Arctic Zombie Dreaming from the Edge

• In Event: Elemental Postcards from Beyond Empire: Excavation / Dust

Abstract

In 2016, on the Yamal Peninsula of Northwest Siberia, high above the arctic circle, an unexpected thaw revealed the carcass of a reindeer who died of anthrax in the 1940s. Reindeer grazing near the remains were exposed to the spores which had drifted out across the tundra. Scientists and news outlets referred to this reemergence of anthrax—seemingly from the dead—as “zombie” diseases. This circulation of empire’s fever dreams through the Caribbean and into the arctic tundra along the worn tatters of racialized disease narratives and discursive twists reveals an anxiety of the materiality of microbes, monstrous as they re-emerge from burial pits: fever dreams reaching out as postcards from the edges of empire, both spatial and temporal.

Author

• Patricia Lopez, University of Washington