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White, Luise. 2000. SPEAKING WITH VAMPIRES: RUMOR AND HISTORY IN COLONIAL AFRICA. Berkeley: University of California Press. 352 pp.
In this book, vampire stories circulating in East and Central Africa are analyzed as a source for colonial history. Luise White takes these rumors as a genre worthy of study in its own right. Instead of seeing them as African misinterpretations of Western technology, her analysis remains located in the rumors. With this approach the rumors are not "explained away": "The result is not a history of fears and fantasies, but a history of African cultural and intellectual life under colonial rule" (p. 6). Rumors about blood-drinking white people had a wide distribution in East and Central colonial Africa. The author combines archival and oral sources to study the circulation of vampire stories, what formulaic elements constituted this genre, and which details made for local specification. The stories took place in many different locations and were populated by many different characters: prostitutes and firemen in Nairobi, White Fathers and game rangers in Zambia, mine supervisors in Katanga, "a stupefier of several women" in Kampala. And in them a wide range of elements play a role: pits, injections, bandages, bottles, blinded cars. With these various locations, characters, and...