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Lars Bang Larsen

Zombies ofImmaterial

Labor: TheModernMonster andthe Death ofDeath

Undead and abject, the zombie is uncontrollableambiguity.1 Slouching across the earth,restlessly but with hallucinatory slowness, it is athing with a soul, a body that is rotten butreactive, oblivious to itself yet driven byunforgiving instinct.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt follows that if the zombie is defined byambiguity, it cannot be reduced to a negativepresence. In fact, it could be a friend. So why

does it lend itself so easily as a metaphor foralienation, rolling readily off our tongues?Resorting to the zombie as a sign for mindlesspersistence is unfair to this particular monster,to be sure, but also apathetic and facile in theperspective of the historical space we inhabit.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊMy proposal, perverse or braindead as itmay be, is that the zombie begs a materialistanalysis with a view to contemporary culture.Such an analysis is necessarily double-edged.The zombie is pure need without morality, henceit promises a measure of objectivity; we know

exactly what it wants Ð brains, flesh Ð becausethis is what it always wants. Abject monstrosityis naturally impossible to render transparent, butabjectness itself harbors a defined function thatpromises instrumentality (of a blunt and limitedkind, admittedly). In this way we may proceed toaddress contemporary relations of culturalproduction, at the same time as we reflect on theanalytical tools we have for doing so.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThus the following is an attempt at asociological reading of the zombie that draws itsnecessity from the pressure that thecapitalization of creativity has exerted on artisticpractice and spectatorship in the recent decade.But it is also the inevitable subversion of theconclusions of such an analysis, as we begin toreturn to artistic thinking.

1. Marxploitation of the Gothic

The zombie as a figure of alienation is theentranced consumer suggested by Marxiantheory. It is Guy DebordÕs description of BrigitteBardot as a rotten corpse and FredericJamesonÕs Òdeath of affectÓ; and of course whatmedia utopianist Marshall McLuhan called Òthe

zombie stance of the technological idiot.Ó2 Thuszombification is easily applied to the notion thatcapital eats up the body and mind of the worker,and that the living are exploited through deadlabor.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWhen Adam Smith invoked the moraloperations of the Òinvisible hand of the marketÓ,he had something else in mind than anintegrated world economy that recalls FreudÕsunheimlich: ÒSevered limbs, a severed head, ahand detached from the arm, feet that dance bythemselves Ð all of those have something highly

uncanny about them, especially when they arecredited with independent activity.Ó3 Under the

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Still from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1978.

globalized reinforcement of capital, theindependent activity of ghost limbs isincreasingly only apparent, yet no less gratuitousand unsettling.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊEconomy and production have in this wayoften been dressed up in Gothic styles; just thinkof William BlakeÕs Òdark satanic millsÓ ofindustrialization. It is doubtful, of course, thatMarx would have endorsed the zombie as a figure

of alienation, inasmuch as it incarnates acollapsed dialectics (between life and death,productivity and apathy, etc.) that can only berecaptured with great difficulty. However, leafingthrough The Communist Manifesto of 1848 onefinds rousing Gothic metaphor. The power ofclass struggle is famously likened to a ghost thatis haunting Europe Ð the Òspecter ofCommunismÓ; we are also told that with theproletariat, the bourgeoisie has produced Òitsown gravediggers,Ó and that modern bourgeoissociety Òhas conjured up such gigantic means of

production and of exchangeÓ that it is like Òthesorcerer, who is no longer able to control thepowers of the netherworld whom he has calledup by his spells.Ó4 The Gothic, understood as therevival of medieval styles in the seventeenthcentury and since, is the theatricalrepresentation of negative affect that emanatesfrom a drama staged around power; a

pessimistic dialectic of enlightenment thatshows how rationality flips into barbarism andhuman bondage. Thus it is puzzling (or populist,agitational) that Marx and Engels employ Gothicmetaphor related to the middle ages Òthatreactionists so much admire.Ó5 The Gothiccontraband in progressive politics is the notionthat fear can be sublime. It is as if the reader ofthe manifesto cannot after all rely on the Òsober

senses,Ó but needs a little extra rhetoricalsomething to compel her to face her Òrealconditions in life.Ó6 How did the excess ofcounter-enlightenment tropes come toprominence in processes of politicalsubjectivation? As Derrida writes in Specters of 

