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We’re All Infected: Legal Personhood, Bare Life and The Walking Dead

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International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This article argues that greater theoretical attention should be paid to the figure of the zombie in the fields of law, cultural studies and philosophy. Using The Walking Dead as a point of critical departure concepts of legal personhood are interrogated in relation to permanent vegetative states, bare life and the notion of the third person. Ultimately, the paper recommends a rejection of personhood; instead favouring a legal and philosophical engagement with humanity and embodiment. Personhood, it is suggested, creates a barrier in law allowing individuals in certain contexts (and in certain embodied states) to be rendered non-persons and thus outside the scope of legal rights. An approach that rejects personhood in favour of embodiment would allow individuals to enjoy their rights without being subject to such discrimination. It is also suggested that the concept of the human, itself complicated by the figure of the zombie, allows for legal engagement with a greater number of putative rights claimants including admixed embryos, cyborgs and the zombie.

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Notes

  1. [1993] A.C. 789 Page 863. Confirmed in NHS Trust A v M; NHS Trust B v H [2001] 1 ALL E.R. 801. This is not to say that there are no other approaches. See, for example, [22] and [35] who advocate positions whereby the threshold for determining personhood is raised to include consciousness. This is, at present however, not the legal approach and would present some danger for those with Alzheimer’s or Dementia. See, for example, [5] at 55.

  2. Or, perhaps, more correctly that patients in permanent vegetative states no longer had best interests. [1993] A.C. 789 Page 868. As Lord Mustill notes ‘The distressing truth which must not be shirked is that is that the proposed conduct is not in the best interests of Anthony Bland, for he has no best interests of any kind.’ [1993] A.C. 789 Page 897. This is echoed by the opinion of John Harris who notes that ‘On the view of personhood I have developed, “ending the life of a non-person cannot do them a moral wrong” for the simple and sufficient reason that “they” do not exist to be wronged or indeed to be harmed in this way. There is no person present, no one who could value life. If the non-person cannot value life, they can lose nothing that they value if they lose their life, nothing that is or could be of value to them. They cannot therefore be wronged in this way’ [22: 55].

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for conversations on these topics with Penny Crofts, Craig Newbery-Jones and Timon Hughes-Davies.

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  1. School of Law, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter, EX4 4RJ, UK

    Mitchell Travis

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  1. Mitchell Travis
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Correspondence to Mitchell Travis.

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Travis, M. We’re All Infected: Legal Personhood, Bare Life and The Walking Dead . Int J Semiot Law 28, 787–800 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-014-9396-3

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