The Walking Dead Problem

The Walking Dead Problem

Gerardo Gómez Puerto

The Walking Dead Problem: An Anthropological Approach Few would argue that the most terrible problem we have being facing during the last years is what has been called, on a biased basis, the Walkers Plague. Yet, no end to this conflict seem to be foreseen on a near future. As our people dies and impoverish in an useless guerrilla war, those of us who still are able to turn to books under the falling of a civilization wonder: are we doing anything wrong? Could the mountain of knowledge accumulated by human kind hide a solution to our current situation? As the present paper will discuss, the answer to both questions could be 'yes', and the key would lay on the field of Cultural Anthropology. Readers may amaze of how the feeble attempts of studying the walkers issue resemble those of which Wolf gave account of his classical work The New Laborers. Effectively, as happened centuries ago with the appearance of the working classes, our intellectuals are more concerned with solving what is perceived as a threat and a problem than with understanding the situation itself. With the first appearance and attacks of walkers1 decades ago, a wave of fear and populism spread all over the world. “Common sense” theoreticians, politicians and army men, relying in a schematic version of Sherif's Realistic Group Conflict Theory, reduced the problem to its material, infrastructural dimension, disencouraging any attempt to study the matter on a structural or symbolic basis. Now well, it would be ridiculous to deny the terrible clash of interests that lays at the core of the war that confronts walkers and the rest of the human world. Certainly, is a matter of production and reproduction: for feeding and propagating their species, walkers require warm human flesh. But we shouldn't be as blind as to deny that our own interests on the fight go farther than mere survival. This may have been the matter at the rising of the walkers, but now that humans have gathered in almost unassailable citadels while walkers remain on ghost towns, the clash should be minimal, if just we didn't persist on sending expeditions to these towns in seek of provisions. But we are anticipating the explanation. Before going further, we should stop to look at a walker. In fact, what is a walker? As far as we know, is a human being on a clinical death that stills moves and feeds. A walking dead or a zombie, as presented on folklore all around the world. This gives us the first hint for a symbolical analysis, but also shows the main lack of our understanding: what do we know of this beings? Nothing more that they're a threat and our enemies. Do they feel, do they think, do they communicate? It's deplorable the lack of research done on this matter. Not knowing if we can talk about walkers or better refer to the microorganisms that most likely causes their state, there's not real much we can conclude. Still we cannot avoid pointing how signs of what may be a language, along with logical thinking and tool uses have being reported by those mercenaries that enter walker territory. This bring to our memories tales concerning European explorers talking about savages that ate human flesh and showed no morals nor faith. It is history repeating itself? Here the socio-structural and symbolic analysis meet: are our fears being feed for economical and social purposes? Are we just responding to our ancient apprehension to mortality? Or is that we are facing a real threat? Our own position is that these three possibilities -coherent with the classical distinction between infrastructure, structure and superstructure- interlink and cannot be reduced the one to the other. Having already dealt with infrastructure, let's deepen a little more on the symbolic dimension, or superstructure. Here we suggested that walkers could awake ancient fears to mortality, as represented in cultures all around the world, from the Haitian zombie to the Nordic graugar, from the ancient Gilgamesh to George A. Romero's movies at the end of the XX century. Because walkers are hu1 Stinches in slang.

1

The Walking Dead Problem

Gerardo Gómez Puerto

mans, are dead humans that bring to our face our own mortality from under the graveyards where we tried to hide it. This fear is the best explanation for the cruelty shown by our troops, for the inhumane tortures to which these beings are exposed, along with the popular attractions on festivals were real chained walkers are humiliated. We use violence and humor to exorcise our worse fear, to maintain the illusion that we are in control. And now that we mention it, much more could be said about control; about how the menacing chaos of our society mirrors the disappearance of the traditional order of nature. But it wouldn't be wise to mix topics on this essay, where time and space are a limit for idle speculation. What we should do, instead, is to focus on the socio-structural dimension of the question; and here our criticisms will surely be attacked by those defenders of the status quo. Looking at our new cities, built as a mean for protecting us against the walkers, it is not difficult to realize the critical division that splits our society in two, like mimicking the more simplistic Marxist theories. Using the fear of walkers as a distraction and excuse, some oligarchic individuals have managed to gain a dominant position in our cities. Living in the center of them, on a closed and private housing complex, those individuals carry on their lifes as if the walker menace were just a tale for children and teenagers. They have malls, they have restaurants, leisure and even a hierarchical and conventional class system. Outside this complex, between it and the surrounding circular walls and barricades, we find a mass of classless people whose main goal is surviving. Their real problem are not walkers, in fact, as the protection perimeter shows itself quite effective, but hunger and crimes. Lacking of the resources and unity for developing households, along with the impossibility of moving through the social hierarchy, united with constant fear and competition, these people have developed a presentism similar to what was discussed on the XX century as the Culture of Poverty. Ironically, and in spite of the existence of minority subversive activities, the remaining energy of those people is expressed on bets on walkers fights, and attacks to walkers, who are blamed for the poverty situation. People belonging to this sector of the population, with a majority of men, risk their lives on expeditions to the outer lands, where they recover supplies that are later sold to the upper classes living in the complex; being those the ones to blame for the clash between the lower classes and the walkers. In this way, we can picture a set of concentric circles or a pyramid, being the walkers on the basis and the inhabitants of the complex at top, on a completely closed social game. It's our hope that this short essay will contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of walkers in all its dimensions. As we have tried to expose, nowadays we see an artificial prolongation of the conflict based on the needs of a minority along with an ancient and irrational incapability for assuming our own mortality. Thus, the only way of solving the problem is a social change and a change of our attitudes towards walkers. The first matter may be a topic for political scientists, while is our duty as anthropologist to get to know better our neighbors, their customs and their needs for easing connivance. It is true that some of us that got over confident and pioneered fieldwork among walkers ended up eaten or even joining their society, but past failures shouldn't stop us for developing new ways of research. If they are really developing a language, as some reports suggest, it should be studied and learned. Maybe a dialog between us and them could show that the conflict isn't more than what interested sectors of our society pretend it to be. In case of this option being a myth or an utopia, our last hope would remain in solving the infrastructural confrontation, with the creation of artificial warm human flesh by cloning. Or if everything else fails, with the annihilation of one of the two -or both- societies.

2