Description
In this thesis, I analyze three specific zombie texts as a means of exploring three different representations of the undead cannibalistic figure of the zombie. In this way, I hope to discover the multifaceted construction of ontology and identity (both zombie and human) that these texts convey. I first work toward this goal in Chapter 2, "Carnivalesque Cannibalism: The Representation of the Grotesque Body in Dawn of the Dead." This chapter applies Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque to George Romero's film Dawn of the Dead as a means of emphasizing the zombie's ability to liberate human ontology from the negative influence of normative consumerism. In Chapter 3, "Subaltern Cannibalism: Power Relations and Identity Politics in World War Z," I examine Max Brooks' novel World War Z through a postcolonial lens -- specifically through the use of Homi Bhabha's discussion of subalternity, hegemony, and difference -- in order to examine the zombie's ability to destabilize and unsettle colonialist discourses and to challenge social and cultural power structures. Finally, in Chapter 4, "Deterritorializing Cannibalism: The Manifestation of Hope in The Walking Dead," I utilize Gilles Deleuze and Fe_lix Guattari's theoretical concept of deterritorialization in order to argue that Robert Kirkman's comic The Walking Dead emphasizes the need to embrace change through the representation of the zombie's positive transformative effects on the construction of the self. In each of these analyses, my goal is to display the literary and discursive power of the undead. In other words, this thesis, overall, is an effort to reveal the fact that the zombie genre has a unique ability to complicate and problematize our ontologies, our relationships, and our world.