Marx , ÒMarx does not like ghosts any more thanhis adversaries do. He does not want to believe inthem. But he thinks of nothing else. . . . Hebelieves he can oppose them, like life to death,like vain appearances of the simulacrum to realpresence.Ó7 Once it becomes clear that Marxist

ghost-hunting is already corrupted by a Gothicimpulse, it allows for a reconstruction of Marxistcritique; a new Òspirit of Marx,Ó as discussed byDerrida. In terms of traditional aesthetichierarchies, the Gothic definitely belongsamongst the underdogs of genres, to theembarrassing aesthetic proletariat. Maybe this iswhat spoke through Marx, like spirits inhabiting

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Film still from George Romero, Night of the Living Dead, 1968.

Film still from George Romero, Dawn of the Dead, 1978.

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Emergency Zombie Defense Station.

a medium, and helped shaped his formidableliterary intuition?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn this perspective there is no politicalreason to exclude the Gothic. The New Yorkartists collective Group Material were among thefirst to establish a link between the Gothic and aMarxist line of cultural critique, before theformer became a curatorial trope.8 The flyer fortheir 1980 show ÒAlienationÓ mimicked

advertising for Alien, and the film programincluded James WhaleÕs Frankenstein (1931). Intheir installation Democracy (1988), a zombiefilm was continuously screened throughout theexhibition: Dawn of the Dead, ÒGeorge RomeroÕs1978 paean to the suburban shopping mall andits implicit effects on people.Ó The film was Òanespecially significant presence . . . , one whichindicated the pertinence of consumer culture todemocracy and to electoral politics.Ó9

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFranco Moretti makes it clear that you canÕtsympathize with those who hunt the monsters. In

his brilliant 1978 essay ÒDialectic of FearÓ henotes that in classic shockers such as BramStokerÕs Dracula and Mary ShelleyÕs Frankenstein

Ówe accept the vices of the monsterÕs destroyerswithout a murmur.Ó10 The antagonist of themonster is a representative of all that isÒcomplacent, stupid, philistine, and impotentÓ

about existing society. To Moretti this indicatesfalse consciousness in the literature of fear; itmakes us side with the bourgeoisie. But bypassing judgment on the literature of fearthrough a dialectic of reason and affect (StokerÒdoesnÕt need a thinking reader, but a frightenedoneÓ), MorettiÕs ideology critique joins the ranksof the destroyers of the monster and thereby, ona cultural level, of those fictitious characters he

criticizes. In fact, Moretti kills the monster twice:he doesnÕt question its killing in the text, and hehas no need for it outside the text.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊGeorge Romero analyzes the conflictbetween the monster and its adversaries in asimilar vein. Crucially, however, his trilogy Night

of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead

(1978), and Day of the Dead (1985), reversesMorettiÕs conclusion, thereby turning culturalspace inside out. In Romero, antagonism andhorror are not pushed out of society (to themonster) but are rather located within society

(qua the monster). The issue isnÕt the zombies;the real problem lies with the ÒheroesÓ Ð thepolice, the army, good old boys with their gunsand male bonding fantasies. If they win, racismhas a future, capitalism has a future, sexism hasa future, militarism has a future. Romero alsoimplements this critique structurally. As Steven

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Still from I Walked With A Zombie, RKO Pictures, 1943.

Still from I Walked With A Zombie, RKO Pictures, 1943.

