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Monthly Archives: June 2010
Monthly Archives: June 2010
“Zombie stories end in one of two ways — the elimination/subjugation of all zombies, or the eradication of humanity from the face of the Earth. … Indeed, recent literary tropes suggest that vampires can peacefully coexist with ordinary teens in many of the world’s high schools, provided they are sufficiently hunky. Zombies, not so much.”
Realpolitik Approach:
“How would the introduction of flesh-eating ghouls affect world politics? The realist answer is simple if surprising: International relations would be largely unaffected. Although some would see in a zombie invasion a new existential threat to the human condition, realists would be unimpressed by the claim that the zombies’ arrival would lead to any radical change in human behavior. To them, a plague of the undead would merely echo older plagues, from the Black Death of the 14th century to the 1918 influenza pandemic. To paraphrase Thucydides, the realpolitik of zombies is that the strong will do what they can and the weak must suffer devouring by reanimated, ravenous corpses.”
Liberal Approach:
“Provided that the initial spread of zombies did not completely wipe out governments, the liberal expectation would be that an international counterzombie regime could make significant inroads into the problem…..Quasi-permanent humanitarian counterzombie missions, perhaps under United Nations auspices, would likely be necessary in failed states. Liberals would acknowledge that the permanent eradication of flesh-eating ghouls is unlikely. The reduction of the zombie problem to one of many manageable threats, however, is quite likely. Most countries would kill most zombies most of the time.”
Neoconservative Approach:
“Instead, neocons would recommend an aggressive and militarized response to ensure human hegemony. Rather than wait for the ghouls to come to them, they would pursue offensive policy options that take the fight to the undead. A pre-emptive strike against zombies would, surely, be a war against evil itself….They would inevitably lump reanimated corpses with other human threats as part of a bigger World War III against authoritarian despots and zombies — an “Axis of Evil Dead.” This would sabotage any attempt at broad-based coalition warfare, hindering military effectiveness in a Global War on Zombies (GWOZ).”
“The different international relations theories also provide a much greater variety of possible outcomes than the Hollywood zombie canon. Traditional zombie narratives in film and fiction are quick to get to the apocalypse. The theoretical approaches presented here, however, suggest that in the real world there would be a vigorous policy response to the menace of the living dead. Realism predicts an eventual live-and-let-live arrangement between the undead and everyone else. Liberals predict an imperfect but nevertheless useful counterzombie regime. Neoconservatives see the defeat of the zombie threat after a long, existential struggle. These scenarios suggest that maybe, just maybe, the zombie canon’s dominant narrative of human extinction is overstated.”
BY DANIEL W. DREZNER | JULY/AUGUST 2010
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/21/night_of_the_living_wonks?page=0,0
Ilya Somin adds:
Libertarian Approach:
“Zombies might be an excellent tool of repression for authoritarian states. Government efforts to combat the zombie menace might well be hampered by public choice problems. Various interest groups would surely exploit the zombie crisis as an opportunity to lobby for special benefits for themselves under the pretext of combatting the zombies. For example, farm subsidies for dead farmers will surely go up, as lobbyists argue that the dead farmers might turn into zombies themselves unless they are paid off. In democracies, anti-zombie policy might also be compromised by widespread voter ignorance of zombies and irrationality about them. I venture to predict that voters are likely to be even more ignorant and irrational about zombies than they are on most other policy issues.”
http://volokh.com/2010/06/22/the-politics-of-zombies/
A commenter also notes, “Most legislators would be safe in case of zombie invasion. Zombies eat brains.”
Indeed.
Postmodern philosophers and novelists share an obsession with words-for-their-own-sake, and indeed, I would say that the philosophers take this to an extreme beyond that achieved by mere novelists. Philosophers, unlike novelists, are not tied down by the necessities of plot and comprehensibility.
I believe the quote at the beginning of this video illustrates my point. Her words are so beautiful I could bathe in them. But what does that mean, exactly?
http://markfullmer.com/film/kristeva-rap-video
I’ve been too busy for this blog lately, but I may have a bit of time during the summer months for fiction, we’ll see. I always tend to overestimate my available time and underestimate my work load, so no promises.