Document Type
Review Article
Publication Date
Summer 8-23-2011
Journal / Book Title
History of the Human Sciences
Abstract
Assassins are often regarded as ahistorical figures of evil. In this article, I contest this view by analyzing the assassination of President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz in 1901. There are two purposes to this article. The first is to situate McKinley’s assassination within the history and development of the social sciences, principally sociology, rather than assume that the assassin is a trans-historical representation of willful irresponsibility. The second is to describe and critique the discourse that made Czolgosz into a rational agent once he entered history as an assassin.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695111414335
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Federman, Cary H., "Between Structure and Agency: Assassination, Social Forces, and the Production of the Criminal Subject" (2011). Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 172.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/justice-studies-facpubs/172
Published Citation
Federman, Cary. "Between structure and agency: assassination, social forces, and the production of the criminal subject." History of the human sciences 24, no. 5 (2011): 73-88.
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