ABSTRACT
Much of The Wire reminds its audience of racial and economic privileges denied a wide range of the series’ characters. The Shakespearean presence in The Wire constitutes a move to expand the audience who hears the stories to which Simon lends voice. The creators of The Wire remain keenly aware of the danger inherent in that task — that representing the underclass from a position of privilege can devolve into a troubling aestheticization of suffering. Passivity in the face of overwhelming human suffering and the intransigence of culpable institutional structures may threaten the efficacy of The Wire as a catalyst for social change. The writing of history both reveals and conceals, speaks and silences. Historiography transforms the concrete and the ephemeral evidences of an always-already vanished past into consumable narrative. Though history serves a self-definitional function for a dominant group, its gaps, fissures, shards, and denials inevitably prompt disruptive questions.
