Walking Corpses & Conscious Plants: Possibilist Ecologies in ...

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Bingham 10 the potential of narrative to act as an affective and educational tool which can help develop ethical awareness. According to Ledbetter: ...we live in a world unpredictable and unsafe where chaos rules, where perhaps the most apt metaphors for our existence come from a language of apocalyptic. Indeed, such a notion suggests that we look all the more passionately for worlds which we can control and for events that are self-serving (2-3) Turning to fictional or imagined spaces to examine social problems in isolation can be an extremely valuable exercise. Also, considering hyperbolic examples of pandemonium and civil unrest can prompt consideration for current affairs which might not necessarily be described by a fictional work but are nevertheless comparable. Kirkman's post-apocalyptic zombie fiction is a logical response to the political climate following the terrorist attacks of September 11 th , 2001 and the wars which followed. In transforming each deceased body into a dehumanized mechanism for reenacting the same transformation upon others, Kirkman forces readers to reconsider how they view the human figure and interact with it. After seeing fellow citizens perish as a result of the actions of suicide bombers, Americans have already had to adapt to the possibility that a seemingly normal person might use his or her body as a weapon. Similarly in The Walking Dead, each person is a threat to every other living person's survival. As memory, personality, and character do not transcend death, everyone is potentially an enemy. To fully explore the significance of this condition in relation to actuality, I turn to Adriana Cavarero's theoretical work Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence. Her concern rests with a particular type of violence that targets the helpless; and once experienced, totally reshapes and numbs those who've been subjected to it. I argue that The Walking Dead is a quintessential portrayal of this type of violence since it completely upsets the presence associated with the human body: each
Bingham 11 zombie exceeds death as every reanimated body becomes a harbinger for more destruction. The ecological relationship we experience as readers is filled with suspense and tension, a tone mitigated mainly through the perspective of the graphic novel's protagonist, Sheriff Rick Grimes. Though we are guided to relate to Rick from the onset of the narrative, as time progresses and he becomes witness and subject to more violence and damage, the relationship becomes strained. I trace these shifts against circumstantial conditions like the absence or presence of community, family, security, supplies, and stability in order to analyze the goal of the creative work in generating social affect. I believe that the presentation of Rick's character and his struggle to maintain his ethical ideals while attempting to preserve his body and sanity holds a great deal of significance in regards to the present climate of American politics. Whereas Kirkman's characters desperately cling to a faint and futile hope for civilization in the face of ever-changing power relations, Moore's text introduces us to a totally different possible world. Through the possible world of the Swamp Thing, I argue, Moore envisions a solution to Kirkman's seemingly unconquerable pessimism. His work is inherently different, though, because it was created earlier and resurrects a character first introduced to the public during a period of reform and environmental consciousness. Swamp Thing was created by Len Wein and Berni Wrightson, debuting in DC Comics' House of Secrets #92 in July 1972. Reviving and adapting their idea, Moore's figure comes into being in a moment on the cusp of planetary crisis. The character thus straddles two distinct periods: he is first informed by a burgeoning public interest in the adoption of pacifism and increase in environmental awareness and secondly through how these attitudes came to influence social life over time. By creating
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Page 3 and 4: Bingham 3 I owe an extreme debt of
Page 5 and 6: Bingham 5 Introduction My project e
Page 7 and 8: Bingham 7 personal growth through t
Page 9: Bingham 9 beliefs. Seeing a possibl
Page 13 and 14: Bingham 13 the validity of singular
Page 15 and 16: Bingham 15 Chapter I: The History o
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Page 21 and 22: Bingham 21 Another artist who worke
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Page 25 and 26: Bingham 25 sponsorship. He designed
Page 27 and 28: Bingham 27 Charles Moulton. Marston
Page 29 and 30: Bingham 29 Frederick Wertham prompt
Page 31 and 32: Bingham 31 “graphic novel” was
Page 33 and 34: Bingham 33 what is or isn't a graph
Page 35 and 36: Bingham 35 Works Cited Benton, Mike
Page 37 and 38: Bingham 37 Chapter II: Transfusion
Page 39 and 40: Bingham 39 conflict or war. This ex
Page 41 and 42: Bingham 41 and dismember other bodi
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Page 45 and 46: Bingham 45 thus creating an affecti
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Bingham 61 order” (200). The prem
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Bingham 63 possession, selling, ste
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Bingham 65 with yourself? Not me. I
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Bingham 67 immediate proximity of t
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Bingham 69 experience, or the human
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Bingham 74 Works Cited Berger, Arth
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Bingham 76 APPENDIX A Fig. 1. Openi
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Bingham 78 Fig. 7. Fig. 8.
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Bingham 101 Chapter III: Speaking o
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Bingham 103 preserved, yet not enti
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Bingham 105 increasingly more discu
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Bingham 107 Wrightson only drew the
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Bingham 109 by the inexorable progr
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Bingham 111 appeared. Though the tw
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Bingham 113 General Avery Carlton S
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Bingham 115 dismembered body which
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Bingham 117 sheltered from or not e
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Bingham 119 authority. This subtle,
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Bingham 121 the center of the page
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Bingham 123 affect. Apart from this
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Bingham 125 acts of fictional chara
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Bingham 127 resemblance, their comp
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Bingham 129 experience. The creator
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Bingham 131 justified. What follows
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Bingham 133 present to witness it t
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Bingham 135 If we read each charact
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Bingham 137 able to issue an urgent
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1 According to comics historian Rob
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Bingham 140 - Interview by David Ro
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