BANKING. ECONOMICS. POLITICS.
The Monocle Quarterly Journal is a business journal dedicated to interrogating and commenting on the underlying forces that drive the large-scale changes that we witness globally.
Each issue of the Monocle Quarterly Journal pays attention to a carefully chosen
theme. In an attempt to explore some of the stranger realities of the times in
which we are currently living, and to do so in a spirit of creativity and originality,
in this issue, we consider the figure of the zombie in modern fiction – a creature
that is neither good nor evil, neither alive nor dead, and which exists only to infect
and kill. The recurrence of zombies in our storytelling appears to be connected
to a subconscious expression of our deepest collective fears – and plausibly, an
expression of the deeply ingrained fear of the plagues that took place as far back as
the 14th century. Though the idea of zombies may seem to have nothing to do with
banking, economics and politics, when these creatures are analysed as they are
presented in fiction and film, it is clear that these cultural artifacts have disturbingly
presaged and predicted the 21st century plague that has impacted every aspect of
our lives as individuals and as a collective. We have therefore decided to embark on
this analysis of zombies in popular culture, with short counterpoints anchored in the
present that reflect our circumstances in this time of great change.