Academic literature on the topic 'Gore capitalism'

Reza Abdoh’s The Law of Remains (1991) is a play replete with violence, cruelty, murder and gore. While many critics view the playwright’s horror-inflected plays as reflective of an Artaudian philosophy that attempts to uncover the essential human ‘truth’ underlying societal ills, I view The Law of Remains as an exercise in dialectical horror. That is, a play that harnesses the grammar of gore and excess to critique capitalism’s disempowering and rapacious qualities while highlighting how consciousness of such qualities could galvanize positive opposition to oppression. In this article, I examine some of the play’s key moments of horror through a Marxist lens to uncover an anti-capitalist structure of feeling that lay in stark opposition to dominant neo-liberal forces in the early 1990s.

This essay reviews two theoretical books on neoliberalism written by Mexican cultural critics: Capitalismo gore (Gore Capitalism), by Sayak Valencia, published originally in Spanish in 2010 and translated into English in 2018, and La tiranía del sentido común ( The Tyranny of Common Sense) by Irmgard Emmelhainz, published in Spanish in 2016 and yet to be translated into English. These works are pioneering in their discussion of the correlation between neoliberalism, subjectivity, and culture in Mexico, and they have become widely influential in broader discussions of art, visual culture, literature, and cultural production. They add to the work of economic and political historians, such as Fernando Escalante Gonzalbo and María Eugenia Romero Sotelo, by connecting landmark moments in neoliberalization (from the financialization of the global economy in the 1970s to the War on Drugs in the 2000s) to changing paradigms in art. Author Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado contextualizes both books within larger discussions of Mexican cultural neoliberalism and describes the theoretical frame works through which both authors read Mexican politics, art, and popular culture. In Valencia's case, Sánchez Prado discusses her idea of “gore capitalism”: a framework for understanding how neoliberalism relies on dynamics of the shadow economy and on the subjectification of gore (what Valencia calls endriago subjectivity) to function at the social and artistic levels. In the case of Emmelhainz, Sánchez Prado engages with the author's idea of semiocapitalism, a term borrowed from theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi, which Emmelhainz deploys to account for the interrelation between culture and capital in the era of neoliberalism. As such, Sánchez Prado argues, Emmelhainz and Valencia provide ways of reading artistic and visual production, including museum curatorship and narcocultura, in ways that show their organic relationship to neoliberal economic and political reforms. Find the complete article at artmargins.com .

In 2022, the cyber hell unfolds in South Korea. In a situation where the web hard cartel and welcome to video cases could not be properly resolved, a network of Nth Room Case-Digital Prison-Illegal Gambling Site was formed. Along with this, Hacklers and cybe-wreckers are indiscriminately making money by making sacrifices for people. This is also in line with the generational change of the gangster culture. This essay analyzes the political and economic background that led to the opening of this ‘cyber hell’ and the problem of subjectivity formed therein. To this end, it borrows Sayak Valencia's concept of gore capitalism and names the system in which violence becomes a mode of accumulating wealth in the digital media field as digital gore capitalism, and the masculinity formed as Gore Masculinity. In this case, gore masculinity refers to the concept of appropriating the subject of Endriago in Valencia's assertion to fit the Korean situation, and it refers to the use of marginalized masculinity as a resource while justifying violence. The key here is that there are consumers who consume violence, and there is an online misogyny culture at the birth of such consumers. Finally, this paper introduces the discussion of Trans Feminism as an alternative ethics to gore masculinity.

