"We are the walking dead" : zombie spaces, mobility and the potential for security in Zone one and The walking dead

Abstract

This paper explores the political implications of contemporary zombie narratives by examining the question of mobility and spaces in three post-9/11 works: Robert Kirkman’s comic series The Walking Dead, the television show The Walking Dead, and Colson Whitehead’s novel Zone One. First, I map the evolution of the zombie through comic books, film, and prose. Second, I focus especially on the contemporary moment of zombie fictions, deploying the Foucauldian notions of biopower and security to look closely at how each of my texts explores current fears about contemporary governmentality in a globalized society. I argue that zombie narratives reveal nightmarish visions of the breakdown of “efficient” security apparatuses, and show how supposedly “archaic” sovereign mechanisms continue to haunt contemporary imaginaries of power.