Zombies, Deviance and the Right to Posthuman Life

Zombies have become increasingly prolific in popular culture. Films from Dawn of the Dead to Shaun of the Dead, books such as the Mira Grant Newsflesh series, zombie games including Dying Light, are all excellent examples of affective zombie mediations. There are some fantastic zombie podcasts, including We’re Alive, and the audiobook of After the Cure, by Deirdre Gould, creates a wonderfully creepy atmosphere that should appeal to any horror fan. But what is it with zombies? Societies and cultures are overcome (or overrun) with morbid fascination, but why? As Sarah Lauro asks, ‘[w]hence does our cultural fascination with zombies come?’ The answer is both obvious and not so obvious. Post-apocalyptic type scenarios allow access to view a world that is both similar-yet-strange. Audiences get to watch/read/play out stories and journeys of survivors and victims and ask those self-reflexive questions – “what would I do, how long would I survive, where would I go?”, and this imaginative exploration allows the consideration of how humans would fare in this world, but not as it is presently known.
This chapter explores the cultural fascination with zombies through a posthuman lens. From this perspective, the zombie apocalypse represents the cultural imperative to break with aspects of contemporary society that constrain people to conformity. Bound by the neoliberal, capitalist expectations on society, there is a belief that everyone should always be producing, competing, innovating, and consuming. The underlying expectation says that contributing members of society should embody “the good citizen”; active members of society, demonstrating personal responsibility, and embodying the entrepreneurial self. However, against a backdrop of dystopian realities, there is a burgeoning scepticism within these societal expectations; the beginning of an understanding that the enterprising self and the good citizen are in fact capitalist traps, designed to keep people “in check” and their behaviours managed. This realisation allows for wider understandings of society as a biased construction, with its own agendas and powers in place. By disrupting these normative tropes (which the zombie apocalypse forces), alternative possibilities emerge. Within the fascination with zombie narratives, then, there is evident a desire to escape the current capitalist, neoliberal lifestyles; to deviate from the trend, and to therefore embody posthuman values — rejecting the attributes ascribed by of the liberal human subject. A zombie outbreak becomes almost romantically representative of a desire to “return to our roots”, to test one’s mettle against nature, and to embrace our most animalistic sides.