Cannibal Translations: Cultural Identity and Alterity in Early Modern China and Latin America

Abstract

Inspired by Columbus's short- lived misreading of accounts that describe the supposedly man- eating Caniba as the soldiers of the Great Khan of China, this essay analyzes representations of cannibalism in China and Latin America in the early modern age. This anecdote, involving cannibal (mis)translation between Europe, the Americas, and China, forms the basis for a reflection on early modern constructions of cultural identity and alterity. Instead of looking through a European perspective that would treat the Americas and China as cultural antipodes—one a territory in need of civilizing, one an object of civilizational envy—the essay focuses on a comparison of representations of cannibalism in China and Latin America by paying particular attention to the tension between, on the one hand, the impulse to frame cannibalism as barbarian atrocity that would deny its practitioners humanity and, on the other hand, cannibal imaginaries as an integral part of civilization. In dialogue with scholarly reflections on the early modern period as a global constellation as well as with recent theories of intercultural comparison, this essay's consideration of cannibal translations between China and Latin America performs and tests a type of comparison that combines an attention to links between two cultures with observations on the patterns of similarity and difference that structure such comparisons.