ABSTRACT
Zombies are political creatures precisely because they give visual depiction and bring forth the chaos of the very real violence hidden under the ideological veil of Western capitalism as it moves into a peculiarly predatory phase. This chapter asserts the zombie as an allegory of the determinate negation of the human-being–of our uniqueness, will, labour, desires/needs and our intersubjective relations with others–under this global economic order. It illustrates the changes of zombie physiology, behaviour, and narratives, in cinematic history showing how these reflect the transitions in global political economy–a movement in which the labouring zombie has been displaced by the ravenous horde of consuming ghouls. Understanding the zombie as the determinate negation of human social relations under predatory capitalism reveals how our frenzied consumption is based on the predation of others and how this predation severs social relations, creating a swirling mass of isolated, atomised individuals.
