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Prospective abstract for a paper I may be presenting at a conference in Lille.
In discussing the history of American violence, Christopher Waldrep and Michael A. Bellesiles view violence as a ‘domestic tradition, rather than an instrument of foreign policy’. Certainly, in the most shocking and controversial depictions of violence in contemporary American literature, violence occurs domestically, meaning both within the borders of the USA, as well as having a clear but complex relationship with the space within a house and home. This is referring to the relationship between the domestic space and violence, rather than ‘domestic violence’ in the ‘traditional’ sense.
Patrick Bateman of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis and Kevin of We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver both expose the difficult relationship that the violent characters have with ‘the domestic’, including; the relationships associated and formed within this space, the architecture of the home, and the impact of a domesticated American whole upon these iconic figures of fictive violence and their actions. The roots of American identity and masculinity have created a condition of life that create violent acts and it is the dichotomous constructs and expectations of the home and the political state that perpetuate both the real and fictive violent cultures within this country.
