Enhancing the Metaphor of Zombie-Ism

Theorising Survivability: Assessing the Metaphor and Impact of ZOMBIE ECONOMICS Thesis by Tom Forster - 10623345 University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Humanities MA Arts & Culture: Comparative Cultural Analysis 2014/2015 Supervisor: Joost de Bloois Second Reader: Jules Strum Key thoughts: As metaphors for illicit globalisation, zombies have emerged as a key pop-culture referent of the porous nature of socio-cultural, political, and physical boundaries in a global age defined by an emotional geopolitics of fear1 (Saunders 80) For the modern citizen, if social and political conditions and one’s own life are perceived as capable of being arranged and influenced by one’s own (co)decisions, the citizens - believing in collective - voluntarily subject themselves to the conditions of society (Lorey 4) 1 All italicised quotations throughout this thesis have been added for emphasis by the author and are not included in the original texts. Contents Forster !3 Introduction (4) Object Introduction: Zombie Economics (9) Michel Serres: A Philosopher of Survivability (11) Section 1: How Zombie Economics Created a Zombie Apparatus (15) The Zombie Economy (15) The Culture of the Zombie Economy (18) Section1: Conclusion (23) Management Model Phase 1 (25) Section 2: Visual Management Models: Potential Tools for Survivability (26) Visual Management Models: Facilitators of Zombie-ism (29) A Case Study: Lean Manufactoring (35) Section 2: Conclusion (37) Section 3: The Zombie Apparatus and Survival Thinking (40) Dual Economy: Dual Apparatus (40) Types of Thinking (45) Section 3: Conclusion (50) Management Model Phase 2 (53) Section 4: Survival Thinking & Its Environment (54) Survivability Introduction (54) Covert Self Aware Survivors - Rise of the Anti-Hero/Fall of the Bad Guy (55) Manufactured Survivability & Purposeful Precarity (62) Section 4: Conclusion (67) Management Model Phase 3 (70) Conclusion: Survivability as a Theoretical Concept (71) Bibliography (76) Introduction Forster !4 Introduction2 The zombie metaphor is a particularly intriguing description of capitalism as it represents everything that humans do not want to be. To a human a zombie cannot think, it cannot feel, its behaviour is irrational, its cannibalistic, its self-destructive and its semi-immortal; which is per- haps the only aspect that a human might like to embrace, but in regards to the economic “com- pensation principle”, the sacrifice of the latter is probably not worth the change (Stiglitz 2012, 72). Despite this, powerful western institutions have committed to undead principles with little regard to culture, now polluted with a common zombie-nomic epistemology. Thankfully, there are ‘spirits’ in zombies. A dilemma that commonly arises in popular media demonstrating the zombie concept. For instance, the scenes that involve a newly undead family member with a still human next of kin debating on pulling the trigger acknowledging the existence of a such a spirit; that there is something still there and we identify with it, despite it being encapsulated in an immoral zombie ethos. However, as this paper aims to show, in the capitalist context of a zombie economic metaphor (Stiglitz 2015), the human is entirely subservient and in no position to execute alternatives or competitive innovation. The very bedrock of a suc- cessful capitalist structure. This leaves the human at the whim of uncertainty and instability as we struggle to understand the evolving logic, or “spirit” (Land & Scott 202) of zombie capitalism. Returning to the fact that a zombie discourse speaks very effective volumes in economics (Quiggin 2012; Saunders 80; Stiglitz 2015; Lorey 4), we must concern ourselves with the point that the metaphor is almost exhausted as this research believes. Very recently, there has been unprecedented growth in popular culture to connote the ethos of a zombie to any object that even 2 Parts of this thesis were taken from materials written by the author during the academic year 2014/2015 on MA Arts & Culture: Comparative Cultural Analysis; Intercultural Dialogues 1 & Narrative & Globali- sation Introduction Forster !5 hints space for such a criticism (Saunders 80). We forget that the traditional zombie narrative re- volves around the perspective of the survivors, a neglected dynamic in this discourse which cer- tainly could be used to enhance the entire metaphor. Survivors ‘fight’ zombies, undeterred by the unprecedented odds against them because of their differentiating origins, identities and goals. Finding the survivors within this metaphorical imagery and developing their identity, as this paper will show, significantly enhances the zombie economy metaphor. If survivability is a counter- part to the zombie, then outlining that cognitive process and