Liberty and death: Pirates and zombies in Atlantic modernity

Alexandra Ganser; Gudrun Rath

doi:10.1080/14788810.2022.2161725

Liberty and death: Pirates and zombies in Atlantic modernity

Alexandra Ganser (Corresponding author), Gudrun Rath

Department of English and American Studies

Publications: Contribution to journal › Editorial › Peer Reviewed

Abstract

Questioning the opposition of freedom and enslavement and of life and death, zombies and pirates have negotiated (post)colonial relations for centuries. Zombies, bodies or spirits doomed to serve a master beyond death, thematize histories of enslavement which also include rebellion. Similarly, pirates were used to articulate colonial adventure and exploitation on the one hand and the idea of a resistant collective beyond established power relations on the other. Both have been cast as figures of exception who are discursively located beyond law and state while simultaneously playing a constitutive role for both; both figures are marked by ambivalent characterizations – hero and criminal, rebel and slave, perpetrator and victim. This opening essay introduces the conjunctures of these figures in the Atlantic realm with a focus on their cultural-historical functions for empire and nation building, for legal discourses and the history of ideas, as well as for contemporary cultural and artistic research.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	365-380
Number of pages	16
Journal	Atlantic Studies
Volume	20
Issue number	3
Early online date	1 May 2023
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2022.2161725
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 1 May 2023

Funding

This collection of essays has evolved out of the international interdisciplinary conference “Liberty and Death: Zombies and Pirates in Atlantic Modernity” (Vienna, 18–19 January 2018). The conference brought together two research projects funded by the national Austrian science foundation FWF: Alexandra Ganser’s Elise Richter project “Crisis and Legitimacy in American Narratives of Piracy, 1678–1861” (V-396-G23; 2014–2018) and Gudrun Rath’s Elise Richter project “Zombification” (V-393-G2; 2014–2022). We would like to thank the Austrian International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK, www.ifk.ac.at ) in Vienna, which hosted and supported our conference generously ever since we first came up with the idea. We are grateful to the IFK team, former director Helmut Lethen and current director Thomas Macho, Johanna Richter, Fiona Faßler, and Daniela Losenicki, as well as Eléonore Tarla, who assisted the organizational team in many ways. A special thank you goes to Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American Studies and Anthropology at Harvard, who acted as a general respondent during the conference. Last but not least, we would like to thank our anonymous peer reviewers for their commentaries and feedback as well as journal editors Dorothea Fischer-Hornung and Manuel Barcia Paz for their patience and professional guidance throughout the publication process. This collection of essays has evolved out of the international interdisciplinary conference “Liberty and Death: Zombies and Pirates in Atlantic Modernity” (Vienna, 18–19 January 2018). The conference brought together two research projects funded by the national Austrian science foundation FWF: Alexandra Ganser’s Elise Richter project “Crisis and Legitimacy in American Narratives of Piracy, 1678–1861” (V-396-G23; 2014–2018) and Gudrun Rath’s Elise Richter project “Zombification” (V-393-G2; 2014–2022). We would like to thank the Austrian International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK, www.ifk.ac.at) in Vienna, which hosted and supported our conference generously ever since we first came up with the idea. We are grateful to the IFK team, former director Helmut Lethen and current director Thomas Macho, Johanna Richter, Fiona Faßler, and Daniela Losenicki, as well as Eléonore Tarla, who assisted the organizational team in many ways. A special thank you goes to Jean Comaroff, Alfred North Whitehead Professor of African and African American Studies and Anthropology at Harvard, who acted as a general respondent during the conference. Last but not least, we would like to thank our anonymous peer reviewers for their commentaries and feedback as well as journal editors Dorothea Fischer-Hornung and Manuel Barcia Paz for their patience and professional guidance throughout the publication process.

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

602005 American studies
605004 Cultural studies
602042 Romance studies

Keywords

Atlantic modernity
Caribbean
enslavement
Pirates
state of exception (Agamben)
zombies

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1080/14788810.2022.2161725

Cite this

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title = "Liberty and death: Pirates and zombies in Atlantic modernity",

abstract = "Questioning the opposition of freedom and enslavement and of life and death, zombies and pirates have negotiated (post)colonial relations for centuries. Zombies, bodies or spirits doomed to serve a master beyond death, thematize histories of enslavement which also include rebellion. Similarly, pirates were used to articulate colonial adventure and exploitation on the one hand and the idea of a resistant collective beyond established power relations on the other. Both have been cast as figures of exception who are discursively located beyond law and state while simultaneously playing a constitutive role for both; both figures are marked by ambivalent characterizations – hero and criminal, rebel and slave, perpetrator and victim. This opening essay introduces the conjunctures of these figures in the Atlantic realm with a focus on their cultural-historical functions for empire and nation building, for legal discourses and the history of ideas, as well as for contemporary cultural and artistic research.",

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Liberty and death: Pirates and zombies in Atlantic modernity

Abstract

Funding

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

Keywords

UN SDGs

Access to Document

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