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Historical Materialism #30
Piyasanın Ucubeleri: Zombiler, Vampirler ve Küresel Kapitalizm
David McNally bu ilginç çalışmasında ucubeliğin arkeolojisini yapıyor. Brezilya'daki halk hikâyelerinden İngiltere'deki ortak alanların çitlenmesine kadar bütün dünyada gözlemlenen ortak bir fenomenin izini politikadan iktisada, folklorden edebiyata kadar pek çok alanda sürüyor. İnsanlık tarihinin "ucubelik"le olan macerasının, "ucube bedenler"e duyulan nefret ve tiksinmenin yalnızca dışlamaya değil, aynı zamanda sermayenin doğasına dair bir anlatı olduğunu gözler önüne seriyor. Bunun için bir yandan Rembrandt o meşhur tablosunun altında burjuvazi ile proletarya arasındaki ilişkinin bir alegorisinin yattığını, öte yandan Shelley'nin ölümsüz anlatısının kendi çağını yansıtmanın çok ötesinde politik bir imaya sahip olduğunu gösteriyor. Yolu Shakespeare'in eserlerine de düşen McNally, Marx'ın söz dağarcığındaki ucubeleri de satır satır ele alıyor. Toplumsal bilinçdışını da kapsayan bu arkeolojik kazı, yalnızca kültürel simgelerin peşine düşmüyor; aynı zamanda Marksist değer teorisini temele alarak 2007 krizini ve bu krizden sonra piyasanın aldığı şekli de detaylarıyla teşrih ediyor. Elinizdeki kitap, on altıncı yüzyıl İngilteresi'nde kamusal infaz sahnelerinin sonunda ölüyü cerrahların keyfine terk etmemek için uğraşanların direnişinin, yirmi birinci yüzyılda cenazesini almak için sesini yükseltenlerinkiyle aynı geleneğe ait olduğunu güçlü bir kuramsal donanım ve edebi bir dille gözler önüne seriyor.
395 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
15 people are currently reading
1165 people want to read
About the author
David McNally
9 books23 followersDavid McNally is the Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston and director of the Center for the Study of Capitalism. McNally is the author of seven books and has won a number of awards, including the Paul Sweezy Award from the American Sociological Associaton for his book Global Slump and the Deutscher Memorial Award for Monsters of the Market.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 22, 2016
so basically vampires are capitalists, the undead are workers, stripped of their individuality etc by capitalism and becoming pure labour power. stories of monsters and magic help defetishise capitalism by exposing the unnaturalness of it. talk of monsters has been used by the working class to show how unnatural it is and by the ruling class to mark off workers. stuff about dismemberment and anatomy dissections as ruling class punishment on the poor and also symbolic of what workers became (ie capital can control the worker, hands become alienated from worker and are controlled by capital/machinery). there's a lot to it it's interesting. like the idea of the monstrous common person in the 17thish century as something "without bounds", the horror of the commons as a concept as opposed to good capitalist enclosures represented in the fear of the monstrous boundless mob. the analysis of okri's writing at the end is very good. you could maybe write a critique of orientalism type stuff in this - he talks a lot about "africa" in general although he's v good with specifics about the places and circumstances the occult ideas he's talking about come from.
the book acts also as a kind of whirlwind tour of 3 periods of capitalism - "primitive accumulation" in europe, development of industrial capitalism, neocolonialism in africa (probably most notably original colonialism is missing from this - seems the monstrous being connected with race would be a meaningful study but i dunno). i liked the history stuff a lot it was good even when the symbolic analysis was a bit tenuous (eg the connection between paintings of corpse anatomy and ruling class understandings of their own power seemed v benefit of hindsight)
the history stuff is good to read but the cultural analysis type stuff can be really tough to get through because of the language. sometimes i had trouble making it through because the actual descriptions of the horrors of capitalism felt too raw while the development of the themes of monsters sometimes felt too remote from the realities of capitalism. which is unfair on the latter because he closely ties the symbolism to the horrors but the language used can be bleh. it's a good book and if the subject sounds interesting then i recommend it
there's a LOT of analysis and interesting stuff to pore over in this book but i'm not in a good place to summarise but if the concept's interesting and you're prepared to tackle some tough language sometimes then it's good
the book acts also as a kind of whirlwind tour of 3 periods of capitalism - "primitive accumulation" in europe, development of industrial capitalism, neocolonialism in africa (probably most notably original colonialism is missing from this - seems the monstrous being connected with race would be a meaningful study but i dunno). i liked the history stuff a lot it was good even when the symbolic analysis was a bit tenuous (eg the connection between paintings of corpse anatomy and ruling class understandings of their own power seemed v benefit of hindsight)
the history stuff is good to read but the cultural analysis type stuff can be really tough to get through because of the language. sometimes i had trouble making it through because the actual descriptions of the horrors of capitalism felt too raw while the development of the themes of monsters sometimes felt too remote from the realities of capitalism. which is unfair on the latter because he closely ties the symbolism to the horrors but the language used can be bleh. it's a good book and if the subject sounds interesting then i recommend it
there's a LOT of analysis and interesting stuff to pore over in this book but i'm not in a good place to summarise but if the concept's interesting and you're prepared to tackle some tough language sometimes then it's good
October 29, 2020
Frankenstein'dan Haiti'de zombi kavramının doğuşuna, Afrikanın zombi/vampir romanlarından, Marx'ın Kapital'ine çok ilginç bir bakış açısıyla yazılmış. Afrika Vampirleri bölümünde dikkatim biraz dağılmış olsa da, kolayca okudum.
