transformando o espaço em lugar simbólico, nos permitindo entender este cotidiano como um espaço de possibilidades que adotam no verbo “gerir” à vinculação de um “saber-fazer”. Pode-se apreender que as práticas (antes da expulsão) vieram repletas de atividades que indicavam o repertório pessoal e coletivo destes moradores no seu cotidiano e na essência de sua gestão. Práticas de moradia, alimentação e subsistência num primeiro momento, e práticas de solidariedade, fé e lazer num segundo momento. Ao rememorarem estas práticas cotidianas, as lideranças-anciãs “deram voz” a uma territorialidade ancestral. Esta territorialidade, acentuou a perspectiva do território como sendo um espaço das experiências vividas, no qual as relações entre os moradores do Fundão e destes com a natureza (física e social), centravam-se em relações permeadas pelos sentimentos e pelos simbolismos atribuídos aos lugares.

Purpose: This study is about refugees and national security in Kenya: Case Study of Eastleigh, Kamukunji Constituency, Nairobi County. The research examined whether refugees are a threat to national security, evaluated the relationship between refugees and terror activities and examined whether the Kenya’s open-door policy on refugees is a threat to national security. This research was guided by conceptual framework on what national security is and threats to national security, as well as refugees and the security threats they pose to Kenya. Push and Pull Theory and Securitization Theory further guided the research.&#x0D; Methodology: The study was conducted using Mixed Methods research design that incorporated both qualitative and quantitative approaches in data collection, data analysis and interpretation of the findings. The research instruments for data collection were questionnaire and one on one interviews with refugees and relevant key stakeholders such as UNHCR, Danish Refugee Council, and Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government. Secondary data was obtained from books, published scholarly materials, internet publications, field research report, theses, journals, government reports, newsletters, and newspapers.&#x0D; Findings: The respondents indicated that there was a relationship between refugees and terror activities in Kenya. Majority of the respondents indicated that policies and laws were the best approaches in dealing with refugees related insecurity, thus effective policies, laws, and best approaches are required to stem the high levels of insecurity. Encampment policy did not provide sustainable solution, majority of the respondents indicated that non-refoulement refugee policies and laws, refugee settlements, local integration, voluntary repatriation was a strategy and durable solutions in dealing with refugees and insecurity, while other respondents proposed expulsion of refugees involved in criminal activities and screening of refugees for security threats, as the best approaches in dealing with refugees related insecurity. Measures against errant refugees and regulation of border entries to prevent illegal and criminal immigrants was also proposed.&#x0D; Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: This research recommends that United Nations, World Bank, and IMF should facilitate peace keeping missions and strengthen the government institutions in countering displacements, with emphasis on resettlement and integration of refugees especially those who cannot return to their country of nationality. Approaches that foster peace and security, such as Nyumba Kumi initiatives led by the security agencies like Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government, should continue to bring refugees, host community, development partners in both NGO and public sector and other stakeholders on board.

This essay supports Paul Hyams’ thesis that while attitudes toward Jews over the twelfth and thirteenth centuries certainly cooled, they did so less dramatically or inevitably than the 1290 expulsion might suggest if imagined as a culmination of policy. Chronicled hostility, alongside which the Jewish ‘blood libel’ myth developed as justification, appears to have increased with perceived Jewish economic status. Their status after their impoverishment decreased as royal policy perpetuated longstanding social divisions that largely originated from neither religious nor economic cleavages, only cultural ones. The treatment of the Jews in the period may simultaneously be understood as one of English identity consolidation in the post-Conquest period, as Jews first coexisted with Anglo-Saxons after the Norman invasion. Since economic reasoning alone does not explain the treatment of the Jews in the latter half of the thirteenth century, this essay also examines instances of anti-Jewish violence and successive Plantagenet king’s policies targeting the Jews and understands them as indicators or constructions of religious and national alterity.

The paper is aimed at considering the question of the optimality of the existing regulation of the winding up of a corporation at the suit of a shareholder in the framework of closely held corporation as a remedy. The presented article aims to evaluate the use of such remedy within the framework of case law and to consider it from theoretical positions. Within the framework of the study, in particular, the thesis is put forward that in case there is a tendency to some merging of the winding up of the corporation at the suit of a shareholder and the exclusion of a shareholder of a corporation into a single remedy, which is aimed at the actual termination of the partnership relations underlying the corporation. The author also comes to the conclusion about the possibility of changes at the level of case law to the consideration of disputes in the framework of corporate conflicts related to the loss of trust relations between shareholders of a closely held corporation.

The thesis focuses attention on the activities of Black Axe Confraternity cult in major Nigerian university campuses. The cult group brings about lack of peace and stability in the campus as a result of incessant violence with the rival cult groups. The activities of Black Axe Confraternity cult started at the University of Benin and spread to various universities. The Black Axe cult members also involves in armed robbery, drug trafficking, kidnapping, election rigging and other political malpractice. Everyyear newlyrecruited members were initiated into the cult group and they swear with the oath of secrecy. From that day, they give their allegiance to their leaders. The impacts of Black Axe Confraternity cult includes interruption of the academic calendar, lack of peace of minds, insecurity and uncertainty among students, death and injury of many members including the innocent students, destruction of the university properties, involvement of election violence and civil disobedience. The solutions to the problems of Black Axe Confraternity cult group in Nigerian university campuses comprises of public enlightenment campaign on the negative effect of cultism, moral reorientation, discouraging politicians from assisting the cult member financially, admission based on merit and expulsion of students involved in campus cult violence. The parents, society, government and the religious organizations have greater role to play in bringing an end to the problem which affects the university educational system in Nigerian.

Preschool expulsions are increasingly studied in terms of their potential negative outcomes on students. This study examined the relationship between preschool teachers’ workplace experiences and their use of disciplinary actions, including expulsions. It sought to understand the sociological mechanisms and supports of the teacher workplace, and the psychological influences on teacher decision making and perceptions that contribute to disciplinary actions. Whereas prior research has illustrated the harmful consequences of expulsions and how teacher experiences may be related to expulsions, this study aimed to increase knowledge about the influence of workplace factors on discipline, primarily in private preschools, which are relatively under-studied. Preschool teachers from the Denver area participated in semi-structured interviews to gain understanding about their stress, perceptions of challenging behaviors, perceived institutional support, and institutional norms regarding discipline. Using open-coding methods, the qualitative data was analyzed and several key themes were established. The findings indicate that preschool teachers generally lack adequate support, especially in regard to challenging behavior management, and that this creates a great deal of stress. Additionally, although preschool expulsions may be declining, they are being replaced by other exclusionary disciplines, including “soft” expulsions to mitigate teacher stress in the absence of knowledge on how to actively improve challenging behaviors. These findings have important implications as they show there needs to be easily accessible training opportunities concentrated on how to handle challenging behaviors and more opportunities for workplace collaboration to better support teachers in dealing with these behaviors, and thus mitigating the negative consequences of exclusionary discipline. To see the complete thesis, please visit https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/q811kk96s.

The theoretical legacy of Zygmunt Bauman is an inexhaustible sourceof inspiration for sociological analysis, particularly bearing in mindthe scope of his work and the diverse range of modern day problemsthat this British-Polish author dealt with. The first part of this articleexamines the question of personal identity in liquid modernity, whichis the starting point of Bauman’s work. Similar to some other authors,Bauman discusses the paradox of the individual who is not free inan individualized society. Bauman’s diagnosis carries pessimistic featureswhich in some places correspond to insights developed in classicalsociology. Bauman makes occasional and sporadic incursionsinto the pitfalls of conservative thought, particularly in relation tothe dichotomies of individual versus community, individualism versustogetherness, and egoism versus solidarity. However, it seems thatthe author manages to skilfully avoid the inherent theoretical traps ofsociology, turning towards cosmopolitan theory. The second part ofthis article presents the thesis that Bauman’s thought is in fact cosmopolitan,especially bearing in mind his final public appearances andwritings. This argument is based in his description of global societythat is simultaneously integrating and developing, and dramaticallydisintegrating and regressing. Bauman writes about violent killingsand expulsions of people in the 21st century and their inability to findrefuge in the Western and democratic world that promotes humanrights. Recalling the crucial cosmopolitan principles of solidarity andhospitality, Bauman makes an appeal to progressive forces to consolidateand work on opening and reaffirming the “cosmopolitan condition”of contemporary society.

