Date of Graduation

5-2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies

Advisor/Mentor

Kathy Comfort

Committee Member

Luis F. Restrepo

Second Committee Member

Yajaira Padilla

Keywords

noir; crime fiction; Neoliberal ideology; Decolonial theory

Abstract

This research aims at providing a Global South reading of noir in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It relies on the premise that noir, a sub-genre of crime fiction born in France during World War II, offered new avenues of literary creation and political criticism. Based on a selection of authors from the U.S., Mexico, Algeria, and Cameroon, the dissertation explores how authors from underrepresented or formerly-colonized communities discuss the impact of neoliberal thinking in their communities. With an emphasis on race and gender dynamics, nation building and terrorism, police corruption and brutality, or the growth of organized, each author relies on a form of discourse whose close ties with a leftist agenda and a concern for the disenfranchised is well known. Eventually, this emphasis on the poorest and their struggles, the commitment to a non-Western perspective eventually raise the question of what diversity, economic development look like. To achieve this objective, the research will discuss the impact of crime fiction, its ties to Western culture, its appropriation by non-Western. To discuss the critique of neoliberal ideology and its impact, decolonial theory with an emphasis on Achille Mbembé’s concepts of brutalism and necropolitics will guide our discussion. Eventually, noir shows a remarkable ability to address numerous, offering a new platform for economic and political critique, and stylistic innovations.

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