August 25, 2008
Haitian zombies on the BBC
Surfing the net for publications on the Haitian zombie, I came across a BBC documentary titled “Supernatural Science—Buried Alive.” As it turned out, a more appropriate title for the narrated story would have been: “Crime Scene Investigation—The Haitian Zombie Case.” Indeed, as the story developed, it became more and more evident that it has nothing to do with the supernatural, and everything to do with people boasting about how, using their knowledge of the Haitian fauna and flora, they manage to poison their unsuspecting neighbors, eventually killing them and stealing their corpses to, supposedly, make zombies.
The supernatural, it should be pointed out, is the realm of the unknownable; it is, by its very nature, mysterious. Science, on the other hand, deals specifically with the knowable: if anything, it is objective. Supernatural science, therefore, is a contradiction in terms. If a phenomenon can be studied and explained scientifically, then, it has nothing to do with the supernatural. Why then do scientists continue to associate the sordid practices of the alleged zombie-makers with the supernatural? What is the relation between Voodoo and zombie-making? These are the questions that I will tackle in a forthcoming article. Meanwhile, I invite the reader to view the six video clips of the BBC documentary and, then, to go on reading the article “Connaissez-vous Narcisse?"