Ghost Criminology

Bringing together prominent early contributions from this emergent perspective, the volume traces the origins, theory, and method of ghost criminology. From the powers of exorcism and erasure marshalled by state agents, street-level struggles over memorialization and memory, to the lingering violence of crime scenes and the ghostly traces of outlaw artists, Ghost Criminology is a volume attuned to that which is well-theorized in other disciplines—the spectral, hauntological, apparitional. Each of the writers assembled here shares, as Mark Fisher (2017) put it, a fascination for the outside, “that which lies beyond standard perception, cognition and experience.” Assembling an arsenal of cutting-edge social and cultural theory, the volume tangles with some of criminology’s most stubborn revenants—the politics of criminalization, the commodification of crime and violence, the haunting power of the image, as well as the unheard and disregarded cries of the dead.