The Walking Dead

Mastering Fear analyzes horror as play and examines what functions horror has and why it is adaptive and beneficial for audiences. It takes a biocultural approach, and focusing on emotions, gender, and play, it argues we play with fiction horror. In horror we engage not only with the negative emotions of fear and disgust, but with a wide range of emotions, both positive and negative. The book lays out a new theory of horror and analyzes female protagonists in contemporary horror from child to teen, adult, middle age, and old age.

Since the turn of the millennium, we have seen a new generation of female protagonists in horror. There are feisty teens in The Vampire Diaries (2009–2017), troubled mothers in The Babadook (2014), and struggling women in the New French extremity with Martyrs (2008) and Inside (2007). At the fuzzy edges of the genre are dramas like Pan's Labyrinth (2006) and Black Swan (2010), and middle-age women are now protagonists with Carol in The Walking Dead (2010–) and Jessica Lange's characters in American Horror Story (2011–). Horror is not just for men, but also for women, and not just for the young, but for audiences of all ages.

Contemporary TV series are having a great success and influence in our postmodern societies. The zombie phenomenon is getting everyday bigger audiences as well. Perhaps, this is the reason why the number of TV series about zombies is also growing. This paper uses the theory of social imagi-naries to show the manner in which one of these before mentioned media products, the series The Walking Dead, invites us to picture or imagine the human through a new characteristic of the survivors: that of being infec-1 orcid.org/0000-0001-9687-3057. Universitat Abat Oliba CEU. España. [email protected]

In this course, we will trace the history of "the Americas" as a history of zombies and zombification. The contemporary zombie, inaugurated in 1968 by film director George A. Romero, did not emerge from nowhere. Anthropologists, historians, social theorists, comic book and graphic novelists teach us that the viral, cannibal, flesh-eating, collective zombie traces its direct lineage to the Haitian religion of vodou. By introducing ourselves to pertinent examples in fiction, film, and scholarship, we will critically engage the history of zombies as a dual-history of slavery and resistance.

A speculative examination of some manifestations of contemporary Horror through the lens of the Zombie; this article considers the relationship between Zombie Apocalypses, Zombies as agents (or not), and wider aspects of genre and theory including comic books and graphic novels, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.   

It surveys multimedia interest in zombies, mash-up novels, alternate universes, and the meetings of zombies with a range of other tropes in diverse narratives.

Full article online; please follow the link to read more.

This  study  explores  accounts  of  the  revenant,  the  walking  dead  in  medieval Britain through the concept of a failure in the ritual process that surrounded death. This concept is used to explore the rituals leading to, surrounding, and following death, as well as the consequences of their perceived failure. The study of folklore and supernatural beliefs provides a unique insight into the perception of the failed ritual process of death and its consequences, as well as how the community dealt with them. Thus the nature of the revenant and the conditions that lead to its existence as a consequence of a ritual failure will be explored. It is identified as a stagnated presence, divorced from its ritual context, with no foreseeable end. The revenant threatens the community as a whole, be it through physical violence or contagion; it needs to be excised to protect the
community and its members.

This is the second volume of the History of Tv series, that goes from 2000 to today. It deals with both Italian and American Tv series (it has also a chapter on series in UK). It arrives to today: the explosion of Netflix, the Tv series in Amazon and Dinsy+, and the opening of Italian Tv series to the International market with series like Medici, My Brilliant Friend, and Leonardo

Taking a look at two contemporary TV series, The Walking Dead and Survivors, this article argues that the recent revival of post-apocalyptic fiction relies on the appropriation of empty and fragmented spaces, which function as subtle vehicles of ideologies such as discourses of security, bodily integrity and the neoliberal politics of late capitalism in Western societies. The visual representation of abandoned spaces and the rebuilding of a spatial order that has the characters following a nomad-like existence both historicise and renormalize the moral dilemmas of the post-apocalypse not only by offering a powerful social commentary of what it means to (re-)connect with a changed environment but also through seemingly rendering the catastrophe a familiar phenomenon.

There is much discussion about how in-game economies emerge and evolve—particularly how they deal
with money and inflation. But games incorporate economics at even more basic levels. Indeed, many gamers are already using the
economic way of thinking without even knowing it. The
key point is that games are all about basic economic
concepts: scarcity, choice, tradeoffs, opportunity cost,
trade, and entrepreneurship.

