Zombie geographies and the undead city

Abstract

In this paper I explore the connections between zombie films and bodies–cities. Common critical and popular analyses of zombie films focus on the body of the zombie, but pay little attention to surrounding spaces. Zombie films of the past ten years are increasingly being set in cities, a trend that I argue allows for the transfer of the ambiguous identity of zombie bodies to city spaces. The zombie outbreak creates an ‘other’-space that I term blank space in which previously rigidly codified spaces are subject to new constructions that reinscribe bodies with new, and potentially ‘other’, subjectivities. Through an analysis of six zombie films (Night of the Living Dead, Land of the Dead, Resident Evil, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, 28 Days Later, and 28 Weeks Later), I argue that for geographers, zombie films can be read as expressions of a bodies–cities theory that emphasizes the role that spatial and bodily otherness plays in the constitution of bodies and cities. For bodies–cities theory, zombies offer a manifestation of the mutuality between bodies and cities that foregrounds corporeality while articulating the importance of difference and otherness for the constitution of bodies and cities.

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