İdil Çetin'in mükemmel çevirisinin de hakkını vermem lazım.
İdil Çetin'in mükemmel çevirisinin de hakkını vermem lazım.
May 1, 2015
This is the best, most evocative, most courageous and potent book I have read this year. I am pretty obsessed with books exploring the financial crisis. Why have 'we' accepted this zombie capitalism after the GFC? Why has this crazy 'business as usual' continued - even after the clear failure of neo-liberalism and finance capitalism in 2008?
David McNally answers my questions. He arches back to proto-industrial systems of inequality and reveals the metaphors and actualities of monsters, grave robbers and the cutting up of corpses. He shows the scale of vampiric imagery in Karl Marx's work and reveals why 'zombies' are most appropriate when considering the injustices and inequalities of derivatives trading (which is - in effect - betting on future invisibilities to leverage present invisibilities in a post-labour economy).
Everyone should read this book. Everyone. The irrationality of our current economy is explained. Time to look under the bed. The monster hiding there is just a scrawny, under-educated white guy in a bad suit.
David McNally answers my questions. He arches back to proto-industrial systems of inequality and reveals the metaphors and actualities of monsters, grave robbers and the cutting up of corpses. He shows the scale of vampiric imagery in Karl Marx's work and reveals why 'zombies' are most appropriate when considering the injustices and inequalities of derivatives trading (which is - in effect - betting on future invisibilities to leverage present invisibilities in a post-labour economy).
Everyone should read this book. Everyone. The irrationality of our current economy is explained. Time to look under the bed. The monster hiding there is just a scrawny, under-educated white guy in a bad suit.
December 27, 2021
I read this around Halloween this year. I had just finished selected chapters from Adrian Desmond’s Politics of Evolution for a Victorian Science class, and the chapters on Lamarckian anatomists illicitly acquiring bodies for scientific research was still fresh in my mind. One of the persisting images that has remained with me from McNally’s book is the imagery of carving up of land in processes of enclosure and the analogous anatomical sciences that were simultaneously flourishing:
“Throughout the centuries of enclosure, after all, land was persistently anatomised – mapped, measured, cut up, enclosed, reassembled.”
I was reminded of this excerpt from a pamphlet put out by the Red Nation:
"Indigenous peoples have long struggled against the abstraction and commodification of land into property. Communism means the resurgence of social relations premised on understanding land as a relative. There can be no ownership of our relative; our collective use is reciprocal with the land and its systems… Communism allows the land to be sacred. In our dreams, we see Mother Earth liberated, no longer scarred with the borders of enclosure and private property. We see humanity returning to a life based on kinship. "
Some of McNally’s commentary on Frankenstein was particularly interesting. The commodification of human body parts that Melinda Cooper touches upon in Life as Surplus was very relevant here, as both elaborate in very interesting ways on Marxist notions of alienation. The fusion of animal body parts into a resurrected body of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, which McNally explicitly connects to the global proletariat, is something I’ll have to return to this Easter. I’ve just been thinking how Prometheus, whom Shelley alludes to in her Jacobin novel’s title, was the god that created humans and also the god that gave to humans the insurrectionary gift of fire. That this monstrous body threatened revolution was very obvious from the sorts of books the monster read, including Goethe’s Werther and Volney’s Ruins of Empire, by which he absorbed through overhearing a young De Lacey reading the book to his lover Safie, an Arab feminist who brings to Shelley’s text interesting anticolonial questions. I had completely missed this while reading Frankenstein in high school, but McNally points out the monster remarks about Indigenous genocide:
“I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.”
