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Zombie Capitalism And The Collective Conscience: Between Bataille And Agamben, Ronjon Paul Datta

Interdisciplinary approaches to surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

Zombie capitalism concerns how socio-economic life and death are debated and evaluated, reflecting dynamics in the “collective conscience.” Discussions of zombie capitalism have extended the popular representation of zombies as the “undead/living-dead” to the domain of socio-economic life. Rooted in radical Durkheimian social theory, this paper offers preliminary reflections on the moral framing of “zombie capitalism” by engaging imaginatively with ideas found in Georges Bataille and Giorgio Agamben, two interdisciplinary thinkers that addressed profound issues of life, death, and values. As represented journalistically and in popular economics, “zombie capitalism” is a condition in which socio-economic entities that, from the capitalist …