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Shaviro observes, the cultural discomfort is notonly located in the filmsÕ graphic cannibalismand zombie genocide: the low-budget aestheticsmakes us see Òthe violent fragmentation of thecinematic process itself.Ó11 The zombie in such arepresentation may be uncanny and repulsive,but the imperfect uncleanness of the zombieÕsface Ð the bad make-up, the failure to hide theactor behind the monsterÕs mask Ð is what

breaks the screen of the spectacle.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊBrian Holmes writes in ÒThe AffectivistManifestoÓ (2009) that activism today faces Ònotso much soldiers with guns as cognitive capital:the knowledge society, an excruciatingly complexorder. The striking thing . . . is the zombie-likecharacter of this society, its fallback toautomatic pilot, its cybernetic governance.Ó12

HolmesÕs diagnosis gets its punch from thecounterintuitive tension between the notion ofcontrol and the zombieÕs sleepwalkingmindlessness. Even our present cultureÕs

schizophrenic scenario of neoliberal economyand post-democratic reinforcement of the stateapparatus cannot be reduced to evil. But ifHolmes uses the monster trope to define acondition of critical ambiguity, he follows Marxistorthodoxy by setting this definition to workdialectically vis-ˆ-vis an affirmative use of themanifesto format. The manifesto is haunted byits modernist codification as a mobilization of acollective We in a revolutionary Now. This code,and the desire it represents, is invariablytransparent to itself, as opposed to the opacityof the zombie.

2. Monster of Mass and Multitude

What most informs metaphorical applications ofthe zombie is perhaps the functional dimensionthat its abjectness seems to lend to it. Accordingto Julia KristevaÕs definition, the abject is what Imust get rid of in order to be an I.13 The abject isa fantasmatic substance that must be expelled Ðfrom the body, from society Ð in order to satisfy apsychic economy, because it is imagined to havesuch a likeness or proximity to the subject that itproduces panic or repulsion. This, Hal Foster

writes, echoing critical preoccupations in the artof the 1980s (the abject) and of the 1990s (theÒreturn of the realÓ), qualifies the abject as Òaregulatory operation.Ó14 The obverse of the abjectis a hygienic operation that promises a bluntinstrumentality of getting rid of Ð of expulsing,excluding, severing, repressing. As we have seen,things are not so clear. The abject sneaks back inas a supplement, subverting attempts atestablishing hygienic categories.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊI will therefore hypothesize that thezombieÕs allegorical (rather than merely

metaphorical) potential lies in trying to elaborateand exacerbate the zombie as a clichŽ of

alienation by using it to deliberately Òdramatizethe strangeness of what has become real,Ó asanthropologists Jean and John L. Comaroffcharacterize the zombieÕs cultural function.15

Why would one want to do such a thing? AsDeleuze and Guattari had it, the problem withcapitalism is not that it breaks up reality; theproblem with capitalism is that it isnÕtschizophrenic and proliferating enough.16 In

other words, it frees desire from traditionallibidinal patterns (of family and religion and soon), but it will always want to recapture theseenergies through profit. According to thisconclusion, one way to circumnavigatecapitalism would be to encourage its semioticexcess and its speculation in affect. Capitalismis not a totalitarian or tyrannical form ofdomination. It primarily spreads its effectsthrough indifference (that can be compared tothe zombieÕs essential lack of protagonism). It isnot what capital does, but what it doesnÕt do or

have: it does not have a concept of society; itdoes not counteract the depletion of nature; ithas no concept of citizenship or culture; and soon. Thus it is a slave morality that makes us clingto capital as though it were our salvation Ðcapitalism is, in fact, what we bring to it.Dramatization of capital through exacerbationand excess can perhaps help distill this state ofaffairs.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe zombie isnÕt just any monster, but onewith a pedigree of social critique. As alreadymentioned, alienation Ð a Marxian term that hasfallen out of use Ð is central to the zombie. ToMarx the loss of control over oneÕs labor Ð a kindof viral effect that spreads throughout socialspace Ð results in estrangement from oneself,from other people, and from the Òspecies-beingÓof humanity as such.17 This disruption of theconnection between life and activity hasÒmonstrous effects.Ó18 Today, in the era ofimmaterial labor, whose forms turn affect,creativity, and language into economicalofferings, alienation from our productivecapacities results in estrangement from thesefaculties and, by extension, from visual and

artistic production Ð and from our ownsubjectivity. What is useful about the monster isthat it is immediately recognizable asestrangement, and in this respect is non-alienating. Secondly, we may address alienationwithout a concept of nature; a good thing, sincethe humanism in the notion of Òthe natural stateof manÓ (for Marx the positive parameter againstwhich we can measure our alienation) has at thispoint been irreversibly deconstructed. In otherwords: the natural state of man is to die, not toend up as undead.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊFranco ÒBifoÓ Berardi describes how ItalianWorkerist thought of the 1960s overturned the