There were some interesting sections in the book on Africa, but I think these were McNally’s weaker sections. The sections on Mary Shelley and Marx likely the most rewarding for me. A really interesting read overall. Also was not aware McNally was the chair of political science at York University for many years until finishing this book.
“Throughout the centuries of enclosure, after all, land was persistently anatomised – mapped, measured, cut up, enclosed, reassembled.”
I was reminded of this excerpt from a pamphlet put out by the Red Nation:
"Indigenous peoples have long struggled against the abstraction and commodification of land into property. Communism means the resurgence of social relations premised on understanding land as a relative. There can be no ownership of our relative; our collective use is reciprocal with the land and its systems… Communism allows the land to be sacred. In our dreams, we see Mother Earth liberated, no longer scarred with the borders of enclosure and private property. We see humanity returning to a life based on kinship. "
Some of McNally’s commentary on Frankenstein was particularly interesting. The commodification of human body parts that Melinda Cooper touches upon in Life as Surplus was very relevant here, as both elaborate in very interesting ways on Marxist notions of alienation. The fusion of animal body parts into a resurrected body of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, which McNally explicitly connects to the global proletariat, is something I’ll have to return to this Easter. I’ve just been thinking how Prometheus, whom Shelley alludes to in her Jacobin novel’s title, was the god that created humans and also the god that gave to humans the insurrectionary gift of fire. That this monstrous body threatened revolution was very obvious from the sorts of books the monster read, including Goethe’s Werther and Volney’s Ruins of Empire, by which he absorbed through overhearing a young De Lacey reading the book to his lover Safie, an Arab feminist who brings to Shelley’s text interesting anticolonial questions. I had completely missed this while reading Frankenstein in high school, but McNally points out the monster remarks about Indigenous genocide:
“I heard of the discovery of the American hemisphere and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its original inhabitants.”
There were some interesting sections in the book on Africa, but I think these were McNally’s weaker sections. The sections on Mary Shelley and Marx likely the most rewarding for me. A really interesting read overall. Also was not aware McNally was the chair of political science at York University for many years until finishing this book.
November 3, 2012
my review here: http://souciant.com/2012/10/monsters-...
January 27, 2021
Parts of this book made me say oh my god aloud, it highlights moments of horror as result of capitalism and can be difficult to process at times.
Full of history and references, I struggled in parts where it discussed literature that I wasn’t familiar so will be worth a revisit in the future.
I’m happily falling into a gothic marxism hole here
Full of history and references, I struggled in parts where it discussed literature that I wasn’t familiar so will be worth a revisit in the future.
I’m happily falling into a gothic marxism hole here
August 17, 2023
Hype products exist, it turns out. Doesn't matter why. Maybe there are bat mitzvahs for girls that need friends. Idk, whatever, not super important. Some kind of market in these products exists, and it's pretty dark. I happen to know about it, for reasons that aren't important right now. Yeah, it's pretty gross, but there's some hope. Why? Honestly, it has nothing to do with some arbitrary control parameter Delta, in script DTop, say. Honestly, it has nothing to do with some arbitrary Buddhist superstition. Perhaps there is some abusive family. Doesn't matter why. Then, we distinguish between bonobos and chimps. Perhaps we say that chimps aren't free, and live in prisons of their own construction, perhaps some kind of institution. Perhaps the nuclear family is a chimp spandrel. Turns out, there is an alternative. Perhaps there is more than one. Well, in any case, maybe it's not important. Room for doubt. Just some kind of buzz, probably.
What is this book about? Well, it's about political economy. The political economy of horror. Why do we care? There are a lot of people in the world that are treated badly by mainstream society. Queers, Jews, the disabled, foreigners, and anyone that doesn't fit the standards of some arbitrary beauty industry. Basically, the bullied. Those of us that are hurt by chimps, by bullying algebra. Just kidding. Anyway, this book tells their stories.
What is this book about? Well, it's about political economy. The political economy of horror. Why do we care? There are a lot of people in the world that are treated badly by mainstream society. Queers, Jews, the disabled, foreigners, and anyone that doesn't fit the standards of some arbitrary beauty industry. Basically, the bullied. Those of us that are hurt by chimps, by bullying algebra. Just kidding. Anyway, this book tells their stories.
