Postracial Fantasies and Zombies

On the Racist Apocalyptic Politics Devouring the World

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by Eric King Watts

Type

Studies

Subject

Genre > Horror

Keywords

horror, zombies, racial issues

Publishing date

2024

Publisher

University of California Press

Collection

Environmental Communication, Power, and Culture) (Volume 5
volume 5

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 230 pages
6 x 9 inches (15 x 23 cm)

ISBN

978-0-520-40378-9

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Book Presentation:
This book understands the postracial as a genre—like the zombie apocalypse—that signals a disturbance in society that is felt as terrifying and exciting. The postracial is repetitive and reproduces blackened biothreat bodies, rituals of securitization, and fantasies of the reclamation of white masculine sovereignty. Eric King Watts examines key moments when Blackness became an object of knowledge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, preparing the "scientific" and philosophical ground for interpreting zombie lore. The book treats the "Greater Caribbean" as a transformative space in which an antiblack infrastructure arose and interrogates the US's militarized domination of Haiti that was the context in which the zombie emerged. Watts traces variations of the form and function of the zombie to contemplate how it matters to our contemporary struggles with racism and pandemic policies.

About the Author:
Eric King Watts is Associate Professor of Communication at Wake Forest University and has published widely on racism and Blackness, including his previous book, Hearing the Hurt: Rhetoric, Aesthetics, and Politics of the New Negro Movement.

See the publisher website: University of California Press