Mob Zombies, Alien Nations, and Cities of the Undead: Monstrous Subjects and the Post-Millennial Nomos in I am Legend and District 9

Abstract

The subject produced from this renewed historical cunning, or perhaps vice versa, is the properly monstrous political subject for whom existing social categories and agential determinations are demonstrably insufficient. From the scholarly collaborations of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker to the plethora of cinematic and televisual incarnations, the first decade of the new millennium has seen an acute resurgence of interest in — indeed, a well-nigh global obsession with — the reckoning of this monstrous subjectivity. Of especial prominence has been the return of the zombie and its phantasmagoric next-of-kin, the werewolf, the alien, and the vampire, all of which have increasingly assumed the key features of the former. In fact, the twenty-first-century zombie is easily distinguished from its Cold War, pop-culture predecessor by two fundamental characteristics: its proclivity for mass social organization and its disarming speed and power. While the first attribute has gone largely without notice, the second provoked vigorous online debate (weighing the merits of the “fast zombie” against the traditional “slow” one) following the release of Danny Boyle’s British “viral zombie” film 28 Days Later (2002) and Zack Snyder’s much-anticipated remake of George Romero’s classic satire of US consumerism Dawn of the Dead (2004), either of which might legitimately lay claim as the originator of this now de rigueur representation.