“Cannibalism alone unites us.” These are the opening words of the “Anthropophagic Manifesto,” published in 1928 by Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade. To the anthropophagists, cannibalization was seen as the fundamental force behind literature, philosophy and art.
The figure of the cannibal has long haunted the Western imagination. The ancient Greeks told countless stories about man-eaters. King Tantalus and King Lycaon both tried and failed to serve their children’s flesh to the gods. Queen Procne fed her son to her husband to punish him for assaulting her sister. Even the gods themselves engaged in cannibalism: Uranus, Chronos and Zeus each devoured their offspring, fearful of an eventual coup. Toward the end of his life, on the walls of his own bedroom, Francisco Goya painted “Saturn Devouring His Son,” likely the world’s most iconic image of cannibalism. But Greek myths by no means have a monopoly on cannibalism. From Russia’s Baba Yaga to the alchemists’ ouroboros, representations of cannibalism are everywhere.
In the modern age, cannibalism is a cultural shorthand for ultimate evil, enshrined in figures like Hannibal Lecter and the American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. It’s a useful trope because its depravity is hyperbolic, a violence both deeply visceral and yet alien to modern society. The alien nature of cannibalism both heightens its terror because we struggle to imagine a cannibal’s psychology and renders it safe because most of us have no firsthand experience with cannibalism to upset us. This paradoxical combination of safety and shock is the perfect material for horror.
However, pop culture cannibalism has enjoyed a recent revival in an entirely new genre: romance. Luca Guadagnino’s 2022 film “Bones and All” follows the love story of Maren and Lee, played by Taylor Russell, “Waves,” and Timothée Chalamet, “Call Me by Your Name,” both cannibals who, despite struggling against their natures, fail to lead a normal life. As Lee dies, he tells Maren to devour him, “bones and all.” Writing about a variety of cannibalistic romances, The Michigan Daily Arts writer Mina Tobya explained that “being consumed is the closest one person can be to another.” It may not be healthy, but “our animal forms yearn for it nonetheless.”
Writing for The Brooklyn Rail, filmmaker Nolan Kelly offers a Queer reading of the film. Maren and Lee’s preference to cannibalize the same sex represents a sublimated homosexual desire. Kelly speculates that their unsuccessful attempts to suppress their cravings parallel the ineffective nature of conversion therapy. Even the various cannibals they encounter resemble a smorgasbord of Queer stereotypes. And while homosexuality is morally distinct from cannibalism, Ronald Reagan, whose election ads we see in the film, might disagree. As the AIDS pandemic ravaged the country, hitting LGBTQ+ communities the hardest, Reagan’s administration told CDC scientists to “look pretty and do as little as you can.” Cannibals are thus perfect metaphors for societal outcasts whose very lives are deemed forfeit by the government.
In recent years, many taboos have been overturned in American culture. From 1934 to 1968, the Hays Code prohibited the depiction of interracial and homosexual affection, women’s navels and profanity. Now, all three would be unremarkable, both on screen and in the streets. Cannibalism is among the final frontier of cultural taboos. Even in societies far more progressive than America, cannibalism remains beyond the pale. Thus artists are able to use cannibals as metaphors for every kind of cultural outsider and controversial ideology. All-consuming love and nuanced critiques of heteronormativity comfortably exist in the body of the fictional cannibal, alongside crude fears about “savage” barbarians. In a time when conservative reactionaries attempt to reverse progress on human rights, even opining about overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, cannibalistic metaphors are particularly potent. They openly reject sanitized versions of Queerness or sexuality and further attack notions of normalcy.
Of course, cannibalism is not just a pop culture trope. The Spanish term “canibal,” or “caribal,” was first coined by Christopher Columbus in reference to the Kalinago of the Bahamas. This is where the archetype of the modern cannibal emerged. Columbus and other Spaniards then used claims about Indigenous cannibalism to justify colonizing native populations. Later, when Queen Isabel prohibited the enslavement of Indigenous peoples, an exception was made for cannibals.
Given the obvious political motivations, some scholars have cast doubt on whether or not indigenous peoples throughout the world have habitually practiced cannibalism. Most famously, American anthropologist William Arens argued in “The Man-Eating Myth” that no such practice has ever occurred on a widespread scale. However, the scholarly reception of Arens’ work has been quite poor — most anthropologists acknowledge the existence of cannibalistic practices. Some have gone even further in their criticism of “The Man-Eating Myth,” accusing Arens of ethnocentrism. By disputing the existence of cannibalism despite extensive documentation and archaeological evidence, he implicitly suggests that cannibalism is the ultimate evil. Thus, Arens’ argument essentially implies the idea that cannibals are savage barbarians who must be civilized.
