University of Massachusetts Boston Zombies as Memes Paper Critical Writing about reading sets “Zombies as Memes” 6 pages. Including answering question:Rich

University of Massachusetts Boston Zombies as Memes Paper Critical Writing about reading sets “Zombies as Memes” 6 pages. Including answering question:Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene, asks, “What is it about the idea of a god [the god meme] that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment” (4)? In your essay, address a similar question: What is it about the zombie meme that gives it stability and penetrance in American culture? Dawkins argues that, for genes and perhaps also for memes, the “qualities of high survival” are “longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity” (5). Define and make use of these key terms as part of an essay in which you employ Dawkins’ discussion of memes to analyze the historical and cultural significance of zonbies/zombies. In your essay, incorporate McAllister’s discussion of zonbies in Haitian colonialism; and Kyle Bishops’ examination of the “zombie renaissance” in American culture. Zombies as Memes
Question for the Portfolio Reading Set
(Due on Tuesday, January 8, 2013 by 4:00 PM)
Question:
Richard Dawkins, in The Selfish Gene, asks, “What is it about the idea of a god [the god
meme] that gives it its stability and penetrance in the cultural environment” (4)? In your
essay, address a similar question: What is it about the zombie meme that gives it stability
and penetrance in American culture?
Dawkins argues that, for genes and perhaps also for memes, the “qualities of high
survival” are “longevity, fecundity, and copying-fidelity” (5). Define and make use of
these key terms as part of an essay in which you employ Dawkins’ discussion of memes
to analyze the historical and cultural significance of zonbies/zombies. In your essay,
incorporate McAllister’s discussion of zonbies in Haitian colonialism; and Kyle Bishops’
examination of the “zombie renaissance” in American culture.
Notes:
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January 2013 WPE Portfolio Reading Set
i
University of Massachusetts at Boston
CPCS, CLA, CEHD, CNHS, and CSM
Writing Proficiency Evaluation
The Portfolio is due no later than 4:00 P.M. in the Writing Proficiency Office,
Campus Center 1/1300 on Tuesday, January 8, 2013.
Portfolio Reading Set: Zombies as Memes
1. Dawkins, Richard. “Memes: The New Replicators”. The Selfish Gene. New York :
Oxford University Press, 1976.
2. Minchillo, John. The Associated Press. “Protesters from Occupy Wall Street march
through New York’s financial district dressed as ‘corporate zombies.’” Photo.
(October 3, 2011)
3. McAlister, Elizabeth. “Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-whites: the Race and
Religion of zombies.” Anthropological Quarterly. 85.2 (Spring 2012): p457.
4. Bishop, Kyle. “Dead Man Still Walking: Explaining the Zombie Renaissance.”
Journal of Popular Film and Television. 37.1 (Spring 2009): p16.
Articles reprinted by permission
Notes:
It is essential that you include in your essay specific references to the articles in the
reading set, and that you attribute any material that you summarize, quote, or paraphrase
to its source. Base your essay on the information contained in the set of readings, not on
your own experience, on outside readings, or on courses you have taken. Plagiarism in a
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policies are serious and may include suspension or expulsion
Your portfolio must contain an essay that is at least five full pages (double spaced in
10 or 12 point type) that answers the question above, at least 15 pages of supporting
papers each one should be attached to a completed Certification Form and a completed
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that has either two or three supporting papers totaling 10 full pages.
Additionally, you are still required to submit the new essay on the reading set. You must
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January 8, 2013.
January 2013 WPE Portfolio Reading Set
ii
“Memes: the New Replicators”1
by Richard Dawkins2
Are there any good reasons for supposing our own species to be unique? I believe the answer is yes.
Most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one word: ‘culture.’ I use the word not in its
snobbish sense, but as a scientist uses it. Cultural transmission is analogous to genetic transmission in
that, although basically conservative, it can give rise to a form of evolution. …It is our own species that
really shows what cultural evolution can do. Language is one example out of many. Fashions in dress
and diet, ceremonies and customs, art and architecture, engineering and technology, all evolve in
historical time in a way that looks like highly speeded up genetic evolution, but has really nothing to do
with genetic evolution. As in genetic evolution though, the change may be progressive.
[…] What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators. The laws of
physics are supposed to be true all over the accessible universe. Are there any principles of biology that
are likely to have similar universal validity? When astronauts voyage to distant planets and look for life,
they can expect to find creatures too strange and unearthly for us to imagine. But is there anything that
must be true of all life, wherever it is found, and whatever the basis of its chemistry? If forms of life exist
whose chemistry is based on silicon rather than carbon, or ammonia rather than water, if creatures are
discovered that boil to death at -100 degrees centigrade, if a form of life is found that is not based on
chemistry at all but on electronic reverberating circuits, will there still be any general principle that is true
of all life? Obviously I do not know but, if I had to bet, I would put my money on one fundamental
principle. This is the law that all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities. The gene,
the DNA molecule, happens to be the replicating entity that prevails on our planet. There may be others.
