Encompassing the extraction of labor power, commodity fetishism, the destruction of the planet, and post-human visions of automated workforces, Thorpe’s contemporary conception of alienation renders “life dependent on the non-living” (37). Through an exegesis of Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in conjunction with analyses of popular cultural artifacts representing the living dead, from vampires to zombies, Thorpe presents readers with a truly capacious definition of alienation. The opening chapter helpfully situates Thorpe’s terminology and claim that we are living in a culture that “aggrandizes the dead and non-living over the living” (2). For Thorpe, this constitutes a culture that worships death, that is, dead labor. In the alienation and replacement of imperfect human labor with automated dead labor and in a highly atomized consumer culture where social participation is mediated by commodity fetishism, the non-living are given priority over the living. The collection of five essays examining different aspects of this culture of death build from a synthesis of Marx’s understanding of alienation and Fromm’s “necrophilia.” Beyond the obvious markers of a cultural attraction to death-such as a popular culture fascinated with the prospect of a zombie apocalypse (28) or an industry dedicated to supplying “doomsday preppers” (211)-Thorpe suggests that the root of the necrophilia that defines contemporary capitalist culture is in the valuing of non-living objects over living human beings. US List: $99.99.īuilding upon a variety of works from Karl Marx and Marxist psychologist Erich Fromm, Charles Thorpe’s Necroculture attempts to demonstrate that the variegated experiences of alienation under the technocratic culture of neoliberal capital are experiences tantamount to a culture of death. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, 270 pp. It was never discovered whether they were a planetary based species that adapted to space or evolved in the vacuum of space and as such their homeworld was never found.Necroculture. While they seemed as vicious creatures due to their appearance they were in fact sociable creatures that would work in packs to repel predators or to locate new sources of minerals. The mouth tentacles was also used to 'feel' the rocks and gave the Morvak an understanding of what kind of material they were burrowing through. They were able to exude a powerful acidic chemical which was used to break down the composition of rocks, as well as stones, into a more digestable form. Locomotion was carried out by two pairs of legs and a pair of clawed limbs allowed them to manipulate their food into their tentacle covered mouths. They possessed a heavy exo-skeleton which would protect them from harm. Should none be present then they would enter into a state of hibernation till new food sources developed, a process that would sometimes take many years. The only requirement they needed was an abundance of food sources. Furthermore, they did not require 'standard' liveable conditions such as gravity or atmosphere and thus had no problem surviving in environments like asteroid belts. They were considered an unusual example of life as they gained sustenance from rocks and stones.

Morvaks were unusual creatures that resembled large crustaceans that were meters across.

Morvak the unliving