Deadline Approaching: Proposals Due By May 31, 2020
Through a Glass Darkly:
European History and Politics in
Contemporary Crime Narratives
Monica Dall’Asta, Jacques
Migozzi, Federico Pagello, Andrew Pepper eds.
To talk about the crime genre—as opposed to detective
or spy or noir fiction—is to recognise the comprehensiveness of a category that
speaks to and contains multiple sub-genres and forms (Ascari, 2007). In this
volume, we want to uncover the ways in which the crime genre, in all of its
multiple guises, forms and media/transmedia developments, has investigated and
interrogated the concealed histories and political underpinnings of national
and supranational societies and institutions in Europe, particularly after the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Two most popular expression of the crime genre, the
detective novel and the spy novel, have long been identified as ‘sociological’
in their orientation (Boltanski, 2012). These forms often tackle enigmas or
uncover conspiracies that are concealed by and within states, asking searching
questions about the failures of democracy and the national and international
criminal justice systems to deliver just societies. Similarly, following the
example of U.S. hard-boiled fiction, the ‘noir’ variant of the genre has also
established itself as a ‘literature of crisis’ (according to Jean-Patrick
Manchette’s formula), where the shredding of official truths and of ‘reality’
itself ends up revealing dark political motives that elicit an even starker set
of ethical and affective interrogations (Neveu, 2004). While the obvious links
between the ‘noir’ and the ‘hard-boiled’ traditions of crime fiction (e.g.
between Manchette and Hammett) suggest an American-French or trans-Atlantic
connection, we are keen to stress that the sociological and political
orientation of the European crime genre—especially since 1989 and the
corresponding opening up of national borders and markets—requires examining
both global/glocal and multi-national (and state-bound) issues and challenges.
It is here that the European dimension of the proposed volume is best
articulated because, to do justice to this context, we need to pay attention
not just to discreet national traditions, but the ways in which contemporary
iterations of the genre interrogate the workings of policing, law, criminality
and justice across borders and nations (Pepper and Schmid, 2016).
The transnational framework of the DETECt project
(Detecting Transcultural Identities in Popular European Crime Narratives) is
necessarily and acutely concerned with civic and ethical issues linked to the
construction of new European new identities. The proposed volume aims to
explore the ways in which these new identities are formulated and thematised in
European crime novels, films or TV series, particularly in relation to the
interrogations raised by the uncovering of hidden aspects of both the
historical past and the contemporary political landscapes. Contributions are
encouraged which look at particular case studies or identify larger national and/or
transnational trends or synthesise the relationship between individual texts
and these larger trends. It is envisaged that the volume will be organised into
the three sections outlined below. Prospective contributors are invited to
identify where their articles might sit within this structure as well as to
outline the particular focus adopted by their essay in relation to the general
topic. The list of topics in each section is to be regarded as indicative
rather than exhaustive.
1. Crime Narratives and the
History of Europe
European crime narratives from the last thirty years
have frequently referred to collective traumas and conflicts that have torn
European societies apart throughout the 20th century. Contributions are invited
that look at the ways in which these fictional works have restaged and
critically reinterpreted some of the most tragic pages in European recent
history, including (but not limited to) the following iterations of violent
rupture and social breakdown:
- The Civil War and Francoist dictatorship in Spanish
crime narratives (e.g. Montalbán, La isla minima);
- Fascism, surveillance and the police-state (e.g.
Lucarelli, Gori, De Giovanni) and the role of oppositional memory (e.g.
Morchio, Dazieri) in Italian detective fiction;
- Fascistic/right-wing nationalist movements in
interwar Scandinavia (e.g. Larsson, Mankell);
- The Third Reich as the historical biotope of crime
fiction (e.g. Kerr, Gilbers);
- The constant presence of wars as a breeding ground
for crime in French crime novels: World War I and II, collaboration, the
Algerian War, colonisation, post-colonisation (e.g. Daeninckx, Férey);
- The heavy presence of Cold War images and axiology
in spy novels and films, including those appeared after the fall of the Berlin
Wall, both in Western and Eastern Europe (e.g. Kondor, Furst);
- The ‘Troubles’ in Irish and British crime fiction
(e.g. Peace, McNamee).