The Walking Dead is a popular TV series depicting a catastrophic and violent world. After a pandemic that turns humans into zombies, we witness the collapse of civilization with all its institutions, the depletion of the resources, and the struggle to build a new world in the middle of the wars between surviving groups. It illustrates a world of literal and metaphorical homo homini lupus. Some people choose sheer survival, and others try to build a moral, civil world. In this article, I propose a reading of this series from a Kantian perspective by employing his interrelated ideas on history, ethics, and politics. I claim that The Walking Dead represents the state of nature and the violence it contains, and illustrates the course of history toward a civil society as defined by Kant.

Dieses Heft möchte einen Überblick über aktuelle Ansätze der Serien- und Serialitätsforschung geben sowie didaktische Ansatzpunkte und Zugänge für den Deutschunterricht aufzeigen. Im Fokus steht zum einen die Frage, welche historischen und gegenwärtigen Formen des – auch medienübergreifenden – seriellen Erzählens existieren und wie sich diese beschreiben und analysieren lassen. Zum anderen stellt sich die Frage nach der Serienrezeption: Welche besonderen Anforderungen stellen serielle Narrationen an ihre Rezipienten, welche spezifischen Nutzungsformen und Rezeptionsmodalitäten entwickeln sich und welches didaktische Potenzial lässt sich im Hinblick auf Serienrezeption formulieren? Mit Beiträgen von Vincent Fröhlich, Daniela Schlütz, Carola Surkamp, Johanna Richter, Willem Strank und Arno Meteling.

La presente investigación gira en torno al impacto del Post 11S en las ficciones enmarcadas en la Tercera Edad Dorada de la televisión estadounidense, con especial atención al caso de Perdidos (Lost, ABC, 2004-2010). El estudio tiene dos grandes partes. Por un lado, un acercamiento a la producción y audiencia de la serie a través de un estudio documental, deteniéndonos en su narración transmedia y el juego entre creadores y los llamados prosumidores. Por otro, a través del Análisis de Contenido, se detectan mensajes que, de forma explícita o latente, hacen referencias a valores o ideas sociopolíticas. Principalmente a aquellas relacionadas con las consecuencias de los atentados del 11S en torno a dos dimensiones: la Cultura del Miedo y el Conservadurismo. A partir de aquí, el estudio se amplía a Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-2013), The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010 ) y a otras 33 producciones contemporáneas para detectar patrones y rupturas. Todo ello bajo el amparo de tres paraguas teóricos fundamentales para comprender estos productos culturales como son los Estudios Culturales, la Economía Política de la Comunicación y la Cultura y la Teoría Crítica Feminista.
The current investigation resolves around the Post 9/11 attacks on the fictions framed in the American Television's Third Golden Age, with special attention to Lost (ABC, 2004-2010). This research comprises two parts. On the one hand, an approach to the Lost production and audience, though a desk study. Special emphasis is being placed on transmedia storytelling and the game between the creative team and the so-called prosumers. On the other hand, using Content Analysis, explicit or latent messages referring to sociopolitical ideas or values are detected. Primarily this involves those that are related to the consequences of Post 9/11 attacks: The Culture of Fear and the Conservatism. Beyond that, this survey takes a closer look to Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008-2013), The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010 ) and another 33 contemporary productions in order to detect possible patterns or breaking points. All of this is analyzed under three theories that are essential in understanding the cultural products: Cultural Studies; Political Economy of Communication and Culture and the Feminist Theories.

Los atentados del 11 de septiembre abren la puerta a la sociedad del riesgo. Una sensación de amenaza que es aprovechada para justificar el encumbramiento de la Seguridad en detrimento de libertades y derechos. A este clima político y social no es ajena la ficción, que introduce en sus producciones de una forma más o menos explícita las convulsiones de la actualidad. Este hecho, unido al que las series de televisión norteamericana estén viviendo un momento dulce en su Tercera Edad Dorada, hace que sean un interesante objeto de análisis sobre la propagación de la sensación del miedo. Un reflejo de la realidad que llega incluso a las apuestas más alegóricas como las referentes al mundo postapocalíptico. En este sentido, el análisis se centra en uno de los éxitos más sonados de la televisión por cable: el holocausto zombi narrado en The Walking Dead. Un estudio centrado en cómo la dimensión siniestra construye un entorno ultraviolento sin salida, marcado por un enemigo incierto que lleva al grupo a apostar por la supervivencia. Fruto de ello, la nueva sociedad es representada en base a unos clichés conservadores que justifican el sometimiento de derechos y libertades en torno a una defensa capitaneada por hombres viriles y fuertes. Una metáfora de la supremacía de la Seguridad que estamos viviendo en los últimos años.