evidencing its existence reveals the damaging extent of zombie economics. Moreover it is not limited to be only a scientific, capitalist metaphor. Before the themes mainstream underscoring in 2012’s Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us by Australian economist John Quiggin, other heterodox economists3 such as Ha-Joon Chang (23 Things They Don't Tell you About Capitalism (2010)) and Joseph Stiglitz (The Price of Inequality (2012)) echoed a very similar ethos throughout their works. Themes of the centralised society “slowly marching” (Stiglitz 2012, 362) through a “global economy [that] lies in tatters” (Chang 2010, 1) sets the scene for the dystopian apocalypse in our globalised finances. Accordingly, those same economists state that policies of the kind are never limited to control only finance. Economics governs the quality of life and because of this it has a profound affect on culture. For instance, German and Japanese societies were once deemed “unorganised” and “lazy” by the UK, Australia and US. Those reputations presented today couldn't be further from the reality, and economics was the agent for that transformation (Chang 2007, 200). This scientific/cultural interdependency, once exclaimed by many great humanities thinkers such as Michel Serres and Michel Foucault (LaTour 8), is now in tandem with modern 3 Heterodox economics is a field outside that of “mainstream economics”; sometimes thought of as too experimental to be feasible. Introduction Forster !6 economic criticism. Chang wrote in 2007’s Bad Samaritans (200) and reaffirmed in 23 Things thereafter (123) that the economy we live in notably influences our cultural nuances as societies; thus indicating a potential “pollution” of zombie-nomics to a much deeper core than that of our pockets (Serres 31). TV shows Breaking Bad and House of Cards as cultural objects, will help define this cognitive zombie invasion from economics, and outline examples of survivability as its counteraction. However, whilst on the topic of TV shows, it is worth underscoring that this thesis does not analyse zombie objects directly as I am attempting to theorise survivability against the zombie metaphor which now ‘parallels reality’ (Saunders 80). The Walking Dead and its pop- ularity, whilst providing some brief essentials of survivability, merely scratches the surface of our resonance with that metaphor. Digging deeper into other cultural objects that have nothing to do with the zombie directly provides a much more rewarding analysis into the covert cultural pollution of zombie-isms. Prominent scientist and humanities philosopher Michel Serres (whose methods will serve as the core cultural concepts for this paper), posited a type of detrimental scientific “cultural pollution” in our mindsets as early as 1992’s The Natural Contact (31). This in- fers the severity of a long lasting zombie infection spanning decades before today’s vocalised Zombie Austerity criticisms in economics (Stiglitz 2015). Serres’s philosophy is central to coining survivability, as will be shown later in his own detailed introduction. For the time being, methodologically, he links the distant subjects of economics and cultural analysis. His lens promotes to academia a capability to shift between disci- plines, broadly in his case between science and philosophy, or for this instance heterodox economics and cultural analysis. More specifically, his method cries the importance of each disci- plines interconnected wellbeing to critique each other towards betterment (LaTour 47). Introduction Forster !7 In what temporality is the scholasticism of the text imprisoned? The bifurcated relationship between science and literature was so frozen, so distant, that the two eterni- ties seemed to be looking at each other, like two porcelain dogs - like two stone lions flanking a doorway (LaTour 47) Serres’s method also takes into consideration the danger of scientific dominance, further expanding the zombie metaphor. Like a zombie, sciences hunger for innovation leads it to the creativity of the survivor to then consume it, but in turn, rearranges the survivors creative poetry into a scientific state of mind therefore removing whatever creative dynamism that remained (LaTour 87). Similarly, in a zombie dominated world, the opposing survivor party is deceived into wishing to be consumed by that culture because of such inherent levels of zombie predominance. A predominance well feared and articulated by the Foucauldian “apparatus” school of thought from the 1970’s. Confessions of the Flesh outlined a theory of purposeful fine tuning of state institutions that govern knowledge, administration and infrastructure for a preordained cause (Foucault 194). Given Serres’s appropriate method to substantiation,

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