OptionalBooks

Nice brain snack—as in a snack for the brain

Published at the peak of the Zombie's popularity in Western Cutlture¹, this academic work analyses how the symbol of the Zombie represents a Crisis of Western Culture. While previous works have taken the Zombie to represent consumerism, environmental forces, or simply death, this work proposes a—how it claims—more holistic interpretation: The Zombie as the embodiment of the “Meaning Crisis”.

The book starts out by laying out the characteristics of zombies, their attributes and behaviours. It then moves on to describe the concept of “domicide”—the destruction of a living environment—using two examples. Then the Meaning Crisis is described as a domicide of our Western (Christianity informed) worldview. In a very short passage at the end these concepts are tied together and we're thrown into the Bibliography.

As a casual reader, I was a bit disappointed to find the Zombies to be more of a hook, then a consistent throughline. The work is structured such that the direct references to Zombies are heavily frontloaded, while later chapters barely make mention of them. For an academic text it is still engaging and interesting, even to a non-academic reader, but it could have been even more so.

For the low price of “free” it is definitely worth a look.

Footnotes

[1] Refer Google Ngram Viewer. ↑

___ Reach out via Mastodon @Optional@dice.camp or shoot me an email