{"title":"Liberty and death: Pirates and zombies in Atlantic modernity","authors":"Alexandra Ganser, G. Rath","doi":"10.1080/14788810.2022.2161725","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"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.","PeriodicalId":44108,"journal":{"name":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Atlantic Studies-Global Currents","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2022.2161725","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
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.