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; A public sculpture in Seattle’s downtown depicts a cement “hobo” sleeping on a bench. A man sleeps on the sidewalk nearby; a policeman comes by and enforcing the law, tells him to move on. The sculpted hobo, part of the city’s efforts to vitalize downtown, appears innocent and romantic. Meanwhile, the living “hobo” is removed from the street as a sign of disorder in the same attempt to create vital streets. Within the vicinity of one block, the person sleeping on the street is at once romanticized and criminalized. What links the sculpted “hobo” with nostalgia and the real person with nuisance?&#x0D; &#x0D; The streets are full of repressive mechanisms. Laws, prohibitory signs, architecture, surveillance, are but a few displays of power that serve to discipline subjects in public spaces. Disciplinary communication strategies serve as mechanisms of repression to disqualify certain types of behaviors and people, while at the same time inviting others. Davis explains this in his discussion of what he calls “sadistic street environments” where architecture of the streets is built in such a way as to facilitate the geographic expulsion of the poor (Davis 232). Some public benches are designed, for example, to prevent sitting for long periods of time. This expulsion is closely tied to visions of clean streets in which consumers are protected from contact with the unclean uncertainty of poverty, a social condition that does not fit into the imagined vitality of orderly consumption.&#x0D; &#x0D; Said wrote that the other and the knowledge about otherness are created through discourse in order to alleviate a fear of the unknown and to justify the need for domination. An identity is formed through something that one “is not,” rather that through something that one “is.” Applying this idea to space, Said described an arbitrary geographical boundary that is drawn, enabling the insiders to label the outsider as the “other” and to separate “ours” from “theirs.” The production of the geographical other takes place through what Said calls poetically endowed meaning, constructed through a limited vocabulary and images that impose and reproduce themselves as reality.&#x0D; &#x0D; In this way, Said’s conceptualization of othering can be applied to the streets. For example, the term homeless encompasses an imagined geography. Like the term “hobo” (a nomad), a person sleeping on the street is commonly referred to as “homeless.” Someone who is “homeless” has no home, and therefore not within his or her own geographical boundaries. “Homeless” cannot be linked to a specific location, deriving a negative identity, through something that is lacking – a home. This creates a dualism; in that being “homeless” is in direct opposition to being with a home, creating the “insider” identity (attached to place) in relation to the “outsider” (having no place). Carrying out one’s domestic functions (like sleeping) in public is, then, an inappropriate intrusion. &#x0D; &#x0D; Having no home, however, creates an uncomfortable ambiguity because it limits the production of knowledge that can be identified geographically (i.e. address, consumption patterns and other demographic information) about the subject. Foucault explained the way that the mechanisms of control incite a discourse about the subject and eventually attempt to discipline it through encroaching regulation. In this way, Wilson and Kelling’s Broken Windows Theory has been enthusiastically used in US city revitalization efforts and serves as an example of such discursively produced disciplinary strategies. The authors construct categories, “signs of disorder,” and recommend an eradication of these signs (who in some cases happen to be people). For example, in the following segment of Wilson and Kelling’s thesis (italics are mine); “unattached adults,” “teenagers” and “panhandlers” are defined as disruptive subjects in need of social control. &#x0D; &#x0D; A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other’s children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers (Wilson and Kelling 32).&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; In this narrative, outsiders invade a neighborhood, creating a frightening world for the stable families. The stranger threatens to turn the home into “an inhospitable and frightening jungle,” a terrifying, yet exotic place. Arguably, the lexical choice of “jungle” itself is racialized. The jungle is frightening because it is associated with something unfamiliar, natural and untamed by colonial powers. It is an environment in need of domination. In this discourse, a good neighborhood is set as the polar opposite of a jungle. In opposition to the jungle, a stable neighborhood is hospitable and safe—but to whom? The “unwanted intruders,” who are “confidently frown[ed]” upon by the “stable neighborhood of families” take shape as inebriates, teenagers, unattached adults and panhandlers. Hospitality and safety is not extended to them. The Broken Windows theory neatly defines the subjects and gives the disciplinary powers an easy target. Power can be straightforwardly exercised over drunks, the poor and the teenagers. The focus has been displaced from any possible systemic flaws onto individual subjects who are othered and necessitate domination.&#x0D; &#x0D; This poetically endowed meaning is perpetuated by mass media that have tapped into, dramatized and reinforced an existing collective paranoia of urban crime (Garland 158). As the American public have become increasingly reliant on media systems for information the spiral of fear and a desire to be protected from the dangerous streets are cultivated by the media. Gerbner’s study of cultivation (1998) demonstrated a relationship between increased exposure to violent television programs and an increased fear of the outdoors. Violence on television cultivates a perception of a “mean world” outside of the home. The home, then, becomes a guarded frontier and fear is embodied in the outsider. In turn, a solution for protection is readily offered through increased social control and the consumption of surveillance and security systems. &#x0D; &#x0D; At the same time, the outsider remains an exotic subject. This exoticism can be used to increase the economic capital of the disciplinary forces. As Said described in Orientalism, while the “other” needs to be disciplined, it has something to be possessed. The subject is undesirable and desired at the same time. In addition to being unfamiliar and fearsome, its representational form is both eccentric and quaint. &#x0D; &#x0D; As cities compete in global economies, to attract people requires continuous work in cultural production (Urry 193). One way that this is achieved is through visual consumption, which produces an aestheticized social life appealing to the tourist gaze. One type of this tourist gaze is what Urry calls a romantic gaze, which seeks to consume the “natural” and “authentic” object (150). The image of the sculpted hobo evokes the sentimental nostalgia of the way cities and hobos “used to be,” benevolent and innocent respectively. Such romanticized representation creates a symbolic capital necessary for the production of globally competitive cities. The discourse of preserving history, for example, allows developers to “reclaim” downtown and it is this “reclamation of history” that enhances the cultural and economic value of a neighborhood. Zukin argued that cultural claim to urban space has given developers new legitimacy to take over the management of the streets. The sculpture of a sleeping hobo helps produce a sense of place through whimsical art and a reference to an imagined idyllic past where hobos were safe and the public, compassionate.&#x0D; &#x0D; In this way, the exoticized and nostalgic representation of the “hobo” has become more real than the subject that is being depicted (Said 94). The life-sized sculpture rests on a bench as art, detached from the real subject, it becomes the “authentic hobo,” the nomad of the past, the romantic and tragic clown such as the one often depicted by Charlie Chaplin’s tramp. While such imagery is used to produce an urban aesthetic, the actual people tend to be treated with much less sympathy as they are cleaned off the streets. Benches are constructed to prevent lengthy repose and laws prohibit sitting on sidewalks as an alternative. Discussions of the living poor are commonly framed in terms of signs of disorder that need to be eradicated for the benefit of urban vitality. &#x0D; &#x0D; The idea that people inhabiting the streets need to be removed as a sign of disorder is a misguided effort in attempts to create vital streets. Nor will visual aesthetic be enough to save the streets. The spectacle of crowds and sittable spaces are some of the key factors that attract people to public spaces and make those spaces come to life (Whyte). In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs famously argued that no one single element in the urban environment can generate a vital city. The perceptions of safety come from such regulating factors as the natural surveillance of eyes on the street and the public characters as described in Duneier’s ethnography of New York’s scavengers, panhandlers and street vendors. In an intricate dance, streets bring strangers together in casual contact with one another and cultivate the knowledge that difference exists and that it does not have to create a frightening world. Being in public builds trust, while impersonal city streets turn anonymous people into dangerous strangers. Jacobs wrote, “when people say that a city, or a part of it is dangerous or is a jungle what they mean primarily is that they do not feel safe on the sidewalks” (37). “A well used city street is apt to be a safe street. A deserted street is apt to be unsafe” (44). A place where diverse public presence is cultivated would reduce the fear of the streets and perhaps bring compassion back from the past.&#x0D; &#x0D; References&#x0D; &#x0D; Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. New York: Verso, 1990. Duneier, Mitchell. Sidewalk. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. Garland, David. The Culture of Control. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Gerbner, George. ‘Cultivation Analysis: An Overview.’ Mass Communication and Society 1.3-4 (Summer-Fall 1998): 175-177. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge. Ed. Colin Gordon. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Random House, 1961. McCarthy, Albert J. ‘Zero Tolerance in a Small Town.’ The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 67.1 (Jan. 1998): 6-11. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. Urry, John. Consuming Places. New York: Routledge, 1995. Whyte, William H. City: Rediscovering the Center. New York: Anchor Books, 1988. Willson James Q. and Kelling, George L. ‘Broken Windows.’ Atlantic Monthly 249.3 (March 1982): 29-38. Zukin, Sharon. Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Citation reference for this article&#x0D; &#x0D; MLA Style&#x0D; Gendelman, Irina. "The Romantic and Dangerous Stranger." M/C Journal 9.3 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?&gt; &lt;http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/03-gendelman.php&gt;. APA Style&#x0D; Gendelman, I. (Jul. 2006) "The Romantic and Dangerous Stranger," M/C Journal, 9(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?&gt; from &lt;http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0607/03-gendelman.php&gt;. &#x0D;

