21 February 2010

Alien-Nation: Zombies, Immigrants, and Millennial Capitalism

Think that zombies, immigrants, and capitalism have little to do with each other? Well, Jean and John Comaroff will most definitely argue that the three are clearly related.

First things first, What is millennial capitalism? It is just an academic way to say that the Comaroffs are focusing on capitalism since the 1980s. With that out of the way, let me summarize the hard to follow 27 pages assigned.

The Comaroffs begin by highlighting the economic shift to consumerism in the last century. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, consumption was literally a disease- now pulmonary tuberculosis. But in the twentieth century, consumption was hailed as a mark of modernity; "a person is a subject made by means of objects." However, this focus on consuming lead to a loss of significance of production. People became far removed from the production of goods as factories were sent to other places where labor was cheap. Put it in our perspective, when you put on a t-shirt do you think about all the work that went into making it? The farm where the cotton was grown? The effort to make raw cotton into fabric? Cutting that fabric into a pattern? Sewing the pieces together? The artist who created the design on the from? If you think of all of those things when you put on a t-shirt, I think it's fairly safe to say you are an exception to the norm. Anyways, in a world of consumers, most people are disconnected from the effort it takes to make each good because most don't work actually producing a good by hand. That brings me to the Comaroffs next point about capitalism. In Neo-capitalism, investments are like gambling. People hope to earn money by what seems to be chance. Profit with little production cost.

How does this relate to zombies and immigrants? Well, South Africa is experiencing an economic change from a strictly regulated economy under apartheid rule to laissez faire capitalism. This causes a disparity in class. There are a few whom have profited, while the rest suffer in poverty. "Almost instantaneous riches to those who control its technologies, and, simultaneously, to threaten the vert livelihood of those who do not," as the Comaroffs put it.

The South Africans vehemently believe in zombies. Zombies are people who have been cursed to serve a master, to work for them by night and be an unthinking object by day. These are the mystical zombies like the ones told in tales in Haiti. Like we discussed in class, the zombie is clearly a projection of our fear of becoming slaves to capitalism. In South Africa, the zombie-makers are profiting off of the work of others without doing much work themselves, basically the essential way to make money in a capitalist economy: investment. The zombie-makers themselves even represent the fear of being of being consumed by capitalism. The zombie-makers cannot reproduce and they can prevent others from reproducing. This is a personification of the South Africans' fear that they cannot get jobs (because zombies are working them) and will not be able to support a family, stagnating the community.

This same fear extends to immigrants. The Comaroffs explain it, "Like zombies, they are nightmare citizens, their rootlessness threatening to siphon off the remaining, rapidly diminishing prosperity of the indigenous population."

Because of the fear of being left out of the capitalist race, and having nothing the South Africans caricatured their fears and projected them onto zombies. Immigrants were the real life version of the zombie- figures from outside the community come to take the South Africans' livelihood. This differs from what we had discussed in class because, we the consumers are separated from the producing side that the African's are familiar with. They fear not that their materialism shall make from mindless consuming drones, but that in the fast paced capitalist economy- that profits only some- will leave them without.

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