“Fine Young Cannibals”: Review of Eating Shakespeare: Cultural Anthropology as Global Methodology, edited by Anne Sophie Refskou, Marcel Alvaro de Amorim, and Vinicius Mariano de Carvalho, London and New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, pp. 301

Abstract

Consistently interesting and excellently articulated, this volume of essays entitled Eating Shakespeare will reward scholars of Shakespeare time and again, specifically those who consider expansive global Shakespeares and ways of traversing the problematic ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ locales of Shakespearean performance. Fortunately, this form of critique also challenges the alleged divide between subaltern identity and more traditional, European forms of subjectivity. Most importantly, this collection of essays breaks new ground in ways to theorize, articulate, and put into practice innovative forms of Shakespearean appropriation using the notion of anthropophagy, or cannibalism, as a central metaphor. Whether one is a Shakespeare scholar, a theatre practitioner, a creative writer, or simply an anthropology enthusiast, this book contains enough nutrients to sustain multiple explorations not only from the alleged ‘periphery’ of Global Shakespeares but also productions closer to home in the ‘centre’ of Shakespeare studies. Keywords: Shakespeare; Cannibalist Manifesto; Oswald Andrade; Cultural Anthropophagy; subaltern identity; Global Shakespeare; Hamlet; Othello; Ophelia; Tribe Arts