“The Dead City”: Corporate Anxiety and the Post-Apocalyptic Vision in Colson Whitehead's Zone One

Abstract

Since the advent of the nuclear age, post-apocalyptic fictions have revealed our society's deepest anxieties. Colson Whitehead's acclaimed zombie novel Zone One (2011) both grounds itself in and updates the post-apocalyptic genre. This article explores how Whitehead employs the zombie trope to critique excessive corporate influence on governmental, legal, and social structures. Through a close reading of the novel and an examination of contemporaneous journalistic accounts, I argue that Whitehead draws from three real-world “apocalypses” – the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the financial crisis, and accelerating gentrification – to demonstrate the insidious effects of excessive corporate influence. On Whitehead's account, corporations undermine governmental legitimacy, commodify human values and attributes, and homogenize American neighborhoods.