Abstracts
Abstract
This paper explores the relations between economics and semiotics, using as its main conceptual lever the figure of the zombie. John Quiggin, Paul Krugman and others criticise the persistence of ‘undead ideas’ in economics. The paper applies this perspective to urban semiosis, where undead monuments have become key sites for staged conflict across the world. Working from Doru Pop’s critique of ‘zombie semiotics’, the paper turns from fiction to the realities of the digital semiosphere and technosphere. Using Juri Lotman’s model, it shows how the climate and coronavirus crises are globally mediated but not self-regulated. It identifies reflexive autocommunication as the means for semiospheric response to planetary crises. Zombie economics and conflict media spread fear of automation and ‘useless’ populations, while techno-entrepreneurs plan to abandon the planet to the apocalypse. It is left to autocommunication among teenage activists to contest the real zombies.
Keywords:
- Zombies,
- Staged Conflict,
- Semiosphere,
- Technosphere,
- Autocommunication,
- Climate,
- Coronavirus Crisis
Résumé
Cet article explore les relations entre économie et sémiotique, en utilisant comme principal levier conceptuel la figure du zombie. John Quiggin, Paul Krugman et d’autres critiquent la persistance des «idées mortes-vivantes» en économie. L’article applique cette perspective à la sémiose urbaine, où les monuments de morts-vivants sont devenus des sites clés de conflits mis en scène à travers le monde. Partant de la critique de Doru Pop sur la « sémiotique zombie », l’article passe de la fiction aux réalités de la sémiosphère et de la technosphère numériques. En utilisant le modèle de Juri Lotman, il montre comment les crises du climat et des coronavirus sont médiatisées à l’échelle mondiale mais pas autorégulées. Il identifie l’autocommunication réflexive comme le moyen de réponse sémiosphérique aux crises planétaires. L’économie zombie et les médias de conflit répandent la peur de l’automatisation et des populations "inutiles", tandis que les techno-entrepreneurs prévoient d’abandonner la planète à l’apocalypse. Il est laissé à l’autocommunication entre militants adolescents de contester les vrais zombies.
Mots-clés :
- Zombies,
- conflit mis en scène,
- sémiosphère,
- technosphère,
- autocommunication,
- climat,
- crise du coronavirus
Appendices
Bibliography
- ABBAS, A. (2019) “Fundraising for F. A. Hayek Memorial near LSE Begins”. InThe Beaver, November 18 : https://beaveronline.co.uk/fundraising-for-f-a-hayek-memorial-near-lse-begins/.
- BAKARE, L. (2020) “Greta Thunberg : Don’t Dump Climate Crisis on Children to Fix.” The Guardian, 4 September. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/04/greta-thunberg-dont-dump-climate-crisis-on-children-to-fix-venice-film-festival.
- BUTLER, J. (2020) The Force of Nonviolence : An Ethico-Political Bind. London : Verso.
- CAHN, A. F. (2020) “A Human Wrote this Article. You Shouldn’t be Scared of GPT-3”. In The Guardian, 13 September. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/12/human-wrote-this-article-gpt-3.
- CAMPBELL, A. (2020) “‘We Are Witnessing a National Catastrophe’ – Yet Neither Politicians Nor the Media Seem Willing to See It”. Tortoise Media, May 6 : https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2020/05/06/alastair-campbell-we-are-witnessing-a-national-catastrophe/content.html.
- CRAWFORD, K. (2021) The Atlas of AI : The Real Worlds of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press.
- CRAWFORD, K. and PAGLEN, T. (2019) “Excavating AI : The Politics of Training Sets for Machine Learning”. Training Humans Exhibition, 19 September 19. https://excavating.ai.
- DERIAN, J. and GARA, P. (2020) “How Zombie Films Reveal the True Dangers of COVID-19”. Zócalo Public Square, 5 April. https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/04/05/zombies-prepare-covid-19-pandemic/ideas/essay/.
- DOPFER, K. and POTTS, J. (2008) The General Theory of Economic Evolution. London : Routledge.
- DUNBAR, R. (2004) “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective”. In Review of General Psychology (8)2 : 100-110: https://attach.matita.net/ziorufus/Dunbar%20gossip.pdf.
- DUNBAR, R. (1996) Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press.
- EPSTEIN, M. (2018) “Lotman, Yuri”. In Filosofia : An Encyclopedia of Russian Thought. http://filosofia.dickinson.edu/encyclopedia/lotman-yuri/.
- FLORIDA, R. (2019) The Rise of the Creative Class — Revisited : Revised and Expanded edition. New York : Basic Books.
- FRANK, S. and RISTIC, M. (2020) “Urban Fallism : Monuments, iconoclasm and activism”. In City : Analysis of Urban Change, Theory, Action (24) 3-4 : 552-64.
- GUARDIAN, THE (2020) “A Robot Wrote this Entire Article. Are You Scared Yet, Human?” 8 September. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/08/robot-wrote-this-article-gpt-3.
- HAMIL, P. (2004) Downtown : My Manhattan. New York : Little, Brown.
