Cars out of place : Vampires, technology, and labor in East and Central Africa
Date
1993-08-16
Authors
White, Luise
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Abstract
This essay is about things that never happened. The African
vampires discussed here are not the undead, but men and
occasionally women specifically employed--as firemen in East Africa
and game rangers in Central Africa--to capture Africans and extract
their blood. Such vampires were said to exist throughout much of
East and Central Africa; they were a specifically colonial
phenomena and were first noted in the late 'teens and early 1920s.
In the colonial versions of these stories, most vampires were black
men supervised on the job by white men, but in postcolonial
versions who works for whom has become unclear. Although it seems
plausible that these stories originated in botched medical
procedures done in too great haste during World War I,
establishing their source does not account for their meaning thirty
years later, or their power, or the passion with which they were
retold and withheld. Stories in which colonial employees drained
Africans of their blood may reveal more than the vivid imagination
of their narrators; they disclose the concerns and anxieties of
people at a specific time and place.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 16 August 1993
Keywords
Urban folklore. Africa, Blood. Collection and preservation. Folklore, Kidnapping. Africa. Folklore, Fire fighters. Africa. Folklore, Motor vehicles. Africa. Folklore, Labor. Africa. Folklore