ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

This paper analyzes the “post-racial” discourse, both fictional and problematic, of how racism ended in the present era (referred to as the post-race era) by examining zombie narratives and post-racial discourse in Colson Whitehead's novel Zone One. The novel is a post-apocalyptic narrative set in Manhattan, where an infectious disease outbreak has started turning people into zombies and society has essentially collapsed. The characters Mark Spitz and Stragglers, who move passively and in confusion and anxiety, without faces or names, evoke the sense of “others” who were previously excluded by racism and persecution. Whitehead also addresses racial justice and the dominant ideology advocated by white society, describing through Buffalo and the American Phoenix that racism is a broad problem inherent in state and class. Zone One symbolically represents the reality of discrimination and violence hidden by the mask of the post-race era and excluded by color-blind racism which is perhaps more terrifying than the zombie apocalypse itself.

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