Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror, and the Zombie Complex by John Cussans (review)

Zombies and "Voodoo" have long served as a shorthand in Anglo-American popular culture for the supposedly barbaric nature of Haiti and Haitians. In Undead Uprising: Haiti, Horror and the Zombie Complex, John Cussans charts this discursive and thematic network of (pseudo-) ethnographic, journalistic, and cinematic representations of Haiti that has served to dehumanize and demonize the nation since at least the events that began the Haitian Revolution in 1791. Cussans approaches the subject of the zombie and Vodou as a scholar of visual culture with a background in cultural history. He seeks to demystify the portrayal of the nation in films and other cultural products by contextualizing their creation in relation to contemporaneous sociohistorical events that shaped Haitian relations with international powers (primarily the United States and France). Through this examination, Cussans elaborates a theory of the "Zombie Complex" mentioned in his title. He states that it "refers to a range of ethical, psychological, and political thought-problems clustered around the central figure of the living-corpse which, though ostensibly fictional, stubbornly reminds us of the horribly actual limits (or lack of limits) of humanity, the individual and the human" (iv). Through this nexus of ontological questions, he links the "apocalyptic flesh-eating zombie" (100) that emerged with George Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead to the Haitian folkloric living dead figure, typically a passive victim controlled by a zombi master. This research dovetails with Kaiama Glover's recent article "'Flesh like One's Own': Benign Denials of Legitimate Complaint" (Public Culture, 2017), which explores how the cannibal zombie can be related to the abject way Haiti is portrayed in US news media.

In the introduction to Undead Uprising, Cussans narrates his interest in the subjects of the book. He cites an early encounter with what he calls "Voodoo-horror" in a Hollywood B-movie, and describes a connection with his doctoral work on imitative behavior in the British "Video Nasty" controversy in the 1980s and in the work of French philosopher Georges Bataille.¹ These references reflect the author's methodology, which includes critical analysis of sensationalistic popular culture read through the lens of philosophy and cultural history. Cussans examines the role of mimetic behavior as it relates to the zombie complex, offering a very interesting account of references to the purported role of Mesmerism in the Haitian Revolution. He examines how the practice—a precursor to hypnotism—arrived in colonial Saint-Domingue, and how it came to be viewed as playing a decisive role in the 1791 revolts inaugurating the revolution. Given his personal and professional background, Cussans identifies himself as "an armchair historian" (vi) of Haiti, yet his work is thoroughly researched and maintains a highly critical eye toward the exoticizing and othering way in which Haitian Vodou is presented in Western media and popular narratives, even those with purported journalistic or objective value. He makes extensive reference to critical work within the field of Haitian studies, which anchors his discourse and helps it to serve as a corrective to the exploitative works he analyzes.

Undead Uprising is divided into two parts, each containing four chapters. The first examines the folkloric Haitian zombi, while the other tracks the evolution of the figure into a violent flesh-hungry monster through the vehicle of Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The transition between the two major parts of the book is illustrated by a graph labeled "Axis of Living Death" (220), which offers a visual interpretation of the transformation of the zombie myth. The largely chronological organization allows the reader to better understand the changing but enduring significance of Vodou to representations of Haiti globally.

In the first chapter, the author studies William Seabrook's 1929 travelogue The Magic Island, which introduced the zombie to North American audiences. In addition to interrogating the zombie's role as justification for the US Occupation of Haiti, the chapter elaborates on Bataille's significance to the...