S’il est un phénomène incontestable de la première décennie du XXIe siècle, c’est bien celui de la massification de la diffusion en temps réel d’images apocalyptiques. Or, il se pourrait que l’esprit ne sorte pas indemne d’une telle exposition ou surexposition aux horreurs du monde. Pourtant, comme s’il ne nous suffisait pas de voir ces images constamment dans les médias, nous les recherchons dans les fictions audiovisuelles que nous choisissons de regarder. Plutôt que d’expliquer ce fait par un goût malsain et morbide, on peut proposer d’y voir la quête d’une manière de supporter cette surexposition médiatique à l’horreur. En effet, de même qu’Aristote reconnaissait aux images le pouvoir de nous instruire en nous permettant d’observer ce que nous ne pourrions regarder sans danger ou dégoût en réalité, et aux fictions le pouvoir de nous donner une présentation plus philosophique des événements que l’histoire (Aristote), je ferai l’hypothèse que les films ou les séries télévisées apocalyptiques, comme les œuvres audiovisuelles qui relèvent de l’horreur épidémique, nous permettent de mieux comprendre nos craintes pour mieux nous préparer à affronter les tragédies que nous aurons malheureusement encore à vivre dans les temps à venir. Cependant, ce pouvoir prophylactique ne peut s’exercer qu’à condition d’échapper à « l’effet de choc » (Benjamin) que ces images, même fictionnelles, peuvent avoir sur nous, qu’à condition, autrement dit, de parvenir à « retrouver l’usage de notre expérience dans le monde de la culture de masse » (Warshow). Pour cela, je m’appuierai essentiellement, mais pas seulement, sur l’œuvre audiovisuelle post-apocalyptique la plus populaire du moment, à savoir la série télévisée de la chaîne AMC adaptée des comics de Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore et Charlie Adlard : The Walking Dead (2010-).

Abstract
Zombies have exploded their fictional boundaries in what is essentially a return to their supposed beginning in social reality. These horror icons have changed through their various manifestations in film, fiction and media, however, becoming more than just metaphor for capitalism or social conservatism. Although clear connections exist between the collective symbolism of zombies and movements such as the Occupy protests or on the other hand between zombie annihilation fantasies and colonial history, no single metaphorical interpretation seems able to contain the zombie phenomenon. They have become a powerful social technology capable of creating and dismantling meaning. This ability to simultaneously construct and destroy make zombies a powerful tool in deciphering individual transformations in post-apocalyptic fictional worlds and also a key influence in forging links between those transformations and real social change. In this chapter I argue that zombies are the same kind of ‘meaning machines’ J. Jack Halberstam discussed when she attempted to revise the definition of Gothic horror in her book Skin Shows. Via Kristevian abjection, I also explain why it is important that the Romero zombie has become the dominant cultural manifestation of this particular monster. Ultimately I examine the role the technology of the zombie plays in physically re-mapping human bodies in the post-apocalypse and do this through a sustained analysis of the AMC series The Walking Dead. I find these cartographies often transgress the boundaries of the fictional worlds they manifest in and establish themselves directly in our own social reality; this is best revealed by a sustained consideration of Afro-Orientalism as political alliance between the characters in the same television series. Finally, in attempting to demonstrate the function of zombies in these processes, I discuss unexpected but potentially important connections to the field of critical posthumanism – ending on the strange subject of zombie sexuality.

This chapter appears in the book Imagining the End: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Apocalypse, Inter-disciplinary Press, 2015. Jeremy R. Strong and Thomas E. Bishop, eds.
Please find the full volume here:  http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/product/imagining-the-end-interdisciplinary-perspectives-on-the-apocalypse/

When I first began hearing ghost stories at ETSU, I realized something: the undead are bridges. The undead – those ephemeral beings in their multiple variations – are bridges between the seen and the invisible, the known and the unknown, the understood and the unexplained, mystery and science. A ghost tale can hold us together in the communal bliss of fear around a campfire. They can also pit us against one another. The undead are simultaneously the persons they used to be, as well as the apparitions they are now. They connect the past with the present. They – like the past – are dead, but very much alive in the present as they haunt places and people. They are somewhere “in-between,” having never completely crossed the threshold into whatever lies beyond. I realized my autoethnographic work is similarly haunted. Ghosts haunt the narrative and autoethnographic work of others too. Haunting, however, is not one-sided. Autoethnographers are not only haunted; they haunt as well.

