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This paper demonstrates how the latest generation of hardboiled detective fiction, which it labels roman noir, especially what could be called the noir police procedural, can be seen as a form of critical theory in the way it deals with its material and analyzes political and social situations. This is particularly true of how these novels analyze the impact of the changes brought about by the end of the Cold War and globalization on local societies. Immigration and security are two topics which illustrate this link. The paper looks at the way two very popular authors of the contemporary noir procedural, Sweden's Henning Mankell and Italy's Andrea Camilleri have handled these issues, in their respective novels Faceless Killers and Rounding the Mark. Though they approach the subject in very different ways, both authors, through their police inspector protagonists deconstruct the "immigration threat", to show that immigration, whether legal or clandestine, is a phenomenon with which Western societies are going to have to come to ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will be a reflection on the ?logic? of the exception which liberal democratic governments claim they have no choice but to follow to meet a situation of crisis, threat or apprehended threat. The Spanish government has had to face just such a situation after the terrible events of March 11 2004 and has apparently avoided the sort of security paranoia which seized the US after 9/11. True, article 116 of the Spanish constitution provides measures to be taken in case of what it calls a ?state of alert?, ?state of exception? and ?state of seige?, and has repressive legislation in place to deal with Basque terrorism, yet there never was any question of invoking article 116 or of adopting special laws to meet a new source of terrororism. Neither at the level of discourse nor practice, has the Zapatero government opted for the politics of fear. In one area, that of immigration and asylum seekers, it has even gone against the general tendency towards tightening-up which is prevelant in most Western societies. The paper will examine more closely the Spanish situation to see how far this first impression is exact, and to see what this case tells us about how far it is possible to go to escape the logic of the exception, despite strong external and internal pressures. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]