Speculative Cannibalism: Derrida and Viveiros de Castro on Eating-the-Other

Abstract

ABSTRACT “Speculative cannibalism” names here some kind of transcendental logic that only works through figuration, in the specific form of an analogical matrix. This article tracks these configurations in the philosophical works of Jacques Derrida and in the anthropological foundations of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. This article states that as transcendental, this analogical matrix is the condition of possibility of the meaning of alterity and difference—but as analogical works as a transcategorial function that is neither beyond nor before experience, only irreducible to a given explanatory category of judgment or being. This function is figurative, that is, constitutes meaning by an operation of comparison in Viveiros de Castro’s nomenclature, and of supplementation, in Derrida’s terminology. In both cases this function posits difference or equivocation as the main operator. Finally, this article argues that even though they are very similar speculative proposals, analogy works a bit differently for deconstruction and for post-structural anthropology: for the first, analogy is based on a supplementary logic that is only taken to be a formal operation, while for the former, analogy it is treated not only as a formal operation, but also as fixed within the material categories of Amerindian thought.