This article creates a dialogue between the necropolitical practices exercised by the drug dealers in the Mexican narco B-movie El juego final by Oscar López (2014) and the adherence of the characters to the neoliberal dogma through the analytic tools of gore capitalism (Valencia, 2010). It analyses the capitalization of death and violence by the cartels and their transformation in resources that enable the hyperconsumption promoted by narcoculture and by its aesthetics of ostentation. The article also suggests that the participation of the main character to the economy of death for surviving purposes in a precarious labor market is another type of integration of the neoliberal values that is opposed to the exuberant demonstrations of wealth, considering in both cases the use of murder as a cultural paradigm that mediates the relationships between the neoliberal subjects in the informal narco economy. Finally, it puts forward the idea that the videohome narco-cinema industry itself also participates to the gore capitalism that is shown in the plots by converting narcoviolence in a theme for entertainment that attracts the audiences and by displaying said violence with an economy of resources that allows its profitability. Este artículo pone a dialogar las prácticas necropolíticas ejercidas por los narcotraficantes en la narcopelícula mexicana de serie B El juego final, de Oscar López (2014), con la adhesión de los personajes al dogma neoliberal a través de las herramientas de análisis del capitalismo gore (Valencia, 2010). Se analiza la capitalización de la muerte y de la violencia por los cárteles y su transformación en recurso que posibilita el hiperconsumo promovido por la narcocultura y por su estética de la ostentación. También se propone pensar la participación del personaje principal en la economía de la muerte por motivos de supervivencia en un mundo laboral precarizado como otro tipo de integración de los valores neoliberales que se contrapone a las manifestaciones exuberantes de riqueza, considerando en ambos casos el uso del asesinato como paradigma cultural que media las relaciones entre los sujetos neoliberales de la economía informal narco. Se sugiere finalmente que la industria del narcocine videohome en sí también participa del capitalismo gore que se muestra en sus tramas narrativas al convertir la narcoviolencia en tema de entretenimiento que atrae a las audiencias y al poner en escena dicha violencia con una economía de recursos que permite su rentabilidad.

The theatrical oeuvre of Reza Abdoh has been lauded for its reinvigoration of the avantgarde, its formal and political daring and its astute commentary about the violence of the HIV virus (Fordyce, Carlson, Mufson, Bell). More recently, Abdoh’s work has been taken up as a commentary on neoliberalism—in part because of its politicization of bricolage and pastiche, recalling the more radical possibilities of theorizations of scholars such as Frederic Jameson (Zimmerman). Others have called out the modes by which Abdoh expanded the possibilities of queerness in the early 1990s. Yet no scholar has commented on Abdoh’s engagement of eschatology as a mode of historiography. That is the purpose of this essay. It is under this rubric, rather than an idea of generic postmodern milieu, that I read the multiple and discordant temporalities in Abdoh’s performances. While drawing on theories of the necropolitical (Mbembe) and gore capitalism (Valencia) in relation to conceptions of queer eschatology and capitalist violence, my inquiry emerges from consideration of the structural and theoretical aspects of the art works (“object’s”) themselves. I consider how Father Was a Peculiar Man (1990), performed in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan, exemplifies the historiographical possibilities of performance through its embodiment of an eschatological vision of the world in which the gender binary is performatively undone.

ABSTRACT This article elaborates a concept of localization through interpreting key arguments in Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez’s early works grouped by the author under the name “genealogies of coloniality.” Following the role localization in his genealogies of coloniality reveals what Castro-Gómez calls “heterarchic articulations.” Heterarchic articulations delineate an analytic model of power that traces how multiple technologies and formations of power operating at different levels, from colonial geopolitics to individual “corpopolitics” of desire, converge and configure radically localized processes of subjectivation. Localization understood in these terms, the author argues, allows Castro-Gómez to radicalize, transform, and combine Foucault’s genealogical approach and decolonial theory. The article concludes by showing that, besides radicalizing and combining genealogy and decoloniality, the localization at work in Castro-Gómez’s genealogies of coloniality serves to interpret theorizations and phenomena of contemporary violence by turning to Mexican transfeminist philosopher Sayak Valencia’s analysis of “gore capitalism.”

This article traces a line of tactical thought pointing out a sequence of methodological affinities touched by poststructuralism, postanarchism and joyful militancy, for the case study of the performative mural The Fall of the Eagle 1. The Exedra in Flames, in the antiauthoritarian exercise of insubordination and celebratory insurrection that burst into the politics of life, revealing the structural scaffolding of violent institutional authoritarianisms tending to the partisan of State in a territory occupied by gore capitalism, in the city of Aguascalientes, Mexico. During the analysis, a transversal report will be crossed that will allow the observation, identification and analysis of the emotions of militant insubordination, revealing in the process the socioemotional irruption of what will be called “normative contracture of the social order”, as testimony of the existing contraction of social bodies in the negotiation and conditioning of life policies inside and outside artistic education programs.

