The Fictional Dimension of the School Shooting Discourse: Approaching the Inexplicable

The Fictional Dimension of the School Shooting Discourse: Approaching the Inexplicable
ISBN-10
3110649012
ISBN-13
9783110649017
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
368
Language
English
Published
2019-06-17
Publisher
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Author
Silke Braselmann

Description

Ever since the 1990s, school shootings have shocked the public in their brutality, their suddenness, and their inexplicability. While film and literature have played a role in the heated debates about so-called copycat crimes, the growing body of fictionalizations of school shootings has been neglected thus far. However, in a discourse in which the boundaries between fiction and reality are increasingly blurred, this book shows how fiction shapes and structures, challenges and disrupts cultural processes of meaning-making. Hence, for a better understanding of the school shooting phenomenon, the relevance of fiction on all levels of discourse construction requires thorough analysis. This book therefore develops a new approach to the role of fiction for contemporary forms of excessive violence. By combining narrative theory with insights from sociology and other disciplines, it provides the means for apprehending and describing the relevance of fiction for contemporary discourses. Furthermore, it provides exemplary analyses of more specific functions of literary and filmic fictionalizations of school shootings between 2000 and 2016.

Other editions

Similar books