The Anthropocene and the Undead describes how our experience of an increasingly erratic environment and the idea of the undead are more closely linked than the obvious zombie horde signaling the end of the world. In fact, as described here, much of how we understand the anthropocene both conceptually and in practice involves undead entities from the past that will not die, undead traumas that rise up and consume the world, and undead temporalities that can never end. fifteen original essays by cultural and anthropological experts such as Kyle William Bishop, Nils Bubandt, Johan Hoeglund, and Steffen Hantke, among others, study the nature of humanity's ongoing complicated relationship to the environment via the concept of the undead. In doing so, The Anthropocene and the Undead sheds invaluable light on adjacent concepts such as the Capitalocene, Necrocene, Disanthropocene, Post-anthropocene, and the Symbiocene to trace real and imagined trajectories of our more-than-human selves into undead and undying futures.
Simon Bacon is an independent scholar.
Acknowledgments Introduction Simon Bacon Part I: Undead Identity in the Anthropocene Chapter 1: (Un)Death of the Father: Self-Sacrificing Paternity in Modern Zombie Narratives Kyle William Bishop Chapter 2: Undeath, Theatricality, and the EcoGothic in DC Moore's Common (2017) Gheorghe Williams Chapter 3: Maggie in the Necrocene Johan Hoeglund Part II: Undead Spaces and "Zones" of the Anthropocene Chapter 4: The Uncanny Valley of the Anthropocene: Short Stories About the Undead Under the Brightest of Lights Nils Bubandt Chapter 5: Mutants and Tourists: Horror Film, Sacrifice Zones, and Chernobyl Diaries (2012) Steffen Hantke Chapter 6: A Panic on the 4th of July: Municipal Malfeasance, Mutation and Monstrosity in Barry Levinson's The Bay (2012) Rebecca Stone Gordon Part III: The Anthropocene and the End of "Time" Chapter 7: "Dying All the Time": The Future as the Extended Present and the Zombification of History in the Anthropocene Elana Gomel Chapter 8: Avenging the Anthropocene: Returning the Dead to Life while Destroying the Planet in The Avengers Films Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. Chapter 9: "To Remember Forever to Forget": Into Eternity and the Anti-Anthropocene Kristopher Woofter and Mikaela Bobiy Part IV: The Disantnropocene: Is Not All About Us Chapter 10: "You're Next!": The Enemy Within and the End of the Anthropocene as Seen in Adaptions Of "Who Goes There?" And The Body Snatchers Andrew Wilson Chapter 11: Non-Consensual Eco-sex: A Guided Meditation to the Permeable Membrane Sarah Lewison Chapter 12: Back from the Dead: Tailings Ponds in the Albertan Oil Sands Mining Operations Aaron Bradshaw Part V: The Post-Anthropocene, the Symbiocene and Undead Futures Chapter 13: Post-Anthropocenic Undying Futures: The Ecocritical Dystopian Posthuman in Lai's The Tiger Flu and Bacigalupi's "The People of Sand and Slag" Conrad Scott Chapter 14: "Cause tonight is the night/When two become one": Stranger Things, Parasitism, Assimilation and the Abject Daisy Butcher Chapter 15: After the End: The Postanthropocene Future of Endzeit Lars Schmeink About the Contributors
