Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Zombie Work Force: Capitalism, Sacrifice, and the Virtual Afterlife of Labor

2023; Volume: 31; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/sym.2023.a914671

1534-0627

Jose Alvarez Lara, A. Charles Muller,

Gothic Literature and Media Analysis

Zombie Work Force:Capitalism, Sacrifice, and the Virtual Afterlife of Labor Jose Alvarez Lara (bio) and Abigail Muller (bio) "Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks," admonished Marx in 1867, tapping into a cultural fascination with vampires that would crystallize thirty years later in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1976, 342). While Marx's indictment of predatory capitalism still rings true, his vampire metaphor now lacks the ability to embody and criticize the evolving practices of neoliberalism. As Lev Grossman explains, "It was the beginning of the end for vampires when Lehman Brothers went under, those bloodsucking parasites. Down with vampires. Long live (or is it die?) the zombie: the official monster of the recession" (2009, n.p.). Ushering us into a new age, the recession inserted zombies into the realm of economics: in 2007, it reanimated the concept of "zombie banks" (originally coined in the 1980s), which describes the parasitical behavior of insolvent financial institutions that remain "alive" by feeding on government support. Soon, they also appeared in politics: the final debate of the 2008 US presidential race led to the viralization of the "cool Obama/zombie McCain" meme, a timely comedic snippet featuring a zombie-like John McCain trailing his contender off the debate stage. Finally, the release of AMC's The Walking Dead in 2010 gave the undead a prominent place in current mass media. When faced with the proliferation of zombies, their undeniable profitability, and their strong link to contemporary politics, economics, identities, and ideologies, we would be remiss if we did not ask what makes zombies so prevalent and relevant. Because this short reflection cannot possibly cover all facets of the topic, we will limit it to the following question: What can zombies tell us about our current social, political, and economic practices in connection to the COVID-19 pandemic? Zombies have long symbolized a lack of humanity and autonomy; they have also always been connected to labor. Before George Romero forever transformed the genre in 1968 with the introduction of his hordes of slow-moving, human-feeding ghouls, zombies were portrayed as colonial or postcolonial individuals who, robbed of mind and soul, endlessly [End Page 397] toiled for the monetary gain of a master that usually manufactured them through voodoo rituals. As such, earlier zombies illustrated the most traditional Marxist transformation of "living labor" (workers) into "dead labor" (machines and commodities). In contrast, post-Romero zombies rarely answer to individuals; instead, they obey a much more contemporary, elusive, and mindless imperative to consume that better resonates with the political and economic complexities of our current reality. In addition, relentless consumption, as Lars Bang Larsen notes, bonds zombies to phenomena such as mass production, mass consumption, and even mass death (2017, 157). And of course, mass production, mass consumption, and mass death are hallmarks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Herein lies the zombie's critical potential: the undead illustrate numerous conundrums plaguing our present reality. In fact, according to Chris Harman, zombies are the capitalist system personified: "what [economists] do not recognize is that 21st century capitalism as a whole is a zombie system, seemingly dead when it comes to achieving human goals and responding to human feelings, but capable of sudden spurs of activity that cause chaos all around" (2010, 12). While it is true that capitalism is zombielike in its disregard for humanity, it further resembles the undead in its insatiable drive to consume and in its viral behavior. Much like any virus (a fictional zombie virus or COVID-19), capitalism incessantly replicates itself, compelling—as Marx and Engels purported in their Manifesto (1848)—all nations to adopt the bourgeois mode of production and thus create a world after its own image (2012, 40). Looking at how these phenomena (namely, capitalism, zombies, and COVID-19) interact illuminates some key elements present in current labor demands and practices, particularly those in the realms of "essential labor" and "academic labor." Regarding the effects of the pandemic on "essential labor," data shows that in the United States, mortality rates were highest among Indigenous, Pacific Islander, African American, and Latino populations, with Whites...