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; In the last three years a new filthy vocabulary of social class has emerged in Britain. The word “chav”, and its various synonyms and regional variations, has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for white working class subjects. An entire slang vocabulary has emerged around chav. Acronyms, such as “Council Housed and Vile” have sprung up to explain the term. Folk etymologies and some scholarly sources suggest that the term chav might derive from a distortion of a Romany word for a child, while others suggests it is a derivative of the term charver, long used in the North East of England to describe the disenfranchised white poor (see Nayak). In current parlance, the term chav is aligned “with stereotypical notions of lower-class” and is above all “a term of intense class-based abhorrence” (Haywood and Yar 16). Routinely demonized within news media, television comedy programmes, and internet sites (such as the chavscum) the level of disgust mobilized by the figure of the chav is suggestive of a heightened class antagonism that marks a new episode of class struggle in Britain. Social class is often represented through highly caricatured figures—the toff, the chav—figures that are referred to in highly emotive terms. One of the ways in which social class is emotionally mediated is through repeated expressions of disgust at the habits and behaviour of those deemed to belong to a lower social class. An everyday definition of disgust would be: an emotion experienced and expressed as a sickening feeling of revulsion, loathing, or nausea. The physicality of disgust reactions means that the communication of disgust draws heavily on metaphors of sensation. As William Miller notes, disgust “needs images of bad taste, foul smells, creepy touchings, ugly sights, bodily secretions and excretions to articulate the judgments it asserts” (218). Our disgust reactions are often revealing of wider social power relations. As Sara Ahmed notes: When thinking about how bodies become objects of disgust, we can see that disgust is crucial to power relations. … Disgust at “that which is below” functions to maintain the power relations between above and below, through which “aboveness” and “belowness” become properties of particular bodies, objects and spaces (89). Ahmed’s account of the connection between disgust and power relations echoes Beverly Skeggs’ influential account of “class making”. As Skeggs suggests, class as a concept, and as a process of classification and social positioning, is not pre-given but is always in production and is continually re-figured (3). Social class virtually disappeared as a central site of analysis within cultural and media studies in the late 1980s, a disappearance that was mirrored by a similar retreat from the taxonomy of class within wider social and political discourse (Skeggs 45). This is not to say that class distinctions, however we measure them, have been eroded or are in decline. On the contrary, class disappeared as a central site of analysis at precisely the same time that “economic polarization” reached “unparalleled depths” in Britain (ibid.). As the term “working class” has been incrementally emptied of meaning, teaching and researching issues of class inequality is now often seen as “paranoid” and felt to be embarrassing and shameful (see Sayer). (Roland Barthes uses the concept of ‘ex-nomination’ to explain how (and why) social class is emptied of meaning in this way. According to Barthes, this process is one of the central mechanisms through which dominant classes naturalise their values.) In the last two decades academics from working class backgrounds and, perhaps most perversely, those who work within disciplines that were founded upon research on class, have increasingly experienced their own class origins as a “filthy secret”. If social class “directly articulated” and as “the object of analysis, has largely disappeared” (Skeggs 46) within the academy and within wider social and political discourses, portrayals of class differences have nevertheless persisted within popular media. In particular, the emergence of the grotesque and comic figure of the chav within a range of contemporary British media, primarily television comedy, reality-genre television, Internet forums and newspapers, has made class differences and antagonisms explicitly visible in contemporary Britain. Class-based discrimination and open snobbery is made socially acceptable through claims that this vicious name-calling has a ‘satirical’ function. Laughing at something is “an act of expulsion” that closely resembles the rejecting movement of disgust reactions (Menninghaus 11). In the case of laughter at those of a lower class, laughter is boundary-forming; it creates a distance between “them” and “us”, and asserts moral judgments and a higher class position. Laughter at chavs is a way of managing and authorizing class disgust, contempt, and anxiety. Popular media can be effective means of communicating class disgust and in so doing, work to produce ‘class communities’ in material, political and affective senses. In the online vocabulary of chav hate, we can further discern the ways in which class disgust is performed in ways that are community-forming. The web site, urbandictionary.com is an online slang dictionary that functions as an unofficial online authority on English language slang. Urbandictionary.com is modelled on an internet forum in which (unregistered) users post definitions of new or existing slang terms, which are then reviewed by volunteer editors. Users vote on definitions by clicking a thumb up or thumb down icon and posts are then ranked according to the votes they have accrued. Urbandictionary currently hosts 300,000 definitions of slang terms and is ranked as one of the 2000 highest web traffic sites in the world. There were 368 definitions of the term chav posted on the site at the time of writing and I have extracted below a small number of indicative phrases taken from some of the most highly ranked posts. all chavs are filth chavs …. the cancer of the United Kingdom filthy, disgusting, dirty, loud, ugly, stupid arseholes that threaten, fight, cause trouble, impregnate 14 year olds, ask for money, ask for fags, ….steal your phones, wear crap sports wear, drink cheap cider and generally spread their hate. A social underclass par excellence. The absolute dregs of modern civilization The only good chav is dead one. The only thing better than that is a mass grave full of dead chavs and a 24 hour work crew making way for more… This disgust speech generates a set of effects, which adhere to and produce the filthy figure and qualities of chav. The dictionary format is significant here because, like the accompanying veneer of irony, it grants a strange authority to the dehumanising bigotry of the posts. Urbandictionary illustrates how class disgust is actively made through repetition. Through the repetition of disgust reactions, the negative properties attributed to chav make this figure materialize as representative of a group who embodies those disgusting qualities – a group who are “lower than human or civil life” (Ahmed 97). As users add to and build the definition of “the chav” within the urban dictionary site, they interact with one another and a conversational environment emerges. The voting system works on this site as a form of peer authorization that encourages users to invoke more and more intense and affective disgust reactions. As Ngai suggests, disgust involves an expectation of concurrence, and disgust reactions seek “to include or draw others into its exclusion of its object, enabling a strange kind of sociability” (336). This sociability has a particular specificity within online communities in which anonymity gives community members license to express their disgust in extreme and virulent ways. The interactivity of these internet forums, and the real and illusory immediacy they transmit, makes online forums intensely affective communal spaces/places within which disgust reactions can be rapidly shared and accrued. As the web becomes more “writable”, through the development and dissemination of shared annotation software, web users are moving from consuming content to creating it ‘in the form of discussion boards, weblogs, wikis, and other collaborative and conversational media” (Golder 2). Within new media spaces such as urbandictionary, we are not only viewers but active users who can go into, enter and affect representational spaces and places. In the case of chavs, users can not only read about them, but have the power to produce the chav as a knowable figure. The chav thread on urbandictionary and similar chav hate forums work to constitute materially the exaggerated excessive corporeality of the chav figure. These are spaces/places in which class disgust is actively generated – class live. With each new post, there is an accruement of disgust. Each post breathes life into the squalid and thrillingly affective imaginary body of the filthy chav. Class disgust is intimately tied to issues of racial difference. These figures constitute an unclean “sullied urban “underclass”“, “forever placed at the borders of whiteness as the socially excluded, the economically redundant” (Nayak 82, 102-3). Whilst the term chav is a term of abuse directed almost exclusively towards the white poor, chavs are not invisible normative whites, but rather hypervisible “filthy whites”. In a way that bears striking similarities to US white trash figure, and the Australian figure of the Bogan, the chav figure foregrounds a dirty whiteness – a whiteness contaminated with poverty. This borderline whiteness is evidenced through claims that chavs appropriate black American popular culture through their clothing, music, and forms of speech, and have geographical, familial and sexual intimacy with working class blacks and Asians. This intimacy is represented by the areas in which chavs live and their illegitimate mixed race children as well as, more complexly, by their filthy white racism. Metaphors of disease, invasion and excessive breeding that are often invoked within white racist responses to immigrants and ethnic minorities are mobilized by the white middle-class in order to differentiate their “respectable whiteness” from the