ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the lineage of the zombie and zombie post-apocalyptic scenes in film in order to make the argument that they fulfill essential functions for the speaking being under the conditions of neoliberalism. It claims that the inevitable tensions of ambivalence, as well as the experience of hainamoration itself are increasingly foreclosed under neoliberalism and moreover take place alongside neoliberal enforcement of the Judeo-Christian injunction to love our neighbor. In a post-lecture discussion at MIT in 2014, Noam Chomsky was asked his opinion on the American cultural preoccupation with zombies and the notion of a zombie apocalypse. In Freud’s advancement of his theory of the social bond at this time, he finds much value in William Robertson Smith’s research of 1889 put forward in his book Religion of the Semites.
