English

In Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve are banished from their Eden and cast into the wilderness. In a similar manner, Mormons sought to establish Zion, a holy utopia of sorts where they could prepare for the Second Coming of Christ. But they were faced with constant banishments, halting their efforts. They experienced trials from both internal and external sources. These trials compelled them to uproot and eventually move West. Enduring these circumstances were, in part, made easier because of scriptural precedence. Amid violence and strife, the Mormon's vision of Zion was affected. Pressures necessitated they change of their concept of Zion. Influenced by holy writings, revelations, and their own literature, the body and doctrine of Zion evolved as the Saints crossed physical and political boundaries as they sought (and still seek) to create their own Eden.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irene Adler and Mary Morstan are remarkable for the way they manage to influence and participate in a male-centered narrative located in a male-oriented literary tradition, often in spite of both the author and his time. Though _Sherlock_ adopts the same names for its two main female characters, however, it also completely changes their narrative function. _Sherlock_ uses its Irene and Mary to access and utilize certain narrative shortcuts or ‘shorthands’ based on and updated from cultural impressions of female characters in detective fiction, thus relegating them to a type identifiable as the postfeminist femme fatale. By adopting a complex combination of female advantage/male disadvantage and unexplained or inexplicable motive, _Sherlock_ reduces its Irene and Mary to narrative devices rather than individual characters with genuine agency and credible motivation, even as these females’ placement closer to the epicenter of the Holmesian narrative creates the appearance of increased female agency.

In their analysis of popular posthuman visualizations, Campbell and Saren (2010) delineate the combination of primitive, technological, and horrific elements that inform “a complex vista of contemporary identity” (156) characterized by fearful yet fascinating ontological mutability. Similarly, Lauro and Embry (2008) anticipate an incipient cultural phenomenon in their “Zombie Manifesto” as they contend that the zombie remains a figure of enduring fear and aversion for the way its very existence repudiates Western values of individuality and cognizance, and Asma (2011) notes that Gothic definitions of monstrosity have regained popularity in a global society that recognizes what Bishop (2013) calls a “flipped” allegory of monstrosity. Building on these and related concerns regarding agency, mutation, individualism, rationality, and monstrosity, I contend that Dominic Mitchell’s 2013-2014 horror/drama In the Flesh repositions the typical zombie story in order to explore the evolution and assignation of posthuman identities.