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The Zombies, circa 1967.

dominant vision of Marxism. The working classwas no longer conceived as Òa passive object ofalienation, but instead the active subject of arefusal capable of building a community startingout from its estrangement from the interests ofcapitalistic society.Ó19 For the estranged worker,alienation became productive. Deleuze andGuattari were part of the same generation ofthinkers and overturned a traditional view of

alienation, for example by consideringschizophrenia as a multiple and nomadic form ofconsciousness (and not as a passive clinicaleffect or loss of self). They put it radically: ÒTheonly modern myth is the myth of zombies Ðmortified schizos, good for work, brought back toreason.Ó20 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe origin of the zombie in Haitian vodoun

has an explicit relationship to labor, as arepetition or reenactment of slavery. The personwho receives the zombie spell Òdies,Ó is buried,excavated, and put to work, usually as a field

hand. In his book The Serpent and the Rainbow,ethnobotanist Wade Davis tells the story of aman called Narcisse, a former zombie:

[Narcisse] remembered being aware of hispredicament, of missing his family andfriends and his land, of wanting to return.

But his life had the quality of a strangedream, with events, objects, andperceptions interacting in slow motion, andwith everything completely out of hiscontrol. In fact there was no control at all.Decision had no meaning, and consciousaction was an impossibility.21

The zombie can move around and carry out tasks,

but does not speak, cannot fend for himself,cannot formulate thoughts, and doesnÕt evenknow its own name: its fate is enslavement.ÒGiven the colonial historyÓ Ð includingoccupation by France and the US Ð Daviscontinues:

the concept of enslavement implies thatthe peasant fears and the zombie suffers afate that is literally worse than death Ð theloss of physical liberty that is slavery, andthe sacrifice of personal autonomy implied

by the loss of identity.22

 That is, more than inexplicable physiologicalchange, victims of voodoo suffer a social andmental death, in a process initiated by fear. Thezombie considered as a subaltern born ofcolonial encounters is a figure that has arisen

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then out of a new relationship to death: not thefear of the zombie apocalypse, as in the movies,but the fear of becoming one Ð the fear of losingcontrol, of becoming a slave.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn pop culture the zombie is a twentieth-century monster and hence related to massphenomena: mass production, massconsumption, mass death. It is not an aristocratlike Dracula or a star freak like Frankenstein; it is

the everyman monster in which business asusual coexists with extremes of hysteria (muchlike democracy at present, in fact). The zombiealso straddles the divide between industrial andimmaterial labor, from mass to multitude, fromthe brawn of industrialism to the dispersedbrains of cognitive capitalism.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊWith its highly ambiguous relationship tosubjectivity, consciousness, and life itself, wemay hence consider the zombie a paradigm ofimmaterial labor.23 Both the zombie andimmaterial labor celebrate logistics and a

colonization of the brain and the nervous system.The living dead roam the world and have agenetic relationship with restlessness: they areÒpure motoric instinct,Ó as it is expressed inRomeroÕs Dawn of the Dead; or they represent adanger Òas long as they got a working thinker andsome mobility,Ó as one zombie hunter puts it inthe novel World War Z by Max Brooks.24 Thelatter, counterintuitive reference to the zombieÕsintellectual capacity may be brought to bear onthe terms Òintellectual laborÓ and Òcognitivecapitalism,Ó used to denote brain-dead Ð andhighly regulated Ð industries such as advertisingand mass media. Or, the Òworking thinkerÓ in thezombieÕs dead flesh is an indication of theMarxist truth that matter thinks. As Lenin asked:What does the car know Ð of its own relations ofproduction? In the same way, the zombie mayprompt the question: What does the zombieÕsrotting flesh know Ð of the soul? As Spinoza said:what the body can do, that is its soul.25 And thezombie can do quite a lot.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIn Philip KaufmanÕs 1978 film Invasion of the

