Abstract
Imperialism and the Criminological Imagination: A Lacanian Analysis establishes an aetiology of colonial and neocolonial harm in terms of the psychodynamic registers of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real. Drawing on three narrative fictions – Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), J.G. Ballard’s The Crystal World (1966), and James Brabazon’s The Break Line (2018) – the authors explore the relationship between text and context where context includes both the realities of imperialism in West Africa and the intertexuality of the novels. The criminological imagination is deployed as a matrix that connects and structures the personal and public, fictional and documentary, and theoretical and empirical, synthesising and developing the existing work of Jon Frauley, Jock Young, and Martin Glynn. Applying that matrix to the data reveals three core cultural logics that justify and motivate imperialism: adventure, genocide, and ecocide. Written in an accessible and engaging style, this book provides an unprecedented exegesis of Jacques Lacan’s psychodynamic theory. Lacan’s metapsychology is presented as an ontological and epistemological inquiry with the potential to enrich criminological theory and serve as a means to the criminological ends of the control, reduction, or prevention of crime and harm.
Original language | English |
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Publisher | Routledge |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781032975146 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781032975108 |
Publication status | Accepted/In press - 23 Sept 2024 |