Daniel Peña’s 2017 novel Bang creates a parallel between the physical and social effects of Mexican migration into and out of the United States and those of the Mexican drug war. This essay utilizes Rob Nixon’s concept of slow violence to look at the corporeal degradation and disposability imposed on migrant farmworkers, in conjunction with Sayak Valencia’s theorization of gore capitalism, the necroeconomy of performative narcoviolence, as experienced by the characters in Bang. Although these two concepts appear to lie on opposite ends of the spectrum, and are illustrated in the novel initially from contrasting sides of the border and of (il)legality of trade, their conjunction points to the commonality between those suffering as grist for the modern economic mill. The essay analyzes how Peña’s transnational perspective, lyrical prose, and bridging of opposing concepts graphically perceive not only the personal experiences of those whose bodies are both degraded and commodified, but also the systemic constraints that force them into impossible choices. Using Peña’s novel, the essay reveals the continuity between these readings of violence as traced through the degradation of disposable bodies; both kinds of violence are ultimately born out of a unity of underlying extractive agricultural economies, yielding the grotesque from the mundane.

Mediante los conceptos de Identidad de Stuart Hall, Necropolítica de Achille Mbembe, y violencia de Slajov Zizek, bajo los estudios del “Capitalismo Gore” de Sayak Valencia, este artículo propone una lectura comparativa de “Ciudad Berraca” de Rodrigo Ramos y el documental “Una esperanza sin fronteras” realizada por el Arzobispado de Santiago de Chile, como dispositivos de denuncia de las prácticas del capitalismo devenido en gore, en donde el sujeto migrante es considerado como una identidad desarraigada, cosificada; una vida despojada de su humanidad, convirtiéndolo en un producto desechable en la reproducción capitalista violenta.

