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If parapolitics, a branch of radical criminology that studies the interactions between public entities and clandestine agencies, is to develop as an academic discipline, then it must develop a coherent theory of aesthetics in order to successfully perform its primary function: to render perceptible extra-judicial phenomena that have hitherto resisted formal classification. Wilson offers the work of H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) as an example of the relevance of subversive literature—in this case, cosmic horror and the weird tale—to the parapolitical criminologist. Cosmic horror is a form of writing that relies heavily upon the epistemological assumption of a radical and irreconcilable disjunction between appearance and reality, perception and truth. In many ways, the well-constructed weird tale strongly resembles the hard-boiled detective story or the noir thriller in that the resolution of the narrative hinges upon a dramatically shattering confrontation with an unspeakable reality. Apart from its obvious utilization of conspiracy theory, the primary attraction of the Lovecraftian text lies with its remarkably sophisticated utilization of two central tropes of classical aesthetic theory—the sublime and the grotesque. Not only does Lovecraft's oeuvre represent a remarkable use of both of these motifs, but the raw literary power of the Lovecraftian weird tale serves as an outstanding exemplar for the parapolitical scholar to emulate in formulating an alternative mode of discourse, or poetics.

Eric Wilson reveals a neglected yet powerful current in several major Romantic figures: the affirmation of - not escape from - turbulence. Romantic Turbulence unearths the chaotic undercurrents of European Romanticism found in Goethe s science and Schelling s philosophy, and demonstrates how these tendencies agitate the texts of Emerson, Fuller, Melville, Thoreau, and Whitman. These writers see the universe not as a reflection of transcendent harmony or a system of predictable laws but rather as a convergence of chaos and order, a polarized field. Detailing this undulatory cosmos, Wilson shows how these American Romantics participate in its unsettling rhythms by practicing an ecological poetics, translating the energies of their habitat into living compositions

This essay discusses the historical and textual representations of piracy in the writings of Hugo Grotius, primarily De Indis/De iure praedae (1603-1608) and the Commentarius in Theses XI (c. 1600). Contrary to popular belief, Grotius, in stark contrast to Jean Bodin, was not an advocate of the constitutionally homogenous Nation-State. Rather, his central concept of divisible sovereignty, the lynchpin of the constitutional theory of his early writings, unambiguously presents us with the object of the heterogeneous State. In Grotian theory, the State may be "read" as a composite construction, with a residual degree of inalienable sovereignty accruing at each unit-level. Even if only unconsciously, Grotius describes a concurrent para-political subdivision of the state between institutional Government (the "magistrates") and civil society, one that constitutes an operational system of governance within the Nation-State. Like his contemporary Johannes Althusius, Grotius' theory allows for the emergence of a wholly "private," albeit lawful, mode of authority. This is most apparent in Grotius' treatment of the mercantile trading Company and its Privateering operations. The corporatist theory of sovereignty permits the Company's private agents of violence, the legally ambivalent Privateer/Pirate, to be invested with a requisite degree of sovereignty. The Grotian theory of divisible sovereignty, investing the seventeenth-century Pirate band with legal personality, serves as a vital historical precursor to the quasi-statist (trans-) national criminal cartels of the twenty-first century. The Grotian Pirate/Privateer/Just Avenger, therefore, is a "nomad": a liminal entity that simultaneously transverses both geographical and juro-political spaces, rendering him or herself in-determinable.

There is no generally accepted explanation as to whyMare Liberum, orThe Free Sea, was written. The most common view is that the Text was a propaganda instrument designed to improve the position of the United Provinces during the truce negotiations with Spain from 1606–08. Central to Grotius' strategy was his reliance upon Iberian Scholastics as a means of providing a series of irrefutable propositions to the Spaniards.

Rene Girard, Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, and the goat song of Tragoidia -- 'El sueno de la razon produce monstruos' or, 'the dream of reason creates monsters': Two little piggies went to the Apocalypse in William Golding's Lord of the Flies -- 'Does anybody know anything about the law?': White male grown-ups in the wilderness and their regression to the state of nature in James Dickey's Deliverance -- 'A little law and order wouldn't hurt anybody around here': The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and High Noon -- 'A woman only loves a real man': Metaphysical desire and the crisis of undifferentiation in Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Rashomon -- 'I just want to talk…': Liberalism, generative unanimity, and post-sacrificial scapegoating in 12 Angry Men -- 'You must always point...': The Post-Heroic Lawyer as scapegoat and scapegoater in Presumed Innocent, The Verdict, and Cape Fear -- The telling of lies and the casting of lots: Franz Kafka's The Trial and the eternal un-decidability of the scapegoat -- '…Why do we, all of us, have to keep judging and being judged?': The scapegoat and the scapegoater in Albert Camus' The Stranger and The Fall -- 'Out There': Monstrous doubles and the folie a deux in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood -- The Good Murderer Gary Gilmore: The re-sacralization of the scapegoat in the age of public reason -- Spare a Thought for the Hangman: The apocalypse of Rene Girard.