Postracial Fantasies and Zombies

This book understands the postracial as a genre—like the zombie apocalypse—that signals a disturbance in society, felt as both terrifying and exciting. The postracial is repetitive and reproduces blackened biothreat bodies, rituals of securitisation, and fantasies of reclaiming white masculine sovereignty.

Eric King Watts examines key moments when Blackness became an object of knowledge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, laying the "scientific" and philosophical groundwork for interpreting zombie lore. The book treats the "Greater Caribbean" as a transformative space where an antiblack infrastructure arose and interrogates the US's militarised domination of Haiti, which provided the context in which the zombie emerged.

Watts traces variations in the form and function of the zombie to contemplate its relevance to our contemporary struggles with racism and pandemic policies.

Postracial Fantasies and Zombies invites readers to consider these intersections within the prism of pop culture and societal fears.