The Evolution of the Zombie

There is nothing so typically terrifying, nothing that so perfectly contains all the characteristics of the nightmare, of revulsion, and very little that has the same history in horror and Gothic as the zombie. The zombie is the perfect embodiment of the abject; a term coined and developed by literary critic, Julia Kristeva. According to her the abject represents anything that is removed from or situated outside the symbolic order, and being forced to face it is an inherently traumatic experience. This includes such things as a corpse, along with rot and excrement, reminds a person of their own fragile mortality. It puts us face to face with the stark reality that we are to die. But it doesn’t stop there with the zombie. The walking, groaning, disease and death spreading walking corpse takes abjection even further. It is a corpse, a body that once was alive and to us should be alive, however it is dead and yet it is a corpse that remains animated and without any trace of humanity. It is a million miles away from the symbolic order. Not only does it remind us of our own mortality, but it also threatens to bring our mortality to an end. Continue Reading