{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.015671641791044775, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0029850746268656717, 'mean_word_length': 5.095454545454546, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Race, violence and neoliberalism: crime fiction in the era of Ferguson and Black Lives Matter

ABSTRACT This paper uses recent instances of police killings of African-American men, and of the retaliatory violence that has flared up in cities across the US, and of the emergence of Black Lives Matter since 2012, as a starting point to think about how well crime fiction can help us to make sense of the larger problem of political violence in the contemporary US. Crime fiction is well-placed to offer insight into the problem of race, drugs, poverty and policing but by paying close attention to The Wire, Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Chester Himes's Plan B, I argue that the issue of depicting police violence in a form where the law must in part be validated and that is narratively orientated towards rational explanation and resolution requires careful consideration. What is different about our contemporary moment is not simply that young black men are being killed by the police or that violent retaliation inevitably follows but rather that these circumstances are also tied to the precariousness experienced by poor black people under neoliberalism. The issue at stake is how exemplary crime fictions make sense of, and critically interrogate, the relationship between race, violence and neoliberalism.