Body Snatchers, a space plant that duplicatespeople and brings them back as empty versions

of themselves spreads its fibers across the Earthas if it were the World Wide Web. The body-snatched donÕt just mindlessly roam the cities insearch of flesh and brains, but have occupied thenetworks of communication and start aplanetary operation to circulate bodies, as ifproponents of the great transformation fromindustrialism to immaterial labor, in whichproduction is eclipsed and taken over by aregime of mediation and reproduction. This is ourlogistical universe, in which things on the moveare valorized, and in which more than ever before

the exchange of information itself determinescommunicative form. The nature of what is

exchanged recedes in favor of the significance ofdistribution and dissemination. Exigencies ofsocial adaptation, by now familiar to us, alsoappear in Invasion. Somebody who has clearlybeen body-snatched thus tells the maincharacter, played by Donald Sutherland, to notbe afraid of Ònew conceptsÓ: imperatives tosocialize and to reinvent oneself, shot throughwith all the accompanying tropes of self-

cannibalization (self-management, self-valuation, self-regulation, self-consume, and soforth). Thus the body snatchers are a caricatureof ideal being, incarnating mobility withoutnervousness.26

3. ÒSolipsistic and asocial horrorÓ

The necessity of a sociological reading of themodern monster derives, for our purpose, fromthe pressure that the capitalization of creativityhas in the past decade exerted on artisticpractice and thinking. Art has become a norm, in

a different way than it was under the culturalorder of the bourgeoisie. In short, within theÒexperience economy,Ó artÕs normative powerconsists in commodifying a conventional idea ofartÕs mythical otherness with a view to thereproduction of subjectivity and economy.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊTen years ago, management thinkers JamesH. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II launched theconcept of the experience economy with theirbook The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre

and Every Business a Stage. Here they describean economy in which experience is a new sourceof profit to be obtained through the staging of thememorable. What is being produced is theexperience of the audience, and the experienceis generated by means of what may be termedÒauthenticity effects.Ó In the experience economyit is often art and its markers of authenticity Ðcreativity, innovation, provocation, and the like Ðthat ensure economic status to experience.27 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊGilmore and Pine advise manufacturers totailor their products to maximize customerexperience, thus valve manufacturers couldprofitably increase the Òpumping experienceÓ;furniture manufacturers might correspondingly

emphasize the Òsitting experienceÓ; and home-appliance manufacturers could capitalize on theÒwashing experience,Ó the Òdrying experience,Óand the Òcooking experience.Ó28 TheÒpsychological premiseÓ of being able to ÒalterconsumersÕ sense of realityÓ is a central theme.29

Gilmore and PineÕs mission is to highlight theprofitability of producing simulated situations.Their arguments will not be subverted by simplypointing out this fact: the experience economy isbeyond all ideology inasmuch as it is theirdeclared intention to fake it better and more

convincingly. In the experience economyÕsontological displacement towards an

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Gothic Shop in Japan.

instrumentalized phenomenology, it becomesirrelevant to verify the materiality of theexperienced object or situation. Memorableauthenticity effects are constituted in a registerof subjective experience. In other words, oneÕsown subjectivity becomes a product oneconsumes, by being provided with opportunitiesto consume oneÕs own time and attentionthrough emotive and cognitive responses to

objects and situations. Similarly, when theexperience economy is applied to culturalinstitutions and the presentation of art works, itrevolves around ways of providing the public withthe opportunity to reproduce itself as consumersof cultural experiences.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊIt is difficult not to see the consequences ofthe experience economy as the dismantling ofnot only artistic and institutional significationbut also of social connections. Thus the syllabusfor the masters-level experience economy courseoffered by the University of Aarhus explains how

consumers within an experience economyfunction as Òhyper-consumers free of earliersocial ties, always hunting for emotionalintensity,Ó and that students of the course areprovided with Òthe opportunity to adoptenterprising behaviours.Ó30 ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊCultural critic Diedrich Diederichsen calls