- HARARI, Y. N. (2017) “The Rise of the Useless Class”. In TED Talk (24 February) : https://ideas.ted.com/the-rise-of-the-useless-class/.
- HARTLEY, J. (2020) How We Use Stories and Why That Matters : Cultural Science in Action. New York : Bloomsbury.
- HARTLEY, J., IBRUS, I. and OJAMAA, M. (2021) On the Digital Semiosphere : Culture, Media and Science for the Anthropocene. New York : Bloomsbury.
- HARTLEY, J. and HERRMANN-PILLATH, C. (2020) “Towards a Semiotics of the Technosphere”. In Kodikas/Code, Ars Semeiotica (41)3-4 : 16-36.
- HARTLEY, J., POTTS, J., MONTGOMERY, M. RENNIE, E. and NEYLON, C. (2019) “Do We Need to Move from Communication Technology to User Community? A New Economic Model of the Journal as a Club”. Learned Publishing (32) : 27-35.
- HARTLEY, J. and POTTS, J. (2014) Cultural Science : A Natural History of Demes, Stories, Knowledge and Innovation. London : Bloomsbury.
- HAYEK, F. (1945) “The Use of Knowledge in Society”. In American Economic Review (35) : 519–30.
- HAYEK, F. (2001 [1944]) The Road to Serfdom. London : Routledge.
- HEERTJE, A. (1996) “Stolper on Schumpeter”. In Journal of Evolutionary Economics (6) : 339-45. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01202274.
- HERRMANN-PILLATH, C. (2018a) “Dilthey and Darwin Combined? 19th Century Geisteswissenschaft for 21st Century Cultural Science”. In Cultural Science Journal (10)1 : 42-53. http://doi.org/10.5334/csci.108.
- HERRMANN-PILLATH, C. (2018b) “The Case for a New Discipline : Technosphere Science”. In Ecological Economics (149) July : 212–25.
- HUME, N. and SMYTH, J. (2020) “Rio Tinto Faces Tough Task to Rebuild Reputation”. Financial Times, 12 September. https://www.ft.com/content/761b0c40-1d7d-4d1f-81d3-3c2dfb920557.
- HUTTER, M. (2018) “The Role of Newness in the Experience Economy”. In Innovation Society Today. W. Rammert, A. Windeler, H. Knoblauch & M. Hutter (Eds.), Wiesbaden : Springer VS : 149-64. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-19269-3_7.
- HUTTER, M. and FARÍAS, I. (2017) “Sourcing Newness : Ways of Inducing Indeterminacy”. In Journal of Cultural Economy (10)5 : 434-49. .
- IMF (International Monetary Fund) (2015) Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality : A Global Perspective. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf.
- JESSOP, B. (2010) “Cultural Political Economy and Critical Policy Studies”. In Critical Policy Studies (3)3-4 : 336-56. DOI: 10.1080/19460171003619741.
- KAUFFMAN, S. (1991) “Antichaos and Adaptation”. In Scientific American (265)2 : 78-85.
- KAUFFMAN, S. (1993) The Origins of Order : Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. New York : Oxford University Press.
- KEEN, S. (2004) Debunking Economics : The Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences. London : Zed Books.
- KRUGMAN, P. (2020) Arguing with Zombies : Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future. New York : Norton.
- KRYŻANOWSKA, N. (2016) “The Discourse of Counter-Monuments : Semiotics of Material Commemoration in Contemporary Urban Spaces”. In Social Semiotics 26(5) : 465-85. .
- KULL, K. and E. VELMEZOVA, E. (2014) “What is the Main Challenge for Contemporary Semiotics?” In Sign Systems Studies (42)4 : 530-48.
- LÉVI-STRAUSS, C. (1963) Structural Anthropology, vol. 1. New York : Basic Books.
- LOTMAN, J. (2009) Culture and Explosion. Berlin : Mouton de Gruyter.
- LOTMAN, Y. (1990) Universe of the Mind : A Semiotic Theory of Culture. London : Tauris; Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press.
- LUTZ, J. (2010) “Zombies of the World, Unite : Class Struggle and Alienation in Land of the Dead”. In The Philosophy of Horror. T. Fahy (Ed.), Lexington, KY : University Press of Kentucky, 121-36.
- MACAULAY, T. (2020) “The Guardian’s GPT-3-Generated Article is Everything Wrong with AI Media Hype”. In TNW [The Next Web]. https://thenextweb.com/neural/2020/09/08/the-guardians-gpt-3-generated-article-is-everything-wrong-with-ai-media-hype/.
- MACGRAW, D. and LYNCH, O. (2006) “One Species, One Planet : Environmental Justice and Sustainable Development”. In World Bank Legal Review : Law, Equity, and Development : 441-82.
- McGREEVY, N. (2020) “Why the First Monument of Real Women in Central Park Matters — and Why It’s Controversial”. In Smithsonian Magazine, 26 August : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/monument-controversy-women-pioneer-central-park-180975662/.
- McCRAW, T. (2010) Prophet of Innovation : Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press.
