We’re All Infected: Legal Personhood, Bare Life and The Walking Dead

Travis, Mitchell

doi:10.1007/s11196-014-9396-3

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…This stigmatization furthers the out-group process providing little chance for reintegrating zombies, and often leading to their extermination. Travis (2014) suggests that the stigmatization of the zombie is a consequence of how they are defined. As his analysis of the legal situation of the infected demonstrates, an understanding of the social and existential definition of the zombie is negotiated using preexisting, and socially constructed frames.…”

Section: Zombie Selves and The Social Construction Of The Zombiementioning

confidence: 99%

Between the Living and Undead: How Zombie Cinema Reflects the Social Construction of Risk, the Anxious Self, and Disease Pandemic

Wonser

Boyns

2016

The Sociological Quarterly

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The zombie film has become an important component of contemporary popular culture. The sociological nature of the themes addressed by these films reflect prominent social concerns, and lend themselves to sociological analysis as texts themselves. This article examines the zombie film genre, its history, predominant themes, and its illustration of sociological dynamics related to identity, collective behavior, disease, contagion, and the privileges that come from social inequality. Particular attention is placed on what the zombie films, themselves, can tell us about society and how they illustrate sociological principles. First, we examine the origins and history of zombie cinema. Next, we move to a discussion of the central narrative devices around which zombie films are organized. In particular, we focus on two narratives in zombie films: those that emphasize zombie possession; and those that focus on the sociological risks of zombie pandemics. The discussion then moves to an analysis of zombies as selves, and how zombie films express cultural anxieties about selfhood, loss of autonomy, and threats of de‐individualization. We then explore the roles of power and privilege in the social epidemiology of zombification, paying particular attention to how those who succumb to zombiedom illustrate the sociological dynamics of health disparities in the real world. Finally, the sociology of infectious disease is used to address how zombiedom correlates with real disease outbreaks, what we know about the social aspects of infectious disease transmission, and the sociology of pandemics.

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Section: Zombie Selves and The Social Construction Of The Zombiementioning

confidence: 99%

Between the Living and Undead: How Zombie Cinema Reflects the Social Construction of Risk, the Anxious Self, and Disease Pandemic

Wonser

Boyns

2016

The Sociological Quarterly

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“…Instead, the legality disclosed by bumper stickers is of the 'popular jurisprudence' variety, a recognition that in a culture drenched in legal thinking reflection on the essential nature of law is not quarantined within the specialists discourses of jurisprudence and legal theory, but rather pervades and oozes through the narratives and nuances of that culture [58: 1-10]. Within law and humanities such an approach has rendered novels [57], films [80,111], television [101], comic books [38], music [91] and computer games [79] as reflections, indeed, critiques of law [83: 495]. In moving the object of analysis from the produced narrational text (novel, film, television, etc.)…”

Section: Bumper Stickers On the Gold Coast Australia 2014mentioning

confidence: 99%

F#ck Your Family!: The Visual Jurisprudence of Automobility

Doyle

Tranter

2016

Int J Semiot Law

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This paper considers the popular visual jurisprudence of bumper stickers. Drawing upon a sample sticker/driver/vehicle assemblages observed at the Gold Coast, Australia in 2014, we argue that the meanings and messages projected by the assemblages have a significant legal dimension. The argument is located at the intersection of past research into bumper stickers, increased scholarly interest in the relation of law to automobility and especially recent considerations of the popular visual jurisprudence of the motor vehicle, its cultures and semiotics. In particular we argue that the sticker/driver/vehicle assemblage represents an engagement with law and legality. We suggest this goes beyond immediate denotations of brands with intellectual property or flags and the sovereign nation state to more essential engagement with consumer capitalisms law of the image, the friend/enemy distinction, the ouroboros of rights and the essential legality of living in a polis.

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“…As a form of 'pop law', the 'rethinking of the culture of law and the law of culture' allows for a new accessibility in the way that scholars critique justice and legal norms [45: 2]. Following MacNeil, Robbie Skyes has identified in the music and performances of the 1990s Britpop band Oasis the last gasps of Hartian positivism [86], while Tim Peters has found a jurisprudential theology within Batman Begins [66], and Mitchell Travis has explored zombies as embodiments of bare life [98].…”

Section: Cultural Legal Studies and Video Gamesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Code, Nintendo’s Super Mario and Digital Legality

Pearson

Tranter

2015

Int J Semiot Law

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The rise of technology in controlling and performing legal processes has created a new digital legality, signalling a transformation of law from an analog paper-based interpretative activity to an autonomous system governed by the rigidity and speed of code. This emerging digital legality converts life and living to data to be processed and catalogued. This process is exemplified and normalised within video games making them import cultural artefacts through which to identify the features and anxieties of digital legality. While video games have so far gone unrepresented in cultural legal theory, this article uses the iconic video game franchise of Super Mario to unlock the emerging features and anxieties of digital legality as involving rigidity, speed and the normalisation of self as data.

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We’re All Infected: Legal Personhood, Bare Life and The Walking Dead

Cited by 11 publications

References 17 publications

Between the Living and Undead: How Zombie Cinema Reflects the Social Construction of Risk, the Anxious Self, and Disease Pandemic

Between the Living and Undead: How Zombie Cinema Reflects the Social Construction of Risk, the Anxious Self, and Disease Pandemic

F#ck Your Family!: The Visual Jurisprudence of Automobility

Code, Nintendo’s Super Mario and Digital Legality

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