Ghosts of Empire, The

This experimental ethnography set against the background of nighttime encounters in the rough streets of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, explores how such transnational characters as textit gringos, putas, and street children are at once co-constructed and reinvented through the legacy of Conquest and the global inequalities of late-capitalism. Theorizing the desires that drive these encounters as forms of colonial violence and sincere emancipatory strategies, Veissière's gaze travels outward across the Atlantic and the historical violence of Empire, and turns back inward to revisit the violence of his own White colonial desires. The Ghosts of Empire "lays bare the questions we cannot answer and the doubts that we push to the side about how transnational forces distort the personalpolitical, internal external dimensions of everyone's lives. Veissière's story-telling is powerful and timely." Stephanie C. Kane, Indiana University Samuel Veissière is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Anthropology at the University College of the North, Canada.