Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

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Bingham 8 Worlds, modal realism is ultimately a strategy of determining the verisimilitude of intentionality as well as other theories which seek to define subjective experience. Modal realism hinges upon the claim that there are countless possible worlds which are real as experienced actuality * ; and each differs only in content rather than kind. Each of these possibilia is then an irreducible entity and therefore is isolated from all others spatially and causally: ...there are no spatiotemporal relations at all between things that belong to different worlds. Nor does anything that happens in one world cause anything to happen at another. Nor do they overlap; they have no parts in common, with the exception, perhaps, of immanent universals exercising their characteristic privilege of repeated occurrence. (Lewis 2) Even though external environments change as we move from one possible world to another, there remains some constancy which repeatedly manifests within subjects. Possible worlds are engaged in the realm of actuality; so even though there may not be a direct causal relationship between these possible worlds and ours, there is certainly a reason why they are imagined. This reasoning suggests a desire to identify specific natural qualities associated with conscious existence. Such considerations act as tests for moral ideologies or ethical beliefs. Interrogating these concepts can reveal when there are discrepancies between intentions and actions, or behaviors and their justifications—a valuable exercise especially in times of war and economic crisis. Lewis describes possible worlds as particularly useful devices for these types of comparison: “The other worlds provide a frame of reference whereby we can charaterise our own world” (Lewis 22). This referential function is especially valuable in political discourse. When we can identify familiarity within spaces that appear totally closed from our own experience, we can reconsider subjectivity and address events or behaviors which are incongruous with * The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provided this definition: “Actuality for x is the realm that includes x. Actuality for us is the maximal spatiotemporally related whole of which we are (mereologically) part.”
Bingham 9 beliefs. Seeing a possible world envisioned in the space of the world we inhabit, yet apart from our experience of the actuality of that world, promotes our desire to identify with it. We are trained to see particular sets of meaning in any image, searching first for familiarity so we can determine the extent of our difference from this alternate reality. According to David Kellogg Lewis' theory of “modal realism,” there are countless possible worlds each real as actuality because they are all self-contained. Each and every one of these possibilia is spatio-temporally and causally isolated (Lewis 2). These spaces can represent alternate realities where only certain variables distinguishing them from actuality have been changed. Hence, conceiving these spaces helps those who engage them to better understand their own perception of actuality and existence. According to Lewis, “One way to tell the truth about complicated phenomena is to say how they resemble simpler idealisations...there is no doubt that we do find it much easier to tell the truth if we drag in truthlike [sic] fiction.” (Lewis 26) Possible worlds like those envisioned by Kirkman and brought to life by the attention of a captive audience can reduce complex issues like extreme permeating violence to their most basic essence. Thus possibilia remove factors like how features such as national affiliation or race differentially affect violence, factors which provide rationales/excuses for individuals to sidestep or avoid straightforward analysis of prevailing conditions. Instead, taking Lewis' model and considering the world of The Walking Dead as a total entity which can be used as a point of reference, it is plausible to conduct an interrogation of the causes and consequences of severe violence. Further support for this argument comes from the literary criticism of author Mark Ledbetter, whose book, Victims and the Postmodern Narrative, Or, Doing Violence to the Body: An Ethic of Reading and Writing describes
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Page 5 and 6: Bingham 5 Introduction My project e
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Page 13 and 14: Bingham 13 the validity of singular
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Page 21 and 22: Bingham 21 Another artist who worke
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Page 27 and 28: Bingham 27 Charles Moulton. Marston
Page 29 and 30: Bingham 29 Frederick Wertham prompt
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Page 33 and 34: Bingham 33 what is or isn't a graph
Page 35 and 36: Bingham 35 Works Cited Benton, Mike
Page 37 and 38: Bingham 37 Chapter II: Transfusion
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Bingham 59 Returning to the full pa
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Bingham 61 order” (200). The prem
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Bingham 63 possession, selling, ste
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Bingham 65 with yourself? Not me. I
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Bingham 69 experience, or the human
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Bingham 74 Works Cited Berger, Arth
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Bingham 76 APPENDIX A Fig. 1. Openi
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Bingham 78 Fig. 7. Fig. 8.
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Bingham 101 Chapter III: Speaking o
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Bingham 107 Wrightson only drew the
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Bingham 113 General Avery Carlton S
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Bingham 119 authority. This subtle,
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Bingham 123 affect. Apart from this
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Bingham 125 acts of fictional chara
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Bingham 129 experience. The creator
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Bingham 135 If we read each charact
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1 According to comics historian Rob
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Bingham 140 - Interview by David Ro
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