Giving a Voice To The Living Dead: Zombie Studies

In “Death and the Nation’s Subject,” Sharon Holland argues that “blackness” in the U.S. nation-state has been situated in a space of “social death,” which is juxtaposed against superior white bodies. She writes, “Blackness is the yardstick by which most peoples in this nation measure their worth—by something they are not” (Holland, 16). In this way, blackness is figured against whiteness— whiteness being life, liberty, voice, etc. and blackness being death, slavery, silence, etc. In this correlation, a space of life and death is created, and ultimately Holland refers to Orlando Patterson’s “social death” argument, in saying that those who are black are dead, “socially dead” because they in a sense lack a history. She notes Patterson’s argument in relation to the U.S. nation state slave in writing, “Not only was the slave denied all claims on, and obligations to, his parents and living blood relations but, by extension, all such claims and obligations on his more remote ancestors and on his descendants. He was truly a genealogical isolate” (Holland, 13). The slave was denied history, and without history (or genealogy) life is also denied. In saying this, history plays a huge role in forming life, or forming a life that matters. When those whom identify with whiteness form identity based on a rich history, enabling essence and meaning, those whom identify with blackness are then denied life, because without history their lives mean nothing.

This “social death” Holland defines can be explored in a documentary, “A Good Man,”which is about choreographer Bill T. Jones’s recent dance production "Fondly Do We Hope... Fervently Do We Pray." In the documentary we are presented with a black man who is creating a dance production about President Abraham Lincoln— “a good man” who has been praised for abolishing slavery. Skeptical of this “history,” Jones explores what it means to be, “a good man,” and what it means to present this genealogy in the medium of dance. Jones admits that many people think Lincoln was just a Politician, however he still believes him to be, “a good man.” Jones says, “Any good art must talk about us… Am I a good man? Are we good people?” In relation to Holland’s argument let us take a close look at the pronouns used. Who is the Us, I and We Jones is confronting? As a black man (narrator) situated with a “socially dead blackness,” we are at some point made to believe the pronouns are related to his disposition. However, could Jones be challenging this stipulation through dance? Lincoln represents a whiteness (life) that alleged blackness (death) is supposed to be measured against. However, because Jones is in a culturally inferior position, he shows the power that is upheld within his stance. There would be no whiteness without blackness, because whiteness is also defined through what it is not. Therefore, whiteness is just as defined by blackness, as the latter. This multiplicity of power can be related to Foucault’s argument that, “power should not been seen only as oppressive, (because) it also enables, especially when employed locally against dominant forms of oppression” (Childers and Hentzi, 239). Therefore, Jones’s art represents the enabling power a “socially dead” person can express through the medium of dance. Power can say yes, and in this case it does. Power in this case can give voice and expression to a dead blackness.

In going along with giving voice to the “socially dead,” let us look at another passage Holland wrote. She explores, “What if some subjects never achieve, in the eyes of others, the status of “living”? What if these subjects merely haunt the periphery of the encountering person’s vision, remain, like the past and the ancestors who inhabit it, at one with the dead—seldom recognized and, because of circum-Atlantic traffic in human cargo or because of removal, often unnamed?” (Holland, 15). In this space of undead we can find a population of (in lack of better popular definition) zombies. We could spend hours discussing the space “zombies” make up in popular films, as they represent many metaphors: capitalism, untamed force, etc. But for the purpose of this blog, let’s explore a video that recognizes zombies with a voice. In a video entitled, “Zombie Rap” by Beau Chevassus, we see a music video depicting zombies in a very “black” way. These “undead rappers” take upon a cultural blackness as they use hip-hop to convey a message. The message: “They rock the nation.” The zombies in this video not only use black conventions, but they also proclaim their power in dominating spaces of movies, YouTube, and “the streets.” In saying this, the space occupied by the living could not exist without the population of the “dead.” Besides the actors of this video all being white (which can raise another debate), the idea of the “zombie” should be considered heavily in the argument Holland makes, because the term “zombie” actually derives from certain serpent worshiping cults in West Africa and the West Indies, as a ritualistic procedure of punishing those who break the law. These laws that were being offended could be as simple as a member of the tribe saying something against the community (Dutton, 142-143). (Seriously, the ritual consisted of knocking a prisoner unconscious, inducing them with a drug that ultimately made them brain dead, ‘burying’ them in a shallow grave, and reawakening them with “voodoo”… Basically these prisoners ‘rise from the dead,’ and walk through the village as mindless vegetables unable to act out another crime. This was documented by an anthropologist who witnessed the ritual first hand in the West Indies.) Therefore, with a rich genealogy in African (black) history, the “zombie” not only conveys a way in which dominant white (and Western) people identify against, but also one in which the genre of horror comes about in reaction to alleged “primitive” cultures. What may at first seem like a silly “Zombie Rap,” is actually a representation of deep historical, modern interpretation, and representation of giving “blackness” voice. Enjoy.

Work Cited:

Dutton, Wendy. “The Problem of Invisibility: Voodoo and Zora Neale Hurston.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies Vol. 13 Nov. 2 (1993): 142-145

Foucault, Michel, Mauro Bertani, Alessandro Fontana, François Ewald, and David Macey. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975-76. New York: Picador, 2003. Print.

Sharon Patricia Holland. Raising the Dead: Readings of Death and (Black) Subjectivity. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. 13-40.

“Zombie Rap.” Director Beau Chevassus. Found on vimeo. http://vimeo.com/groups/4640/videos/10235034