whiteness of the lower class chavs (see Nayak 84). The process of making white lower class identity filthy is an attempt to differentiate between respectable and non-respectable forms of whiteness (and an attempt to abject the white poor from spheres of white privilege). Disgust reactions work not only to give meaning to the figure of the chav but, more complicatedly, constitute a category of being – chav being. So whilst the figures of the chav and chavette have a virtual existence within newspapers, Internet forums and television shows, the chav nevertheless takes symbolic shape in ways that have felt material and physical effects upon those interpellated as “chav”. We can think here of the way in which” signs of chavness”, such as the wearing of certain items or brands of clothing have been increasingly used to police access to public spaces, such as nightclubs and shopping centres since 2003. The figure of the chav becomes a body imbued with negative affect. This affect travels, it circulates and leaks out into public space and shapes everyday perceptual practices. The social policing of chavs foregrounds the disturbing ease with which imagined “emotional qualities slide into corporeal qualities” (Ngai 573). Chav disgust is felt and lived. Experiencing the frisson of acting like a chav has become a major leisure occupation in Britain where middle class students now regularly hold “chav nites”, in which they dress up as chavs and chavettes. These students dress as chavs, carry plastic bags from the cut-price food superstores, drink cider and listen to ‘chav music’, in order to enjoy the affect of being an imaginary chav. In April 2006 the front page of The Sun featured Prince William dressed up as a chav with the headline, “Future Bling of England”, The story details how the future king: “joined in the fun as his platoon donned chav-themed fancy dress to mark the completion of their first term” at Sandhurst military academy. William, we were told, “went to a lot of trouble thinking up what to wear” (white baseball cap, sweatshirt, two gold chains), and was challenged to “put on a chavvy accent and stop speaking like a royal”. These examples of ironic class–passing represent a new era of ‘slumming it’ that recalls the 19th century Victorian slummers, who descended on the East End of London in their many thousands, in pursuit of abject encounters – touristic tastes of the illicit pleasures associated with the immoral, urban poor. This new chav ‘slumming it’ makes no pretence at any moral imperative, it doesn’t pretend to be sociological, there is no “field work”, no ethnography, no gathering of knowledge about the poor, no charity, no reaching out to touch, and no liberal guilt, there is nothing but ‘filthy pleasure’. The cumulative effect of disgust at chavs is the blocking of the disenfranchised white poor from view; they are rendered invisible and incomprehensible. Nevertheless, chav has become an increasingly complex identity category and some of those interpellated as filthy chavs have now reclaimed the term as an affirmative sub-cultural identity. This trans-coding of chav is visible within popular music acts, such as white teenage rapper Lady Sovereign and the acclaimed pop icon and urban poet Mike Skinner (who releases records as The Streets). Journalist Julie Burchill has repeatedly attempted both to defend, and claim for herself, a chav identity and in 2005, the tabloid newspaper The Sun, a propagator of chav hate, ran a ‘Proud to be Chav’ campaign. Nevertheless, this ‘chav pride’ is deceptive, for like the US term ‘white trash’ – now widely adopted within celebrity culture – this ‘pride’ works as an enabling identity category only for those who have acquired enough cultural capital and social mobility to ‘rise above the filth’. Since the publication in English of Julia Kristeva’s Power’s of Horror: An Essay on Abjection in 1982, an entire theoretical paradigm has emerged that celebrates the ‘transgressive’ potential of encounters with filth. Such theoretical ‘abject encounters’ are rarely subversive but are on the contrary an increasingly normative and problematic feature of a media and cultural studies devoid of political direction. Instead of assuming that confrontations with ‘filth’ are ‘necessarily subversive and disruptive’ we need to rethink abjection as a violent exclusionary social force. As Miller notes, ‘disgust does not so much solve the dilemma of social powerlessness as diagnose it powerfully’ (353). Theoretical accounts of media and culture that invoke ‘the transformative potential of filth’ too often marginalize the real dirty politics of inequality. References Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP and New York: Routledge, 2004. Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972 [1949]. Birchill, Julie. “Yeah But, No But, Why I’m Proud to Be a Chav.” The Times 18 Feb. 2005. Chav Scum. 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.chavscum.co.uk&gt;. Golder, Scott. “Webbed Footnotes: Collaborative Annotation on the Web.” MA Thesis 2003. 31 Oct. 2006 http://web.media.mit.edu/~golder/projects/webbedfootnotes/ golder-thesis-2005.pdf&gt;. Hayward, Keith, and Majid Yar. “The ‘Chav’ Phenomenon: Consumption, Media and the Construction of a New Underclass.” Crime, Media, Culture 2.1 (2006): 9-28. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Larcombe, Duncan. “Future Bling of England.” The Sun 10 April 2006. Menninghaus, Winfried. Disgust: Theory and History of a Strong Sensation. Trans. Howard Eiland and Joel Golb. State University of New York Press, 2003. Miller, William. The Anatomy of Disgust. Harvard UP, 1998. Nayak, Anoop. Race, Place and Globalization: Youth Cultures in a Changing World. Oxford: Berg, 2003. Ngai, Sianne. Ugly Feelings: Literature, Affect, and Ideology. Harvard UP, Cambridge, 2005. “Proud to be Chav.” The Sun. 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.thesun.co.uk&gt;. Sayer, Andrew. “What Are You Worth? Why Class Is an Embarrassing Subject.” Sociological Research Online 7.3 (2002). 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.socresonline.org.uk/7/3/sayer.html&gt;. Skeggs, Beverly. Class, Self and Culture. London. Routledge, 2005. Urbandictionary. “Chav.” 31 Oct. 2006 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chav&gt;. Wray, Matt, and Annalee Newitz, eds. White Trash: Race and Class in America. London: Routledge, 1997. &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; Citation reference for this article&#x0D; &#x0D; MLA Style&#x0D; Tyler, Imogen. "Chav Scum: The Filthy Politics of Social Class in Contemporary Britain." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?&gt; &lt;http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/09-tyler.php&gt;. APA Style&#x0D; Tyler, I. (Nov. 2006) "Chav Scum: The Filthy Politics of Social Class in Contemporary Britain," M/C Journal, 9(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?&gt; from &lt;http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/09-tyler.php&gt;. &#x0D;

Introduction Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular genres. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as one in every three new novels, published in English, is classified within the crime fiction category (Knight xi). These new entrants to the market are forced to jostle for space on bookstore and library shelves with reprints of classic crime novels; such works placed in, often fierce, competition against their contemporaries as well as many of their predecessors. Raymond Chandler, in his well-known essay The Simple Art of Murder, noted Ernest Hemingway’s observation that “the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer […] competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well” (3). In fact, there are so many examples of crime fiction works that, as early as the 1920s, one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’, Dorothy L. Sayers, complained: It is impossible to keep track of all the detective-stories produced to-day [sic]. Book upon book, magazine upon magazine pour out from the Press, crammed with murders, thefts, arsons, frauds, conspiracies, problems, puzzles, mysteries, thrills, maniacs, crooks, poisoners, forgers, garrotters, police, spies, secret-service men, detectives, until it seems that half the world must be engaged in setting riddles for the other half to solve (95). Twenty years after Sayers wrote on the matter of the vast quantities of crime fiction available, W.H. Auden wrote one of the more famous essays on the genre: The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict. Auden is, perhaps, better known as a poet but his connection to the crime fiction genre is undisputed. As well as his poetic works that reference crime fiction and commentaries on crime fiction, one of Auden’s fellow poets, Cecil Day-Lewis, wrote a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake: the central protagonist of these novels, Nigel Strangeways, was modelled upon Auden (Scaggs 27). Interestingly, some writers whose names are now synonymous with the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, established the link between poetry and crime fiction many years before the publication of The Guilty Vicarage. Edmund Wilson suggested that “reading detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking” (395). In the first line of The Guilty Vicarage, Auden supports Wilson’s claim and confesses that: “For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (406). This indicates that the genre is at best a trivial pursuit, at worst a pursuit that is bad for your health and is, increasingly, socially unacceptable, while Auden’s ideas around taste—high and low—are made clear when he declares that “detective stories have nothing to do with works of art” (406). The debates that surround genre and taste are many and varied. The mid-1920s was a point in time which had witnessed crime fiction writers produce some of the finest examples of fiction to ever be published and when readers and publishers were watching, with anticipation, as a new generation of crime fiction writers were readying themselves to enter what would become known as the genre’s Golden Age. At this time, R. Austin Freeman wrote that: By the critic and the professedly literary person the detective story is apt to be dismissed contemptuously as outside the pale of literature, to be conceived of as a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste (7). This article responds to Auden’s essay and explores how crime fiction appeals to many different tastes: tastes that are acquired, change over time, are embraced, or kept as guilty secrets. In addition, this article will challenge Auden’s very narrow definition of crime fiction and suggest how Auden’s religious imagery, deployed to explain why many people choose to read crime fiction, can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment. This latter argument demonstrates that