[DOWNLOAD] "Haitian Zombie, Myth, And Modern Identity (Critical Essay)" by Kette Thomas ~ Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Haitian Zombie, Myth, And Modern Identity (Critical Essay)
- Author : Kette Thomas
- Release Date : January 01, 2010
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 89 KB
Description
The origin of the discourse on subjectivity in Western culture is difficult to trace, but the idea gained momentum during the Enlightenment and became a central focus of the modern era. Concurrently, third-world countries were branded as collective units, researched anthropologically, with the primary focus being on their primitive beliefs and ritual ceremonies, and were perceived in terms of their exotic, isolated locales. Believed to be less scientific, less technological, and less civilized than modern cultures, anthropologists, sociologists, philosophers, and psychoanalysts treated the study of these communities as "preserved" reflections of our primitive ancestors (Freud 4). "Third world" cultures were rarely associated with the discourse on personal subjectivity, but they made both formal and informal contributions to the field. Haitians, for example, used one mythical ritual known as zombification to address the subject. Zombies gained popularity in Western culture, especially during the twentieth century, becoming a metaphor for individuals who lacked consciousness and threatened social structures. Most cultures, therefore, recognize the zombie in these conventional terms; however, treatment of the figure often neglects the rituals associated with zombification and the broader implications to subjectivity inherent in the practice. Although studied in varying disciplines, scholars have not studied the zombie in terms of their mythological contributions. The vast majority of mythological research centered on texts from ancient Greece among other cultures that influenced Western ideology, which why the examination of Haiti's zombie myth would have been unlikely. Once anthropologists discovered the practice in the twentieth century, the contentious relationship between the United States and Haiti obstructed exchanges between scholars and practitioners that might have illuminated the allegorical expressions behind zombification.