ABSTRACT
Criminology grew as the use of reasoned discourse internal to the nation-state methodological nationalism ruled, even when criminological theory was presented as 'social theory of deviance' or 'general theory of crime'. A General Theory of Crime told that the idea of organised crime' is 'incompatible' with ideas of crime and self-control'; genocide is essentially just murder. But the fact is that the crime is never perfect, for the world betrays itself by appearances, which are the clues to its non-existence, the traces of the continuity of the nothing. The distortions of war, that men sell their souls and engage in activities that 'domestically' would be regarded as crimes and severe sin, was the theme of a bitter Westminster Review article in 1844. The art of the First World War struggled to cope; it was as if all the promises of the Enlightenment were laid waste on the pitted and mud-ridden fields of France and the devastation of industrial warfare.