La televisión es una de las instituciones socializadoras fundamentales. Sus producciones, impregnadas de elementos contextuales, toman parte activa en la construcción simbólica de la realidad a través de sus informaciones y ficciones. Justamente estas últimas viven hoy en día un momento de esplendor en torno al quality drama estadounidense. Unas narraciones que, en forma de alegoría, continúan (re)produciendo mayoritariamente espacios de vulnerabilidad en el que se refuerza la posición subsidiaria de las mujeres. Por ello, el presente texto se centra en el estudio de la reproducción de las lógicas de dominación patriarcales en tres grandes éxitos comerciales: Breaking Bad, Hijos de la Anarquía y The Walking Dead. Bajo el paraguas de la teoría crítica feminista, se realiza un análisis de la construcción de los principales personajes en torno a sus roles y espacios, prestando especial atención a la evolución de cada uno de ellos.

In this essay, I focus my attention on the survivors of the zombie apocalypse, rather than the sociocultural implications of the zombies themselves. It is the life-and-death choices of the survivors and what these characters specifically choose to cull from their recent pasts in the rebuilding of a new post-apocalyptic civilization that I find most interesting. What worlds are constructed after the initial attack that brings on the zombie apocalypse? What power dynamics continue? Does Western hegemony continue? I choose to stay within the sphere of contemporary zombie horror because I believe it remains pregnant with opportunities to explore modern race and gender relations, for Kim Paffenroth insists that zombie movies are deeply psychological dramas, that “the real enemy is the group, with the fear and ignorance that tears them apart and sets them against one another.” Finally, this particular piece focuses on the intricacies of the construction of black female survivors within contemporary zombie texts, reading their experiences within the context of black feminist theory. I begin with a retracing of the critical work that has been done on gender and race within the genre of horror itself, later focusing on the subgenre of zombie horror texts.

Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 25.2-3 (2014): 295-313.


In the West, property and the “human” are knotted. If posthumanism is about decentering the human, it would of necessity involve untying that knot. Reading George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Land of the Dead (2005), along with Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead (2003 – present), this essay argues that zombies allegorize the “multitude” of the propertyless, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri put it. They relentlessly threaten both property and the “human” that is predicated on it. Bound up in this foundational thematic of zombie narrative, though, is the survivors’ response to the zombies’ deterritorializing threat: they retrench, assert ownership of territory through bodily labor, and then engage in internecine struggles in property’s defense. Indeed, the more the survivors seek to hold on to what is “human” through securing land and property at any cost, the more they themselves become monstrous.

Why is it easier to imagine the End of the World than the End of Capitalism? As a contribution to the (as yet) hypothetical discipline of Apocalyptology, which would be devoted to studying Capitalism's multiple connections with the End of the World, this essay seeks to answer that question through a historical and critical analysis of what American Survivalists call Teotwawki as a meta-narrative framing for a variety of political discourses, ranging from Survivalism itself to the insurrectionary anarchism of the Invisible Committee, or the anarcho-primitivism of the Deep Ecology Movement and some accounts of the Anthropocene. Ever since the end of the 1970s, in a context where Capitalist Realism polices the boundaries of collective imaginaries, pre-empting any alternative to the Neoliberal order, end-of-the-world plots and tropes have been displacing end-of-capitalism narratives by redirecting the desire for radical social change towards the imagery of catastrophe and collapse and away from visions of revolution.

En este trabajo, avanzo sobre la hipótesis de que el Apocalipsis bíblico debe considerarse como un pilar fundamental en relatos contemporáneos sobre el final de los tiempos tales como The Walking Dead, especialmente a la hora de interrogar el modo en que problematizan una concepción del futuro. Desplegaré algunos argumentos para dirimir como lo pos-apocalíptico promete el porvenir como una mera restitución de tiempos pretéritos, tonalidad afectiva que puede definirse como una nostalgia del futuro. Para dar cuenta de ello, me ocupo de una figura del zombi, leyendo su resurrección cultural en diálogo con los temores más apremiantes de nuestra época tales como el contagio virósico, motivo que una serie como The Walking Dead elige trabajar por las vías del gore y el horror corporal para componer, finalmente, un escenario desesperanzador y repleto de incertidumbres. En esta apropiación particular del Apocalipsis, dicha serie televisiva pone en relieve una particular lectura de la naturaleza humana, que no puede pensarse exenta del imaginario cultural estadounidense. La peste zombi, en tal sentido, parecería estar al servicio de una posición enunciativa sobre la sociedad y sobre su carencia de utopías, cuestión que las ficciones masivas presentan como la imposibilidad de proponer una renovación del mundo.

