#truechains

The fundamental issue with neoliberal economic processes is that they are discursively framed in this upwardly mobile trajectory that is supposed to be attainable by everyone living in a liberalized market-economy and nationalized democracy. This frame does not acknowledge what the Camoroff’s describe as a world driven by “the force that determines definitions of value, the construction of identities, even the shape of the global ecumene.” This force is the abstracted market processes of the neoliberal world order. “Determining value” has been mapped on to the social processes of human beings, and in this ideological framework the former dividing lines that were narrated through racial and moral purity are now overarchingly defined using discourse redefined through neoliberal economics. In South Africa this contradiction found within the social conceptualization of the “strangeness of what’s become real (167)” is the fact that reality does not reflect the promise of the neoliberal model. The obsession over the living dead, zombies, is reflective of Taussig’s concept of the devil contract in that it describes the mystical conceptualization of economic circumstances produced by people whose historical identities included this kind of spirituality. This kind of spirituality is utilized by those from the global north and south and its reproduction manifests in different forms. For us it’s the mediated depictions of this post-apocalyptic rationalization process in the Walking Dead are indicative of a kind of Hobbesian view of the “state of nature” that Hobbes thought existed in a pre-colonial context. Imagining that a world full of zombies would lead to the deterioration of economic and social relationships, and ultimately pit humans against each other, is rooted in the fear that these supernatural/biological creatures compromise our ability to live our lives. South Africa’s version stems from a history of insecurity entrenched in the colonial and neocolonial processes of their national identities. I use identities, plural, to demonstrate the fact that homogeneity never existed the way we have legally & economically conceptualized our citizenship here. (I AM TURNING INTO A COMAROFF GUYS) But in the process of cultivating an identity for citizens of South Africa, post-apartheid economics created a defining process that employs the devalued reputation of menial & migrant labor in order to reduce certain demographics to this zombie form. From that, the urban legends of those who perform witchcraft, the women and men who take jobs away from the traditional economic actors that held up the elite, are demonized through this zombie or alien demarcation in order to rationalize the specific economic conditions in the South African context. Within demographics the anxiety over unemployment/social injustice/the degeneration reputation, despite the real cause of this insecurity, has resulted in intergroup violence that only confirms the fear of the protected group of capitalist elites. This is the point at which we can start applying the Comaroff work to the context of our own city. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about………….I refuse to ‘even’.) To conclude with a salient metaphor provided by this chapter: (pg 165 & 166)