Looking for quotes from Derrida on a topic is a nearly
surefire way to preclude any original discussion.  If
you are interested in problems with drawing the alive
/ not alive distinction, then you'd be better off
looking at viruses than zombies.

Yes, there is also a great deal of literature in the
philosophy of mind on zombies and what their
possibility means for physicalism.  You can get into
the literature by looking at some encyclopedia
articles, such as this one: 
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/

However, thinking about zombie movies in reference to
the philosophy of mind literature would be
unrewarding.  For starters, the zombies are a
different kind.  The zombies in the mind literature
must be physically and functionally indistinguishable
from real people, and well, horror zombies are pretty
easy to identify.  They don't behave like us, and the
seldom look very healthy.

Although horror zombies often look different than
non-zombies, their similarities raise significant
philosophical problems.  Consider how in most Zombie
movies some character inevitably must confront some
friend or relative that has become a zombie.  An
excellent horror movie that recently cam out called
“Slither” (James Gunn, 2006) has a long episode where
a girl must defend herself against her now-zombie
family.  

What's philosophically interesting about this?  Well,
for starters, there are some personal identity issues
raised here that are worth considering.  More
specifically, these kinds of scenarios force us to
reflect on our relationship to our bodies.  In what
sense are we our body, etc?  Do we cease to exist as
we loose control over our bodies, or is it only when
we have no more control?  Is control really the issue,
since we could imagine being completely shut in.   . .
.   I'm only scratching the surface.  

Also, many zombie movies ask us to consider whether or
not our death is something that should matter to us? 
Most zombie movies assume that what happens after our
death should matter to us, but we can ask why? 
Experiential theories of value hold that all value can
be cached out in experiential terms.  If this is
correct then what happens after our death shouldn't
matter to us.  However, it does.  Are we mistaken or
is this a clear counter-example to such theories of
value.  For example, in “28 Days Later,” a father
realizes that he is becoming a zombie and tries to
save his children from the zombie that he will become.
 Should this matter to him?  It seems so, but it is
often hard to say why.  It seems to force you to
develop a non-experiential theory of value, but this
isn't so easy to do.  . . . 

There are also questions about love that these kinds
of scenarios ask us to think about.  How important is
or should be someones body?  What is it that we love
when we love a person?  What is is like to love
another person?  . . .

Just throwing some ideas out there.  

Cheers,

Aaron Smuts


--- Patricia Molloy <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Henry: where does Derrida talk about zombies? I'm
> aware of his take on
> werewolves  of course which I used in a paper on
> Ginger Snaps (forthcoming
> in the next issue of JumpCut), though I focus much
> more on Agamben. 

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