For those who have been following the zombie discussion spawned (pardon the pun) by my buddy Nathan, it appears to have gone, again pardon the pun, viral. Over at the promising new blog Hyper Tiling, Fabio weighs in with ruminations of his own. Ian Bogost weighs in with too terrific posts, the first riffing on Nate’s thesis that the zombie is a cultural symptom arising from a set of discontents similar to those driving the speculative realist movement, and the second responding to some worries in my post in the context of Ian’s own work with object-oriented ontology, technology, and some of the ire it’s generated among his colleagues. I especially like Ian’s reference to Bartleby in the context of this discussion. Nate has since clarified and expanded upon his original remarks. If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know.
All of this has gotten me thinking that perhaps a conference and/or an edited collection is in order, treating the zombie in the context of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology. zer0 press might be a nice venue for such a collection. I’m still gathering my own thoughts on the figure of the zombie, but it does seem to hit something central. It would be great to get Reza on board as well. Perhaps Nate could edit and organize such a project.
August 23, 2009 at 12:52 am
It has certainly been an interesting turn of events. I would add that the collection has an even potentially wider scope than just zombies: the weird, the uncanny, etc. These seem like more encompassing themes. Anyway this is a great idea. I’d love to be able to tell someone I was heading to the conference on, you know, zombies!
August 23, 2009 at 3:12 am
I second Paul’s suggestion that it cover a wider area, but if not, I would still love to write a conference paper over zombies!
August 23, 2009 at 3:13 pm
There’s certainly enough to discuss to fill a symposium, whether zombiecentric or not.
Incidentally, my colleague Carl DiSalvo reminded me of the Atlanta Zombie Symposium will take place here. There’s also an associated journal CFP [PDF].
Still, I think an SR approach to zombies would embody a rather different spirit, as it were. Thanks to our interest in science fiction, there’s quite a history of events on monsters, vampires, etc. here at Georgia Tech. I’ll chat with my colleagues about it.
August 23, 2009 at 6:02 pm
[…] in too with a couple of posts, and Fabian at Hypertiling had a few things to say as well (see Larval Subjects for the […]
August 23, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Interestingly, the Sirens in ancient Greek mythology were considered the living dead as well. Does SR/OOO need to include within its framework some sort of genealogical/hermeneutic strategy to reconcile the Sirens and Zombies? Or, do we treat the Sirens-object along the same lines as the Zombie-object?