If there are, provided certain other conditions are met, they will almost inevitably tend to become the
basis for an evolutionary process.
But do we have to go to distant worlds to find other kinds of replicators and other, consequent, kinds of
evolution? I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us
in the face. It is still in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is
achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind.
The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys
the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. `Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek
root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene.’ I hope my classicist friends will forgive me
if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being
related to `memory’, or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with `cream.’
Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building
arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or
eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process
which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he
passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea
catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain. As my colleague N.K.
Humphrey neatly summed up an earlier draft of this chapter: `… memes should be regarded as living
structures, not just metaphorically but technically. When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you
literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a
virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of a host cell. And this isn’t just a way of talking — the meme
1
This final chapter of Dawkins’ book on the topic of genetics launched a new way of thinking about culture, now
known as memetics.
2
Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and author, is an emeritus fellow at Oxford University.
January 2013 WPE Portfolio Reading Set
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for, say, “belief in life after death” is actually realized physically, millions of times over, as a structure in
the nervous systems of individual men the world over.’
Consider the idea of God. We do not know how it arose in the meme pool. Probably it originated many
times by independent `mutation.’ In any case, it is very old indeed. How does it replicate itself? By the
spoken and written word, aided by great music and great art. Why does it have such high survival value?
Remember that `survival value’ here does not mean value for a gene in a gene pool, but value for a meme
in a meme pool. The question really means: What is it about the idea of a god that gives it its stability
and penetrance in the cultural environment? The survival value of the god meme in the meme pool
results from its great psychological appeal. It provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and
troubling questions about existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next.
The `everlasting arms’ hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, like a doctor’s placebo, is
none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some of the reasons why the idea of God is copied
so readily by successive generations of individual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with
high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.
[…] For more than three thousand million years, DNA has been the only replicator worth talking about in
the world. But it does not necessarily hold these monopoly rights for all time. Whenever conditions arise
in which a new kind of replicator can make copies of itself, the new replicators will tend to take over, and
start a new kind of evolution of their own. Once this new evolution begins, it will in no necessary sense
be subservient to the old. The old gene-selected evolution, by making brains, provided the `soup’ in
which the first memes arose. Once self-copying memes had arisen, their own, much faster, kind of
evolution took off. We biologists have assimilated the idea of genetic evolution so deeply that we tend to
forget that it is only one of many possible kinds of evolution.
Imitation, in the broad sense, is how memes can replicate. But just as not all genes that can replicate do
so successfully, so some memes are more successful in the meme-pool than others. This is the analogue
of natural selection. I have mentioned particular examples of qualities that make for high survival value
among memes. But in general they must be the same as those discussed for [genes]…: longevity,
fecundity, and copying-fidelity. The longevity of any one copy of a meme is probably relatively
unimportant, as it is for any one copy of a gene. The copy of the tune `Auld Lang Syne’ that exists in my
brain will last only for the rest of my life. The copy of the same tune that is printed in my volume of The
Scottish Student’s Song Book is unlikely to last much longer. But I expect there will be copies of the same
tune on paper and in people’s brains for centuries to come. As in the case of genes, fecundity is much
more important than longevity of particular copies. If the meme is a scientific idea, its spread will depend
on how acceptable it is to the population of individual scientists; a rough measure of its survival value
could be obtained by counting the number of times it is referred to in successive years in scientific
journals. If it is a popular tune, its spread through the meme pool may be gauged by the number of people
heard whistling it in the streets. If it is a style of women’s shoe, the population memeticist may use sales
statistics from shoe shops. Some memes, like some genes, achieve brilliant short-term success in
spreading rapidly, but do not last long in the meme pool. Popular songs and stiletto heels are examples.
Others, such as the Jewish religious laws, may continue to propagate themselves for thousands of years,
usually because of the great potential permanence of written records.
This brings me to the third general quality of successful replicators: copying-fidelity. […] At first sight it
looks as if memes are not high-fidelity replicators at all. Every time a scientist hears an idea and passes it
on to somebody else, he is likely to change it somewhat. […] The memes are being passed on to you in
altered form. This looks quite unlike the particulate, all-or-none quality of gene transmission. It looks as
though meme transmission is subject to continuous mutation, and also to blending.
[…] So far I have talked of memes as though it was obvious what a single unit-meme consisted of. But
of course that is far from obvious. I have said a tune is one meme, but what about a symphony: how many
January 2013 WPE Portfolio Reading Set
Page 2 of 17
memes is that? Is each movement one meme, each recognizable phrase of melody, each bar, each chord,
or what?
