Wesleyan Shooting

Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/nyregion/08wesleyan.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The article centers on a religiously motivated shooting at Wesleyan University.  A man, identified as Stephen Morgan, shot and killed a 21 year-old student at a bookstore near the university.  The man has not been apprehended, and is especially considered a threat to Jewish students enrolled in the University.

            The article paints Stephen Morgan as a threat to the social body.  It constructs this image through the use of his murder as well as a journal entry expressing threats toward Jewish students.  These two actions act to illustrate that he is capable of harming other individuals (the precedent of the murder), and that he has a reason for potentially continuing to do so (personal vendetta against Jews).  We can consider this in Foucault’s terms as looking to the soul of the criminal.  The individual is considered as a threat, because he is the sum of his previous actions.

            What I find interesting here is the conception of continuity within the idea of the soul.  In this sense, he killed the woman because of his hate of Jews, he is a potential serial killer because of his persistent hate of Jews, and he has always been a violent person because the girl had previously reported him.  In each instance, an aspect of his soul is asserted as an objective quality, supported by a particular aspect of his history.  We can consider this practice in a positive light as simplifying the environment and making the job of the police easier (threat -> needs to be caught).  However, we may also consider this practice as overly simplistic, with various misconceptions along the way (i.e. the killing may have not been religiously motivated.  Killing tied to gender instead; misidentification of “real soul”).