La présente thèse étudie les représentations narratives et formelles des personnages féminins dans le narco-cinéma videohome mexicain et mexicano-états-unien, un cinéma à petit budget qui dépeint les activités violentes des cartels de drogue au Mexique. Basée sur l'analyse d'un corpus de 175 films produits entre 2007 et 2024, l'étude s'intéresse aux interactions complexes entre personnages féminins, violence, consommation ostentatoire et sexualité hétéronormative. Son approche interdisciplinaire permet d'envisager les représentations féminines dans le contexte plus large de la narco-culture hétéropatriarcale et du néolibéralisme dans lequel ces films s'inscrivent.La thèse comporte trois parties. La première présente le contexte sociohistorique du narcotrafic et de la narco-violence au Mexique. Elle montre leur profond enracinement dans certaines régions du Mexique et le rôle qu'a joué la guerre contre le narcotrafic, lancée en 2006 par Felipe Calderón, dans l'exacerbation de la violence dans le pays. Cette guerre a entraîné une intensification et une diversification de la participation des femmes aux activités criminelles liées à la drogue, qui ont coïncidé avec une augmentation du nombre de féminicides. La deuxième partie caractérise la narco-culture, son système de valeurs et ses principales productions culturelles, ainsi que le narco-cinéma videohome. Elle met en lumière la contribution de cette industrie cinématographique encore peu étudiée à la construction, au sein de la culture populaire, d'une mémoire collective du narcotrafic, laquelle obéit à la logique du capitalisme gore. La troisième partie examine les femmes et leurs représentations dans le narco-cinéma. Elle fait état du nombre encore limité de rôles créatifs occupés par des femmes dans cette industrie et souligne l'effet considérable que cela engendre sur les représentations de genre à l'écran. Il y est question de deux grandes catégories de personnages féminins. D'une part, les personnages subordonnés à la narco-masculinité hégémonique renforcent les stéréotypes traditionnels et les chorégraphies sociales du genre propres à la narco-culture. D'autre part, les personnages empouvoirés offrent une alternative, bien qu'imparfaite, aux modèles féminins conventionnels.L'analyse révèle les principaux personnages féminins de chacune de ces deux catégories. Parmi les personnages subordonnés aux trafiquants masculins, on trouve les victimes de la narco-violence masculine, qui subissent les conséquences des nécropolitiques de genre, et les femmes-trophées, qui sont sexuellement objectivées et utilisées par les narcotrafiquants comme symboles de leur statut social. Chez les personnages empouvoirés, on voit surtout des dirigeantes de cartel, des tueuses à gages (ou « sicarias »), des vengeresses et des « buchonas ». Les trois premières recourent à la violence comme outil de nécro-empouvoirement, de mobilité socioéconomique ou de vengeance, tandis que les buchonas exploitent leur capital érotique pour accéder à l'abondance matérielle. Ces figures féminines actives déstabilisent effectivement les rôles de genre traditionnels. On constate cependant qu'elles exercent leur empouvoirement dans le cadre imposé par le système hétéropatriarcal et néolibéral.En définitive, cette thèse soutient que le narco-cinéma videohome, par sa représentation du dispositif de pouvoir sexo-genré de la narco-culture et de ses fractures, reflète les tensions entre genre, pouvoir et violence dans le Mexique contemporain, mais aussi les possibles transformations de cette dynamique complexe
This thesis examines the narrative and formal representations of female characters in Mexican and Mexican American videohome narcocinema, a low-budget cinema that depicts the violent activities of drug cartels in Mexico. Drawing from an analysis of a corpus of 175 films produced between 2007 and 2024, the research explores the intricate relationships between female characters, violence, conspicuous consumption, and heteronormative sexuality. Through an interdisciplinary approach, the female representations are critically analyzed within the broader context of heteropatriarchal narcoculture and neoliberalism in which these films are framed.The study is structured into three main sections. The first section addresses the socio-historical context of drug trafficking and narco-violence in Mexico. Drug trafficking has deeply entrenched roots in certain regions of Mexico, and President Felipe Calderón's attempts to diminish its influence by initiating a war on drugs in 2006 has only resulted in intensified violence across the country. This escalation has produced both an increase and diversification of female involvement in drug-related criminal activities as well as a rise in violence against women and “feminicide”. The second section of the study provides an in-depth characterization of narcoculture, examining its underlying value system and main cultural productions, alongside a detailed exploration of videohome narcocinema. I argue that this relatively overlooked film industry plays a crucial role in shaping a collective memory of drug trafficking through popular culture, operating within the framework of gore capitalism. In the third section, which focusses on women and their representations in narcocinema, we discuss the limited participation of women in creative roles within the narcocinema industry, a factor that significantly influences how gender is represented on screen. The study identifies two broad categories of female characters: first, those who are subordinated to hegemonic narco-masculinity, which reinforce traditional stereotypes and social choreographies of gender within narcoculture, and second, those whose partial empowerment―the limits of which we explain through a historical analysis―offers alternative models of femininity.The analysis highlights that the main female characters subordinated to male traffickers include victims of male narco-violence, who suffer the consequences of gendered necropolitics, as well as trophy women, who are sexually objectified and used by drug traffickers as symbols of status. The empowered characters, on the other hand, predominantly consist of female cartel bosses, hired assassins or sicarias, avengers, and buchonas. The former resort to violence as a means of necro-empowerment, socioeconomic mobility, or revenge, while the buchonas leverage their erotic capital to gain access to material wealth. Nevertheless, the study observes that while these active female figures destabilize traditional gender roles, their empowerment remains confined within the constraints of the heteropatriarchal and neoliberal system.The thesis posits that videohome narcocinema, by depicting the sex-gender power apparatus inherent in narcoculture and highlighting its ruptures, serves as a reflection of the tensions and potential shifts in the relationships between gender, power, and violence in contemporary Mexico

