The figure of the zombie and the memory of slavery across the Atlantic

Abstract

ABSTRACT The figure of the zombie implies a particular relationship between the imaginary and everyday life in which the former is part of the latter. This has to be kept in mind when reflecting on the emergence of the zombie figure in Haiti. The figure of the zombie can be further thought through if we see it in relation with the “surviving image” (“afterlife” in George Didi-Huberman’s sense) of slavery. The master imagines the ideal slave as a being emptied of everything that constitutes him/her as a subject. Only the zombie is capable of fulfilling this ideal: an idea that lies at the core of the zombie imaginary. In this essay, I interrogate the power of the modern zombie imaginary. I investigate why the zombie as a phantasmagory of absolute power continues to emerge in literature, cinema and the arts and what it teaches us about the memory of slavery.