What was criminology? From photography to painting in Cesare Lombroso's (1835-1909) criminal anthropology

Thesis

Despite the emergence of a new criminological subfield called visual criminology in recent years and a long-standing criminological subfield called historical criminology, the visual history of criminology remains neglected. Nowhere is this neglect more obvious than when it comes to the scholarship of Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909). Given that Lombroso is considered to be the so-called founding figure of criminology it seems natural that a visual-historical study of our discipline should begin with him. A mere cursory glance through Lombroso’s L’uomo delinquente in rapporto all'antropologia, alla giurisprudenza e alle discipline carcerarie [Criminal Man in relation to anthropology, jurisprudence and prison disciplines] (1876), his most well-known work in criminology, and especially the fourth volume of its fifth and final edition (1896-1897d), reveals it to be rich in terms of the quantity and quality of images therein. Nicole Rafter (1939-2016) began paying attention to the visual in Lombroso’s scholarship and was a pioneer in this regard. However, her untimely death in 2016 meant that her efforts were frustrated in this regard. As yet, no in-depth study on the subject has been published. In this dissertation, I undertake a sustained book-length examination of the visual component of Lombroso’s criminal anthropology. I focus on photography and, additionally, a visual medium that even scholars in the arts and especially literary and art histories are yet to analyse, namely painting especially as it manifests itself as fine art. I argue that Lombroso’s criminal anthropology was not merely visual—that was something that Rafter (2014) observed before her death—but that it was, additionally, a creative and even artistic enterprise. In so doing I revise the orthodox history of criminology by troubling the relationship between science (Lombroso’s criminal anthropology) on the one hand and the arts on the other. What was criminology? Not what we knew it to be.

Authors: West, K

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English