Serial Killers: Death and Life in America's Wound Culture

Mark Seltzer is a professor of English at Cornell University who has previously explored, in his book Bodies and Machines, the notion of a technological society as one in which processes of "registration, recording, and reproduction" break down distinctions between individual and mass, private and public. In Serial Killers, he argues that this "machine culture" constitutes a "pathological public sphere" that sets up the serial killer as an icon of our "wound culture"--a public not only enthralled by, but addicted to, murder and mayhem. The Washington Post writes of this book: "Drawing with equal dexterity on sources ranging from gay pulp novelist Dennis Cooper to French philosopher Jacques Lacan, Seltzer sees the serial killer as a sort of performance artist around whom we gather in an unhealthy attempt to exorcise our own demons."

Also recommended: Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer by Richard Tithecott