Speaking with Vampires : Rumor and History in Colonial Africa / Luise White.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

White, Luise, Author.

Series:

Studies on the history of society and culture

Studies on the History of Society and Culture ; 37

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Vampires--Africa, East.

Vampires.

Vampires--Africa, Central.

Folklore--Africa, East.

Folklore.

Folklore--Africa, Central.

Blood--Folklore.

Blood.

Africa, East--Colonial influence.

Africa, East.

Africa, Central--Colonial influence.

Africa, Central.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (372 pages) : illustrations, maps

Edition:

Reprint 2019

Other Title:

Rumor and history in colonial Africa

Place of Publication:

Berkeley, CA : University of California Press, [2000]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During the colonial period, Africans told each other terrifying rumors that Africans who worked for white colonists captured unwary residents and took their blood. In colonial Tanganyika, for example, Africans were said to be captured by these agents of colonialism and hung upside down, their throats cut so their blood drained into huge buckets. In Kampala, the police were said to abduct Africans and keep them in pits, where their blood was sucked. Luise White presents and interprets vampire stories from East and Central Africa as a way of understanding the world as the storytellers did. Using gossip and rumor as historical sources in their own right, she assesses the place of such evidence, oral and written, in historical reconstruction. White conducted more than 130 interviews for this book and did research in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia. In addition to presenting powerful, vivid stories that Africans told to describe colonial power, the book presents an original epistemological inquiry into the nature of historical truth and memory, and into their relationship to the writing of history.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Maps

Acknowledgments

A Note on Currencies and Talk

1 . Blood and Words: Writing History with (and about) Vampire Stories

2. Historicizing Rumor and Gossip

3. "Bandages on Your Mouth": The Experience of Colonial Medicine in East and Central Africa

4. "Why Is Petrol Red?" The Experience of Skilled and Semi-Skilled Labor in East and Central Africa

5. "A Special Danger": Gender, Property, and Blood in Nairobi,1919-193

6. "Roast Mutton Captivity": Labor, Trade, and Catholic Missions in Colonial Northern Rhodesia

7. Blood, Bugs, and Archives: Debates over Sleeping- Sickness Control in Colonial Northern Rhodesia,1931-1939

8. Citizenship and Censorship: Politics, Newspapers, and "a Stupefier of Several Women" in Kampala in the 1950's

9. Class Struggle and Cannibalism: Storytelling and History Writing on the Copperbelts of Colonial Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo

10. Conclusions

Bibliography

Credits

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780520922297

0520922298

9781597349123

1597349127

OCLC:

1153458255