Appetite for Disruption

Tracing the elaboration of the zombie in modern cinema—from George Romero through Bruce LaBruce—this chapter argues for a queer reading of the zombie as challenging the hetero-centrist structure of reproductive futurity that Lee Edelman outlined in his 2004 book No Future. The chapter exploits the uncertain ontology of the zombie (being neither dead nor alive) to make the point that, like “queer,” zombie-ness connotes a certain sense of transversality; zombies cut (or gnaw, rather) through definitions of various kinds with each bloody contact. The zombie virus is transported from wound to wound, and the visceral instantiation of the queer zombies in this chapter reaches an apex when the cinematic wound of zombie cinema intersects, flows into, the traumatic reality of the AIDS epidemic, as is shown in the analysis of LaBruce’sOtto; or, Up with Dead People.