Necroculture

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-v

   PDF

2. The Necroculture of Capitalism

   • Charles Thorpe

   Pages 1-52

3. Artificial Life on a Dead Planet

   • Charles Thorpe

   Pages 53-91

4. Speed and Stasis

   • Charles Thorpe

   Pages 93-151

5. The Pornography of Information

   • Charles Thorpe

   Pages 153-204

6. The Tyranny of Negative Freedom

   • Charles Thorpe

   Pages 205-259

7. Back Matter

   Pages 261-270

   PDF

In this book, the author draws on Karl Marx’s writings on alienation and Erich Fromm’s conception of necrophilia in order to understand these aspects of contemporary culture as expressions of the domination of the living by the dead under capitalism. Necroculture is the ideological reflection and material manifestation of this basic feature of capitalism: the rule of dead capital over living labor. The author argues that necroculture represents the subsumption of the world by vampire capital. 

• Zombies
• necrophilia
• Marx
• Fromm
• alienation
• pornography
• torture
• vampire
• capitalism
• popular culture
• possessive individualism
• biotechnology
• robotics
• extinction
• exterminism
• Tea Party
• libertarianism
• gun culture

“‘Necroculture’, the productivist ideology which denies climate change and promotes techno-salvationism is expressed as a complete capitulation to the perceived power of capital, not to preserve life but to reproduce it as something which transcends death.” (Debra Benita Shaw, New Formations, Issue 91, 2017)

“In Necroculture, Charles Thorpe challenges this received wisdom by gathering an ambitious array of macrosocial ills into cohesive categories and then drawing theoretical purchase from Karl Marx and Erich Fromm to explain them. … Necroculture is a must-read for anyone interested in studying such camouflaged macrosocial addictions.” (Shawn Van Valkenburgh, Critical Sociology, August, 2017)

“Charles Thorpe’s Necroculture is a brilliant and powerful warning about America’s embrace of the pathologies of violence, the abandonment of civic literacy, the destruction of the planet, and what he calls the tyranny of negative freedom ... . A beautifully written and accessible book, it is an important and crucial source  for understanding America’s descent into madness, war, militarism, and the death motivated mechanics of terminal exclusion. Necroculture is a must read to both understand and resist the death of democratic ideals in the United States.” (Henry Giroux, Professor of English and Cultural Studies and Global TV Network Chair in Communications, McMaster University, Canada)

“This is a wonderfully well-conceived, deeply researched, and compellingly argued study of contemporary capitalism as a kind of living death. Thorpe mobilizes a wide range of theoretical and cultural resources to make the case that technological mediation and the reificationof everyday life have reached a point of apocalyptic zombification. Thorpe’s readings of a broad array of cultural texts—from science-fiction novels to films and television series such as The Walking Dead—are astute and challenging, his analyses of socioeconomic contexts consistently arresting, and his command of Marxist and neo-Marxist theory breathtaking. Highly recommended.” (Rob Latham, Science Fiction Studies)

• University of California, San Diego, USA

  Charles Thorpe

Charles Thorpe is Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Science Studies Program at the University of California, San Diego, USA. He is the author of Oppenheimer: The Tragic Intellect (2006) and has been featured in The British Journal of Sociology, Science as Culture, Science Fiction Studies, and Theory, Culture and Society.

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