We Are All Zombies Now

• In Event: Monstrous Curriculum Conversations

Abstract

This paper expands Quiggin’s (2010) notion of zombie economics by combining to discuss not only how neoliberal education reform continues despite evidence of its ineffectiveness or danger (its “death,” as it were), but also how it is perpetuated through the infected bodies of teachers and students themselves. By examining various ways the zombie has been characterized in popular culture, I posit the zombie as an ideal metaphor for the discussion of the specific ways teachers feel the effects of neoliberal reform within public education. Such a metaphor is not taken lightly and is not meant to diminish the effects of reforms on people, but by using the metaphor of a zombie, one sees neoliberal reform beyond the discourse around public education to how such reforms come to be embodied in the actors within public education. Zombies bring an understanding of how reforms affect schools, but also speak to the complex relationship of how those reforms and actors feed each other. In the end, a zombie is an undead body, but a body nonetheless moved forward by some other nonliving power.

This paper relies on two current pop culture iterations of the zombie trope. The first is the graphic novel (Kirkman, Adlard, Moore, & Rathburn, 2009) and television series (Darabont, 2010), “The Walking Dead”. Here we see the effects of living in a zombie apocalypse where it is difficult at best to determine who exactly the walking dead are, the living or the zombies. Furthermore, zombies allow for a consideration of spatial theory (Soja, 1989) as it relates to neoliberal education reforms by examining how zombie bodies move transgressively in terms of traditional community boundaries. The second pop culture iteration is iZombie (Roberson, Allred, Allred, & Klein, 2011), in which a teenage zombie is a functioning member of society (despite here need to feed on human flesh) by solving crimes. Here, to be a zombie does not mean one is a mindless monster. This paper will consider the difference between these metaphors especially as it relates to student protests of neoliberal reforms that rely on the zombie metaphor.


Darabont, F. (Writer) & E. Dickerson, G. Nicotero, G. Ferland, & B. Gierhart (Directors). (2010). The walking dead. In D. Alpert, G. A. Hurd, & R. Kirkman (Producer), The walking dead. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Anchor Bay Entertainment.
Kirkman, R., Adlard, C., Moore, T., & Rathburn, C. (2009). The walking dead compendium one. Berkeley, Calif.: Image Comics.
Quiggin, J. (2010). Zombie economics: How dead ideas still walk among us. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Roberson, C., Allred, M., Allred, L., & Klein, T. (2011). iZombie. New York, NY: DC Comics/Vertigo.
Soja, E. W. (1989). Postmodern geographies: The reassertion of space in critical social theory. London: Verso.

Author

• Gabriel Huddleston, Texas Christian University