I appeal to the same verbal trick as I used [before]. There I divided the `gene complex’ into large and
small genetic units, and units within units. The `gene’ was defined, not in a rigid all-or-none way, but as a
unit of convenience, a length of chromosome with just sufficient copying-fidelity to serve as a viable unit
of natural selection. If a single phrase of Beethoven’s ninth symphony is sufficiently distinctive and
memorable to be abstracted from the context of the whole symphony, and used as the call-sign of a
maddeningly intrusive European broadcasting station, then to that extent it deserves to be called one
meme […]
Let us pursue the analogy between memes and genes further. Throughout this book, I have emphasized
that we must not think of genes as conscious, purposeful agents. Blind natural selection, however, makes
them behave rather as if they were purposeful, and it has been convenient, as a shorthand, to refer to
genes in the language of purpose… We have even used words like `selfish’ and `ruthless’ of genes,
knowing full well it is only a figure of speech. Can we, in exactly the same spirit, look for selfish or
ruthless memes ?
[…] Any user of a digital computer knows how precious computer time and memory storage space are.
At many large computer centers they are literally costed in money; or each user may be allotted a ration
of time, measured in seconds, and a ration of space, measured in `words’. The computers in which memes
live are human brains. Time is possibly a more important limiting factor than storage space, and it is the
subject of heavy competition. The human brain, and the body that it controls, cannot do more than one or
a few things at once. If a meme is to dominate the attention of a human brain, it must do so at the expense
of `rival’ memes. Other commodities for which memes compete are radio and television time, billboard
space, newspaper column-inches, and library shelf-space.
[…] When we die there are two things we can leave behind us: genes and memes. We were built as gene
machines, created to pass on our genes. But that aspect of us will be forgotten in three generations. Your
child, even your grandchild, may bear a resemblance to you, perhaps in facial features, in a talent for
music, in the colour of her hair. But as each generation passes, the contribution of your genes is halved.
It does not take long to reach negligible proportions. Our genes may be immortal but the collection of
genes that is any one of us is bound to crumble away. Elizabeth II is a direct descendant of William the
Conqueror. Yet it is quite probable that she bears not a single one of the old king’s genes. We should not
seek immortality in reproduction.
But if you contribute to the world’s culture, if you have a good idea, compose a tune, invent a sparkplug,
write a poem, it may live on, intact, long after your genes have dissolved in the common pool. Socrates
may or may not have a gene or two alive in the world today, as G.C. Williams has remarked, but who
cares? The meme-complexes of Socrates, Leonardo, Copernicus and Marconi are still going strong.
January 2013 WPE Portfolio Reading Set
Page 3 of 17
John Minchillo3/The Associated Press. Protesters from Occupy Wall Street march through New York’s
financial district dressed as “corporate zombies.” (October 3, 2011)
“Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hyper-whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies”
by Elizabeth McAlister4
[…] Like the Haitian zonbi5, the US film zombie must be understood as being embedded in a set of
deeply symbolic structures that are a matter of religious thought. In both contexts, zombie narratives and
rituals interrogate the boundary between life and death, elucidate the complex relations between freedom
and slavery, and highlight the overlap between capitalism and cannibalism. What I want to stress
especially is that in each context, race is the pivot on which these dynamics articulate themselves.
Zombies: A Brief History
What intrigues me as a scholar of Afro-Caribbean religion is that the mythmaking comprising and
surrounding the zombie in America originates from sensationalized descriptions of a set of AfroCaribbean mystical arts. The word zonbi appears in writing as far back as colonial Saint-Domingue,
glossed by travel writer Moreau de Saint-Mery (1797) as the slaves’ belief in a returned soul, a revenant.
20th century reports describe not a returned soul but a returned body–a person bodily raised from the
grave and turned into a slave worker. As a spirit or a slave, complex spiritual formulae separate body and
soul, and compel one or the other to work. […]
A very different kind of zombie populates US film and television: a ghoul who lumbers around trying to
eat people. George Romero’s “Living Dead” films exemplify this concept of the zombie in the popular
imagination. The idea refers, of course, to dead people who are still alive, and driven to kill and
3
John Minchillo is a freelance photojournalist living in New York City.
Elizabeth McAllister is an associate professor in the Department of Religion at Wesleyan University.
5
[Author’s note] I will use the Kreyol spelling, zonbi, when discussing the ethnographic practice or thought about it
in Haiti, and zombie when speaking of ideas and appropriations of the figure.
4
January 2013 WPE Portfolio Reading Set
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cannibalize the living. […] In this first decade of the new millennium, the walking dead and their
cannibalistic appetites seem to be everywhere. […] Especially intriguing are the “zombie wa…
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