Figures of Terror: The Haitian Revolution and the Zombie

• Published in: Atlantic Studies
• Main Author: Hoermann, Raphael
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor and Francis 2016
• Subjects: Literature in its original language; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/14350/; https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/14350/1/14350_Hoermann_%231.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2016.1240887

This article investigates the relation of the figure of the zombie to the Haitian Revolution, the only successful slave revolution in the Atlantic World. While existing research often stresses the strong link between the zombie and the slave, this is not borne out by the contemporary discourse on the Haitian Revolution. Whereas horror and terror are associated with the zombie from its inception, it is only with the US occupation of Haiti (1915-34) that US American writers and directors invented the zombie of popular North Atlantic culture: a soulless slave without consciousness directed by a zombie master. As I argue, this amounts to a neo-colonialist act of symbolic re-enslavement of the self-emancipated Haitians. This time they are deprived not merely of their freedom as under the slave regime, but even of their consciousness.