Even if every gory detail recorded by Columbus and his peers was accurate, why do we see cannibalism as uniquely deviant, subhuman and foreign? Even in instances where cannibalism is the culmination of murder or enslavement, is it necessarily worse than the destruction caused by colonialism? Consider that when Columbus enslaved thousands of Arawaks, he overworked mothers to the point where they could not nurse their young. By his own estimate, this led to the deaths of 7,000 infants in only a few months. As indigenous Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú remarked, “It is said that our indigenous ancestors, Mayas and Aztecs, made human sacrifices to their gods … How many humans have been sacrificed to the gods of capital in the last five hundred years?”
And is cannibalism particularly foreign to European culture? The ancient Greeks didn’t just tell stories about cannibalism. The Cynics and Stoics believed that it was sometimes morally acceptable by various groups in the region and regularly practiced. During the First Crusade, European Christians cannibalized their opponents on several occasions. At the infamous Siege of Ma’arra, they cut babies to pieces before cooking and eating them. While historians have debated the crusaders’ motivations, the fact only Muslims were targeted could suggest cannibalism was employed as a mass terror tactic.
If cannibalism is neither morally inferior or even foreign to historical European practices, why did the figure of the cannibal only coalesce when Columbus encountered the New World? Simply, it creates a moral justification for colonization. It divides the world into a civilized West and uncivilized peripheries. The violence of the West — of crusaders and conquistadors — is rational and enlightened, whereas the violence of the barbarians is seen as irrational and godless. Under this situation, the violence of only the West against the cannibals is seen as justified, because it forms a noble, civilizing mission.
This binary also erases the cultural nuances of cannibalism. Some cultures — such as the Wari’ of Brazil, practice endocannibalism, or funerary cannibalism. In their funerary rites, the bodies of the deceased are roasted and consumed in entirety by surviving family members. Such acts do not involve human sacrifice or enslavement, instead constituting culturally essential and respectful parts of the grieving process. But under colonial norms, all forms of cannibalism are rendered equally savage.
The very notion that some practices are not only uncommon but deviant often serves to justify the violent mobilization of so-called “normal” people. In such cases, the deviants become scapegoats for society’s ills. The Nazis, for example, were obsessed with identifying “degenerates,” such as homosexuals, Jews and communists; their mere existence was seen as a threat to a healthy, “normal” German state. In modern America, so many book bans center on the supposed threats of “gender ideology” and wokeism on children. Recently, a Florida county banned a book on the Holocaust, even as neo-Nazi groups gain major power.
This societally explosive position of deviants makes the cannibal an attractive figure for artists interested in exploring social deviation. It can, like in “Bones and All,” be used to deconstruct hegemonic forms of understanding. It can also be used to reinforce colonial norms. For example, when “Pirates of the Caribbean” depicts a dark-skinned tribe that wishes to eat their chief, despite the fact that contemporary Britons were also consuming royalty, what message is being sent?
Thus the power of Brazil’s anthropophagic movement is not that the use of cannibalism as a central metaphor is shocking. Of course it is. The movement is revolutionary because it normalizes the villainized figure of the cannibal, thereby offering a new way to understand interactions between the New World and Old World. Brazil’s history is not seen as a garden flowered by the civilizing, foreign influences of cubism, Portuguese, Christianity and modernism. Brazil is instead understood as a cannibal. As translation scholar Susan Bassnett puts it, “It has broken down the sinews of its oppressor and used them for nourishment.” This cannibal is an anticolonial hero who rebels against the European enlightenment.
Cannibalism alone unites us. In this world, we must devour the bodies of our fellow humans. Their brains, their hearts, their guts. Let’s learn from the Wari’ and consume the bodies of our heroes, mournfully and respectfully. And — like the anthropophagists suggest — let us disintegrate colonizers in our stomachs. Let us devour the gods of capital to nourish the bones of a better world. Bon appétit.
Statement Contributor Awmeo Azad can be reached at awmeo@umich.edu.
The post What’s so bad about cannibalism? appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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