drawing analogies – Invisible Mirrors

April 23, 2025

Drawing Analogies Book Launch and Discussion

We will be launching our book Drawing Analogies: Diagrams in Art, Theory and Practice at The Gallery, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT on Thursday May 1st at 18.00.

The launch will be accompanied by invited academics presenting on their research and discussing diagrams with the Diagram Research Group.

The invited academics are:

Dr. Winnie Soon, artist & Director of UG Art & Technology (Slade School of Fine Art UCL
Duncan Greig, Professor of Genetics (Centre of Life’s Origins and Evolution/CLOE)
Martin Holbraad, Professor of Anthropology (UCL Anthropology)

Drawing Analogies is published by Bloomsbury Press as part of the ‘Drawing In’ series as a hardback book and open access publication that can be downloaded here.

There will be refreshments. For information and attendance e-mail David Burrows: d.burrows@ucl.ac.uk

June 17, 2024June 17, 2024

Drawing Analogies at the Photographers’ Gallery

David Burrows, Dean Kenning and Mary Yacoob will be discussing our forthcoming book Drawing Analogies: Diagrams in Art, Theory and Practice at The Photographers’ Gallery on Tuesday June 25th between 6.30 and 8 pm. The event is free but limited. Places can be booked here.

“Finally an authoritative book on that weird, complex figure of the zombie that delves deep into the dark heart of the matter rather than skating the surface. John Cussans is that rare writer who can bring to bear anthropology, cultural studies, colonial and post-colonial history, philosophy, politics, folk-lore and a love of pulp fiction and film to offer a compelling story about how a marginal superstition from the Caribbean became the defining monster of our times. Prepare for a wild ride that moves elegantly from Hegel and Haiti, via Mesmerism, James Bond, Georges Bataille and Surrealism to Papa Doc Duvalier and Doctor Terror’s House of Horrors, always steadily illuminating a path through a forest of delirious details. A truly marvellous journey.”

Roger Luckhurst, author of Zombies: A Cultural History

“Cussans rejects exceptionalist explanations of Vodou and the zombie to present a nuanced description of those phenomena within the international political, economic and cultural environment in which both the realities and the inventions are situated. This comprehensive work is a must read for anyone wishing to understand more about the destinies of African-based religions in the Americas, and especially concerning the uses and abuses of Haitian cultural phenomena by outside interests.”

LeGrace Benson, author of Arts and Religions of Haiti: How the Sun Illuminates Under Cover of Darkness and President of The Haitian Studies Association.

“No one alive, or – almost certainly – deceased, has thought about zombies more voraciously than John Cussans. While the outcome of this feasting is not pretty, what it has unearthed cannot be laid to rest again. Those who doubt the consistency, deep historical momentum, or global significance of the ‘zombie-complex’ will find all such reservations fundamentally challenged by this troubling book. Subsequent to this meticulous and wide-ranging process of exhumation, it is no longer plausible to deny that an inexterminable anticipation of undead uprising continues to define the horizon of our world.”

Nick Land, author of Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism.