(the) American (Novel of)

122 Mark S. Roberts
suicide in which a man first unfurled a banner for the TV helicopters
so he could accurately list his grievances.
Given this imagistic treatment of murder, gore, and mayhem—
both by participating individuals and the media—one could argue,
along with Jean Baudrillard, that the modern criminal act in its constant
repetition within the hyperreality of media has imploded, turned
in on itself, become merely an image, a bit of information among
billions of other bits of information. That is to say, something which can
be infinitely reduplicated, since it has lost its uniqueness, its qualities of
shock, opprobrium, or transgression.
This has not always been the case, however. In the period between
the Renaissance and the height of the industrial revolution, designated
by Baudrillard as “the counterfeit,” crime took on a distinct significance,
serving many unique social, political, literary, and artistic purposes. In
the case of Charles Fourier, for example, one finds a marked emphasis
on the singular value of the very act of crime. Indeed, with Fourier and
the Fourierists, one encounters the early beginnings of an articulated
sociology of crime—a theory which seeks to understand criminal acts
in terms of social position. In his Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault
construes this theory in terms of viewing crime as “a result of
civilization . . . and by that very fact, a weapon against it.” 2 The Fourierists,
it seems, perceived the criminal as a heroic figure fighting against a
totally corrupt system that treats his or her “natural robustness” and
rebelliousness with violent and repressive means. Effectively, society
imprisons and, too often, executes those who reject or disdain its prescriptions.
Thus criminality is not rooted in the nature of the individual,
as a moral defect, but, rather, it is a means of activism against and
resistance to a repressive society. Moreover, an individual will invariably
become a criminal or a model citizen based on certain socioeconomic
forces at play in the various classes. The high-born criminal would no
doubt condemn the low-born magistrate to a lengthy sentence on a
prison ship, reversing the existing moral and authoritarian order.
Not only does crime resist the status quo for the Fourierists, but
it is also a tonic, a means of awakening the most dolorous, sensuous and
dormant passions lying within the individual:
At bottom, the existence of crime manifests “a fortunate impressibility
of nature;” it should be seen not so much as a weakness
or a disease, but as an energy that is reviving an outburst of