Čutura, Vladan.
(2018).
The phenomenology of crime in Croatian crime novels.
PhD Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Croatian Language and Literature.
(Poslijediplomski doktorski studij kroatistike)
[mentor Grgas, Stipe and Brešić, Vinko].
Abstract
The specificity of the approach in this paper is that the scientific findings will precede the
review of popular culture, more precisely the crime novel, in order to inscribe the meanings that
literature has to deal with causes and phenomena of criminality. Such an approach assumes lax
boundaries between criminology, literary and cultural theory. As such, new themes and
approaches came from the radical peripherals to the centre of knowledgeable interest which
resulted in new crime directions and schools. Such insights will serve the methodological and
analytical approach to the Croatian criminal novel.
It is that by combining the theory of classical criminological science with culture and
media studies, cognitive sciences, deconstruction, psychoanalytic semiotics and feminism that
these theories have come to important notions in the interpretation of the phenomenon of crime
through the numerous products of popular culture.
Crime has always been a focus of interest in different disciplines, but the cultural studies
and cultural criminology disciplines have begun to be interested in this phenomenon and in the
field of culture to try new ways to understand the problem. This was confirmed by the fact that,
because of its complexity, the phenomenon of crime cannot be and has never been the subject of
just one discipline and it is therefore logical that the boundaries between disciplines should be
relaxed. Such an approach necessarily leads to the spread of discourse regarding the boundaries
of crime.
There are several important facts that justify attempts to investigate the faintness of
fictional texts of crime novels with the theories of criminology and, in general, with the world of
crime. First, in this work, I am interested in how the crime was “packaged” in this popular genre
that has recently been interpreted solely as a cheap entertainment. By crossing two discourses,
literary theory and criminology, I want to examine with which criminological concepts the
authors of Croatian crime novels negotiated and how they changed the narrative of crime in this
genre. More precisely, if we approach a criminal novel as one of the many narratives on crime, it
can testify on the occurrences and causes of deviant behaviours. The aim of the paper was to
point to possible overlap points and ways in which criminology can serve as an analytical object
in approaching various scientific concepts like criminology, social control and criminal law. It was also intended to illustrate how these ideas can be used in the creative analysis of
the problem. Such an approach required the examination of cultural and social meanings on the
various criminal-related phenomena in Croatian crime novels. Though literature is one of the
narratives on crime, most academic criminologists have not been honouring it in their research
until recently, but it is the stories that allow us to pursue crime and criminals in a different kind
of complexity than those we encounter in classical criminal studies. The fact is that literature and
culture are involved in building our reality and they shape the way we think about certain
phenomena, including the phenomenon of crime.
According to the literary text, I used the same approach as a narrative of the crime, such
as crime news, criminological texts, offenders’ biographies or case studies. With this approach, it
becomes clear that there are numerous insights into our social world. The important conclusion I
tried to contribute to is the conclusion reached by two American authors - Nicole Rafter and
Michelle Brown (2011), that criminology is not only produced by scientists, but by many
participants in popular culture, including those who write and read crime novels or watch and
record criminal films. According to their conclusion, it can be said that crime, albeit a negative
social phenomenon, is also a cultural resource.
The idea and the inspiration for such an approach have been found in the theory of
cultural criminology and in one of the fundamental insights of the representative of this
orientation, that the phenomenon of criminality must also be studied by analyzing both the
criminal activities shown in the media, and culture of everyday life.
What is cultural criminology at all? It is a theoretical, methodological and interventionist
approach to crime investigation, where crime and social control are interpreted in a cultural
context. The phenomenon of crime is also approaching as a cultural product and a creative
construct, with emphasis on the interpretation of meaning and on representation and power in the
construction of crime and the formation of experiences. In building such a concept, it was
necessary to step out from the framework of academic criminology to other ideas and scientific
interests, such as literature, music, art, architecture and philosophy. In this sense, cultural
criminology means to things; new analytical objects and new ways of analysis centered on
symbolic meanings.
If we ask ourselves whether or not we need cultural criminology, the answer is that
cultural interpretations complement and alter existing knowledge about problems that are hidden beneath manifest contents and problematize the purity of the concepts of crime phenomenon
which are often the product of precisely designed data of criminological and criminal law
analyzes and theories. This moves the boundaries of criminological theory beyond known
concepts, including understanding the perception of crime in pop culture, in which forms this
popular literary genre is involved. An interdisciplinary approach becomes clearer in which places
overlapping two crime narratives that often seemed to be opposing fields - academic and literary,
and that cultural dynamics largely define criminality that is not just statistics and other
bureaucratic calculations.
It is important to note why crime novels have become the focus of new criminological
theories and there are several reasons for this. First, every crime and criminal act always appear
and interpret as narrative events, regardless of whether the testimonies are from the courtrooms,
insights of social sciences and criminology, through biographical case studies, newspaper
reports, or, discovering crime by reading crime novels. Secondly, the themes that were produced
by popular culture originated in all forms of crime and often caused certain reactions to its
content. Third, there is a whole history of a relationship between criminology and literature.