such self-consume Eigenblutdoping, blooddoping. Just as cyclists dope themselves usingtheir own blood, cultural consumers seek toaugment their self-identity by consuming theproducts of their own subjectivity. According toDiederichsen, this phenomenon is a Òsolipsisticand asocial horror,Ó which reduces life to a loopwe can move in and out of without actuallyparticipating in any processes.31 Inside these

loops, time has been brought to a halt, and thetraditional power of the cultural institution isdisplaced when audiences are invited to play andparticipate in an ostensible ÒdemocratizationÓ ofart. In the loop, audiences ironically lose thepossibility of inscribing their subjectivities onanything besides themselves, and are hencepotentially robbed of an important opportunity torespond to the institution and the exhibitionarycomplex where art is presented.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe zombie returns at this point, then, tostalk a new cultural economy that is necessarily

already no longer current; nor is it ever outdated,because it cancels cultural time measured indecades and centuries. The time of theexperience economy is that of an impoverishedpresent.32

4. The Death of Death

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Julie Williams and Dylon Holroydtied the knot goth style.

There are several reasons why we need a modernmonster. Firstly, it can help us meditate onalienation in our era of an immaterial capitalismthat has turned life into cash; into an onto-capitalist, forensic culture in which we turntowards the dead body, not with fear, but as akind of pornographic curator (as testified to byany number of TV series about vampires,undertakers, and forensics). As Steven Shaviro

writes, Òzombies mark the rebellion of deathagainst its capitalist appropriation ... our societyendeavors to transform death into value, but thezombies enact a radical refusal and destructionof value.Ó33 Shaviro sharply outlines here thezombieÕs exit strategy from that strangest ofscenarios, the estrangement of death itself. Butat the same time, one wonders whether it can bethat simple. Immaterial capitalismÕs tropes ofself-cannibalization render it more ambiguousthan ever whether the abject is a crisis in theorder of subject and society, or a perverse

confirmation of them. In other words, beyond thedestruction of value that Shaviro discusses, it allrevolves around a riddle: If, during our lifespan aspaying beings, life itself has become capital,then where does that leave death?ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊOne answer is that, in a world with nooutsides, death died. We are now witnessing the

death of death, of which its overrepresentation isthe most prominent symptom. For the first timesince the end of the Second World War there areno endgame narratives. Apocalyptic horizons aregiven amnesty. A planet jolted out of itsecological balance is a disaster, but notsomething important. In art, the mid twentiethcenturyÕs Òdeath of the AuthorÓ and Òdeath ofManÓ are now highly operational, and the Òdeath

of Art,Ó a big deal in the 1980s, is now eclipsed bythe splendid victory of Òcontemporary art.Ó Thisin spite of the obvious truth that art, consideredas an autonomous entity, is dead and gone,replaced by a new art (a double?) that is directlyinscribed on culture; a script for social andcultural agency. There is nothing left to die, as ifwe were caught in the ever-circling eye of theeternal return itself. As the blurb for GeorgeRomeroÕs Survival of the Dead (2009) goes:ÒDeath isnÕt what it used to be.Ó This ought to bea cause for worry. Endgame narratives have

always accompanied new paradigms, or havenegated or problematized the reproduction ofreceived ideas.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊThe zombie is always considered a post-being, a no-longer-human, an impossiblesubject. But can we also think of it as a pre-being? Can we turn it into a child; that most

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poignant embodiment of the monster and theghost (the Òchild-player against whom can donothing,Ó as Spinoza put it), or at least allow it toindicate a limit of not-yet-being?34 That is, thelack incarnated by zombie is also present at thelevel of enunciation in the zombie narrative. InRomeroÕs films, the zombie apocalypse graduallyrecedes into the background and other Ð inter-human, social Ð problems become prominent

during the unfolding of the plot. The zombie,always mute, is never at the center of the plotthe way Dracula or Frankenstein are, hence itspresence cannot be explained away as amechanism for reintegrating social tensionthrough fear. It is a strange, tragicomic monsterthat displaces evil and its concept: the zombieisnÕt evil, nor has it been begot by evil; it is amonstrosity that deflects itself in order to showthat our imagination cannot stop at the monster.It is irrelevant if you kill it (there will always beten more rotten arms reaching through the

