The Crime of Writing: Narratives and Shared Meanings in Criminal Cases in Baathist Syria

Date de publication:

15 Décembre 2015

Langue de publication:

Anglais

Titre de collection:

Presses de l'IFPO

Publié ici :

07 Janvier 2016

Mis à jour le :

05 Août 2017

Auteur:

Zouhair Ghazzal

Mots-clefs:

Syrie
régime baathiste
Baath
crime
justice

Zone géographique:

Moyen-Orient

Support:

Papier

Zouhair Ghazzal, The Crime of Writing: Narratives and Shared Meanings in Criminal Cases in Baathist Syria, CP 38, Beyrouth, Presses de l’Ifpo, 2015, 586 p.

ISBN 978-2-35159-710-1

Sommaire

Cases by chapter 1

Prologue 5

From the primal scene to the crime scene 6

Plan of the book 25

Acknowledgments 28

Transliteration 32

Chapter 1. The political economy of crime 35

The civic foundations of the new post‑Ottoman legal order 35
This is not good enough to stay 46
Criminalizing the economy 52
Bailouts of so‑called credit collectors 59
What happened to the personality? 71
The old sultanic order and the new civic virtues 79
Why the demonstrability of crime has become that importan 83
The blueprint of undecipherable statistics 91

Chapter 2. What would stand as enough evidence? 101

What is enough evidence? 105
The aura of witnessing 108
Memory, time, and forgetting 110
Between performance and morality: why direct interrogation is all that matters 110
The crime of writing The unspoken honor 115
The unveiling of the mute ground of discourse 117
Wither Oedipus? 131

Chapter 3. There is no crime where there is madness 143

What happened? 145
The insane shepherd‑who‑writes 148
The criminal case as a legal artifact 161
Is he competent to stand trial? 167
Was he insane? 176
My client is known to be an idiot 177
Writing insanity 179
The accused is now in a borderline state 183
Common understandings and misunderstandings 188

Chapter 4. Auto-biographies: Self and Other in Confessional Criminal Narratives 195

Matters of fact 198
Autobiographical confessions 201
Crime or suicide? 210
Anatomy of a confession: the unwritten law of abuse 222
I admit that I was abusive towards my teenage daughter, but does that make me look like a criminal worthy of incarceration? 22
All those silent observers 233
The father’s gaze and the daughter’s guilt 239

Chapter 5. The death penalty, torture, and due process 245

So that they may become a lesson to others: why the death penalty still matters 245
When does torture become commonplace? 248
The death penalty is too little for people like that 251
Let’s keep everything in secret 256
Contents VII You must become independent 268
Torture and its limits 273
Torture as the obscene supplement of Law 293
There is something wrong with my wife’s sexuality 295
That which we dare not speak about 299
Strong mother, weak son‑in‑law 303
The semantics of love and sexuality 304
They spoke too much, or too little 306
Selective use of language, key‑wording, and language games 310
That immoral thing 311
When the Law enjoys itself 312

Chapter 6. The problem of recipiency in honor killings 317

From “murder” to “honorable killing” 320
My husband and my mother were not lovers 324
Rethinking recipiency in honor killings 329
Negotiating sexual freedom 336
Struggling with motive 337
Swingers: unconventional hedonistic lives, and the exchange of sexual partners 339
The price of sexual freedom 340
Oedipus unbound 341
Documenting the indescribable 349
Triple rapes 352
Denying the facts, finding the truth 359

Chapter 7. When punishment is left to the judiciary: Kin wars between shared meanings and law 365

How did you do such a thing? 368
Are you kin affiliated? 371
Potential victims 378
The crime of writing Parsing the narrative threads 380
Relatives are always a surprise 382
Murder and the dynamics of kinship 384
Witnessing the everydayness of kin, violence, and sexuality 386
Wouldn’t it have been simpler? 387
The kin who surprise us 388

Chapter 8. A danger to society: they must therefore all disappear 391

Arson and matricide: the daughter rehabilitates the law 394
The violence of the mute woman and the power of speech 401
The emergence of the criminal spectator 407
I tempted him with some money 412
I saw my divorcée lying down with her new fiancé 421
Shameful sex in the vicinity of the husband’s corpse 425
Tales of sexual jouissance 430

Chapter 9. The place of third parties in land crimes 435

Honor, kin, land, and modernity 436
The landed aristocracy 439
Anatomy of a murder scene 441
The return of the repressed 444
The mantle of the father 447
Right‑of‑passage 456
Typology of a police report regarding the relatedness of the assailants: how local relations of power are interpreted and processed 459
Keying into the kinship database 461
Mitigated (cross‑)examinations 461
The political economy of land and crime 464
They had abused of their relationship to society 471
Murder always implies a third party 473

Chapter 10. Photoshopping the president: Men at work in the age of socialism 479

A crook should know how and when to quit 479
A crook who went too far 489
Accounts, reflexivity, and indexical expressions 499
Why is such a metamorphosis important? 500
Petty thefts and pernicious crack habits 510
How dangerous were they? 518

Chapter 11. Le moment de conclure 525

Relevant penal code articles 541
Glossary 547
Bibliography 553
Index 559

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The Crime of Writing: Narratives and Shared Meanings in Criminal Cases in Baathist Syria

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Sommaire

Chapter 1. The political economy of crime 35

Chapter 2. What would stand as enough evidence? 101

Chapter 3. There is no crime where there is madness 143

Chapter 4. Auto-biographies: Self and Other in Confessional Criminal Narratives 195

Chapter 5. The death penalty, torture, and due process 245

Chapter 6. The problem of recipiency in honor killings 317

Chapter 7. When punishment is left to the judiciary: Kin wars between shared meanings and law 365

Chapter 8. A danger to society: they must therefore all disappear 391

Chapter 9. The place of third parties in land crimes 435

Chapter 10. Photoshopping the president: Men at work in the age of socialism 479

Chapter 11. Le moment de conclure 525

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The Crime of Writing: Narratives and Shared Meanings in Criminal Cases in Baathist Syria

Date de publication:

Langue de publication:

Titre de collection:

Publié ici :

Mis à jour le :

Auteur:

Mots-clefs:

Zone géographique:

Support:

Visiter le site web

Sommaire

Chapter 1. The political economy of crime 35

Chapter 2. What would stand as enough evidence? 101

Chapter 3. There is no crime where there is madness 143

Chapter 4. Auto-biographies: Self and Other in Confessional Criminal Narratives 195

Chapter 5. The death penalty, torture, and due process 245

Chapter 6. The problem of recipiency in honor killings 317

Chapter 7. When punishment is left to the judiciary: Kin wars between shared meanings and law 365

Chapter 8. A danger to society: they must therefore all disappear 391

Chapter 9. The place of third parties in land crimes 435

Chapter 10. Photoshopping the president: Men at work in the age of socialism 479

Chapter 11. Le moment de conclure 525

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