October 29, 2015
This book was a great expose of the way capitalism works to alienate and appropriate us. It looked at various novels (such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein) then travelled via connections to Marx to Africa to look at the colonialism, needless poverty, laboring there and the way all this has given rise to stories about zombies and witches.
It was a tough read and written in very large, dense chunks but worth the effort. One of my favourite things was the way he kept nodding to feminism, critiquing every single instance of misogyny in his sources even if otherwise agreeing with the source. For a work that was not predominantly feminist that pro-feminist commitment was impressive!
McNally has clearly done a phenomenal amount of reading, thinking and research around these issues and adds something worthwhile to the conversation about the economic and environmental future of our globe. The picture painted is bleak, but there is an acknowledgement in it of agency and possibility within the oppressed. The ending strikes a note of hope and directs us to stories and thence back into ourselves.
It was a tough read and written in very large, dense chunks but worth the effort. One of my favourite things was the way he kept nodding to feminism, critiquing every single instance of misogyny in his sources even if otherwise agreeing with the source. For a work that was not predominantly feminist that pro-feminist commitment was impressive!
McNally has clearly done a phenomenal amount of reading, thinking and research around these issues and adds something worthwhile to the conversation about the economic and environmental future of our globe. The picture painted is bleak, but there is an acknowledgement in it of agency and possibility within the oppressed. The ending strikes a note of hope and directs us to stories and thence back into ourselves.
December 12, 2019
Although occasionally a bit repetitive, this book provides a brilliant interpretation of our modern, global obsession with monsters in terms of Marx's theories of commodity fetishism and the exploitation of labor. McNally's central insight is that horror reflects the capitalist process of commodification, with its emphasis on repetition, reversals in agency (objects that should have no agency being bestowed agency while those that should have it are denied agency),the insistence on homogeneity and interchangeability, and the separation of the parts from the whole. To illustrate this point, he looks at such diverse topics as body snatching in eighteenth-century England, contemporary zombie stories in Western Africa and Enron's "occult economy." Highly recommended for both those interested in the cultural world of capitalism and in understanding the prevalence of horror. If you're someone like me, who is fascinated by both, this is the book you've dreamed of.
April 27, 2021
𝘐𝘧 𝘷𝘢𝘮𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘯 𝘶𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘥𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴, 𝘻𝘰𝘮𝘣𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘩𝘢𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧-𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘨𝘦, 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘺 𝘣𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴, 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘴.
——
This book analyses capitalism and monstrosity, highlighting the monstrous nature at the heart of capitalism and the way our stories of monsters reflects this. He does this by examining Frankenstein and the crimes of the anatomy schools in the 18th and 19th century, the literary evocations of the monstrous in Marx’s Capital and the ways it manifests in modern economics, and finally in the folklore of Sub Saharan Africa communities and the novels of Ben Okri. This book was brilliant. I was highlighting and annotating all over it. It was a fantastically interesting read and I highly recommend it.
——
This book analyses capitalism and monstrosity, highlighting the monstrous nature at the heart of capitalism and the way our stories of monsters reflects this. He does this by examining Frankenstein and the crimes of the anatomy schools in the 18th and 19th century, the literary evocations of the monstrous in Marx’s Capital and the ways it manifests in modern economics, and finally in the folklore of Sub Saharan Africa communities and the novels of Ben Okri. This book was brilliant. I was highlighting and annotating all over it. It was a fantastically interesting read and I highly recommend it.
August 22, 2012
"To grasp the invisible powers of capitalist exploitation and accumulation requires the night-vision made possible by a dialectical optics"
October 18, 2017
I learned about this book at the Midwest British Studies conference, and as soon as I realized that McNally's work here pertained to an ongoing project of mine related to a postcolonial reading of space in Clive Barker's Hellraiser, I ordered the book right away. Although Monsters of the Market does not touch Hellraiser or any of its contemporaries, McNally does engage with a wealth of Marxist analysis of zombies and vampires across numerous cultures, as well as Frankenstein's monster. The end result is a menagerie of history, political science, and pop culture that is both thought provoking at an academic level and genuinely fun to read.
September 11, 2021
A bit too academic for my tastes, but still a decent (and at times slogging) read. An intriguing mix of Marxist economic analysis, Literary Theory, horror, history and so much more. Definitely a recommended for radicals with an interest in horror/gothic works. Definitely piqued my interest to explore the topic further with all the references.