Literature is embedded in the foundations of criminology and criminal law since its creation in
the mid-19th century. The first criminologists would regularly seek evidence in literary texts for
dubious scientific theories, where literature was often instrumentalized. By returning to the past
of the criminological discipline, one will show that criminology has "always been" contaminated
with cultural, especially literary factors. Finally, crime novels have become a research topic in
criminology due to the contemporary relationships between power and influence, as well as the
explosion of the entertainment industry and the globalization of crime in culture, media, and
economy. In order to inscribe these types of meanings and try to explain them, it is important to
focus on the conceptions of crime circulating in the texts of Croatian crime novels.
There are two dominant research directions in this paper. The first is the diachronic
approach, which has shown that Croatian crime novels have to be interpreted within the positions
of ruling socio-political and ideological narratives. In that part, I examined the ways in which
symbolic images and narratives related to the phenomenon of crime and the time within which
they were formed. Such an approach proved to be important for yet another reason, as it allows
to describe the relationship between official crime policy and the Keith Hayward and Jock Young (2012) thesis that the phenomenon of crime and the cultural product and creative
construct incorporating representational power.
The second approach will be to define the ways in which the subjects of literature that
overlap with the scientific interests of criminal law and criminology are discussed. In this case, I
will approach the literary text as a scientific object that enriches the existing analysis of
established concepts in the field of criminology.
The main research question in the paper, which is basically theoretical, is whether a
criminal novel with a focus on the problem of crime can be the basis of empirical data and the
fact of establishing a common model of the study of phenomenology and the etiology of crime.
The research question led to the fact that crime novels can contribute to the research of numerous
criminal phenomena and enrich the criminological methodology of this issue. The objectives of
this research can be divided into the underlying goal and several applicable goals. It is
fundamental to point to and overlap the points and ways in which crime novels can further
explain some of the basic criminological concepts and illustrate how these ideas can be used in
creative analyzes and interpretations of phenomenology and etiology of crime.
Also, I would outline four applicable work goals. The first is to show that disciplinary
enrichment ˗ criminology in the field of literature and literacy in the field of criminology can be
achieved. Another, to contribute to the existing archive of the interpretation of the criminalistic
genre. The third is to draw attention to a somewhat neglected link between the phenomenon of
crime and literature. The latter will encourage a wider debate that would produce new
hypotheses and research on correspondence between criminological and cultural-theoretical
approaches in the field of music, film, theatre, media and other phenomena of popular culture.
The scientific methods I will use in such an endeavour will be to analyze and interpret
manifest contents of the phenomenon of crime in literary and criminological texts. They will be
compared by comparative analysis to gain insight into their overlapping, offer insights and
describe the results of the research. The work consists of two parts. The first part of the paper
deals with several important concepts, such as the problem of interdisciplinarity, the definition of
classical criminology, development, methodology and theory of cultural criminology, the
phenomenon of evil, the influence of cultural practices on the development of criminology and
the social history of the formation of the criminal genre. In the second part of the paper I have dealt with interpretations of Croatian crime novels
in four historical stages ˗ the first and second phase of socialism (Anthony Šoljan, Branko Belan,
Milan Nikolic, Paul Pavlicic and Goran Tribuson), transition period (Ivica Đikić, Robert Naprta,
Ivana Bodrožić, Drago Hedl, Jurica Pavičić, Nenad Stipanić) and a modern novel (Želimir Periš).
One of the aims of the paper was to present the possibility of disciplinary enrichment. It
is an attempt to reconceptualize criminological theory in relation to culture, assuming that it can
play an important role in relation to criminology, constituting its discourse and social
significance. An interdisciplinary approach has demonstrated the way in which "fictitious
reality" in literature can be useful in explaining the importance of imaginative and creative
thinking in social sciences. This goal has also led to the enrichment of existing archives of
reading and interpreting crime novels.
I believe this work will inspire a broader debate that would produce new hypotheses and
research by crossing criminological and cultural theoretical approaches in the field of popular
culture in music, film, theater, the media and other popular culture phenomena. With this intent, I
also believe in the possibility that literature is only one single segment of culture that can be
studied this way.
As one of the most important conclusions of this paper, thanks to the diachronic approach
in the history of the Croatian crime novels and also the history of criminology, I would point out
that most of the criminal behaviours stems from economic and political structures, arrangements
and vice versa and criminology and criminal law have often been weapons in defence of such
structures. This is evidenced by almost all crime novels, from Marija Jurić Zagorka to the latest
novels by Želimir Periš, which point to the arbitrariness of the border between criminal and noncriminal behaviour as one of the fundamental political ideas of today.
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