El cambio social acaecido las últimas décadas desafía la filosofía política. André Gorz puede ser definido como un crítico moderno del productivismo como uno de los mitos fundantes de la modernidad. Revisa críticamente la tradición socialista mostrando la necesidad de reconsiderar la utopía y actualizar las ideologías emancipatorias. En cuanto a epistemología y ontología, asume una combinación de teoría social de la acción básicamente marxista, con una visión fenomenólogica-existencialista del sujeto. Su contribución clave es la descentralización y la reconsideración de la idea de trabajo, como mediación central en la interacción social y el metabolismo naturaleza-sociedad. No ha sido permeable al giro lingüístico y la crisis del sujeto en la filosofía contemporánea, pero ha abierto una perspectiva postproductivista en el análisis contemporáneo vinculando el postmarxismo con el ecologismo político en un mismo marco teórico coherente.
The social shift suffered last decades poses new challenges to Political Philosophy. André Gorz can be faced as a modern critic who points out productivism as one of the funding myths of modernity. He critically reviews the socialist tradition showing the need to reconsider the utopia and actualise emancipator ideologies. Related to epistemology and ontology, Gorz assumes a combination of social theory based on the idea of praxis (mainly Marxian) with a phenomenological-existentialist view of the subject. The key contribution in his work is the de-centralisation and re-consideration of the idea of labour, as core mediation in social interaction and nature-society metabolism. He is far to be receptive to the debate open by linguistic turn and the crisis of subject in contemporary philosophy, but he has opened a postproductivist outlook of industrial society that link postmarxism and political ecology into a coherent theoretical framework.

Capitalism has gone astray. Today we face ecological exhaustion, persistent inequality, financialization, stress on communities, short-termism, and new power concentrations. An avalanche of new economic thinking and a reorientation of European values show the way toward a different economy. A new perspective is necessary if we want to implement the Sustainable Development Goals and if we consider our planet as ‘Our Common Home,’ for present and future generations. This book argues that European economies should be the initiators of a global transition toward a sustainable and inclusive world economy. Together, amid severe geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges, they need to develop their own perspective on what a good economy really is, in distinction to Chinese state capitalism and American big business capitalism. Crucially, this requires the rediscovery of key European values, a coherent view on responsible capitalism, and a new self-awareness as a global player for the Common Good in today’s and tomorrow’s world.

What configuration of institutions and policies is most conducive to human flourishing? The historical and comparative evidence suggests that the answer is social democratic capitalism — a democratic political system, a capitalist economy, good elementary and secondary schooling, a big welfare state, pro-employment public services, and moderate regulation of product and labor markets. Lane Kenworthy shows that this system improves living standards for the least well-off, enhances economic security, and boosts equality of opportunity. And it does so without sacrificing other things we want in a good society, from liberty to economic growth to health and happiness. Its chief practitioners have been the Nordic nations. The Nordics have gone farther than other rich democratic countries in coupling a big welfare state with public services that promote high employment and modest product- and labor-market regulations. Many believe this system isn’t transferable beyond Scandinavia, but Kenworthy shows that social democratic capitalism and its successes can be replicated in other affluent nations, including the United States. Today, the U.S. lags behind other countries in economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity. If the U.S. expanded existing social programs and added some additional ones, many Americans would have better lives. Kenworthy argues that, despite formidable political obstacles, the U.S. is likely to move toward social democratic capitalism in coming decades. As a country gets richer, he explains, it becomes more willing to spend more in order to safeguard against risk and enhance fairness. He lays out a detailed policy agenda that could alleviate many of America’s problems.

The article reconstructs André Gorz's intellectual itinerary, with a focus on his critique of subject’s alienation due to the functioning modes of capitalist economy. From this point of view, attention is payed to Gorz's insistence on the modifications of worker’s structures and on the processes that further enhance his or her cognitive and "immaterial" aspects. The alienation of nowadays subjectivity is linked to these very aspects. However, it is precisely in the transformations of the variegated figure of work/worker that it is possible to grasp the inescapable resources of meaning for thinking and design processes to escape from capitalism.

AbstractTo overcome capitalism, the strategies of reform and revolution continue to play a prominent role. Historically, both strategies have led to state-dominated societies with a top-down structure of domination. This is no coincidence, as both strategies are fundamentally state-oriented and aim at gaining state power by “climbing the mountain” or “jumping over the gorge” and a subsequent reorganisation of society by the state. However, both strategies provide valuable insights into overcoming capitalism, with reformism strengthening the process element and revolution heralding the necessary break. Strengths and weaknesses of both strategies are discussed and variants critical of the state are evaluated. In the end, it is not the name that matters, but combining reformist and revolutionary insights with the development of a societal alternative as part of the struggle to overcome capitalism.

