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This article has been published in: Ocula 35, Zombesque. Sociosemiotics of a cultural epidemic

author: Marco Grosoli (Istituto de Filosofia (IFILNOVA), Universidade NOVA, Lisbon, PT)

More Zombies than Zombies. Catherine Malabou’s “New Wounded” and their Ethico-Political Implications, According to Victor Erice’s Cerrar los ojos

language: italian

abstract: Ethical and political implications of zombie-related fantasies have often been studied in relation to Freud’s “death drive”. Catherine Malabou argued that subjects whose personality and memory have been cancelled by neurological traumas (i.e. those whom she calls The New Wounded, after her eponymous book) embody Freud’s death drive beyond Freud and beyond psychoanalysis. The “new wounded” subject, whose personality is reduced to an emotionless, indifferent blank slate, are like zombies, but they are no fantasy: they are real and clinically diagnosable. Because they “become the form of their own death”, claims Malabou, the new wounded embody what is most essential in human subjectivity (its fragility and contingency), while retaining the ethico-political potential traditionally associated with zombies. My paper uses Malabou’s philosophical/neurological framework to analyze Cerrar los ojos (Victor Erice, 2023), a non-zombie film sharing a number of key traits with zombie genre.

citation information: Marco Grosoli, More Zombies than Zombies. Catherine Malabou’s “New Wounded” and their Ethico-Political Implications, According to Victor Erice’s Cerrar los ojos, "Ocula", vol.26, n.35, pp.156-180, September 2025. DOI: 10.57576/ocula2025-38

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