ABSTRACT
The representations of Tracey Wigginton, dubbed the ‘notorious lesbian vampire killer’ by the media, have much to tell us about the borders of acceptable and recuperable subjectivities in mainstream law and media and about the contours of Western heteropatriarchy’s deepest, most abject, fears. The case is transitional in this study, demonstrating both explicit strategies of rejection in mainstream legal and media discourses and overt recuperative measures in alternative, particularly feminist and psychiatric, discourses. Unlike the actions of battered women who kill, Tracey Wigginton’s actions are not recuperable within mainstream law and media; yet, as I shall demonstrate in Chapter 5, nor are they disavowed as completely in both mainstream and alternative discourses as are those of women like Karla Homolka and Valmae Beck.
