Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's Wound CultureIn this provocative cultural study, the serial killer emerges as a central figure in what Mark Seltzer calls 'America's wound culture'. From the traumas displayed by talk show guests and political candidates, to the violent entertainment of Crash or The Alienist, to the latest terrible report of mass murder, we are surrounded by the accident from which we cannot avert our eyes. Bringing depth and shadow to our collective portrait of what a serial killer must be, Mark Seltzer draws upon popular sources, scholarly analyses, and the language of psychoanalysis to explore the genesis of this uniquely modern phenomenon. Revealed is a fascination with machines and technological reproduction, with the singular and the mass, with definitions of self, other, and intimacy. What emerges is a disturbing picture of how contemporary culture is haunted by technology and the instability of identity. |
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abnormal normality basic become Bodies and Machines bodily boundaries clichés compulsive construction crime crowd death Dennis Nilsen Discourse Network distance effect erotics failure fantasy film Freud gender H. H. Holmes Homicide Hunting Humans identification identity individual inseparable interior intimacy Jack the Ripper Jacques Lacan Jeffrey Dahmer Killer Inside killing La Bête humaine Lacan lence Leyton logic Lustmord machine culture male mass in person mechanical merely Michel Foucault mimetic Mindhunter modern motive Murder New York Nilsen notion novel numbers pathological public sphere popular primary mediation private desire psychic psycho Psychoanalysis psychology pulp fiction radical recent relays repetitive representation reproduction Ressler sadistic scene self-difference self-making serial killer serial murder serial violence sexual difference simulation Slavoj Žižek sort spectacle story substitution technologies Ted Bundy Theweleit thing tion trans trauma turn understanding University Press victims visible wound culture writing Žižek