a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. Crime Fiction: A Type For Every Taste Cathy Cole has observed that “crime novels are housed in their own section in many bookshops, separated from literary novels much as you’d keep a child with measles away from the rest of the class” (116). Times have changed. So too, have our tastes. Crime fiction, once sequestered in corners, now demands vast tracts of prime real estate in bookstores allowing readers to “make their way to the appropriate shelves, and begin to browse […] sorting through a wide variety of very different types of novels” (Malmgren 115). This is a result of the sheer size of the genre, noted above, as well as the genre’s expanding scope. Indeed, those who worked to re-invent crime fiction in the 1800s could not have envisaged the “taxonomic exuberance” (Derrida 206) of the writers who have defined crime fiction sub-genres, as well as how readers would respond by not only wanting to read crime fiction but also wanting to read many different types of crime fiction tailored to their particular tastes. To understand the demand for this diversity, it is important to reflect upon some of the appeal factors of crime fiction for readers. Many rules have been promulgated for the writers of crime fiction to follow. Ronald Knox produced a set of 10 rules in 1928. These included Rule 3 “Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable”, and Rule 10 “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them” (194–6). In the same year, S.S. Van Dine produced another list of 20 rules, which included Rule 3 “There must be no love interest: The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar”, and Rule 7 “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better” (189–93). Some of these directives have been deliberately ignored or have become out-of-date over time while others continue to be followed in contemporary crime writing practice. In sharp contrast, there are no rules for reading this genre. Individuals are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction. There are, however, different appeal factors for readers. The most common of these appeal factors, often described as doorways, are story, setting, character, and language. As the following passage explains: The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next. The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being immersed in an evocation of place or time. The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others’ eyes. Readers who most appreciate skilful writing enter through the doorway of language (Wyatt online). These doorways draw readers to the crime fiction genre. There are stories that allow us to easily predict what will come next or make us hold our breath until the very last page, the books that we will cheerfully lend to a family member or a friend and those that we keep close to hand to re-read again and again. There are settings as diverse as country manors, exotic locations, and familiar city streets, places we have been and others that we might want to explore. There are characters such as the accidental sleuth, the hardboiled detective, and the refined police officer, amongst many others, the men and women—complete with idiosyncrasies and flaws—who we have grown to admire and trust. There is also the language that all writers, regardless of genre, depend upon to tell their tales. In crime fiction, even the most basic task of describing where the murder victim was found can range from words that convey the genteel—“The room of the tragedy” (Christie 62)—to the absurd: “There it was, jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb” (Maloney 1). These appeal factors indicate why readers might choose crime fiction over another genre, or choose one type of crime fiction over another. Yet such factors fail to explain what crime fiction is or adequately answer why the genre is devoured in such vast quantities. Firstly, crime fiction stories are those in which there is the committing of a crime, or at least the suspicion of a crime (Cole), and the story that unfolds revolves around the efforts of an amateur or professional detective to solve that crime (Scaggs). Secondly, crime fiction offers the reassurance of resolution, a guarantee that from “previous experience and from certain cultural conventions associated with this genre that ultimately the mystery will be fully explained” (Zunshine 122). For Auden, the definition of the crime novel was quite specific, and he argued that referring to the genre by “the vulgar definition, ‘a Whodunit’ is correct” (407). Auden went on to offer a basic formula stating that: “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (407). The idea of a formula is certainly a useful one, particularly when production demands—in terms of both quality and quantity—are so high, because the formula facilitates creators in the “rapid and efficient production of new works” (Cawelti 9). For contemporary crime fiction readers, the doorways to reading, discussed briefly above, have been cast wide open. Stories relying upon the basic crime fiction formula as a foundation can be gothic tales, clue puzzles, forensic procedurals, spy thrillers, hardboiled narratives, or violent crime narratives, amongst many others. The settings can be quiet villages or busy metropolises, landscapes that readers actually inhabit or that provide a form of affordable tourism. These stories can be set in the past, the here and now, or the future. Characters can range from Edgar Allan Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin to Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, from Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple to Kerry Greenwood’s Honourable Phryne Fisher. Similarly, language can come in numerous styles from the direct (even rough) words of Carter Brown to the literary prose of Peter Temple. Anything is possible, meaning everything is available to readers. For Auden—although he required a crime to be committed and expected that crime to be resolved—these doorways were only slightly ajar. For him, the story had to be a Whodunit; the setting had to be rural England, though a college setting was also considered suitable; the characters had to be “eccentric (aesthetically interesting individuals) and good (instinctively ethical)” and there needed to be a “completely satisfactory detective” (Sherlock Holmes, Inspector French, and Father Brown were identified as “satisfactory”); and the language descriptive and detailed (406, 409, 408). To illustrate this point, Auden’s concept of crime fiction has been plotted on a taxonomy, below, that traces the genre’s main developments over a period of three centuries. As can be seen, much of what is, today, taken for granted as being classified as crime fiction is completely excluded from Auden’s ideal. Figure 1: Taxonomy of Crime Fiction (Adapted from Franks, Murder 136) Crime Fiction: A Personal Journey I discovered crime fiction the summer before I started high school when I saw the film version of The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. A few days after I had seen the film I started reading the Raymond Chandler novel of the same title, featuring his famous detective Philip Marlowe, and was transfixed by the second paragraph: The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armour rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn’t have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the visor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn’t seem to be really trying (9). John Scaggs has written that this passage indicates Marlowe is an idealised figure, a knight of romance rewritten onto the mean streets of mid-20th century Los Angeles (62); a relocation Susan Roland calls a “secular form of the divinely sanctioned knight errant on a quest for metaphysical justice” (139): my kind of guy. Like many young people I looked for adventure and escape in books, a search that was realised with Raymond Chandler and his contemporaries. On the escapism scale, these men with their stories of tough-talking detectives taking on murderers and other criminals, law enforcement officers, and the occasional femme fatale, were certainly a sharp upgrade from C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia. After reading the works written by the pioneers of the hardboiled and roman noir traditions, I looked to other American authors such as Edgar Allan Poe who, in the mid-1800s, became the father of the modern detective story, and Thorne Smith who, in the 1920s and 1930s, produced magical realist tales with characters who often chose to dabble on the wrong side of the law. This led me to the works of British crime writers including Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Dorothy L. Sayers. My personal library then became dominated by Australian writers of crime fiction, from the stories of bushrangers and convicts of the Colonial era to contemporary tales of police and private investigators. There have been various attempts to “improve” or “refine” my tastes: to convince me that serious literature is real reading and frivolous fiction is merely a distraction. Certainly, the reading of those novels, often described as classics, provide perfect combinations of beauty and brilliance. Their narratives, however, do not often result in satisfactory endings. This routinely frustrates me because, while I understand the philosophical frameworks that many writers operate within, I believe the characters of such works are too often treated unfairly in the final pages. For example, at the end of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Frederick Henry “left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain” after his son is stillborn and “Mrs Henry” becomes “very ill” and dies (292–93). Another example can be found on the last page of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith “gazed up at the enormous face” and he realised that he “loved Big Brother” (311). Endings such as these provide a space for reflection about the world around us but rarely spark an immediate response of how great that world is to live in (Franks Motive). The subject matter of crime fiction does not easily facilitate fairy-tale finishes, yet, people continue to read the genre because, generally, the concluding chapter will show that justice, of some form, will be done. Punishment will be meted out to the ‘bad characters’ that have broken society’s moral or legal laws; the ‘good characters’ may experience hardships and may suffer but they will, generally, prevail. Crime Fiction: A Taste For Justice Superimposed upon Auden’s parameters around crime fiction, are his ideas of the law in the real world and how such laws are interwoven with the Christian-based system of ethics. This can be seen in Auden’s listing of three classes of crime: “(a) offenses against God and one’s neighbor or neighbors; (b) offenses against God and society; (c) offenses against