Fetish, Voodoo & Zombies: The Discourse of
Un-Enlightenment
In the past decade the popular media and
as well as academia have become increasingly frenzied by the zombie takeover of
the American imagination via films, television, books, video games, social
media, and even the government (the CDC’s “Preparedness 101: The Zombie
Apocalypse”). Theories on the “Crazed Zombie Craze” run rampant.
Most commentators agree, however, that zombies are a metaphor for modern
society: whether victims of capitalism, consumerism, post-9/11 paranoia, social
apathy, etc., they are us. Despite the word’s etymological
origins in Africa and its overtly racist nascence in American popular culture,
the modern Zombie has been, apparently, de-racialized. Or has it?
While we will look at some contemporary
theories of the “evolution” of the zombie from lone, foot-shuffling
victims deprived of volition by evil forces to raging hoards of infectious
flesh-eaters, our goal will not be to contribute to this discourse so much as
to interrogate it. Why retain a term whose original meaning has been inverted?
Even George Romero, whose 1968 film Night
of the Living Dead is widely credited with giving birth to the modern
zombie, has eschewed the term. Yet it persists. Why, and what does its
persistence say about us?
This seminar will examine the multiple
histories of three key terms originally used to describe West African and African
Diasporic practices—”Fetish,” “Voodoo,” and
“Zombie”—in order to interrogate the reasons for both their
appropriation and their persistence in a modern discourse that has not only
stripped them of racial connotations but has also inverted their meaning and
function in relation to their original and still extant cultural contexts.
The approach will be somewhat of an
odyssey, beginning with the “Zombie Craze,” then following a
chronological path starting with the concept of “Fetishism,” a term
coined by French philosopher Charles de Brosses in 1757 to indicate the
“pure condition of un-enlightenment” (William Pietz): the opposite of
emergent European “rational” self-identity. After tracking the
trajectory of the term’s deployment by Hegel, Marx, and Freud, we will look at
modern descriptions of uses of “fetish” objects—bocio (Togo/Benin) and nkisi
(Congo)—within their African cultural contexts. We will follow a similar
methodology to look at the deployment of the word “Voodoo” in
American culture in response to our very fraught relationship with Haiti, from
the Haitian revolution (1804) to the American occupation of Haiti (1915-1934),
which also introduced the word “Zombie” into American popular culture
via W. B. Seabrook’s Magic Island
(1929). In both cases we will look at the concepts in their Haitian and African
contexts—Haitian vodou/West African vodoun and the Haitian zombi—which not only refute the
stereotypes but reveal their implications in the construction of normative
American subjectivity. We will then return to the “Zombie Craze,”
bringing new insights to bear on the phenomenon.
Yes, zombies are us, but only as one of
the “self-evident ways that American choose to talk about themselves
through and within a sometimes allegorical, sometimes metaphorical, but always
choked representation of an Africanist presence” (Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark).
Major Assignments
Weekly Response Essays: Short (one-page) essays responding
to each week’s readings.
Outside work (book, film, etc) research and presentation:
Seminar participants will read and report on an outside work related to the
seminar topic.
Outside article presentation and discussion leading: Seminar
participants will select an article for the class to read and lead a class
discussion on it.
Final Seminar Paper (12-15 pages) or equivalent Research
Project. Early in the semester, participants will identify an area of research
for their final project. A wide range of areas pertaining to the course topic
will be acceptable: art and art history, film, literature, social movements,
anthropology, history, etc. Periodic reports on progress and related
assignments, such as bibliographies, outlines, etc., will also be required.
A formal Oral Presentation (academic panel format) of the
final project.
Major Required Texts/Films
Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of this World
Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
William Gibson, Count Zero
Victor Halperin, White Zombie (1932)
Val Lewton (producer),
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
George Romero, Night of the Living Dead (1968)
A VERY substantial
amount of additional required readings will be available on Laulima.