Neo-imperialism and the Apocalyptic Vampire Narrative: Justin Cronin’s The Passage

Abstract

In the wake of the 7 October 2001 bombing of Afghanistan, the start of the so-called ‘global war on terror’, and, more particularly, with the subsequent 2003 invasion of Iraq, it became increasingly difficult to accept the central proposition of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire: ‘Imperialism is over.’ Indeed, for a number of postcolonial scholars writing in recent years, most notably perhaps Neil Lazarus in his provocative ‘Postcolonial Studies after the Invasion of Iraq’, such events were a clear indication that imperialism was, in fact, disturbingly alive and healthy, that the US was ‘seeking to reinvent the imperial tradition and reintroduce imperial rule — and on a global scale — for the twenty-first century’ (Lazarus 2006, p. 20). The invasion and occupation of Iraq was seen as a watershed for postcolonial studies, not because the world had changed, but because in substantial ways it had not changed. Many have consequently seen a need to redirect some of the energies of postcolonial studies in recognition of the contemporaneity of imperialism and colonialism. As Loomba et al. confirm in their opening essay for Postcolonial Studies and Beyond, ‘Beyond What? An Introduction’: ‘[t]he shadow the 2003 US invasion of Iraq casts on the twenty-first century makes it more absurd than ever to speak of ours as a postcolonial world […] the signs of galloping US imperialism make the agenda of postcolonial studies more necessary than ever’ (2006, p. 6).

The United States does not, and indeed no nation-state can today, form the center of an imperialist project. Imperialism is over. (Hardt and Negri 2000, pp. xii–xiv)

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand. (Paine [1776] 1986, p. 120)