Special Issue: Pandemic, Plague, Pestilence and the Tropics

Related papersPandemic, plague, pestilence and the Tropics | with Anita Lundberg, Kalala Ngalamulume, Arbaayah Ali Termizi and Chrystopher J. Spicer (e-Tropics)Jean SegataView PDFchevron_rightPandemics and 'Zombies': How to Think Tropical Imaginaries with Cinematic CosmologiesMilan Kroulíketropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, 2021The tropics in occidental imaginaries are typically coded as either edenic paradise or as hell. It is in the latter mode that they come to be linked with zombies, diseases, and questions relating to the autonomy of the human body. In this article I first summarise historical connections between colonialism and the tropics as expressed through dealings with disease set against a background of Christian-secular cosmology. I then further think the issue with two films that approach disease and the tropics through the zombie, which I conceive of as radical heteronomy. One film, Zombi 2, is a Euro-American engagement with the tropics as imagined fr...