‘m delivering my inaugural lecture on Thursday June 13th @ 6pm UK time: Representations of Killing in Fiction and Political Discourse. Please do attend virtually or in person (in Cambridge, UK) if you’re interested – I’d love to see you there. Here are the links:
Mick Finlay is an academic teaching and conducting research in Social Psychology. He also writes crime novels. In this talk, he brings together these two interests, discussing how the way we present violent deaths in fiction has implications for the reader, while the way we describe the deaths of civilians in war has implications for the citizen. The first part describes the various methods used to represent murders in crime fiction and reflects on the attractions of writing and reading about crime. In the second part, we move into the real world, looking at some of Mick’s research into how groups rationalize violence. Drawing on ideas of wilful ignorance and competitive victimhood, examples are presented that illustrate how people describe the killing of civilians in ways that protect the moral identity of the perpetrator group and enable individuals to avoid recognizing the violence of those they identify with. Examples will be drawn from Nazi Germany, Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Trigger warning: this talk will refer to sensitive and contentious present-day conflicts that attendees may have emotional identifications with.
The Arrowood Series 