In his semi-autobiographical novel The Thief’s Journal, French writer, iconoclast, and self-proclaimed criminal Jean Genet writes how the category of the criminal imagines and instantiates itself: “Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it.”
Genet, in his typical fashion, takes criminality to be defined by its coalitional nature and commitment to alterity. However, as evidenced by the weaponization of the category of the criminal in political and social rhetoric, and the proliferation of carceral structures ostensibly designed to stunt criminal activity, whatever that may be, the category of the criminal is as much an imposed designation as it is an assumed identity. This reading group seeks to understand more of what the category of criminal has come to mean by engaging the texts, films, and artworks that eschew apparent definitions of what constitutes the designation. Our group will engage with literature, films, and art that challenge our settled idea of what a criminal is, and push us to question these same imaginations. In our readings and, even more, in our conversations, we will remain grounded in multiple foundational questions. What unexpected elements of the commonplace are criminalized? Does anything exist outside of the criminal? And, most crucially, does the category of the criminal retain any analytic utility in our efforts towards prison and penal abolition? Of course, our group will attend to the questions that linger throughout our time together. This endeavor does not seek to depoliticize or decontextualize criminality– on the contrary, our readings and collective deconstruction of the category of the criminal will push the term to its limits, unveiling our own investments in the category, and debating whether its abolition or embrace pushes us closer towards the just world we work to create together.
Fall Schedule:
- September 11
- September 25
- October 23
- November 13
- December 4