UCLA Larsson Symposium

Description

The crime writer and scholar Barbara Fister treats the symposium "Stieg Larsson and Scandinavian Crime Fiction" on her website:

"The fourth speaker was Kim Toft Hansen of the University of Aalborg in Denmark who gave an erudite talk about religion in Scandinavian crime fiction and the way that the genre is shifting from empirical and rational realism to an examination of spiritual issues inherent in transgression and the restoration of order. He described the way hard secularism has given way to post-secular modernism and suggests that in contemporary crime fiction we see how human experiences transcend empirical, rational realism. Transgression itself is a “sensitive vector” for cultural trends. He used five examples to show how this “mediatized religion” appears in popular culture: a radio drama, a crime drama on television, and three novels, including one by Hakan Nesser, a soon-to-be-translated philosophical thriller by A. J. Kazinski, The Last Good Man, and the Millennium Trilogy. It all made me wonder if the rise of the thriller, with its battles between good and evil, is a post-secular rebellion against the “just the facts, ma’am” rational and evidence-based tradition of the classic mystery. You can read his paper online, where it will be much more intelligent and informative than my notes. And I can’t resist noting some other intriguing essays he has written including “Fictions of Ambivalence: Social Uneasiness and Violence in Crime Fiction” and “Crime Fiction and Mediatizd Religion.” (And a quiet “hurrah!” for scholars who share their work online!)"

Subject

Skandinavisk krimifiktion.