“Posts” in the zombie apocalypse: post-feminism and postracial discourses in The Walking Dead and Z Nation

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ABSTRACT AMC’s The Walking Dead and Syfy’s Z Nation present post-apocalyptic zombie worlds reflective of both gender and racial politics. In this paper, I argue via a feminist textual analysis that Z Nation serves as a critique of TWD as it tends to intertextually parody TWD’s conservative politics which are deeply entrenched in post-feminist and postracial ideologies. I analyze the multicultural casts, the images of the “strong black woman,” and the featured white male leaders with police/military backgrounds in each of the series. In short, Z Nation’s incorporation of these elements becomes a playful irony that works to critically deconstruct the racial and gendered politics within TWD.