[You can download a Sample of the book in Palgrave website: https://he.palgrave.com/resources/sample-chapters/9781137568847_sample.pdf]

This book examines the role of emotions in contemporary TV series. Over the past 20 years, TV fiction has become one of the most powerful and influential trends in popular culture. Shows such as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Lost and The Wire have created a vigorous televisual landscape where innovations in narrative form, aesthetic engagement and ethical concerns have raised TV entertainment to new heights. What makes this volume unique is its interdisciplinary approach, as the series are analysed from the perspective of Television Studies, Literature, Sociology, Philosophy and Media Studies. Key concepts developed include the relation between moral emotion and character identification, how serial narrative builds into 'affective moments' as a distinctive mode of aesthetic experience, the politics of emotion in collective identities, the intersection of gender and emotions, and how popular genres such as terror films, the thriller and science fiction manage the 'emotional turn' that postmodernism has made visible.

This article uses Pedro Valencia's play Con Z de zombie (2013) to theorize the Mexican drug war through the lens of the zombie apocalypse. As the play's title shows, Valencia asserts a connection between zombies and drug traffickers; indeed, the entire play allegorically critiques the ideologies of the drug war and advocates for sincere dialogue between narcos, civilians, and the state. The playwright employs theatrical techniques that challenge biopolitical constructs that have kept different segments of society apart from each other since the war began. Building on the work of Roberto Esposito, who argues that modern states aim to " immunize " individuals against the excesses of " dangerous communities, " I assert that the three characters of this play represent different segments of society that have come into conflict with each other as a result of the drug war. Valencia asserts that this divisions undermines any attempts at peace when his human characters befriend a zombie who has regained consciousness. These characters soon learn that they can only successfully navigate the zombie apocalypse if they work together. At an allegorical level, then, the play asserts that the state must facilitate a communion between (repentant) narcos, civilians, and the military if it wishes to mediate drug violence in the country. Pedro Valencia's play Con Z de zombie (2013) uses the backdrop of a worldwide zombie apocalypse as an allegory for contemporary Mexican drug violence. The story is set in the nation's capital, which has generally avoided the effects of organized crime that has plagued

This paper describes the assembling of a taxonomy of 'zombie space', consisting of categories of fictional urban space drawn from zombie films and other expressions of a living dead 'mythos', and presents a provisional set of these categories. The paper places this assembling in the context of the use of taxonomies in alternative ambulatory practices such as the Dadaist de-ambulation, the situationist dérive, and contemporary 'walking as art' practices. It concludes by describing the problems, specifically the paucity of theoretical detail and the lack of practical models, faced in the deployment of such a taxonomy when moving beyond an observational or experiential walk to one that is part of the construction of 'situations'.

This chapter considers the continued critical import of Heidegger’s notion of equipmentality in grappling with contemporary currents and problems within the mediatory or, as I prefer to term it, the immediatory sphere. Within Heidegger’s thought “equipmentality” marks out an exhilarating conception that equipment is never something that exists objectively “out there” (Vorhanden) but which instead inheres so deeply within our each and every comportment (Verhalten) that we rarely get to see it in operation. For when such equipment is ready-to-hand (Zuhanden) and is operating effectively, and when it is really there working for us, we do not really recognize, in any removed sense, that we are there using it. Equipmentality thus bypasses classical notions of a detached “mentality” and so we must never, according to Heidegger, equate equipmentality in any cognate way with calculative cognition. This is the first sense in which we can think equipmentality as “equip-mentality,” in that it marinates the entirety of who we are and is thus never in any way at all some sheer “thing” that we would pick up and apply. Such is the “space” of equipment, in that it is never distanced or decidedly set apart from us. Secondly, it is in the very character of equipment that it has the quality, the “equipment-ality,” of structural holism. As a consequence of this holism, equipment is never engaged with in the singular, and so one can never isolate any single “part” of it outside of the ongoing whole, without losing this equipment-ality that provides its resolve. This is the “time” of equipment, in that each and every part is deferred and is thus always lying in wait for other component parts within which it will find its meaning and significance (Bedeutung). Equipmentality then is something that inheres within really every- thing that we are. In so inhering, within everything that we are, it is never some mere mental “side” (res cogitans) placed in opposition to some object “side” (res extensa). In thus never taking sides, equipmentality always already coheres into its coherent qualitative whole. It is such coherence that we find so lacking in the zombie.

