Bloodscripts: Writing the Violent Subject

Front Cover
Ohio State University Press, 2003 - History - 234 pages
We live in an increasingly violent world. From suicide terrorists to serial killers, violent subjects challenge our imaginations. We seek answers to our questions on this subject in literature, cinema, and electronic media. In Bloodscripts, Elana Gomel examines how popular culture narratives construct violent subjectivity. Using such various narratives as mystery, horror; detective, and fantasy fiction as well as accounts of the atrocities perpetuated by serial killers and the Holocaust, Bloodscripts offers a new map of the genres of violence and links the twin obsessions of postmodern culture: crime and genocide. Bloodscripts is a stimulating, original, and accessible account of the narrative construction of the violent subject. It proposes a narrative model that will be of interest to literary critics, cultural scholars, criminologists, and anyone trying to understand the role of violence in postmodern culture.
 

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
xi
The Visible Man
1
Serial Killing and the Dismemberment of Identity
32
The Library of the Body
63
Utopia Noir
98
From Moreau to Mengele
132
The Singularity of History
162
Peacescripts?
196
NOTES
209
INDEX
229
Copyright

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