The promise and peril of empathy during a zombie apocalypse

This article responds to Eric King Watts’ 2024 book Postracial Fantasies and Zombies: On the Racist Apocalyptic Politics Devouring the World. The author contends that one similarity between our contemporary political culture and the racialization apparent in zombie fantasies revolves around a desire to eradicate empathy as a rhetorical and human activity. That is, empathy is superfluous in fantasies that presume the apocalypse ushers in a “postracial” future where only the living and the dead remain, or it is dangerous for fantasies that glorify violence against humans or posthuman zombies as necessary for survival. By exploring how empathy and race are treated in The Girl with All the Gifts, the author contends that the elimination of empathy in zombie narratives serves as a warning to eliminate empathy in our political and social lives. But in zombie narratives where empathy persists despite attempts to destroy it, it creates a complex form of allyship that can usher in new identities, social lives, and political futures.