There was a very important phase-shift/mutation of the zombie in the late 80’s/early 90’s that coincided with the advent of the first zombie computer games. This was also the time that Haiti became implicated in stories about the origin and diffusion of HIV/AIDS (referred to by some as ‘The Zombie Curse’). Post 90’s the zombie becomes a viral-replicant-type entity, something ‘undead’ or ‘death-like’ in our DNA that correlated with ‘a-life’, something that proliferates through blood and machines. (And as you know this formulation fits very well with the Freudian death-drive thesis). It’s diffusion through gaming platforms from then on certainly changes the zombie’s popularly perceived ontology and it has very much shorn it of many of those earlier associations. And so I agree that current zombie lore isn’t necessarily plugging into these associated histories (adding the caveat that an essential function of the contemporary zombie-meme may be to neutralize or eradicate historical consciousness).

One could argue, given its historical origins, that necropolitics and biopower are in the zombie’s very DNA.
And, interestingly, if we switch the convergent virus/DNA/immortal replicator rails in the 90’s and track back through the current consensus about the origin of AIDS/HIV we end up back in the biopolitical quagmire of the Congo (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5450391). I know, it’s a stretch, and I’m seriously unsure where all this ends up. But it puts an interesting spin on games like this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAohn_n0hyg.

(Following this thread, Episode 3 of Adam Curtis’s ‘All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace’ – ‘The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey’ – is very interesting in terms of the relation between computer games, AIDS, Africa and ‘a-life’ zombies. To summarize it tells the story of the evolutionary biologist William Hamilton who thought that HIV was caused by polio vaccines, prepared in chimpanzee tissue cultures and administered to Africans between 1957 and 1960. He travelled to the Congo in 2000 in an attempt to prove his theory. Curtis draws interesting analogies between the minerals that militias in the Congo were waging war to control at that time (principally coltan, an essential element in the manufacture of digital devices like PlayStation 2 for which ‘Resident Evil’ and ‘Silent Hill’, two of the first zombie-kill games, were made) and the “selfish gene” theories of Dawkins. He also shows how in the 1930‘s allogenic European myths about the racial superiority of Tutsi over Hutu peoples, supplemented by eugenic pseudo-science (Curtis) and imperial bio-politics (me), led to inter-tribal genocide after the withdrawal of Belgian rule from Rwanda in 1960. In 1967 a war broke out in the Congo between white mercenaries, supported by the major mining conglomerates, and President Mobuto’s Congolese army. (There’s a great Dian Fossey part of the story too, but I’ll leave that for your viewing pleasure).

But, you’re right, this is a very different take on the necropolitics of zombies than the reality/pleasure experienced in their virtual obliteration.

Fan of your work. Missed your talk at GS, but a friend got me the recording. Could you let me know where I could find the Michel Leris review on Magic Island you quoted?

Cheers.

Kornrich, Brines and Leupp (2012) Egalitarianism, Housework and Sexual Frequency in Marriage (ungated PDF and money shot chart).

Apparently, (male-female) couples in “peer marriages”, where the man picks up a larger share of “core housework”, have less sex. Linearly so along the distribution, and in contradistinction with “non-core housework”, which does increase sex frequency.

This is Darwin talking. Not sure what he’s saying, but this is coming from the voice of Darwin.

The key weakness in this study is that it uses a relatively old (mid-90s) dataset. But all the relevant variables are statistically significant, the whole thing is very sound. Check it out. It’s of no use to me, but…