Digging Deep into the Zombie Complex with J. G. Michael

I was very happy to have conversation recently with J G Michael on his excellent podcast Parallax Views. J.G. asked some excellent questions that allowed us to dig deeper than usual into the historical, psychological and contemporary political implications of the zombie complex.

In it we discuss conceptions of the soul in Haitian Vodou; its role in the revolution and later suppression; primitivism, negrophilia and the romance of revolutionary Vodou amongst avant-garde intellectuals; George Bataille’s ideas about revolutionary violence, excess and General Economy; the notion of somnambulistic trance in debates about cinema and mass media; Papa Doc Duvalier’s political use of Vodou during the dictatorship; and US-UK anti-Vodou Black Ops in the 1940’s and Cold War .

It was good to be drawn into a theoretical discussion about J.G’s interview with Frank B. Wilderson III, author of Afropessimism, and to air some grievances about Wade Davis, author of Serpent and the Rainbow (1985).