AbstractAt the time of the classical sociologists, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the most visible contradiction of society was that between labour and capital. To early anthropologists, a few decades later, the main contradiction was the clash of cultures resulting from colonialism and unequal power, where non-state, non-modern cultures seemed doomed to vanish. To us, the most poignant and urgent contradiction of global modernity is climate change in all its ramifications, from calls for climate justice to critiques of the growth economy. The loss of cultural diversity and oppression under capitalism have not gone away, but a new and fresh layer has been added, and this is what this conversation is about.

AbstractMost of Eriksen’s research over the years has somehow or other dealt with the local implications of globalization. He has looked at ethnic dynamics, the challenges of forging national identities, creolization and cosmopolitanism, the legacies of plantation societies and, more recently, climate change in the era of ‘accelerated acceleration’. Here we want to talk not just about cultural diversity and not just look at biological diversity, but both, because he believes that there are some important pattern resemblances between biological and cultural diversity. And many of the same forces militate against that and threaten to create a flattened world with less diversity, less difference. And, obviously, there is a concern for the future. We need to have an open ended future with different options, maximum flexibility and the current situation with more homogenization. We live in a time when there are important events taking place, too, from climate change to environmental destruction, and we need to do something about that. In order to show options and possibilities for the future, we have to focus on diversity because complex problems need diverse answers.Martina: I would like to start with a passion of mine to get into one of your main research themes: diversity. I’m a Marvel fan and, what is emerging, is a reduction of what Marvel has always been about: diversity in comics. There seems to be a standardization that reduces the specificity of each superhero and so it seems that everyone is the same in a kind of indifference of difference. So in this hyper-diversity, I think there is also a reduction of diversity. Do you see something similar in your studies as well?Thomas: It’s a great example, and it could be useful to look briefly at the history of thought about diversity and the way in which it’s suddenly come onto the agenda in a huge way. If you take a look at the number of journal articles about diversity and related concepts, the result is stunning. Before 1990, the concept was not much used. In the last 30 years or so, it’s positively exploded. You now find massive research on biodiversity, cultural diversity, agro-biodiversity, biocultural diversity, indigenous diversity and so on. You’ll also notice that the growth curve has this ‘overheating shape’ indicating exponential growth in the use of the terms. And why is this? Well, I think this has something to do with what Hegel described when he said that ‘the owl of Minerva flies at dusk,’ which is to say that it is only when a phenomenon is being threatened or even gone that it catches widespread attention. Regarding diversity, we may be witnessing this mechanism. The extreme interest in diversity talk since around 1990 is largely a result of its loss which became increasingly noticeable since the beginning of the overheating years in the early 1990s. So many things happened at the same time, more or less. I was just reminded yesterday of the fact that Nelson Mandela was released almost exactly a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There were many major events taking place, seemingly independently of each other, in different parts of the world. This has something to do with what you’re talking about, because yes, I think you’re right, there has been a reduction of many kinds of diversity.So when we speak of superdiversity, which we do sometimes in migration studies (Vertovec, 2023), we’re really mainly talking about people who are diverse in the same ways, or rather people who are diverse in compatible ways. They all fit into the template of modernity. So the big paradox here of identity politics is that it expresses similarity more than difference. It’s not really about cultural difference because they rely on a shared language for talking about cultural difference. So in other words, in order to show how different you are from everybody else, you first have to become quite similar. Otherwise, there is a real risk that we’d end up like Ludwig Wittgenstein’s lion. In Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1983), he remarks that if a lion could talk, we wouldn’t understand what it was saying. Lévi-Strauss actually says something similar in Tristes Tropiques (Lévi-Strauss, 1976) where he describes meeting an Amazonian people, I think it was the Nambikwara, who are so close that he could touch them, and yet it is as though there were a glass wall between them. That’s real diversity. It’s different in a way that makes translation difficult. And it’s another world. It’s a different ontology.These days, I’m reading a book by Leslie Bank and Nellie Sharpley about the Coronavirus pandemic