"Unmaking Zombies"

Buddhism and Political Subjectivity in the Capitalocene

Abstract

“Carbon-fueled capitalism is a zombie system, voracious but sterile,” writes Roy Scranton in his book, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene. This essay places Buddhism in dialogue with western Marxist and feminist thinkers to consider how Buddhist philosophy as embodied mindfulness and ethics can help resolve the problem of the political subject confronting the “end-times” of global climate change. While western social theory on its own presents a clear diagnosis of the structural dimensions of the problem and offers critiques on the nature of the capitalist and neoliberal political subject, it often undertheorizes the new forms of subjectivity that are necessary to transform the human relationship to nature in the Anthropocene (or, what Jason Moore terms the Capitalocene). This essay draws on the work of both Buddhist practitioners and contemporary Buddhist philosophers to theorize a different notion of subjectivity, constructed on a foundation of embodied mindfulness and compassion, that could be both emotionally and materially more satisfying than neoliberal consumerism.