Life and death are blended into one and the same thing in zombies. Yet they have been treated as a dichotomy in modern-day society, in which failure, sadness, loneliness, etc. are not permitted. We are forced to be heroes if we wish to avoid being cut off from others. The zombie as tragic hero could serve as a ‘perfect-imperfect’ model of the significance that life acquires once death, profound failure, anguish, infinite and fathomless despair have been experienced. We are all of us zombies, yet we refuse to acknowledge this, closing our eyes out of a sense of ambivalence to the possibility of allowing ourselves to bite and so acquire an understanding of who we are.
Such an act would be to live the tragedy in which there is no place for that ideal character, a hero bored with his own perfection, success and absolute consciousness. Let us revel in the sense of senselessness, the unconsciousness of consciousness, the movement of automatism and the reciprocal involvement of opposites without becoming ensnared in nihilism. Because to live is to die a little every day, and to die at a slow pace is to live more intensely!
Extract from “La figura del Zombi a la deriva entre la vida y la muerte”, written by Zaloa Zabala, one of the organisers and a member of consonni.