I might have to add Fanon, Brecht, Okri, Silko to my reading list. Maybe revisit Shelley's Frankenstein and check out Nollywood.
I might have to add Fanon, Brecht, Okri, Silko to my reading list. Maybe revisit Shelley's Frankenstein and check out Nollywood.
September 20, 2018
It is prudent and ethical to distinguish good monsters from bad. (p. 11) It's not just the big bank failures that are monstrous...it's the whole system in daily life. “…it is a paradox of our age that monsters are both everywhere and nowhere.” (p. 2)
December 2, 2019
A leftist interpretation of modern horror conventions. There's a lot to mine here and some great writing. I found myself getting lost in the book during the three times I picked it up and became immersed.
October 10, 2023
spooky season (capitalismo)
July 29, 2024
This book was fucking out of this world, mind boggling, fantastic
December 11, 2024
I've been eyeing this book for a while and it seemed perfect for Halloween! McNally explores the history of zombies, vampires, and other monsters, arguing that their origins are tied to socioeconomic and cultural changes experienced by the working class under capitalism.
The book begins in England where the enclosure of the commons had broken up traditional communities and thrown people into rapidly growing cities. Technological advancement and the empiricism of the Enlightenment created a culture fascinated with the human body--so much so that dissections became a popular form of public entertainment complete with musical score. But beneath the scientific veneer was a punitive core.
Laws were passed allowing "anatomists" to claim the bodies of criminals for these performances. The rising demand for bodies prompted a change to allow any unclaimed body in the poor houses to be taken. The working class came to resent the posthumous humiliation of the anatomist's blade and would fight to claim the bodies taken down from the gallows, to save them from further denigration.
This is the social cauldron in which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written. McNally explains that Frankenstein's Creature is a metaphor for the proletariat. Cobbled together from disparate pieces and thrown into the world with no possessions, he works at night for a family without their knowledge and teaches himself to read. His labor goes unseen and unappreciated, and eventually they reject him.
McNally continues to explore how the occult is used as a metaphor for capitalism. He lists countless examples of Marx referring to vampires and specters, dead labor controlling living labor, the sorcery of capital and the alchemy of money.
The origin of the zombie trope is fascinating. The idea originally came from Haiti, and focused on the zombie-laborer, a being without personality or language, reduced to its physical capacity to work. Stories of zombies and the occult are growing in popularity in Africa as capitalism takes hold. McNally analyzes recent works of fiction set in Africa and also urban legends about witches, head-hunters, and more.
Phenomenal book. Maybe my favorite so far this year.
The book begins in England where the enclosure of the commons had broken up traditional communities and thrown people into rapidly growing cities. Technological advancement and the empiricism of the Enlightenment created a culture fascinated with the human body--so much so that dissections became a popular form of public entertainment complete with musical score. But beneath the scientific veneer was a punitive core.
Laws were passed allowing "anatomists" to claim the bodies of criminals for these performances. The rising demand for bodies prompted a change to allow any unclaimed body in the poor houses to be taken. The working class came to resent the posthumous humiliation of the anatomist's blade and would fight to claim the bodies taken down from the gallows, to save them from further denigration.
This is the social cauldron in which Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was written. McNally explains that Frankenstein's Creature is a metaphor for the proletariat. Cobbled together from disparate pieces and thrown into the world with no possessions, he works at night for a family without their knowledge and teaches himself to read. His labor goes unseen and unappreciated, and eventually they reject him.
McNally continues to explore how the occult is used as a metaphor for capitalism. He lists countless examples of Marx referring to vampires and specters, dead labor controlling living labor, the sorcery of capital and the alchemy of money.
The origin of the zombie trope is fascinating. The idea originally came from Haiti, and focused on the zombie-laborer, a being without personality or language, reduced to its physical capacity to work. Stories of zombies and the occult are growing in popularity in Africa as capitalism takes hold. McNally analyzes recent works of fiction set in Africa and also urban legends about witches, head-hunters, and more.
Phenomenal book. Maybe my favorite so far this year.
September 20, 2017
My review is at press for science fiction scholarship journal _Extrapolation_. Suffice to say here that this is one of the most importatn and most creative scholarly books I've read, ranking with works like White and Stallybrass' _Politics and Poetics of Transgression_ as an essential explanation of everyday life under globalized late capitalism.
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September 20, 2013330.122 M1692 2012
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