ABSTRACT
Using an eclectic array of sources, Katz builds up a picture of the sensual, magical and creative appeals of crime. Evoking the notion of the Nietzschean superman, Katz asserts that deviance offers the perpetrator a means of ‘self transcendence’, a way of overcoming the conventionality and mundanity typically associated with the banal routines and practicalities of everyday ‘regular life’. At the subjective level, crime is stimulating, exciting and liberating. To think of crime either as another form of rational activity or as the result of some innate or social pathology is totally to miss the point. As I have observed elsewhere:
It is worth noting that this argument challenges one of the central assumptions of much contemporary criminology, namely the belief that most crime is routinised and, in some way, banal. This is undoubtedly the case if one adopts the perspective of the police or other criminal justice and law enforcement agencies, however, it is not necessarily true for those participating in criminal activity, for whom the most innocuous transgression may well represent an exhilarating form of experience. (Fenwick and Hayward 2000: 36)
At the same time, Katz urges more attention to the criminal act itself, for each specific crime, he maintains, presents the criminal with a distinct set of subjective experiences and existential dilemmas, and thus has its own singular attraction. If emotions are major contingencies in the ‘lived contours of crime’, Katz’s approach illuminates the ‘sneaky thrills’ of shoplifting; robbery as a spontaneous, chaotic and often hedonistic act;3 the ‘sense of superiority’ involved in the act of ‘stickup’: and the pride robbers take in their defiant reputation as ‘badmen’. Katz even examines the lived sensuality behind events of cold-blooded, ‘senseless’ murder, charting the role of ‘defilement’, ‘sacrifice’, ‘righteous rage’, ‘vengeance’ and ‘hedonism’ – emotions that are frequently at the root of most ‘non-modal homicides’.4 His account encompasses the ‘sensual metaphysics’, from the pleasure and ‘ludic’ quality of the act itself to the shame and embarrassment felt on apprehension.
