Decolonizing the Undead - Rethinking Zombies in World-Literature, Film, and Media

Looking beyond Euro-Anglo-US centric zombie narratives, Decolonizing the Undead reconsiders representations and allegories constructed around this figure of the undead, probing it''s cultural and historical weight across different nations and its significance to postcolonial, decolonial and Neoliberal discourses. Taking stock of zombies as they appear in literature, film and television from the Caribbean, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, India, Japan, Iraq and Ireland, this book explores how the undead reflect a plethora of experiences previously obscured by western preoccupations and anxieties. These include embodiment and dismemberment in Haitian revolutionary contexts; resistance and subversion to social realities in the Caribbean and Latin America; symbiosis of cultural historical traditions with Western popular culture; the undead as feminist figures; as an allegory for migrant workers; as a critique to reconfigure socio-ecological relations between humans and nature; and as a means of voicing the plurality of stories from destroyed cities and war-zones. Interspersed with contextual explorations of the zombie narrative in American culture such as zombie walks and the television series The Santa Clarita Diet , contributors examine such writers as Lowell R. Torres, Diego Velazquez Betancourt, Hemendra Kumar Roy and Manabendra Pal; works like China Mieville''s Covehithe , Reza Negarestani''s Cycolonopedia , Julio Ortega''s novel Adios, Ayacucho , Ahmad Sadaawi''s Frankenstein in Baghdad; and films by Alejandro Brugues, Michaell James Rowland, Steve McQueen and many others. Far from just another zombie project, this is a vital study that teases out the important conversations among numerous cultures and nations embodied in the this universally recognized figure of the dead.>

Product details

• Authors: Giulia Champion, Roxan Douglas, Stephen Shapiro
• Assisted by: Giulia Champion (Editor), Roxanne Douglas (Editor), Stephen Shapiro (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 22.09.2022
• EAN: 9781350271128
• ISBN: 978-1-350-27112-8
• No. of pages: 232
• Subjects: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy > Fantasy; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > Other languages / Other literatures; Haiti, Fantasy, Popular Culture, LITERARY CRITICISM / African, LITERARY CRITICISM / Caribbean & Latin American, LITERARY CRITICISM / Horror & Supernatural, India, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, 21st century, c 2000 to c 2100, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, Literary studies: from c 1900 -, Iraq, Literary studies: post-colonial literature, Latin America – Mexico, Central America, South America, North America (USA and Canada), Sub-Saharan Africa, Literary studies: postcolonial literature, Mythical creatures: Zombies and the undead