Agents of Power, Landscapes of Fear: The Vampires and Heart Thieves of Madagascar

Abstract

Vampires and heart thieves have, it is said, inhabited the island of Madagascar for the last century. These mythic figures signify relations of identity tied to the global processes of colonial capitalism, modernism, and imperialism as they relate to a colonized Africa, and more specifically, to the island of Madagascar. The vampire and heart thief express the array of extractive processes rooted in the social relations between colonizer and colonized, political subjects, empire, church, and state. These mythic figures are manipulated by various groups to fulfil specific local political agendas and invoke difference based upon race and class. Rumors and sightings of vampires and heart thieves create a landscape of fear which enables or constrains complicity with, or rebellion against, agents of the state and the church.

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