Description
Book SynopsisA former police sergeant draws on philosophy, literature, and art to reveal the profound--indeed poetic--significance of police-citizen encounters
Trade Review“[Wender] juxtaposes narratives from his own experience representing different types of police-citizen encounters with representations of social encounters from different artistic and literary genres. The pairings are fascinating.”--
Academia“
Policing and the Poetics of Everyday Life is an imaginative and unique book. Drawing on the ideas of Heidegger, the text is rich, challenging, clever, seductive, and at times very touching. It includes vignettes of human misery, philosophical discourse, and comparisons and analogies drawn from paintings, poetry, and literature. The scholarship weaves together such a wide range of ideas that most readers will be both awed and amazed.”--Peter K. Manning, author of
Policing Contingencies“A fascinating book that contributes to a variety of contexts including philosophy, sociology, and criminology. Indeed, wherever the issue is challenging the inflexibility of bureaucratic thinking, this book will provoke good discussions.”--Robert Bernasconi, Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Philosophy, University of Memphis
Table of ContentsPreface
ix Acknowledgments
xi Introduction: The Bureaucratic Paradox
1
Division 1 1. Approaching Human Beings as Problems
15 2. The Common Roots of Bureaucratic Policing and Mainstream Social Science
35 3. The Approach of a Phenomenological Aesthetics of Encounter
47Division 2 4. Domestic Violence Encounters: The Eye of the Painter and the Eye of the Police
65 5. The Policing of Childhood: Encounters with Juveniles
89 6. The Poetry of Policing: Encounters from the Drug War
113 7. Encountering the Drama of Mental and Emotional Crisis
138 8. Policing Death: The Problematization of Mortality
162 9. Policing and the Poetics of Everyday Life Postscript: Imagining Otherwise
197 Notes
201 Bibliography
215 Index
237
