The Negative Character of Killing in the Narratives of Soldiers and Police

Abstract

Published over 30 years ago, Seductions of Crime has transformed criminology as a discipline, the foreground factors that make criminal behavior a morally alluring endeavor deemed an important point to consider in accounts of criminal action by those even in mainstream criminology. In this chapter, we provide an update and revision to Katz's theory of righteous slaughter in an institutional context. We argue that killing is an overcoming, a negotiated and contingent outcome that is accomplished through the emotional and behavioral management of the self, the killing a reflexive reaction, driven by fear and excitement of the situation, peppered with a heavy heaping of moral agonizing. We argue that the killings and refrained killings carried out by soldiers and police are negative character, lacking the sensuous and affirmative character of an ontological project that Katz described.

Citation

Baggaley, K.T. and Shon, P.C. (2020), "The Negative Character of Killing in the Narratives of Soldiers and Police", Polizzi, D. (Ed.) Jack Katz, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 41-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-78756-072-720201003