Buried Alive

Abstract

Buried Alive Jennifer Spiegel (bio) Zombies: An Anthropological Investigation of the Living Dead Philippe Charlier University of Flordia Press www.upf.com 160 Pages; Print, $18.95 When I decided to review this book, I did not realize that its title was subterfuge for rigorous, scholarly, nonfiction attention paid to the topic of zombies. I expected a novel, a little literary zombie (à la Colson Whitehead's Zone One [2012]). I had my own Walking Dead baggage. But then I held the book in my hands, and I began reading Philippe Charlier's Zombies: An Anthrolpological Investigation of the Living Dead. I discovered that Charlier was actually a French academic at the University of Versailles at St. Quentin who specialized in death; immediately, I felt—pun intended—buried alive and in over my head. A nonfiction examination of zombies in Haiti? Oh, man… Yes, a nonfiction examination of zombies in Haiti. As the back cover attests, Charlier is nicknamed the "Indiana Jones of the graveyards," and he lives up to his name, taking on the zombie backstory, the death-imbued atmosphere of Haitian life. Despite the fact that the zombie apocalypse has infiltrated the popular imagination (it has for a while now, though it may be even more comprehensive today—post-Kirkman), the truth is that Haitian life often surrounds death and a belief in the reality of zombies. While an American reader might warn his or her child to get back to bed, smirking and winking and alluding to creatures-that-go-bump-in-the-night, a Haitian doctor or religious zealot or even an ordinary citizen featured in this book might not exactly be joking around: Zombies may be real! Or are they? The author begins honestly enough with a question: "What are we talking about?" It might be appropriate to mention what we are not talking about. The author presents his evidence, which is the stuff of cultural anthropology: medical files and religious rites, relatives of the deceased, eccentrics and eyewitnesses, and a catalogue of tombs, funeral homes, and graveyards. Cultural anthropology at work. But the author, like a good professor, presents the data without making a declarative statement about the supernatural. And this is not a book that philosophizes about the symbolic value of the zombie or how it operates as some kind of extended cultural metaphor. Rather, this is a book of data. Death, albeit universal, may be more keenly significant in the daily ministrations of Haiti than, say, the US. Is that fair to say? It seems odd to make such a proclamation, though I found this passage striking: "On the road between the airport in Port-au-Prince and the city center, I counted nearly one hundred funeral homes…as if the dead were a part of daily life in the same way as the living…" Death as a companion, death as familiar as the corner store. This is unique, right? (Aren't we hell-bent—this might be overstatement—on denying death in the US?) Why does Haiti, a unique blend of African, French, and Caribbean roots, hover over death so closely? Charlier notes that the slave trade has created a particular circumstance: "…the body of men is a stolen body." The terrain is ripe, so to speak, for identity to be shifty and corpses to be masquerades. The aesthetics typically are what draw me to a book. In truth, the most stirring parts of this tome were the descriptive, lyrical parts (of which there are quite a few). Charlier speaks of "iron doors locked by huge padlocks because of the theft of caskets" in cemeteries. We read about chicken feathers and blood droplets in Vodou rituals. We see slums and zombies in rags and charismatic zombie-experts in Nirvana t-shirts. The political instability, along with the wreckage of both poverty and natural disaster, all contribute to the aura of this book: it is successfully—how shall I put it?—weird! There are things to learn here (about Vodou!), and characters present in this real-life Indiana Jones escapade. Wade Davis (Canadian anthropologist who gave us The Serpent and The Rainbow, the 1985 book which became...