broken window pane). The zombie pushes ahorizon of empty time ahead of it; whether thattime will be messianic or apocalyptic is held inabeyance. Or, the zombie represents the degreeto which we are incapable of reimagining thefuture. So the question becomes: How can welook over its shoulder? What future race comesafter the zombie? How do we cannibalize self-cannibalization? The only way to find out is toabstract the zombie condition.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊSooner or later, the opacity of ourfascination with the zombie exhaustssociological attempts at reading of it. There isultimately no way to rationalize the skepticismthe zombie drags in. A similar mechanism is atwork in art. Whereas sociology is based onpositive knowledge, art is based on the conceptof art and on cultureÕs re-imagining of thatconcept. Beyond the experience economy, andbeyond sociological analysis of these, there lienew artistic thinking and imagining. Thus we canwitness how it all falls apart in the end:sociology, zombie as allegory, even the absenceof the end that turns out to be one. What is leftare material traces to be picked up anew.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ× Zombies of Immaterial Labor was originally presented in theMasquerade lecture series, organized by the curatorialplatform If I CanÕt Dance I DonÕt Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, January25, 2010.ÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊÊ

Lars Bang LarsenÊis an art historian and curator basedin Barcelona and Copenhagen. He has co-curatedgroup exhibitions such asÊPyramids of 

MarsÊ(Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, 2000, a.o.),ÊThe

Echo Show (Tramway, Glasgow2003),ÊPopulismÊ(Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam 2005,a.o.), La insurrecci—n invisible de un mill—n de mentes

(Sala rekalde, Bilbao 2005), and A History of Irritated

Material (Raven Row, London 2010). His books includeSture Johannesson (NIFCA / Lukas & Sternberg 2002)and a monograph about Palle NielsenÕs utopian

adventure playground at Moderna Museet inStockholm, The Model. A Model for a Qualitative

Society, 1968 (MACBA 2010). The series of pamphletsKunst er Norm, Organisationsformer and Spredt v¾ren

(ÕArt is NormÕ, ÕForms of OrganisationÕ and ÕDissipatedbeingÕ, published by the Art Academy of Jutland),discusses the experience economy as a mutation inartÕs DNA towards a new normativisation of art. LarsBang LarsenÕs research is supported by the Ph.D.program at the Department of Arts and CulturalStudies at Copenhagen University.

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ÊÊÊÊÊÊ1I am grateful to Brian Kuan Woodfor the title of this essay.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ2ÒThe Playboy Interview: MarshallMcLuhan,Ó Playboy , March 1969,available athttp://www.nextnature.net/2009/12/the-playboy-interview-marshall-mcluhan. I am gratefulto Jacob Lillemose for thisreference.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ3Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny ,trans. David McLintock (1899;London: Penguin Books, 2003),150.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ4Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,The Communist Manifesto, trans.Samuel Moore (1848; London:Penguin Classics, 1967), 78, 94.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ5Ibid.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ6Ibid., 83.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ7

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: the State of the Debt, theWork of Mourning, and the NewInternational, trans. PeggyKamuf (1993; New York:Routledge, 2006), 57.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ8I am thinking of Mike KelleyÕsThe Uncanny (1993; Cologne:Walther Kšnig 2004), ChristophGrunenbergÕs Gothic:Transmutations of Horror inLate-Twentieth-Century Art(Boston: Institute ofContemporary Art, 1997), andPaul SchimmelÕs Helter Skelter:L.A. Art in the 1990s, ed.Catherine Gudis (Los Angeles:Museum of Contemporary Art,1992), which had the subtitle Artof the Living Dead).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ9David Deitcher: ÒSocialAesthetics,Ó in Democracy: AProject by Group Material, ed.Brian Wallis (New York: DIA ArtFoundation, 1990), 37. (Deitchererroneously states that Dawn of the Dead appeared in 1979; thecorrect year is 1978. I havecorrected this in the quotation.)

