Trouble with zombies: Bare life, Muselmanner and displaced people

This article considers the increase in media representations of zombies during the first decade of the 2000s. It argues that a connection can be read between the new preoccupation with zombies and anxieties over the apparent threat posed by those without rights attempting to enter Western countries. The article sets up a theoretical argument using the work of Giorgio Agamben. Taking on board Agamben's discussion of ‘bare life’, the article follows Agamben in making a link between this idea and the Muselmann, the Jew reduced to the walking dead in the concentration and death camps. For Agamben, bare life is central to the functioning of the modern state. The article suggests that bare life is a way of connecting the Muselmann with the zombie as that monster has been elaborated in films since George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968). Indeed, where Agamben argues that the werewolf was the characterising monster of the premodern era, this article argues that the zombie is the characterising monster of the modern era. The article goes on to make the connection between bare life, Muselmänner, zombies and displaced people, most commonly understood as asylum seekers

Neurovisceral phenotypes in the expression of psychiatric symptoms

This review explores the proposal that vulnerability to psychological symptoms, particularly anxiety, originates in constitutional differences in the control of bodily state, exemplified by a set of conditions that include Joint Hypermobility, Postural Tachycardia Syndrome and Vasovagal Syncope. Research is revealing how brainbody mechanisms underlie individual differences in psychophysiological reactivity that can be important for predicting, stratifying and treating individuals with anxiety disorders and related conditions. One common constitutional difference is Joint Hypermobility, in which there is an increased range of joint movement as a result of a variant of collagen. Joint hypermobility is over-represented in people with anxiety, mood and neurodevelopmental disorders. It is also linked to stress-sensitive medical conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Structural differences in 'emotional' brain regions are reported in hypermobile individuals, and many people with joint hypermobility manifest autonomic abnormalities, typically Postural Tachycardia Syndrome. Enhanced heart rate reactivity during postural change and as recently recognised factors causing vasodilatation (as noted post prandially, post exertion and with heat) is characteristic of Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, and there is a phenomenological overlap with anxiety disorders, which may be partially accounted for by exaggerated neural reactivity within ventromedial prefrontal cortex. People who experience Vasovagal Syncope, a heritable tendency to fainting induced by emotional challenges (and needle/blood phobia), are also more vulnerable to anxiety disorders. Neuroimaging implicates brainstem differences in vulnerability to faints, yet the structural integrity of the caudate nucleus appears important for the control of fainting frequency in relation to parasympathetic tone and anxiety. Together there is clinical and neuroanatomical evidence to show that common constitutional differences affecting autonomic responsivity are linked to psychiatric symptoms, notably anxiety

From comic to graphic and from book to novel: Sandman’s invisible authors and the quest for literariness.

The comic book is dead – long live the graphic novel! These words might make a fitting epitaph for the British-American comics industry’s development during the twentieth century. During this time the discourse around comics publishing and the books themselves have undergone a series of aesthetic, commercial, conceptual and cultural changes. This talk will explore the move towards bookishness and literariness in contemporary British-American comics, using DC Vertigo’s Sandman series (Gaiman et al, 1989-present) as a case study. Sandman is best remembered for its mythological content and literary allusions, and these elements have allowed it to claim its place as a canonised graphic novel by both academics and fans. This paper compares the discourses that surround the comic and reflects on both text and paratext to draw out some of the contradictions that emerge when we approach graphic novels as solely literary artefacts. It begins by revisiting the launch and original run of Sandman (1989-1996) as the flagship title for DC’s Vertigo imprint back in the 1990s. Vertigo contributed to the cultural revaluation of comics as graphic novels by placing an emphasis on the author function and offering a critical and aesthetic distance from DC’s other publications. It counters the literary paratexts around Sandman by exploring its visual elements: considering the multiplicity of these (collage, multiple artists) and arguing that this matched the diversity of the comic’s content and raised its critical profile. It extends this examination to Sandman: Overture (2013-15). It argues that Sandman enacts the particular status struggles of the collaborative comics medium against the ‘graphic novel’ brand. It concludes by mapping its findings back onto the processes and changes at work in comics today, and reflecting on what this means for definitions of cultural worth, the performativity of the author function, and our understanding of artistic creation and ownership