Life, death, and the living dead in the time of COVID-19

Abstract

Is COVID-19 our first global zombie event? The question leads to others that fall outside the decorum of official discourse, possibly because the answers reach beyond the pale of the state. Unable to understand the nature of the threat, national leaders failed early and caught on late to the need for a globally coordinated response. Coupled with a deep resistance by states to the alienation of any degree of sovereignty to international institutions, the prospect of a global solution to the zombie question remains elusive. This essay offers an interpandemic response to the novel coronavirus that cuts across borders and against the grain. The first is transnational, to identify from the parallax view of Sydney and Los Angeles emergent risks that defy single-state fixes. The second is transhistorical, to counter efforts by China and the United States to subsume a human security crisis into the narrative of an eternal Cold War. The third is transmedial, to acquire new political and cultural perspectives on the pandemic through the zombie cinematic genre, including our documentary film, Project Z: The Final Global Event. A zombie inquiry can help us understand how COVID-19 is both disease and potential cure of late and rising empires.