The Infected Homo Sacer: The (Auto)Immunity and Biopolitics of Haitian Zombies in Junot Díaz’s “Monstro”

13/10/2026

AI Summary

Zombification functions as a biopolitical technology that classifies, regulates, and exposes populations to varying precarity under neoliberal governance.
Relocation camps are spaces of exception where legal protections are suspended, producing homo sacer and necropolitical forms of bare life.
Autoimmunity and immunity theories show the state undermines its own protections, merging neoliberal sovereignty and necropolitics to produce disposable life.

TL;DR (AI Generated)

This article reconsiders the figure of the zombie in Junot Díaz's "Monstro" by shifting attention to its role as a biopolitical mechanism that determines who is protected, abandoned, and left to die.

While existing scholarship has tended to read the zombie as an allegory of colonial trauma and racial violence, this study argues that zombification operates as a material technology of governance through which populations are classified, regulated, and exposed to varying degrees of precarity within neoliberal regimes.

Drawing on Agamben's concept of homo sacer and Mbembe's necropolitics, the article shows how relocation camps function as spaces of exception in which bare life is produced through the suspension of legal and political protections.

Basic summary

J Bioeth Inq. 2026 Oct 12. doi: 10.1007/s11673-026-10629-6. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This article reconsiders the figure of the zombie in Junot Díaz’s “Monstro” by shifting attention to its role as a biopolitical mechanism that determines who is protected, abandoned, and left to die. While existing scholarship has tended to read the zombie as an allegory of colonial trauma and racial violence, this study argues that zombification operates as a material technology of governance through which populations are classified, regulated, and exposed to varying degrees of precarity within neoliberal regimes. Drawing on Agamben’s concept of homo sacer and Mbembe’s necropolitics, the article shows how relocation camps function as spaces of exception in which bare life is produced through the suspension of legal and political protections. It further examines how racialized and gendered objectification operates across both micro and macro scales, revealing the logic of inclusive exclusion that structures these regimes of life management. Finally, through Derrida’s theory of autoimmunity and Esposito’s concept of immunity, the article argues that the violence in the narrative emerges from a system that destroys its own protective mechanisms in the pursuit of security. In doing so, “Monstro” exposes zombification as a site where neoliberal sovereignty, necropolitical governance, and autoimmune logic converge in the production of disposable life.

PMID:42862530 | DOI:10.1007/s11673-026-10629-6

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