TY - BOOK ID - 104765550 TI - Zombies in Western culture : a twenty-first century crisis AU - Vervaeke, John AU - Mastropietro, Christopher AU - Miscevic, Filip PY - 2017 SN - 9781783743308 9781783743315 1783743301 178374331X 9781783743322 1783743328 178374328X 9781783743285 2821897316 9782821897311 9781783743292 9781783743285 178374328X 1783743298 PB - Open Book Publishers DB - UniCat KW - Zombies KW - Alienation (Social psychology) KW - Displacement (Psychology) KW - Popular culture KW - Zombies in popular culture. KW - Zombies in motion pictures. KW - Zombies in literature. KW - Society in literature. KW - Civilization, Modern. KW - Psychological aspects. KW - Social aspects. KW - Motion pictures KW - Modern civilization KW - Modernity KW - Civilization KW - Renaissance KW - Zombis KW - Dead KW - Culture, Popular KW - Mass culture KW - Pop culture KW - Popular arts KW - Communication KW - Intellectual life KW - Mass society KW - Recreation KW - Culture KW - Displacement behavior in humans KW - Defense mechanisms (Psychology) KW - Human behavior KW - Psychology, Pathological KW - Sublimation (Psychology) KW - Alienation, Social KW - Disaffection (Social psychology) KW - Estrangement (Social psychology) KW - Rebels (Social psychology) KW - Social alienation KW - Social psychology KW - Social isolation KW - History KW - Western culture KW - popular culture KW - crisis of meaning KW - cultural studies KW - apocalypse KW - alienation KW - media studies UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:104765550 AB - Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement. They trace the relationship between zombies and the theme of secular apocalypse, demonstrating that the zombie draws its power from being a perversion of the Christian mythos of death and resurrection. Symbolic of a lost Christian worldview, the zombie represents a world that can no longer explain itself, nor provide us with instructions for how to live within it. The concept of “domicide” or the destruction of home is developed to describe the modern crisis of meaning that the zombie both represents and reflects. This is illustrated using case studies including the relocation of the Anishinaabe of the Grassy Narrows First Nation, and the upheaval of population displacement in the Hellenistic period. Finally, the authors invoke and reformulate symbols of the four horseman of the apocalypse as rhetorical analogues to frame those aspects of contemporary collapse that elucidate the horror of the zombie. Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis is required reading for anyone interested in the phenomenon of zombies in contemporary culture. It will also be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience including students and scholars of culture studies, semiotics, philosophy, religious studies, eschatology, anthropology, Jungian studies, and sociology. ER -