Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society (review)

Abstract

Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society. Beth A. Conklin. Austin, Texas: University Of Texas, 2001; 285 pp. There are very few topics in anthropology that are as exotic as cannibalism. We might like think of ourselves as open-minded and adventurous, but we nevertheless still recoil at the thought of eating human flesh. Cannibalism, as much as any other practice, still represents a limit cultural relativism. However, as a consequence of colonialism and evangelization, cannibalism is almost entirely a thing of the past. Nowadays, the only way study it is through the testimony of witnesses who have eaten either co-socials in funerals (endocannibalism), or victims of confrontations with neighboring groups (exocannibalism). In Consuming Grief, Beth A. Conklin and her informants describe the ways in which funerary cannibalism was practiced until the 1960s by the Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest. According the author, practice of endocannibalism is embedded in the way social relations are constructed among the Wari'-especially between consaguines and affines-and in how they see themselves as part of a world in which human/animal identity is fluid in this life, as well as in the afterlife. Conklin shows that funerary cannibalism was a main component of a grieving process in which causing the body of the deceased to disappear helped the family and friends come terms with their loss more easily and more quickly. The book is divided in four well integrated parts. The first part, Contexts, opens with a synthetic chapter on Cannibal Epistemologies that, as its title suggests, takes us through the different types of evidence that cannibalism has existed as a social practice in human history. This book is a convincing challenge William Arens' (1979) claim, in The Man-Eating Myth, that cannibalism is purely a Western construct. The chapter also puts into perspective Amazonian cannibalism by comparing it medicinal cannibalism carried out for centuries in Europe. Chapter Two, Wari' Worlds, presents an in-depth description of social organization and environment both as they were before the contact with Europeans (who tried put a stop the cannibalistic tradition) and as they evolved in the post-contact period. Cultural Collisions relates the Westerners' reaction their encounter with the and, especially, their discovery of cannibalistic funerary practices. The conquerors soon pressured the abandon these practices and adopt the custom of burying corpses instead of eating or cremating them. The second part of the book, entitled Motifs and Motives, aims answer why and how the practiced endocannibalism. In Chapter Four, Conklin depicts funerals in rich detail, as they were before and after the contact, and offers accounts of perspectives on illness and death. In Explanations of Eating, she takes us on an intellectual journey through the various classical explanations of cannibalism: lack of proteins in the diet, sublimation of aggression, respect for the ancestors, desire incorporate the essence of the deceased into one's own body, etc. In the third part, Bodily Connections Conklin examines the ways in which the individual's body and its components are fitted into a network of social relations. Those relations are in part intertwined through the exchange of bodily fluids (Chapter Six) between parents and children, lovers, and consanguines. Conklin explains why only affines could consume a corpse without any danger and how this act reinforced existing ties among consanguines and affines. Chapter Seven, Embodied Identities, focuses once again on the body, but this time the author clarifies the ways in which the body serves as a central concept for defining juxtaposed identities. …