New Criticals


The Wire and Philosophy: Part Three

Sovereign-Criminal, Criminal-Sovereign: Avon, Stringer, Omar

The triumvirate of Avon, Stringer, and Omar provide require a slightly different analysis. If we are too look at the "lower-level" criminals, the pawns of the game, we can clearly see how their individuality is bound to the community of the street, the hood, the ghetto. But if we turn to those "leaders" and rogues, the paradox of the criminal becomes more evident, and it these figures that straddle the various "worlds" of The Wire that both defy simple classification but also reveal the paradoxes and contradictions that define the "worlds" themselves.