‘We Are All Infected’ The Derridian Imaginary of the Human Event in The Walking Dead

Authors

  • Jorge Martínez-Lucena Author Universitat Abat Oliba CEU

Keywords:

Derrida, Anthropology, Human, Event, The Walking Dead, TV series, Social imaginaries, Zombie

Abstract

Contemporary TV series are having a great success and influence in our postmodern societies. The zombie phenomenon is getting everyday bigger audiences as well. Perhaps, this is the reason why the number of TV series about zombies is also growing. This paper uses the theory of social imaginaries to show the manner in which one of these before mentioned media products, the series The Walking Dead, invites us to picture or imagine the human through a new characteristic of the survivors: that of being infected. This new state shows how this TV fiction introduces and potentiates a new idea of the humanhood as eventual and impossible for the naturalistic and economical reasoning. In order to clarify this idea of the human being as someone who cannot be reduced to the mere scientific discourse we invoke Derrida and his attempt of defending the human difference.

doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.2.2

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Author Biography

Jorge Martínez-Lucena, Universitat Abat Oliba CEU

Jorge Martínez Lucena es profesor agregado en la Universitat Abat Oliba CEU (Barcelona). Licenciado en Filosofía (Universitat de Barcelona, 1997) y Doctor en Comunicación (Universidad CEU San Pablo, 2007), ha sido Visiting Researcher en la Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano (2007) con beca a la movilidad CEU-Santander, y en la University of Hertforshire (Hatfield, UK) (2010-2011) con la beca José Castillejos del Ministerio de Educación Español. Es autor de varios ensayos en torno a la cultura pop audiovisual posmoderna y de numerosos artículos científicos en el campo de los Media y los Cultural studies. Su foco principal de investigación en la actualidad son los imaginarios sociales y las teleseries televisivas.

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Published

2017-03-30

How to Cite

Martínez-Lucena, J. (2017). ‘We Are All Infected’ The Derridian Imaginary of the Human Event in The Walking Dead. Palabra Clave, 20(2), 316–339. Retrieved from https://palabraclave.unisabana.edu.co/index.php/palabraclave/article/view/6486

Issue

Vol. 20 No. 2 (2017)

Section

Articles

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