A growing literature is emerging on the connection between Popular Culture and International Relations. Within the first camp, Zombies have experienced in the past decade a sort of renaissance, as witnessed by the burgeoning rise of Zombie-related artifacts, like movies, novels, videogames, social events, and TV shows. For the purposes of the current analysis, the main feature of the Zombie narrative is that most, if not all representations of the genre depict a post-apocalyptic scenario, where security is constantly endangered and political institutions have dissolved. In this world, issues of life and death are the main concern for any actor, both individually and collectively. As a result, the use of violence and the practice of conflict acquire a different meaning compared to real life. Such a difference gives us the opportunity to speculate on war and warfare as they are depicted in a counter-factual world. In this paper we will take AMC's TV series The Walking Dead and its portrayal of warlike events with a view to spell out the social meanings of war and, equally relevant, how the practice of war changes accordingly.

As transmedia franchises increasingly populate our cultural environment, many questions arise about the effect of the different media involved in the depiction of storyworlds. Through the analysis of different examples, with special emphasis on the particular case of The Walking Dead, and drawing primarily from Henry Jenkins’s concept of “transmedia storytelling” and Jens Schröter’s concept of intermediality, this paper aims to show how different media aesthetics contribute to the process of storytelling and enrich the experience of the consumer. Usually overlooked in other analyses, we argue that these formal and aesthetical characteristics, such as the interactive nature of video games, call for a broader approach that transcends the accustomed search of common narrative aspects. This will be exemplified by a closer comparative look at the adventure game The Walking Dead: The Game (Telltale Games, 2012) and The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (Terminal Reality, 2013). The transformations that the different media demand contribute not only to the narrative, but also provide different tools for the construction of storyworlds and different ways to engage with it.

Nell’ultimo decennio i morti viventi hanno invaso le tavole dei fumetti, le pagine di libri e riviste, e, gli schermi, cinematografici, televisivi, ma anche dei monitor, degli smartphone e dei tablet. Nessun terreno mediale è rimasto immune dal contagio; una vera e propria meta-invasione transmediale di cui si tenterà di tracciare alcune coordinate nelle prossime pagine, avendo come punto di riferimento alcune opere mediali significative per questo filone; soprattutto, l’universo di The Walking Dead. Il termine universo non è usato a caso: The Walking Dead nasce nell’ottobre del 2003 come fumetto a opera di Robert Kirkman, per poi diventare sette anni più tardi una delle serie televisive di maggiore successo degli ultimi anni. Il mosaico mediale di The Walking Dead è in continuo divenire e i tasselli che lo compongono sono numerosi: un talk show televisivo, The Talking Dead, in cui gli ospiti commentano gli episodi della serie subito dopo la loro messa in onda; numerosi videogame, di cui alcuni – quelli prodotti dalla Telltale Game – hanno ottenuto un grande successo di pubblico e critica; una serie di romanzi dedicata a uno dei personaggi cardine della terza e quarta stagione della serie televisiva, il Governatore. Inoltre, è in fase di produzione uno spin-off con una linea narrativa diversa da quella principale, con personaggi e ambientazioni differenti, al punto tale che gli autori precisano che non si dovrebbe parlare di spin-off, ma di un’altra serie televisiva ambientata nello stesso mondo. Da qui si rafforza l’idea che ci troviamo di fronte a un vero e proprio universo narrativo che fa da cornice a prodotti mediali di varia natura. Il Big Bang dell’universo di The Walking Dead non è improvviso, esso è piuttosto il portato, da un lato, di una tradizione cinematografica, quella inaugurata e tuttora portata avanti da George A. Romero, profondamente sedimentata nell’immaginario collettivo, e, dall’altro, di una temperie sociale e culturale che ha ridato linfa vitale alla figura dello zombi, messa in secondo piano dopo i fasti cinematografici degli anni ’70 e ‘80. Non a caso, nella recente letteratura accademica e mediologica sul tema, si sta facendo strada l’idea che l’era attuale siano definibile come l’epoca della “Zombi Renaissance”: “We are currently experiencing a global explosion of zombie mania, with zombie representations and zombie-related material infiltrating the media and contemporary society in multiple and changing forms” (Hubner Leaning e Manning, 2014). L’universo di The Walking Dead, con gli ascolti da record della serie televisiva e le sue varie diversificazioni mediali, rappresenta probabilmente l’epitome della Zombi Renaissance.

