Capitalism's Grotesque Life (WGF - Workshop Grant)

Summary

This resource is an application for a Workshop Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Anthropologists know that capital deals in death: it ends cultures, exterminates peoples, kills ecologies, destroys worlds. But what interest might we take in capital's grotesque form of life: in the vitality of those processes and practices that come alive through the exuberant organization of death, or in the bizarre liveliness and animation that capital elicits from the world it destroys? This workshop explores the zombie-like qualities of capitalism as it is so often declared to be dying - its ruinousness even as it never seems quite finished with the ruin it makes. We explore its puzzling aliveness - the way capitalism capitalizes on life while at the same time depriving life of life. At the same time, we ask how life presents itself in our capitalist contemporary - as zombie, as site for compulsive extraction and wealth generation, as alterlife, excess, or lively counter-politics. We ask what life one can be attached to in the face of capitalism's necrotic project?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• WGF - Support for Meetings   •
• Wenner-Gren Foundation

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Andrea Muehlebach

Notes

Rights & Attribution: This resource is an application from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and has been approved by the grantee solely for pedagogical purposes. Please do not cite, circulate, or duplicate any part of these documents without the express written consent of the author.

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