Using Zombies in the Critical Medical Humanities: A Transdisciplinary Methodology for the Development of Ethical Thinking and Feeling

Abstract

This thesis investigates the critical potential of the zombie figure for the enhancement of ethical debates in the areas of health and medicine, both as an illustrative intervention into current debates and as a way of provoking new ones. Situated within the emerging field of critical medical humanities, it draws on transdisciplinary theoretical precepts to conduct a close study of two types of narratives: those produced in popular zombie films and television, and those popularly generated out of scientific and public understandings of medical phenomena. Through four transdisciplinary case studies, it utilises a qualitative and experimental research approach combining methods of close textual analysis, critical discourse analysis, thought experiments, and radical qualitative comparison. These case studies analyse a series of cinematic and cultural zombie types and use them as a source of theory to critically and affectively investigate a range of biomedical topics. Through this process, this thesis develops a transdisciplinary methodology for addressing difficult ethical questions posed both in the specialised field of medical ethics and in broader public discourse. In doing so, it responds to a call in medical ethics for a more expansive approach to ethical thinking, arguing that close critical attention to popular culture broadly, and the zombie specifically, can promote feeling-inflected approaches to addressing ethical and philosophical opportunities in health and medicine. Furthermore, it argues that feeling and affect produced through popular culture constitute a strong and much-needed mechanism for ethical thinking in health and medicine. In developing this transdisciplinary, multimodal methodology and applying it to biomedical and bioethical case studies, the approach of this thesis offers a rich, flexible, and generative contribution to critical medical humanities and beyond.