Metropolitan Wasteland Writing and Reflection on Modernity in Colson Whitehead's Zone One
In Colson Whitehead's Zone One,the provisional government"American Phoenix"fails in reconstructing zombie-stricken New York by killing zombies and constructing a wall to frustrate zombies'progress.According to this essay,the zombie sweeper Spitz's recollection about New York before the apocalypse,reveals the wasteland essence of this capitalized desire-laden metropolis.His doubts on the reconstruction's meaning and the unexpected collapse of the wall,not only deconstruct the government's modern progress discourse,but also urge him to enter into the living dead sea to"learn how to swim."This zombie science fiction thus constructs a literary experiment setting in which Spitz symbolically crosses class and racial barricades of the modern metropolitan wasteland and achieves the transcendence of life boarder in Georg Simmel's metaphysics.These crossings not only question but also attempt to cure the modern compulsiveness due to which human beings'subjectivity is deconstructed in mechanical reproduction.
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