OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSION
Living On: Zombies

Incognitum Hactenus is re-thinking the zombie.

The release of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968 solidified our cultural awareness of what a zombie was and marked the beginning of the zombie film as a staple of Hollywood storytelling. Now a (regenerative) genre unto itself, the zombie movie invariably sees a band of survivors escaping from hordes of the undead, re-animated corpses limping mindlessly across desolated, post-apocalyptic landscapes that used to be our homes. Defined in part as a response to late capitalism, the zombie has come to represent humanity’s mindless consumerism, as in Romero’s second, and genre defining zombie movie Dawn of the Dead (1978), religious zealotry, the end of civilization, anxiety about our reliance on corporate medicine’s experimentation, 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later (2002 & 2007), conservative America’s racism, homophobia or general bigotry and so on.

In the next issue of Incognitum Hactenus – Living On: Zombies – we want to think beyond this narrow category to a beyond, to a realm of post-contemporaneity where the zombie, instead of being a figure of Romantic critique, is seen in a new light. This will be a double-death, the Romantic Zombie dies to make way for the Post-Contemporary Zombie. It is our claim that a rethinking of the zombie in this way produces new languages that can talk about, amongst other things, art beyond the current moment. Post-contemporary art and the Post-Contemporary Zombie stumble hand in hand into a new world. Happy writing.

Open call: if you are interested in contributing to Living On: Zombies please send a 200 word abstract to both editors: tom.trevatt@hotmail.com and caryn@caryncoleman.com. Please note that not all submissions will be accepted for publication.

Original call for papers for at this link.