This article presents a deep analysis of the Zombie revival (lead by HBO’s The Walking Dead) of those last years. Starting from the Catholic’s “expecto resurrectionem mortuorum” and through the categories of modern political philosophy, the author makes a comparison between the imaginary of the “ones who waits” and the reality of a post-zombie world where the Hobbesian state of nature rules over individuals and morality.

Presented in part fulfilment for the degree of BA(Hons) English

We are firmly locked in the realms of catastrophe. Extrapolations of the future are composite, yet limited to despair. Are we unable to envision a future as anything other than dystopian? Or more pressingly, are we able to conceive a future at all? Conrad McCarthy’s narrator in the award-winning novel, The Road, poignantly states: ‘there is no later. This is later.’ (McCarthy, 2009:56) - A statement that abolishes the comfort of being overlooked as solely residing in the realms of fiction. A collectively bleak forecast on the future is prominent in various forms of major discourse; so much so that Maria Puente, writing a review for the movie Never Let Me Go (2010) in USA Today, opted for the captivating title: ‘According to Sci-Fi Movies, the Future Isn’t Looking So Good’ - despite this particular film not depicting the future, but discerning its inclusion of the calamitous themes contaminating contemporary speculative fiction. It is this mode of thought that has led to pre-eminent contemporary critic Fredric Jameson titling his 1982 journal entry in Science Fiction Studies, ‘Progress versus Utopia; Or, Can We Imagine the Future?’

This thesis explores the role of hope and belief in the aesthetic of dystopian fiction. This new genre, dragged under the heels through the 19th century wave of its utopian sister, achieved prominence in the 20th century. A framework in how characters find and exhibit hope in the fictional worlds, and how readers and viewers may extract hope from fiction is provided. An understanding of the mechanics of dystopian fiction and its societal function is fundamental to appreciating its effectiveness. Looking past dystopia’s nihilistic and horrifying evocation as superficial, I am mainly focused on its potential for revealing the conditions of the present and the steps that must be taken to avoid despair. In other words, I want to extract elements of hope in dystopia, adhering to the Jamesonian dialectic. To finalise this section the essence of my thesis is outlined—what must be acknowledged is the monumental quality that hope has in the aesthetic overall. In all its forms, hope is the sine qua non of dystopia. If we are to extrapolate anything from the stubbornness of the utopian impulse, it is that mankind inherently pursues amelioration, comfort, and ultimately perfection, despite how futile and unattainable that may be. Leading science-fiction (hereafter SF) author and academic China Miéville insists, in his 2014 Nelson Institute Earth Day Conference speech, that “utopias are necessary” despite being “insufficient” and part of the deprecated ideologies that incorporate the “bad totality that organises us” (nelsoninstitute, 2014, 1:49-2:01). Therefore, as a pragmatic and truly dialectic approach that refutes the haunting unilateralism of conventional utopias, we are to turn to salvagepunk as the best mode of resistance to this epoch of catastrophe. Salvaging and re-purposing will allow us to recapture utopia under the colossal junk of capitalism’s throwaways and the residues of discarded utopias.

The aim of this dissertation is to clarify the possible
senses of the city as an image of the world in the
television series The Walking Dead (Frank Darabont
y Angela Kang, 2010-). We explore the elements of
the world that are are poetically imitated in the series.
The city is the preferent simbol of The Walking Dead to
manifest this elements of the world. The methodology of
this investigation is Possible Worlds Theory, moreover
we pay attention to hermeneuthic authors such as
Paul Ricoeur, Gadamer or García-Noblejas. The
series presents a world infested by zombies. Cities
have become uninhabitable sites, but also many other
places. Various human groups respond to this borderline
situation by founding new urban spaces away from
traditional cities. The settlements are built as microcities
(small worlds) that express different anthropologies