ABSTRACT
This chapter engages with the popular zombie trope. It highlights the cultural intermediary role of public relations and considers how the zombie offers an apt metaphor for exploring the links between public relations and neoliberalism. Public relations work is founded on promoting commercial interests even as it inserts empty, ‘democratic’ rhetoric around engagement and empowerment of publics into the everyday. The zombie crosses genres and boundaries, and is therefore useful for exposing the inherent contradictions between professionalism, corporate social responsibility, ethics and the reality of neoliberalism and the market logic of the public relations industry.
