Chapter 5: The vampire of war
Journal: Manchester University Press eBooks
Year: 2017

The most threatening collective of dangerous bodies is undoubtedly that generated by war, the supreme Gothic horror. The final chapter will conduct a wide-ranging exploration of the imagery, discourse and symbolism of vampirism in the context of warfare. Even though war is the ultimate blood-sucker, it has rarely been analysed as such. The metaphor is capacious enough to go beyond war in the abstract to accommodate most of the players and action involved. The vampire functions as a floating sign