Rethinking criminology with Luhmann, Lang, Foucault

Abstract

The question that the article addresses is: what is the object of criminology? To answer this question it's necessary to face with the epistemological status of criminological knowledge. But if one seeks the answer to this problem within the criminological debate, one is bound to end up disappointed. Criminology seems to continue to ignore the need for a method that makes possible a reflective access to one's own object. The author points out three different but converging paths that allow to address the central problem for any social observation, i.e. that of being part of the object sought to be described. The first path is the social theory of Niklas Luhmann. Through the distinction between first-order and second order observation is possible to understand the problem of object without following in the paradox of auto-implications. The second path is art and in particular the film of Fritz Lang, M the Monster of Dusseldorf. Art, says the author, allows us to see that which we cannot see from within the bounds of scientific observation. Art my help the observing to escape the blind spot of his/her own observations. The third path is the genealogy of power described by Michel Foucault in particular in the lectures on Abnormals. These three different paths allows, according to the author, to understand from different perspectives that criminology will only be able to produce useful knowledge if it fully recognizes that it is itself implicated in the constitution of its observed object.