2. Crime Narratives and the
Present of Europe
Our present time is characterized by a number of
social, political, financial/economic crises that threaten the construction of
a cosmopolitan pan-European identity in line with the EU’s founding ideals.
Crime narratives attempt to offer realistic representations of such
contemporary crises by putting in place a number of ‘chronotopes’ that
symbolise social divisions and peripheral and marginalized identities. We
encourage essays that examine the ways in which post-1989 European crime
narratives have represented the emergence of nationalisms, xenophobia, racism
and other threats to the social cohesiveness of European democracies. We also
invite contributions that use the trope of the crisis to explore how the links
between crime, business and politics have polluted or corrupted the democratic
imperatives of European social democracies and institutions from the outset.
Topics might include:
- The Kosovo War, and more broadly the Balkan
conflicts of the 1990s, as the first signs of a generalised geopolitical chaos
(e.g. in French noir novels);
- The financial crisis of 2008 and its devastating
consequences for individuals, communities and whole societies (e.g. Bruen and
French in Ireland; Markaris in Greece; Dahl in Sweden; Lemaître in France);
- The migrant crisis (within and outside the EU) and
the emergence of new anxieties about belonging and/or otherness (e.g. Mankell,
Dolan, Rankin);
- Climate change, pollution, and environmental
destruction (e.g. Tuomainen, Pulixi);
- The blurring of crime and capitalism and the
depiction of crime as a form of social protest vis-à-vis the effects of global
capitalism and neoliberal deregulation and privatisation (e.g. Manotti,
Carlotto, Heinichen, the TV series Bron);
- Inquiries into the effects of contemporary forms of
patriarchy, gendered violence and misogyny and their links to other forms of
oppression and domination (e.g. Lemaître, Slimani, Macintosh, Gimenez-Bartlett
Larsson, McDermid).
3. Crime Narratives and the
Future of Europe
European crime narratives explore a broad range of
social and cultural identities across different scales: from the more stable
identities attached to local contexts through the new mobile, precarious and
mutating identities fostered by the dynamics of globalization. This section
will look into how these different identities and their complex interplay can
suggest ways to frame the future of Europe. Contributions could address how
crime narratives try to make sense of the complex, if yet perhaps
contradictory, set of representations circulating across different European
public spaces and collective imaginaries. On the one hand, we might ask whether
something like a European crime genre even actually exists, given that these
works typically demonstrate suspicions about ‘outsiders’ and only rarely offer
positive representations of post-national transcultural identities. On the
other hand, however, the genre does give us glimpses into what might be
achieved through cross-border policing initiatives, organised under or by
Interpol and Europol, in the face of organised crime gangs involved in
transnational smuggling and trafficking networking. Contributions to this final
section are encouraged to reflect upon how crime narratives produced by and in
between the discreet nation-states frame the hopes and limits of European
cohesiveness and the continent’s future or futures. Essays could focus on one
or more of the following topics:
- The interplay between local, regional, national and
transnational identities as represented through specific narrative tropes, such
as in particular the local police station, the interrogation room, the frontier
or border, and so on;
- The connection between social deprivation at the
local end of the geopolitical scale and different global systems and networks
at the other end;
- The role of borders, cities, violence, rebellion,
policing and surveillance in producing new identities and subjectivities not
wholly anchored in discreet nation-states. Attention could also be given to
formal innovations insofar as these allow or enable the expression of new
identities;
- The hope and consolation offered by the resilient
community or village (Broadchurch, Shetland) or the extended family (Markaris’s
Kostas Charistos series) in the face of the messy, brutal contingencies of a
world ruled by criminal and business elites;
- Social banditry as a form of contestation directed
against social inequalities produced by capitalism (Carlotto’s Alligator
series; La casa de papel).
If you are interested in submitting a proposal to be
considered for inclusion in this volume, please send an abstract of no
more than 300 words and a short biography to info@detect-project.eu by
May 31, 2020. We would encourage you to identify the section of the
proposed volume where your essay would be best situated. We are looking to
commission up to 14 essays in total of 7000 words each including footnotes and
bibliographic references.
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