A Note on Zombies and Cannibals

The modern zombie is an individual enslaved by vodun or similar practices.   In contrast, the postmodern zombie, as encountered in post-Romero films and books, is usually an individual affected by some species of infection or plague and, significantly, is a cannibal; i.e., consumes human flesh.  This is not the case with the earlier modern zombie incarnations, nor is it the case with Afro-Haitian traditional zombies; they may be "eaten" or consumed by other entities, but they do not eat human flesh.

The cannibal aspect (really, the "ghoul" aspect, as George Romero remarks) connects to a broader history.

1. European-imperial racist constructions of non-European subjugated peoples characterized colonial subjects as "savage," "primitive," "childlike," and so on, as a means of justifying European exploitation and rule over peoples of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America.

2. An especially dramatic image of the non-European savage was that of the "cannibal," the eater of human flesh.  In this imperialist fantasy, here was the utterly inferior race, here was the animalistic savage showing its truest colors: a man scarcely deserving the appellation man, devouring his own kind like a beast.

3. Scholars and critics have argued in recent years that in the repertoire of imperialism and colonialism, the cannibal is a powerful myth.  The horrifying savage and his practices make the white man appear virtuous and just by contrast.  And the white man can imagine he is justified in conquering and subjugating people who are given to such practices.

4. But a further turn of argument suggests that the cannibal figure is a distorted reflection of European values, especially economic ones as embodied in capitalism.  Slavery, the plantation system, forced labor, the whole range of European colonial practices against native populations around the world, may be viewed as the real "cannibalism." Because in essence, capitalism produces surplus value, that is, produces profit, by means of the bodies and the lives of the human beings under its power.  In such a view, capitalism as economic system feeds itself on human flesh and blood.  It is cannibalistic (in Capital, Karl Marx used another monster, the vampire, to characterize the predatory aspect of capitalist economics).

Zombie figures as cannibals as well as the undead present us with interestingly layered connotations and meanings.  Among other things, they can satirize the predatory character of capitalist economies; they also  can depict exploited human forces that are rising up against such economies, a species of imaginative revolution.