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"This is a book, not about what makes the serial killer tick, but about those of us--all of us--who have wound the clock and need to keep it running." These words by historian James Kincaid, in the foreword to Of Men and Monsters, introduce the idea, explored in depth by author Richard Tithecott, that we construct the phenomenon of serial killing. We also construct ourselves, he says, as audience to that spectacle. The killer himself responds to that audience, in a classic loop of the observer affecting the observed. It is a postmodern view, of course, to say that society, and its designated representatives such as FBI serial-killer experts, actually collude in the actions of a "monster" like Jeffrey Dahmer. Tithecott draws on the ideas of French philosopher Michel Foucault to explain and illustrate this view, using prose that is heavy going in places, but still quite readable.
Another important contribution to the cultural study of violence is Mark Seltzer's Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's Wound Culture.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Cultural Studies / American Studies "Tithecott takes aim at the unsettling disparity of attention between murderer and murdered."-Chris Bull, Washington Post
Of Men and Monsters examines the serial killer as an American cultural icon, one that both attracts and repels. Richard Tithecott suggests that the stories we tell and the images we conjure of serial killers-real and fictional-reveal as much about mainstream culture and its values, desires, and anxieties as they do about the killers themselves.
"In this post-modern reading, Jeffrey Dahmer is not a page in the history of true crime but a Monster who serves many rhetorical and cultural functions."- Philip Jenkins, Penn State University, author of Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide
"Brilliantly compelling. Tithecott challenges us to investigate our simultaneous distancing from and fascination with serial murder."-Maria Tatar, Harvard University, author of Lustmord: Sexual Murder in Weimar Germany
Of Men and Monsters explores the serial killer as an American cultural icon. Looking at how Jeffrey Dahmer's story was told-on Geraldo Rivera's talk show, in People Weekly pictorials and CNN specials, in Washington Post editorials-and at other examples of serial killers, real and fictional, Jeffrey Tithecott argues that the serial killer we construct for ourselves is a figure both repulsive and attractive who fulfills dreams of masculinity, purity, and violence.
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