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ10Franco Moretti, ÒDialectic ofFear,Ó in Signs Taken for 

Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms, trans. SusanFischer, David Forgacs, andDavid Miller (London: Verso,1983), 84.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ11Steven Shaviro, The CinematicBody (1993; Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press,2006), 91.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ12Brian Holmes, ÒThe AffectivistManifesto: Artistic Critique inthe 21st Century,Ó in Escape theOvercode: Activist Art in theControl Society (Eindhoven: VanAbbemuseum; Zagreb: What,

How & for Whom, 2009), 14.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ13See Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection,trans. Leon S. Roudiez (NewYork: Columbia University Press,1982).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ14Hal Foster, The Return of theReal (Cambridge, MA: The MITPress, 1996), 156.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ15Jean and John L. Comaroff,

ÒAlien-Nation: Zombies,Immigrants and MillennialCapitalism,Ó South AtlanticQuarterly 101, no. 4 (Fall 2002):779Ð805. I am grateful to KodwoEshun for this reference. Theallegorical impulse behindbringing the zombie back to theMarxian concept of alienationderives from the dynamics of thezombieÕs ruinous (lack of)existence. Thus George RomeroÕsfamous trilogy is a sequence ofallegorical variation: a critique ofracist America (Night), a critiqueof consumerism (Dawn), and acritique with feminist overtones(Day ).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ16See Gilles Deleuze and FŽlixGuattari: Anti-Oedipus:Capitalism and Schizophrenia,trans. Robert Hurley, MarkSeem, and Helen R. Lane (1972;Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1983).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ17See also my introduction in theexhibition guide A History of Irritated Material (London: RavenRow, 2010).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ18Karl Marx, ÒEstranged Labour,Óin Economic and PhilosophicalManuscripts of 1844, availableat http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ19Franco ÒBifoÓ Berardi, The Soulat Work: From Alienation to

 Autonomy , trans. FrancescaCadel and Mecchia Giuseppina(New York: Semiotext(e), 2009),23.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ20Deleuze and Guattari: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism andSchizophrenia, 335.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ21

Wade Davis, The Serpent and theRainbow (New York: Simon &Schuster, 1985), 80.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ22Ibid., 139.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ23See also my article ÒBrainsÓ inMuhtelif no. 4 (2008).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ24Max Brooks, World War Z: AnOral History of the Zombie War (New York: Gerald andDuckworth, 2007), 96.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ25See Berardi, The Soul at Work,

21.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ26In the Spanish translation thebody snatchers are ultracuerpos:ultrabodies, as if particularlywell-adapted mutations.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ27See also my Kunst er Norm(Aarhus: Jutland Art Academy,2008).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ28James H. Gilmore and B. JosephPine II, The Experience Economy:

Work is Theatre and Every Business a Stage (Boston:Harvard Business School Press,1999), 16.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ29Ibid., 175.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ30See the Aarhus University,Faculty of Humanities website,http://studieguide.au.dk/kandidat_dk.cfm?fag=1062.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ31Diedrich Diederichsen,Eigenblutdoping:Selbstverwertung, KŸnstlerr omantik, Partizipation (Cologne:

Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2008).

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ32Žižek discusses the zombie interms of suffering. Of RomeroÕsNight of the Living Dead, hewrites: ÒThe ÔundeadÕ are notportrayed as embodiments ofpure evil, of a simple drive to killor revenge, but as sufferers,pursuing their victims with anawkward persistence, colored bya kind of infinite sadness.Ó Thedead make their melancholicreturn because they havenÕtbeen properly buried Ð just likeghosts, zombies return Òascollectors of some unpaidsymbolic debt.Ó Žižek points outthat Òthe return of the deadsignifies that they cannot findtheir proper place in the text oftradition,Ó an insight that we canuse for our own sociologicalends. Similarly, the experiencecommodity cannot find its placein the text of tradition andculture, inasmuch as this is whatthe experience economy isundoing. Slavoj Žižek, Looking

 Awry: An Introduction to JacquesLacan through Popular Culture(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press,1992), 22Ð23.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ33Shaviro, The Cinematic Body , 84.

ÊÊÊÊÊÊ34Quoted from Gilles Deleuze andFŽlix Guattari, QuÕest-ce que la

 philosophie (Paris: ƒditions deMinuit, 1991), 70.

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