- MASCIOTRA, D. (2020) “Statues Versus Protesters : Trump and the GOP Favor the Dead over the Living”. In Salon, 11 July. https://www.salon.com/2020/07/11/statues-versus-protesters-trump-and-the-gop-favor-the-dead-over-the-living/.
- MASCIOTRA, D. (2019) “Anyone who Says, ‘It’s the Economy, Stupid’ is Being Stupid”. In Salon, 9 November. https://www.salon.com/2019/11/09/anyone-who-says-its-the-economy-stupid-is-being-stupid/.
- MAZZUCATO, M. (2018) The Value of Everything : Making and Taking in the Global Economy. London : Allen Lane.
- MOKE, B. (2012) “Hidden History of Washington Square Park in NYC”. Untapped New York. https://untappedcities.com/2012/03/16/hidden-history-of-washington-square-park/.
- NAIDU, S., D. RODRIK and G. ZUCMAN (2019) “Economics After Neoliberalism”. In Boston Review 15 February : http://bostonreview.net/forum/suresh-naidu-dani-rodrik-gabriel-zucman-economics-after-neoliberalism.
- NITV (2018) “Budget Cuts Millions from ABC to Pay for Captain Cook Statue at Botany Bay”. In National Indigenous Television News, 9 May. https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2018/05/09/budget-cuts-millions-abc-pay-captain-cook-statue-botany-bay.
- ORRELL, D. (2010) Economyths : Ten Ways Economics Gets It Wrong. Mississauga : Wiley.
- PERSKY, J. (1995) “The Ethology of Homo Economicus”. In The Journal of Economic Perspectives (9)2 : 221-31.
- PETRILLI, S., and PONZIO, A. (2007) “Semiotics Today. From Global Semiotics to Semioethics, a Dialogic Response”. Signs – International Journal of Semiotics (1) : 29-127. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2562/f059513ae0b67b716af9c56aa23e5d41510e.pdf.
- PIKETTY, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Paris: Éditions du Seuil; Cambridge MA : Harvard University Press.
- PONZIO, A. (2014) “The Semiotics of Karl Marx”. Chinese Semiotic Studies (10)2 : 195-214. doi: https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2014-0019.
- POP, D. (2018) The Age of Promiscuity : Narrative and Mythological Meme Mutations in Contemporary Cinema and Popular Culture. Lanham, MD : Lexington Books.
- POTTS, J., CUNNINGHAM, S. HARTLEY, J. and ORMEROD, P. (2008) “Social Network Markets : A New Definition of the Creative Industries”. In Journal of Cultural Economy (32) : 167-85.
- POTTS, J., HARTLEY, J. MONTGOMERY, L. NEYLON, C. and RENNIE, E. (2017) “A Journal Is a Club : A New Economic Model for Scholarly Publishing”. In Prometheus : Critical Studies in Innovation (35)1 : 75-92.
- QUEIROZ, R. (2018) “Individual Liberty and the Importance of the Concept of the People”. In Palgrave Communications (4)99. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0151-3.
- QUIGGIN, J. (2012) Zombie Economics : How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Princeton NJ : Princeton University Press.
- QUINN, M. and REID, J. (2020) “A Joint Statement from Marc Quinn and Jen Reid”. In Marc Quinn, 15 July. http://marcquinn.com/studio/news/a-joint-statement-from-marc-quinn-and-jen-reid.
- RAWORTH, K. (2018) Doughnut Economics : Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. London : Random House.
- RODRIK, D. (2017) “Rescuing Economics from Neoliberalism”. In Boston Review (6) November. http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality/dani-rodrik-rescuing-economics-neoliberalism.
- ROLAND, G. (2020) “Culture, Institutions, and Development”. In The Handbook of Economic Development and Institutions. F. Bourguignon, J-P. Platteau & J-M. Baland (Eds.) Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 414-48.
- SILBERMAN, S. (2019) “Greta Thunberg Became a Climate Activist Not in Spite of Her Autism, but Because of It”. In Vox, 24 September. https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/5/6/18531551/greta-thunberg-autism-aspergers.
- SNELLGROVE, C. and T. MOORE (2017) “The Untold Truth of Baby Groot”. In Looper, 16 May. https://www.looper.com/63592/untold-truth-baby-groot/.
- SOBANDE, F. (2020) “‘We’re All in this Together’ : Commodified Notions of Connection, Care and Community in Brand Responses to COVID-19”. In European Journal of Cultural Studies. .
- STOLPER, W. (1994) Joseph Alois Schumpeter : The Public Life of a Private Man. Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press.
- STOVER, J. (2017) “There Is No Case for the Humanities”. In American Affairs (1)4 : 210-224. Republished in The Chronicle (4 March 2018): https://www.chronicle.com/article/there-is-no-case-for-the-humanities.
- THUNBERG, G. (2019) No One is Too Small to Make a Difference. London : Penguin.
- TYNAN, D. (2016) “Rocket Men : Why Tech’s Biggest Billionaires Want Their Place in Space”. In The Guardian, 5 December. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/dec/05/tech-billionaires-space-exploration-musk-bezos-branson.