God” (407). Murder, in Auden’s opinion, is a class (b) offense: for the crime fiction novel, the society reflected within the story should be one in “a state of grace, i.e., a society where there is no need of the law, no contradiction between the aesthetic individual and the ethical universal, and where murder, therefore, is the unheard-of act which precipitates a crisis” (408). Additionally, in the crime novel “as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder” (408). Thus, as Charles J. Rzepka notes, “according to W.H. Auden, the ‘classical’ English detective story typically re-enacts rites of scapegoating and expulsion that affirm the innocence of a community of good people supposedly ignorant of evil” (12). This premise—of good versus evil—supports Auden’s claim that the punishment of wrongdoers, particularly those who claim the “right to be omnipotent” and commit murder (409), should be swift and final: As to the murderer’s end, of the three alternatives—execution, suicide, and madness—the first is preferable; for if he commits suicide he refuses to repent, and if he goes mad he cannot repent, but if he does not repent society cannot forgive. Execution, on the other hand, is the act of atonement by which the murderer is forgiven by society (409). The unilateral endorsement of state-sanctioned murder is problematic, however, because—of the main justifications for punishment: retribution; deterrence; incapacitation; and rehabilitation (Carter Snead 1245)—punishment, in this context, focuses exclusively upon retribution and deterrence, incapacitation is achieved by default, but the idea of rehabilitation is completely ignored. This, in turn, ignores how the reading of crime fiction can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment and how a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. One of the ways to explore the connection between crime fiction and justice is through the lens of Emile Durkheim’s thesis on the conscience collective which proposes punishment is a process allowing for the demonstration of group norms and the strengthening of moral boundaries. David Garland, in summarising this thesis, states: So although the modern state has a near monopoly of penal violence and controls the administration of penalties, a much wider population feels itself to be involved in the process of punishment, and supplies the context of social support and valorization within which state punishment takes place (32). It is claimed here that this “much wider population” connecting with the task of punishment can be taken further. Crime fiction, above all other forms of literary production, which, for those who do not directly contribute to the maintenance of their respective legal systems, facilitates a feeling of active participation in the penalising of a variety of perpetrators: from the issuing of fines to incarceration (Franks Punishment). Crime fiction readers are therefore, temporarily at least, direct contributors to a more stable society: one that is clearly based upon right and wrong and reliant upon the conscience collective to maintain and reaffirm order. In this context, the reader is no longer alone, with only their crime fiction novel for company, but has become an active member of “a moral framework which binds individuals to each other and to its conventions and institutions” (Garland 51). This allows crime fiction, once viewed as a “vice” (Wilson 395) or an “addiction” (Auden 406), to be seen as playing a crucial role in the preservation of social mores. It has been argued “only the most literal of literary minds would dispute the claim that fictional characters help shape the way we think of ourselves, and hence help us articulate more clearly what it means to be human” (Galgut 190). Crime fiction focuses on what it means to be human, and how complex humans are, because stories of murders, and the men and women who perpetrate and solve them, comment on what drives some people to take a life and others to avenge that life which is lost and, by extension, engages with a broad community of readers around ideas of justice and punishment. It is, furthermore, argued here that the idea of the story is one of the more important doorways for crime fiction and, more specifically, the conclusions that these stories, traditionally, offer. For Auden, the ending should be one of restoration of the spirit, as he suspected that “the typical reader of detective stories is, like myself, a person who suffers from a sense of sin” (411). In this way, the “phantasy, then, which the detective story addict indulges is the phantasy of being restored to the Garden of Eden, to a state of innocence, where he may know love as love and not as the law” (412), indicating that it was not necessarily an accident that “the detective story has flourished most in predominantly Protestant countries” (408). Today, modern crime fiction is a “broad church, where talented authors raise questions and cast light on a variety of societal and other issues through the prism of an exciting, page-turning story” (Sisterson). Moreover, our tastes in crime fiction have been tempered by a growing fear of real crime, particularly murder, “a crime of unique horror” (Hitchens 200). This has seen some readers develop a taste for crime fiction that is not produced within a framework of ecclesiastical faith but is rather grounded in reliance upon those who enact punishment in both the fictional and real worlds. As P.D. James has written: [N]ot by luck or divine intervention, but by human ingenuity, human intelligence and human courage. It confirms our hope that, despite some evidence to the contrary, we live in a beneficent and moral universe in which problems can be solved by rational means and peace and order restored from communal or personal disruption and chaos (174). Dorothy L. Sayers, despite her work to legitimise crime fiction, wrote that there: “certainly does seem a possibility that the detective story will some time come to an end, simply because the public will have learnt all the tricks” (108). Of course, many readers have “learnt all the tricks”, or most of them. This does not, however, detract from the genre’s overall appeal. We have not grown bored with, or become tired of, the formula that revolves around good and evil, and justice and punishment. Quite the opposite. Our knowledge of, as well as our faith in, the genre’s “tricks” gives a level of confidence to readers who are looking for endings that punish murderers and other wrongdoers, allowing for more satisfactory conclusions than the, rather depressing, ends given to Mr. Henry and Mr. Smith by Ernest Hemingway and George Orwell noted above. Conclusion For some, the popularity of crime fiction is a curious case indeed. When Penguin and Collins published the Marsh Million—100,000 copies each of 10 Ngaio Marsh titles in 1949—the author’s relief at the success of the project was palpable when she commented that “it was pleasant to find detective fiction being discussed as a tolerable form of reading by people whose opinion one valued” (172). More recently, upon the announcement that a Miles Franklin Award would be given to Peter Temple for his crime novel Truth, John Sutherland, a former chairman of the judges for one of the world’s most famous literary awards, suggested that submitting a crime novel for the Booker Prize would be: “like putting a donkey into the Grand National”. Much like art, fashion, food, and home furnishings or any one of the innumerable fields of activity and endeavour that are subject to opinion, there will always be those within the world of fiction who claim positions as arbiters of taste. Yet reading is intensely personal. I like a strong, well-plotted story, appreciate a carefully researched setting, and can admire elegant language, but if a character is too difficult to embrace—if I find I cannot make an emotional connection, if I find myself ambivalent about their fate—then a book is discarded as not being to my taste. It is also important to recognise that some tastes are transient. Crime fiction stories that are popular today could be forgotten tomorrow. Some stories appeal to such a broad range of tastes they are immediately included in the crime fiction canon. Yet others evolve over time to accommodate widespread changes in taste (an excellent example of this can be seen in the continual re-imagining of the stories of Sherlock Holmes). Personal tastes also adapt to our experiences and our surroundings. A book that someone adores in their 20s might be dismissed in their 40s. A storyline that was meaningful when read abroad may lose some of its magic when read at home. Personal events, from a change in employment to the loss of a loved one, can also impact upon what we want to read. Similarly, world events, such as economic crises and military conflicts, can also influence our reading preferences. Auden professed an almost insatiable appetite for crime fiction, describing the reading of detective stories as an addiction, and listed a very specific set of criteria to define the Whodunit. Today, such self-imposed restrictions are rare as, while there are many rules for writing crime fiction, there are no rules for reading this (or any other) genre. People are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction, and to follow the deliberate or whimsical paths that their tastes may lay down for them. Crime fiction writers, past and present, offer: an incredible array of detective stories from the locked room to the clue puzzle; settings that range from the English country estate to city skyscrapers in glamorous locations around the world; numerous characters from cerebral sleuths who can solve a crime in their living room over a nice, hot cup of tea to weapon wielding heroes who track down villains on foot in darkened alleyways; and, language that ranges from the cultured conversations from the novels of the genre’s Golden Age to the hard-hitting terminology of forensic and legal procedurals. Overlaid on these appeal factors is the capacity of crime fiction to feed a taste for justice: to engage, vicariously at least, in the establishment of a more stable society. Of course, there are those who turn to the genre for a temporary distraction, an occasional guilty pleasure. There are those who stumble across the genre by accident or deliberately seek it out. There are also those, like Auden, who are addicted to crime fiction. So there are corpses for the conservative and dead bodies for the bloodthirsty. There is, indeed, a murder victim, and a murder story, to suit every reader’s taste. References Auden, W.H. “The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on The Detective Story, By an Addict.” Harper’s Magazine May (1948): 406–12. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.harpers.org/archive/1948/05/0033206›. Carter Snead, O. “Memory and Punishment.” Vanderbilt Law Review 64.4 (2011): 1195–264. Cawelti, John G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976/1977. Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. London: Penguin, 1939/1970. ––. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Christie, Agatha. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: HarperCollins, 1920/2007. Cole, Cathy. Private Dicks and Feisty Chicks: An Interrogation of Crime Fiction. Fremantle: Curtin UP, 2004. Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Glyph 7 (1980): 202–32. Franks, Rachel. “May I Suggest Murder?: An Overview of Crime Fiction for Readers’ Advisory Services Staff.” Australian Library Journal 60.2 (2011): 133–43. ––. “Motive for Murder: Reading Crime Fiction.” The Australian Library and Information Association Biennial Conference. Sydney: Jul. 2012. ––. “Punishment by the Book: Delivering and Evading Punishment in Crime Fiction.” Inter-Disciplinary.Net 3rd Global Conference on Punishment. Oxford: Sep. 2013. Freeman, R.A. “The Art of the Detective Story.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 1924/1947. 7–17. Galgut, E. “Poetic Faith and Prosaic Concerns: A Defense of Suspension of Disbelief.” South African Journal of Philosophy 21.3 (2002): 190–99. Garland, David. Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1993. Hemingway, Ernest. A Farewell to Arms. London: Random House, 1929/2004. ––. in R. Chandler. The Simple Art of Murder. New York: Vintage Books, 1950/1988. Hitchens, P. A Brief History of Crime: The Decline of Order, Justice and Liberty in England. London: Atlantic Books, 2003. James, P.D. Talking About Detective Fiction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Knight, Stephen. Crime Fiction since 1800: Death, Detection, Diversity, 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillian, 2010. Knox, Ronald A. “Club Rules: The 10 Commandments for Detective Novelists, 1928.” Ronald Knox Society of North America. 1 Dec. 2013 ‹http://www.ronaldknoxsociety.com/detective.html›. Malmgren, C.D. “Anatomy of Murder: Mystery, Detective and Crime Fiction.” Journal of Popular Culture Spring (1997): 115–21. Maloney, Shane. The Murray Whelan Trilogy: Stiff, The Brush-Off and Nice Try. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1994/2008. Marsh, Ngaio in J. Drayton. Ngaio Marsh: Her Life in Crime. Auckland: Harper Collins, 2008. Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books, 1949/1989. Roland, Susan. From Agatha Christie to Ruth Rendell: British Women Writers in Detective and Crime Fiction. London: Palgrave, 2001. Rzepka, Charles J. Detective Fiction. Cambridge: Polity, 2005. Sayers, Dorothy L. “The Omnibus of Crime.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 1928/1947. 71–109. Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction: The New Critical Idiom. London: Routledge, 2005. Sisterson, C. “Battle for the Marsh: Awards 2013.” Black Mask: Pulps, Noir and News of Same. 1 Jan. 2014 http://www.blackmask.com/category/awards-2013/ Sutherland, John. in A. Flood. “Could Miles Franklin turn the Booker Prize to Crime?” The Guardian. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/25/miles-franklin-booker-prize-crime›. Van Dine, S.S. “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 1928/1947. 189-93. Wilson, Edmund. “Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd.” The Art of the Mystery Story: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Howard Haycraft. New York: Simon &amp; Schuster, 1944/1947. 390–97. Wyatt, N. “Redefining RA: A RA Big Think.” Library Journal Online. 1 Jan. 2014 ‹http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2007/07/ljarchives/lj-series-redefining-ra-an-ra-big-think›. Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006.

On 26 April 2002, in the German city of Erfurt, 19-year-old Robert Steinhäuser entered his former high school with two semi-automatic weapons. He killed the secretary, twelve teachers, two students, and a policeman before a staff member locked him in an empty classroom and he turned his gun on himself (Lemonick). Ten years later, I visited the city with the intention of writing a play about it. This was to be my fifth play based on primary research of an actual event. In previous projects, I had written about personal catastrophes of failed relationships, and reversals of fortune within private community groups. As my experience progressed, I was drawn to events of increasing complexity and seriousness. Now I was dealing with the social catastrophe of violent, deliberate loss of life that had affected the community on a national scale. I had developed a practice of making contact with potential participants, gaining their trust, and conducting interviews. I was interested in truth and authenticity and the ethics of writing about real experiences. My process was informed by the work of theorists Donna Haraway, Zygmunt Bauman and Roy Bhaskar. While embracing postmodern reflexivity, these thinkers nevertheless maintain the existence of a reality that operates independently of social construction (Davies 19). This involves a rejection of a postmodern relativism, in which “unadulterated individualism” (Bauman 2) leaves us free to construct our own worlds with impunity. Instead, we are invited to acknowledge that “we are not in charge of the world” (Haraway 39), and that we are answerable for our relationships within it. I intended to challenge postmodern notions of truth with work that was real rather than relative, authentic rather than constructed. I believed that a personal relationship between me and those who inspired my work was crucial. This relationship would be the ethical foundation from which I could monitor the value of my work and the risk of harm to those involved in the stories I chose to tell. I launched into the Erfurt project intending to follow my established process. But that didn’t happen. I went to Erfurt on the tenth anniversary of the event. I attended an official memorial ceremony at the school, and another service at the church which had been heavily involved in counselling the bereaved. In the evening I saw a theatre production at the Erfurt Theatre entitled Die Würde der deutschen Waffenschränke ist unantastbar (The Dignity of German Weapons Cupboards is Inviolable). The piece, by writer and journalist Roman Grafe, is based on interviews and contemporary reports about this and similar incidents around Germany. My intention had been to make initial contact with people and lay the ground-work for subsequent communication and interviews for my project. However, the whole time I was in Erfurt, I spoke to no one, apart from waiters, shopkeepers and a lonely sight-seeing chimneysweep who cornered me for a conversation in the cathedral. It’s highly likely I couldn’t have done the interviews the way I had planned them anyway. But the point is that, in Erfurt, I decided I wasn’t going to try. The work I had done in the past was always about uncovering an untold story. My drive to investigate and illuminate a story was directly related to how hidden, surprising, and unreachable it was. This was a big part of how I judged the value of what I was doing, despite the inherent inequitable power of the colonizing voice (hooks 343). My previous experience had been that the people I found wanted to speak to me because no one had ever asked them for their story before. I also believed in the value of unearthing a story for an audience who either didn't know about it, or wanted to know more. Neither of these applied in Erfurt. This event attracted enormous media attention. There are dedicated books, documentaries, YouTube shorts, essays, Masters theses, parliamentary reports, inquiries, debates, magazine articles, and newspaper reports. Many people, including survivors, the bereaved, professionals, and Robert Steinhäuser’s parents and friends, had already spoken. Inquiries for more information keep coming. The principal of the school has ring binders full of them and, even after ten years, they continue to stream onto her desk every week (Müller 165). When I was at the official memorial service at the school, I saw reporters and photographers hovering in the crowd, sneaking around to catch moments of grief. I was ashamed to feel that I was one of them. For all my noble aspirations, academic justification and approval by an ethics committee, the sheer volume of interest in this event combined with the ongoing pain of those involved made what I was doing seem grubby. The closest I came to a personal interaction was a pencilled note in the margins of a copy of Für heute reichts (Geipel), a hybrid narrative-style investigation of the event which I borrowed from the library. The copy had been underlined throughout. On page 230, the investigator of the story is warned away by a bereaved lawyer: Ich kann Ihnen im Moment niemanden von den Angehörigen sagen, der bereit wäre, mit Ihnen zu sprechen. (I can’t tell you any of the next of kin at the moment who would be prepared to speak with you.) Written underneath in pencil: Ich hab’s nie ausgesprochen und doch denke ich, ich redete ununterbrochen davon. (I’ve never said it aloud and yet I think I’ve talked about it continuously.) I took this as a warning: those who wanted to speak already had; those who didn’t, wouldn’t. And more importantly, it was painful either way. To comb over this well-mined ground yet again, causing even more pain in the process, seemed unethical to me. The risk of further harm was obvious. The stories that people had told were horrifying. At the centre of each of them: raw, hopeless pain. The testimonials all spiralled into a tunnel of loss, silence, death, and blame. They bristled with the need for community, to have been there, the indignity and pain of not being with their loved ones when they needed them. The painful, horrible, awful truth: there is nothing they could have done. As I sat in the memorial church service in Erfurt, I felt the depth of my own losses yawning inside me and I was almost engulfed with sadness. The vulnerability of my loved ones and my own mortality loomed so large that I had to consciously control myself and pull myself back from the brink. It’s that silent place of grief that Cixous identifies as both aesthetically compelling and ethically fraught (McEvoy 214). It’s the silence where death exists. This is where the people around me had been for ten years. I’ve been taken to that place so many times in the course of researching this event, and it was in the theatre that it was most intense. I sat in the theatre and experienced a verbatim monologue from a bereaved mother, performed by an actress sitting on the edge of the stage, reading aloud from printed sheets of paper. A fifteen minute monologue of how she found out about the shooting, the wait for more news, how her daughter's mobile phone didn't answer, how she found out her daughter had been killed when someone called her to offer condolences, what the days, weeks and months afterwards were like, the celebration of her birthday beside her