Coming soon to this journal
Empire of the living dead
Author:
William Bogard a
(Show Biography)
| Affiliation: | a Department of Sociology, Whitman College, WA, USA |
DOI:
10.1080/13576270801954377
Publication Frequency:
4 issues per year
Subjects:
Counseling;
Death;
Death & Dying;
Death Studies;
Gerontology/Ageing;
Grief & Trauma Counseling - Adult;
Grief & Trauma Counseling - Children & Adolescents;
Health & Medical Anthropology;
Medical Sociology;
Palliative Care Nursing;
Pastoral Counseling;
Social Work with the Elderly;
Sociology of Religion;
Specialist Care;
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Abstract
The corpse is no longer a dominant organizing figure of power and knowledge in postmodern network society. Limited by its own corporeality and tied to modern notions of the individual, its utility in controlling life has been superseded by technologies that control birth. This essay draws a line from Foucault's analysis of the dead body as an object of biopower to Baudrillard's and Deleuze's vision of control societies, in which the body disappears and biopower becomes a function of information and genetic modification. It uses the popular film image of the “living dead” to trace this evolution of biopower from the dissection of bodies at the end of life to the pre-programming and simulation of life at its inception: an evolution from the corpse to the clone, from the individuated dead body to the hybrid, dividualized body.
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| Keywords: the corpse; biopower; simulation; control societies; the body; cinema and society |
| view references (37) |

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