Cannibalism

Catalog description

Western thought teaches us that people who eat people are “bad.” Indeed, the notion of cannibalism is a recurring concern in the history of ideas regarding the primitive, the animalistic, the monstrous, or any of the other classifications frequently invoked to mark others, regardless of their actual culinary preferences. An extended reflection on cannibalism as an intellectual phenomenon suggests how people eating people, or at least the possibility of it, says a great deal about those that do not. Interesting, as well, is the fact that, in some regions of the Caribbean and Brazil, ideas regarding cannibalism have made an important turn, such that the cannibal has become a provocative affirmation of self. The aim of this course is to think about cannibalism, not, as it often is, as a theme for anthropologists and ethnographers, but rather as an intellectual problem that has enjoyed a very long life in the history of ideas about self. In this course, we shall revisit a selection of texts regarding cannibalism from Columbus’ diaries to the present, and including many noteworthy and fascinating interventions about the idea of cannibalism by, among others, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cabeza de Vaca, Hans Staden, Goya, Rubén Darío, Fernández Retamar, Oswald de Andrade, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, and Juan José Saer.