The Hermeneutics of Youth Crime: From an Ontology of Conformity to a Metaphysics of Resistance

• In Event: Material Manifestations of Insidious Ideological Injunctions: Criminalizing Youth Conformities

Abstract

Youth crimes continue to be woefully misunderstood as both the contexts and content that constitute an analytic framework for understanding ideology, law and social action. Mainstream criminological approaches seek to incorporate youths into existing privileged interpretations and institutions inherent in the currently fashionable neo liberal discourses of “responsibilization”. Critical interpretations within the framework of critical hermeneutics confront neoliberal, modernist and capital constructions in order resolve a plethora of contradictions. Specifically, this paper asks the following questions: To what extent do ideologies form and inform delinquencies in relation to conflicting narratives of resistance? How and why do youths talk up narratives of regulation and resistance? How does culture hegemonize resistance? How does delinquency function to mediate relations, representations and recognition? Within the larger culture, the cultural commodity of crime is a complex form of social communication that diverts attention away from the political impact of predatory ideologies.

Author

• Livy Anthony Visano, York University