The Zombie Myth as the Hegelian-Master Slave in William Seabrook’s  The Magic Island: A Postcolonial and Cultural Perspective

Hamza Alwan Jaber; Azhar Noori Fejer

doi:10.35516/Hum.2026.8717

Authors

Hamza Alwan Jaber Department of English Language, College of Education/ Ibn Rushd for Human Science, University of Baghdad, Bagdad, Iraq https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0071-2743
Azhar Noori Fejer Department of English Language, College of Education/ Ibn Rushd for Human Science, University of Baghdad, Bagdad, Iraq https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2996-7656

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35516/Hum.2026.8717

Keywords:

Cutural materialism, postcolonialism, zombie slaves, voodooism, subalternity, exploiation, oppression

Abstract

Objectives: the current paper aims to discuss the image of the Haitian zombie presented as a harmless, obedient slave, controlled being devoid of any personality and oppressed and fed by a mysterious priest or sorcerer called ‘bokor’ in William Seabrooks’ The Magic Island (1929). So, the researcher investigates why and how this character was imported into the American novel and culture and traces its development.

Methods: the current paper analyzes William Seabrooks’, The Magic Island (1929), from a cultural and postcolonial perspective to inspect circumstances leading to significant transformations and radical changes that could be attributed to the United States' occupation of Haiti in 1915 such conditions could have motivated Seabrook to go to Haiti and present this character to the American culture. The researcher is utilizing G.W.F. Hegel’s master-slave dialectic in addition to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concepts of subaltern and ‘Sub-subaltern.

Results: Since its inception, the concept of the zombie denotes a soulless man who is devoid of will totally at the mercy of a plantation owner. Born of Haitian folklore and linked from its earliest periods to oppression, the zombie began as a parable of the exploited workers in modern industrial economies and of the exploited natives in colonial nations.

Conclusions: Zombies are the exploited Indigenous labor whom imperialism/colonialists used as cheap labor without proper working conditions. So the Seabrook zombies are a metaphor for indigenous laborers who are overworked, underpaid, undervalued, not respected, etc.

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