The ghosts of Empire

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In this experimental ethnography set against the background of nighttime encounters in the rough streets of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, Veissière explores how such transnational characters as gringos, street kids, mulatas and putas are at once co-constructed, negotiated, and reinvented through the legacy of Conquest and the global inequities of late-capitalism. Theorizing the desires that drive these encounters- desire for love, sex, money, horizons, happiness- 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 desire.