Myth, Undead: The Apocalyptic Imaginary, Vol.

• The Apocalyptic Sublime

The apocalypse is sublime – this is no great leap of thought, for not long after he wrote the
Critique of Judgment, from which I derive my understanding of the term “sublime,” Kant wrote an
essay entitled “The End of All Things.” A direct translation of the Greek ἀποκάλυψις as “lifting the
veil,” or as “revelation” suggests that the concept of the sublime may help shed light upon the
persistence of this eschatological myth in secular, (post-) modern culture. Apocalypse was always
something more than a theological concept – the object of our fascination, anticipation and even desire
has only taken new forms throughout history: the Bomb, unprecedented epidemics, “the end of
history,” the ultimate fate of the universe, the end of the Mayan calendar.. even the zombie apocalypse.
The apocalypse is attractive – a sublime surpassing nature:

Compared to any of these, our ability to resist becomes an insignificant trifle. Yet the sight of
them becomes all the more attractive the more fearful it is, provided we are in a safe place. And
we like to call these objects sublime because they raise the soul's fortitude above its usual
middle range and allow us to discover within ourselves an ability to resist which is of a quite
different kind, and which gives us the courage to believe that we could be a match for [their]
seeming omnipotence. [2]

The apocalypse is immanent – as more-or-less disguised myth. The apocalypse is always imminent – as
an event ever on the horizon. Always yet to come, this imminence signifies our safety – it is a formal
structure of eschatological myth: nothing that happens can be the apocalypse, rather the apocalypse is
fundamentally what does not happen – immanence itself revealed, unveiled and disclosed (Georges
Bataille, “Beyond Seriousness” [3]). In what time I have today, I shall speak of apocalyptic myth as not
only “our symbolic interface with the world, often but not always presented in allegorical or
metaphorical form,” [4] but as a narrative form that functions, as it were, as the plot (μύθοσ) of history.
The apocalypse would be the climax, dénouement and closure of history: judgment, revelation and end.

This is of course the first installment of a series on the topic of eschatological myth today – by means
of examining the various forms it can take, eschatological myth as a whole will come into view.
 • An Undead Myth

The zombie apocalypse is trendy – Facebook tells us that 599,332 people have RSVP-ed. [5] It is the
latest form of the apocalypse – a postmodern incarnation of the myth with modern zombies. While
folkloric zombies have a long history and various cultural forms, “modern zombies are often related to an
apocalypse, where civilization could collapse due to a plague of the undead” (Munz, Hudea, Imad & Smith,
When Zombies Attack!, pg. 134). [6] This was an entirely new vision of the end when Night of the Living Dead
appeared in 1968, the year during which post-industrial, post-modern capitalism attained undisputed ascendancy
after the failed revolts of May.

The zombie apocalypse is the eschatological event proper to post-modernity – being tongue-in-cheek and
altogether lacking in seriousness, we can laugh off the very real anxieties it nevertheless signi fies. While it is
doubtless true that the obvious sources of anxiety – our mortality and the very real capacity of our
civilization to annihilate itself (attained with the advent of the Bomb, object of other forms of the
eschatological myth, enduring element of the contemporary apocalyptic imaginary) – are inextricably
bound up in every such myth, others appear to be more significant.

Modern zombies are American – the largely interchangeable zombie flick settings signify an
automated, atomized and alienated society. Modern zombies embody the undead afterlife of modernity
and its myths – the alienated, atomized subject, no longer properly an “individual,” lives and labors like
an automaton. The ideologies of post-modern liberal capitalism produce and rely upon subjects such as
these – zombies with a pulse.

• Descartes of the Dead

The modern zombie is the apotheosis of the Cartesian subject in a world in which the Enlightenment
project and modernity have revealed themselves in the end to be bankrupt. Atomization and alienation
are not merely the result of ideological operations – for, with the flight of the divine of which Hölderlin
was prophet and Nietzsche apostle, the subject can no longer have any certainty concerning the world
and others. The (post-) modern subject has never since free of false consciousness.

The zombie apocalypse is an allegory of the final triumph of the ideologies of post-modern capitalism.
What leaves us in fear and trembling is the possibility of becoming a working zombie with a pulse in a
monkey suit. The apocalyptic sublime serves both as a call to arms – vive la Résistance – and as a
promised, imminent return of mythic lost immanence.

Killing zombies is just plain fun, too. I want to splatter Zombie Descartes' brain on the wall...

Notes

[1] Immanuel Kant, “The End of All Things (1794),” in Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, Trans. Ted
Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), pp. 93-106.

[2] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, Trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), pg.
120.

[3] Georges Bataille, “Beyond Seriousness,” in The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, Trans.
Michelle Kendall & Stuart Kendall (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 212-218.

[4] James Curcio, “The Immanence of Myth – an Anthology,” Escape Into Life, January 27th 2011.
http://www.escapeintolife.com/essays/living-myths/

[5] As of January 31st, 2011, around noon.

[6] Wehen Zombies Attack!: Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection", by Philip
Munz, Ioan Hudea, Joe Imad and Robert J, Smith?. In Infectious Disease Modelling Research Progress,
eds. J.M. Tchuenche and C. Chiyaka, Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 133-150, 2009.

Rowan G. Tepper is Instructor of Comparative Literature at Binghamton University. He is the author of

the essay "After God: The Revolutionary Absolute," forthcoming in The Immanence of Myth, and
previously of Michel Foucault: Toward a Philosophy and Politics of the Event (2010). Somehow they
let this loon teach. He considers it his job to corrupt the youth of various parts of New York State. For
reasons unknown, he has decided to publish this series bi-weekly on Mondays.

This essay appeared on Modern Mythology (www.modernmythology.net) on Monday, January 31st

2011. http://www.modernmythology.net/2011/01/myth-undead-apocalyptic-imaginary-vol-1.html