The Zombie as Figure of Mental Illness

Chapter 2 discusses a widespread but underexamined zombie trope: the hesitation between the zombie as a “real” living dead person and the zombie as a mentally ill or intellectually disabled individual. This chapter begins by exploring the emergence of the trope of the zombie as a figure of mental illness in iconic occupation-era (1915–1934) and mid-twentieth century travelogues, films, and anthropological writing by writers and directors from the United States and Europe, arguing that in addition to playing on US audiences’ fascination with zombies and Haitian “voodoo,” they also reveal implicit fears about emergent Western psychiatric treatments. If this avatar of the zombie emerged as a way of simultaneously titillating US audiences and “diagnosing” the living dead—explaining this apparent product of Haitian superstition through scientific, rational discourse—Haitian writers of the twentieth century (Alexis, Depestre, and Chenet) reappropriate this avatar, blurring the distinction between the zombie as a product of Vodou and the zombie as a product of mental illness. In doing so, these authors seek to restore the complex historical and cultural backdrop against which the living dead must be understood in the Caribbean.