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The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.

NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."





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Thursday, May 18, 2017

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

One of the curious quirks of American culture is the popular fascination with zombies.  I get vampires -- that is all about menstruation.  But why zombies?  The latest manifestation of this obsession with the undead is the surfacing of Joe Lieberman as the leading candidate for the position of Director of the FBI.  Hasn't anyone ever driven a stake through his heart?

10 comments:

Chris said...

Zombies need physical brain damage to die, thus, even though JL has had a few steaks through his heart, he continues to live on!

Chris said...

stakes*

David Auerbach said...

only the good die young. (Ailes died too old and Kissinger will.) JL's obit will get a small grin from me, Ailes deserved a whole happy dance. For Kissinger I'll require the grave as my dance platform.

Danny said...

'I get vampires -- that is all about menstruation.'

I could offer that 'there are numerous metaphorical meanings and readings of this being', like through Marxist discourse or whatever, but I want to lose this debate -- you DO, get vampires!

Anonymous said...

C'mon, you're a Marxist! Vampires are about capital, which "lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks"; when Jonathan Harker stabs Dracula he bleeds "bank-notes and a stream of gold". (See also Franco Moretti's Dialectic of Fear.)

Jerry Brown said...

I'm not a huge fan of my former Senator Lieberman but I would not be unhappy with him being the Director of the FBI given that it is up to Trump to nominate or appoint someone. There are far worse people that might end up in that position.

F Lengyel said...

I had always thought that the image in commercial entertainment of hoards of zombies represented the working and middle classes (possibly commuting to and from their places of abysmal enslavement); also that this imagery is near the limit of what mass media might venture about class relations without offending capitalist relations of production.

Lannholm said...

Ran across an old text book today, Philosophy,A Modern Encounter, prompting me to look you up. Am I surprised you are blogging about driving a stake thru JL's heart? Not in the slightest. Thanks for the smile.

Lannholm said...

Ran across an old text book today, Philosophy,A Modern Encounter, prompting me to look you up. Am I surprised you are blogging about driving a stake thru JL's heart? Not in the slightest. Thanks for the smile.

Anonymous said...

Zombies... well Professor Wolff, the hard right has been co-opted by Marxists but Marxism by another means called "Accelerationism".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Land

Nick Land is one of the main proponents and it seems he wrote a book called
"The Thirst For Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism". The book has a better explanation with the public's thirst for destruction than any I could provide.

It's easier to imagine a zombie apocalypse than the future of capitalism, post-capitalism...