Abstract
Cannibalism both fascinates and repels. The concept of the cannibal has changed and evolved, from the semi- or in-human anthropophagi of Classical texts to the ‘savage’ cannibals of colonial times, whose alleged aberrations served as a justification for invasion, conversion and extermination, to the contemporary cannibal driven often by psychosexual drives. Cannibal texts typically present the act as pervasive, aggressive and repulsive. If these parameters are admitted, alleged cannibals immediately fall outside normative European humanist morality. This paper examines cannibalism as a major delineator of the civilised human. Cannibals offer social scientists a handy milestone to confirm the constant improvement and progress of humanity. The idea that colonised peoples were not savage, degenerate cannibals threatens the concept of the ‘Great Chain of Being’, which was assumed to show an inexorable progress from plants to animals to humans, and upward toward the divine, led by enlightened Western civilisation. But cannibal mythology, factual or imaginary, offers an opportunity to re-evaluate the assumptions of human supremacism and see ourselves as edible, natural beings.
Highlights
Cannibals, like royalty, monsters and criminals, have evolved and morphed into new forms, each one reflecting the fears of its time
Social anthropologist William Arens tossed a spanner into the normative assumptions of pervasive savage cannibalism in his book, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (1979)
Rather than deny the existence of cannibalism, which allows a reclassification of the Amerindian peoples as like the colonialists, de Castro examines the details of Tupinamba cannibalism, which was ‘a very elaborate system for the capture, execution, and ceremonial consumption of their enemies’ (2014: 140)
Summary
Like royalty, monsters and criminals, have evolved and morphed into new forms, each one reflecting the fears of its time. Sigmund Freud tried to elucidate the origin of the taboos on cannibalism and incest by speculating on a cultural turning point, which, he thought, might have occurred at a time when a ‘Darwinian primal horde’ (1998: 108) of human progenitors were, like many other primates, dominated by an alpha male. This patriarch refused to share power or access to the females and drove out the younger males. I have divided instances of cannibalism into three distinct periods, classical, modern and contemporary, common to all is the occasional need to eat human flesh to survive in an emergency
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