grave. It was authentic, in that it came directly from the person who had experienced it. The ethical values of the theatre maker were evident in the unedited rawness of the piece and the respect it was given within the production. This theatre piece did exactly what I had thought I wanted do: it opened a real window into what happened. But it wasn’t satisfying to experience. It was just plain awful. What I have come to believe, as an artist wanting to interpret this event with integrity, is that opening this window into grief is not enough. The tunnelling spiral of pain, loss and blame goes nowhere but down. It’s harder to bear because the victims were young, and they were killed in an explosion of violence, at the imposition of a stranger’s will, in a place that was supposed to be safe. But when you strip away the circumstances, the essence of loss is the same, whether your loved one dies of cancer, in a car accident, or a natural disaster. It’s terrible, and it’s real, but it’s not unique to this event. If I was going to be part of a crowd picking over the corpses, then I felt I had to be very clear within myself why I had chosen these ones. I was staying in a monastery where two hundred and sixty-seven people were killed by a bomb while sheltering in the library during World War II. Stories of violent death and loss are everywhere. Feeling the intensity of that loss as though it’s your own isn’t necessarily productive. A few weeks before, I had passed the scene of an accident on the way to school with my daughter. A girl had been hit by a car and seriously injured. The ambulance officers were already there and they had put a cushion under the girl's head, and they were at the ambulance preparing the stretcher. The girl was lying in the middle of the road, alone and crying. As we passed and walked towards the school, girls were running from the front gates to join the expanding fan of onlookers standing there, looking, shaking their heads, agreeing with each other how terrible it was. I wanted to tell them to go away. It highlighted for me the deeply held response to trauma that my parents instilled in me: if there’s nothing you can do to help, then you have no business being there. Standing around watching turned the girl’s pain turned her into a spectacle. It created a bright line between the spectators and the girl, while simultaneously making the spectators feel as though they were part of her story and that they were special for witnessing it. They could go back to class and say: I was there, it was terrible. The comfort seems to be in processing sympathy into a feeling of self-importance at having felt pain that isn’t yours. I have felt the pain of the bereaved. I have cried for those who were killed. But my tears have not brought me closer to understanding what happened here. I had the same feeling of wrongness when I left the theatre as when I was escaping the crowd staring at the girl from the side of the road. Sharing the feeling of loss gave an illusion of understanding, solidarity, community and helpfulness that the spectators could then just walk away from and take superficial comfort from, without ever dealing with what I think is the actual reality of the event. In my opinion, the essence of this event does not lie in the nature of the violence and its attendant loss. What happened in Erfurt wasn’t an accident. These were targeted murders. The heart of this event is not the loss: it’s the desire to kill. This is what distinguishes this particular kind of event from any other catastrophe in which lives are lost. At its centre: someone did this on purpose. Robert Steinhäuser was expelled from school without any qualifications, so he was unemployable and ineligible for further education. He didn’t tell his family or his friends about the expulsion, so for months afterwards he lived a charade of attending school. When he attacked, he specifically targeted teachers and actively tried to avoid hurting students. (The two students who died that day were killed as he shot through a locked door.) According to the state government commission into the incident, Robert Steinhäuser’s transgression was an attempt to achieve recognition and public importance (Müller 193). It appears that he was at a point where he decided that the best thing or the only thing he could do was enact a theatrical mass murder of the people he thought were responsible for his misery. For me, focusing on the repercussions and the victims and the loss actually reinforces the structures that led Robert to make this decision: Robert is isolated, singular, and everyone else is against him. For many, this is seen as the appropriate way to deal with him. Angela Merkel, the conservative party leader at the time, said: Wer das Unverständliche verstehbar und das Unerklärbare erklärbar machen möchte, der muss aufpassen, das er sich nicht – zumindest unterschwellig – auf die Seite des Täters stellt und versucht, das Unentschuldbar mit irgendwelchen Umständen zu erklären. (Slotosch 1) (Whoever wants to make something that’s beyond understanding understandable and the inexplicable explicable has to be careful that he doesn’t—even unconsciously—stand on the side of the perpetrator and try to explain the inexcusable with circumstances of some kind.) According to Merkel, even to attempt to understand Robert is to betray his victims, and places you on the wrong side of the line that defines our humanity. Many of those who were directly affected by the event believe this as well. A recurring issue for many of the survivors and bereaved is the need to suppress the memory of Robert Steinhäuser. The school principal, Christiane Alt, said: Ich kann es nicht ertragen, dass er so postmortalen Ruhm auf sich zieht – das passiert immer wieder, nicht nur im Internet – und dass die Namen der Opfer ins Vergessen sinken. (Müller 160) (I can’t bear that he attracts such posthumous celebrity—it keeps happening, not just on the internet—and that the names of the victims sink into obscurity.) There is ongoing debate about the appropriateness of a seventeenth tribute: seventeen people died that day, only sixteen are officially mourned. There were sixteen names on the plaque at the school, sixteen candles on the memorial on the steps, and sixteen people were honoured and remembered in speeches. The voices of the perpetrators were unheard in the theatre piece. They were given no words and no story. It was only in the church that there was a seventeenth candle, on its own, to the side, in the dark. I have circled around this story for over a year and I keep coming back to Robert, however unwillingly. I am a dramatic writer. I write characters who take action. The German word for “perpetrator” is Täter. From the verb tun, to do. It means “do-er.” Someone who does something. It’s closer to our word “actor”, which for me reinforces the theatricality of the event as a whole. Robert staged this event. He wanted witnesses, as the impact of what he did depends on it. He even performed in costume. I am concerned that looking at Robert may actively reinforce the dramaturgical structure that he orchestrated, and thereby empower him and those like him. He wanted people to see him and know his story, and this is the only way he felt he could take control over it and face its indignity. I don’t want him to be right. All of this has left me in a very strange position. My own ethical process has actually collapsed beneath my feet. I had relied on giving a voice to those who wanted to speak—those people have already spoken. I saw value in uncovering a story that was previously unknown. This one has been examined many times over. I relied on personal, situated relationships between myself and those involved in the event. I have no such relationship. And if I did, what I see as an ethical response to this event—that is to try to understand Robert’s story—would actually be contrary to what many of those involved in the event want. I would run the risk of hurting those I most want to champion. It’s a risk I’ve had to run before. My last play was about a fifteen-year-old girl who had a sexual relationship with a teacher. I interviewed her and her friends, family, court officials, and also spoke to the teacher himself. The girl is highly intelligent and she had suffered terribly, but she could also be conceited and manipulative, and for me that truth was a crucial part of her story. I believed I got it right, but I also knew I ran the risk of hurting her, which of course I didn’t want to do. The girl came to see the play on opening night and I was absolutely terrified. We couldn’t speak, because she has to remain anonymous, but she thanked me via e-mail afterwards and told me that she felt privileged. She said that the play gave her experience a level of dignity that she would never have found otherwise. I was relieved, humbled, honoured, and vindicated. This is what I hoped for: a creative work about real events that was truthful and authentic, without being exploitative or hurtful. I had thought that the process relied on this ethical and responsible relationship. But the girl told me what she appreciated most was the energy and integrity with which I had dedicated myself to her story. This response has helped me to continue with my project. I am no longer sure of how to achieve an ethical, authentic artistic outcome, or even what that may be. But I still believe in my own capacity to ask questions with energy and integrity, and I hope that this will be enough. Because it’s all I have left. References Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics. Blackwell: Oxford, 1993. Davies, Charlotte Aull. Reflexive Ethnography: A Guide to Researching Selves and Others. Routledge: London, 2008. Die Würde der deutschen Waffenschränke ist unantastbar (The Dignity of German Weapons Cupboards Is Inviolable). Dir. Roman Grafe. Erfurt Theatre, 2012. Geipel, Ines. Für heute reichts (Amok in Erfurt). Berlin: Rohwohlt, 2004. Haraway, Donna. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Turning Points in Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief. Eds. Norman K. Denzin, and Yvonna S. Lincoln. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira P, 2003. 21–46. hooks, b. “Marginality as a Site of Resistance.” Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Eds. Russell Ferguson et al. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1990. 341–343. Lemonick, Michael. D. “Germany’s Columbine.” Time 159.18 (6 May 2002): 36. Mcevoy, W. “Finding the Balance: Writing and Performing Ethics in Théâtre du Soleil’s Le Dernier Caravansérail.” New Theatre Quarterly 22.3 (2003): 211–26. Müller, Hanno, and Paul-Josef Raue. Der Amoklauf: 10 Jahre danach—Erinnern und Gedenken. Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 2012. Slotosch, Sven. “Das alte Lied, das alte Leid.” Telepolis 30 Nov. 2006. 7 Jun. 2012 &lt; http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/24/24101/1.html &gt;.