Zombification. Transatlantic cultures of the "undead".

The zombie a figure at the crossroads of life and death, of subject and object, embodying the loss of self-control and self-determination has by now become part of popular cultural narratives. In current versions, the zombie tends to represent the abject Other, which is excluded from the social, but keeps returning incessantly as a terribly endangering force. Contrary to this apparent apocalyptic one- sidedness, the zombie has one of its multiple starting points in Haiti, where it has been shaped as a figure of colonial slave labour, with regard to the long (neo-)colonial history of the country. In contrast to conventional understandings of the figure that put the emphasis on the loss of self- determination, historical perspectives in the context of Haitian Revolution and vodou also pose questions of a possible understanding of (deliberate) zombification as a strategy of marronage, rebellion and decolonial agency. This research project, which is expected to lead to the publication of a second monograph (Habilitation), aims to flesh out the multiple functions and structures of historical zombie-narratives and visualisations from the 17th century onward as encountered in travelogues and anthropological writing, fiction and law, photography, graffiti and paintings. The project inquires how the figure of the zombie is produced through textual and visual media and how it can possibly function in a decentralized way, rather than a hegemonic and stigmatising one. Focusing predominantly on francophone representations from the Caribbean, the project examines textual and visual zombie- representations, processes of zombification and their impact on non-Caribbean narratives in a historical and transatlantic perspective. The zombie is understood as a figure of circulation (between West Africa, the Caribbean, Brasil, Europe, North America), which characterizes through its multiple encodings and has no original. The project is structured as follows: (a) the historical perspective of zombie-representations in the context of slave labour and revolution; (b) conceptions of the zombie as a figure of revolt, marronage and decolonial agency; and (c) connections between imaginaries of zombification and unfree labour to the present day. Beginning with the first textual emergence of the term as encountered in the 1697 novel Le zombi du Grand Pérou, attributed to the French galley-prisoner Pierre-Corneille Blessebois, the project focuses on possible connections to escaped slaves from Brazilian Quilombo de Palmares and their leader Zumbi, which similarly have to be considered in order to acquire a broader notion of the zombie- concept. Likewise, in the twentieth century, authors of the Négritude-tradition, such as Frankétiennes Dézafi (1975) take up on the theme of zombification and political rebellion. In a last step, the project inquires how zombie-representations continue to linger on in actual imaginaries of unfree labour, such as political manifests.

No additional funding sources recorded.