The No. 1 Parisian Detective Agency: Vidocq and the 'Third Space' of the Private Police
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/bells.2010.2.14Keywords:
criminal world, convict/policeman/detective, textual and cultural redefiniton, „third space of discourse“Abstract
Eugène-François Vidocq (1775-1857) has entered cultural legend mostly for his exploits in the criminal world and the unlikely fact of having risen from a hardlabor convict to the Chief of Police in Paris. After his years directing the Brigade de Sûreté – a new branch of police work dedicated to prevention and public safety – Vidocq opened the first private detective agency, in 1833. This article discusses his work with the police and then as a private detective, both historically and theoretically, and argues that Vidocq created essentially a new “third space of discourse” for nineteenth-century law-enforcement. Vidocq was on the side of neither the state police nor the criminals he was hired to track down, yet he was uncannily allied with both. He thus found himself at the head of a new kind of (textual and cultural) agency in which he was forced to redefine the work, both practical and ideological, of dépistage (following traces). Includes four images.
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