in South Africa (Bank & Sharpley, 2022), and there are rural communities in the Eastern Cape which don’t trust biomedicine, so many refuse vaccinations. They resist it. They don’t trust it. Perhaps they trust traditional remedies slightly more. This was and is the situation with HIV-AIDS as well. This is a kind of diversity which is understandable and translateable, yet fundamental. You know, there are really different ways in which we see the Cosmos and the universe. So if you take the Marvel films, they’ve really sort of renovated and renewed the superhero phenomenon, which was almost dead when they began to revive it. As a kid around 1970, I was an avid reader of Superman and Batman. I also read a lot of Donald Duck and incidentally, a passion for i paperi and the Donald/Paperino universe is one curious commonality between Italy and Norway. Anyway, with the superheroes, everybody was very white. They represented a the white, conservative version of America. In the renewed Marvel universe, there are lots of literally very strong women, who are independent agents and not just pretty appendages to the men as they had often been in the past. You also had people with different cultural and racial identities. The Black Panther of Wakanda and all the mythology which went with it are very popular in many African countries. It’s huge in Nigeria, for example, and seems to add to the existing diversity. But then again, as we were saying and as you observed, these characters are diverse in comparable within a uniform framework, a pretty rigid cultural grammar which presupposes individualism: there are no very deep cultural differences in the way they see the world. So that’s the new kind of diversity, which really consists more of talking about diversity than being diverse. I should add that the superdiversity perspective is very useful, and I have often drawn on it myself in research on cultural complexity. But it remains framed within the language of modernity.Martina: What you just said makes me think of contradictory dimensions that are, however, held together by the same gaze. How is it that your approach helps hold together processes that nevertheless tell us the same thing about the concept of diversity?Thomas: When we talk about diversity, it may be fruitful to look at it from a different angle. We could look at traditional knowledge and bodily skills among indigenous peoples, for example, and ideas about nature and the afterlife. Typically, some would immediately object that this is wrong and we are right and they should learn science and should go to school, period. But that’s not the point when we approach them as scholars, because then we try to understand their worlds from within and you realize that this world is experienced and perceived in ways which are quite different from ours. One of the big debates in anthropology for a number of years now has concerned the relationship between culture and nature after Lévi-Strauss, the greatest anthropological theorist of the last century. His view was that all cultures have a clear distinction between culture and nature, which is allegedly a universal way of creating order. This view has been challenged by people who have done serious ethnographic work on the issue, from my Oslo colleague Signe Howell’s work in Malaysia to studies in Melanesia, but perhaps mainly in the Amazon, where anthropologists argue that there are many ways of conceptualising the relationship between humans and everything else. Many of these world-views are quite ecological in character. They see us as participants in the same universe as other animals, plants and even rocks and rivers, and might point out that ‘the land does not belong to us – we belong to the land’. That makes for a very different relationship to nature than the predatory, exploitative form typical of capitalist modernity. In other words, in these cultural worlds, there is no clear boundary between us humans and non-humans. If you go in that direction, you will discover that in fact, cultural diversity is about much more than giving rights to minorities and celebrating National Day in different ethnic costumes, or even establishing religious tolerance. That way of talking about diversity is useful, but it should not detract attention from deeper and older forms of diversity.

Although Dawn of the Dead polarized critics and shocked audiences, the biggest challenge it posed was to the film industry’s regulatory bodies, as this chapter discusses. Dawn of the Dead’s financial success as an unrated film undermined the MPAA rating system, putting pressure on the MPAA to make changes to the system, which eventually resulted in the replacement of the “X”-rating with the “NC-17”. In Britain – according to then BBFC president James Ferman – Dawn of the Dead was considered a threat in terms of confronting the BBFC with “violence never before passed by the Board.” In Ontario, Canada it suffered severe cuts; and in Australia it was initially banned. Part of the threat Dawn of the Dead posed to these regulatory bodies arose because of its status as an independent film. The chapter argues that studio films, such as Friday the 13^th (1979) were felt by the regulators to be mitigated by their essentially conservative moral messages; Romero’s satire of consumer-capitalism was, by contrast, ideologically troubling to censors.