This groundbreaking book reveals how complex stories—ranging from war memoirs and political polemics to propaganda and prize-winning fiction—can shape our understanding of ideologically motivated violence. Drawing on the rich tradition of aesthetic education, it offers an original theory connecting the aesthetic, ethical and political dimensions of narrative. The author demonstrates how literature and documentary writing can unmask techniques of neutralisation, expose fictionality and sugg...

This book introduces narrative justice, a new theory of aesthetic education – the thesis that the cultivation of aesthetic or artistic sensibility can both improve moral character and achieve political justice. The author argues that there is a subcategory of narrative representations that provide moral knowledge regardless of their categorisation as fiction or non-fiction, and which therefore can be employed as a means of moral improvement. McGregor applies this narrative ethics to the cr...

Through an examination of Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, this book demonstrates the ability of cinematic fictions, and other complex narrative fictions, to contribute to meeting the climate challenge by shaping the desires of audiences.What if there was a single feature film that showed us everything we need to know about climate catastrophe culture? What if that same film also made the philosophies of Slavoj Žižek, Mark Fisher, Francis Fukuyama, and Fredric Jameson acc...

In The Value of Literature, Rafe McGregor employs a unique approach – the combination of philosophical work on value theory and critical work on the relationship between form and content – to present a new argument for, and defence of, literary humanism. He argues that literature has value for art, for culture, and for humanity – in short, that it matters. Unlike most contemporary defenders of literary value, the author's strategy does not involve arguing that literature is good as a means...

There is increasing pressure on the humanities to justify their value and on criminology to undertake interdisciplinary research. In this book, Rafe McGregor establishes a new interdisciplinary methodology, ‘criminological criticism’, harnessing the synergy between literary studies and critical criminology to produce genuine interventions in social reality.McGregor practices criminological criticism on George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, Prime Video’s ‘Carnival Row’ and J.K. Rowl...

Criminology has been reluctant to embrace fictional narratives as a tool for understanding, explaining and reducing crime and social harm.In this philosophical enquiry, McGregor uses examples from films, television, novels and graphic novels to demonstrate the extensive criminological potential of fiction around the world. Building on previous studies of non-fiction narratives, the book is the first to explore the ways criminological fiction provides knowledge of the causes of crim...

Transatlantic policing is experiencing an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy, epitomised by public responses to the murders of George Floyd and Sarah Everard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Legitimacy is lost when the police either fail to protect the public or rely on coercion rather than consent to achieve that protection. Recovering Police Legitimacy challenges conventional criminological, political, and public solutions to the problem by approaching it from the bottom up, beginn...

Literary Theory and Criminology demonstrates the significance of contemporary literary theory to the discipline of criminology, particularly to those criminologists who are primarily concerned with questions of power, inequality, and harm. Drawing on innovations in philosophical, narrative, cultural, and pulp criminology, it sets out a deconstructive framework as part of a critical criminological critique-praxis.This book comprises eight essays – on globalisation, criminol...

After a brief hiatus, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine is back with a new issue and a new editor. Here are tales in mystery and detection in the classic manner, with a fine selection of new stories, features, and a classic Holmes reprint. Here are:BEAUTY AND THE BEYOTCH, by Barb GoffmanTHE CASE OF THE COLONEL’S SUICIDE, by Rafe McGregorTHE HOLMES IMPERSONATOR AND THE BAKER STREET IRREGULARS, by Janice LawTHE BODY IN THE BACKYARD, by Peter DiChellis

Standing at the intersection of criminology and philosophy, this book demonstrates the ways in which mythic movies and television series can provide an understanding of actual crimes and social harms.Taking three social problems as its subjects – capitalist political economy, structural injustice, and racism – the book explores the ways in which David Fincher’s Fight Club (1999), HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–2019), and Jordan Peele’s Us (2019) offer soluti...

Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine #30 is back with a special fiction issue featuring 6 Sherlock Holmes stories and a Mr. Moto story!FEATURES:FROM WATSON’S NOTEBOOKS, by John H WatsonASK MRS HUDSON, by (Mrs) Martha HudsonSCREEN OF THE CRIME, by Kim NewmanI’LL TAKE A PASS ON THE CURRIED MUTTON, THANK YOU, by O’Neill CuratoloBARTITSU, THE REVIVED MIXED-MARTIAL ART OF SHERLOCK HOLMES, by Elizabeth CrowensFICTI...

This book provides a clear and concise introduction to the work of French cultural icon Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) for criminologists, sociologists, and social theorists. The authors approach Lacan as a structuralist rather than a psychoanalyst or psychiatrist, exploring his perspective on the relationships among being, agency, meaning, and structure; his construction of subjectivity; and his register theory, constituted by the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic.The book begins w...