A Theological Anthropology of the Undead

Did We Fail to Decay?

Abstract

To conceptualize a non-anthropocentric theological perspective that can help humans navigate through the age of the Anthropocene, I construct a theological anthropology of the undead by exploring the decomposition happening on the body of zombies. To do this, I will first argue that there are real-life zombies whom the neoliberal political-economic process has expulsed. Arguing that hikikomori are such zombie, I examine the life of hikikomori by looking into the space they occupy offline and online through a non-intrusive, observation-based cyberethnography. These spaces reveal ingenuine mechanisms that avert people’s gazes. The dynamics of such aversion exposes a powerful process that decomposes the political system of democracy and the economic system of neoliberalism. From this analysis, I construct a theological anthropology of the undead by revising the Christian concept of resurrection from the perspective of decomposition.