Subversions of the Sensible: The Poetics of Antropofagia in Brazilian Concrete Poetry

Abstract

In this article, I provide a new reading of Andrade's cannibal that charts its subversive avatars in Brazilian concrete poetry from 1960s to present. Shifting terms of discussion on legacy of anthropophagia through a reading of Andrade's poetry, I argue that critical force of his cannibalistic poetics lies not in identity but in its self-reflexive, multimedial defiance of representational logic. Second, I investigate how Brazilian concrete poets resuscitate Andrade's poetics to take what they famously called the participatory into politics during 1960s. Drawing from a diverse array of multimedial, anti-literary poems, I illustrate how largely misunderstood participatory leap hinges on ways in which Brazilian concrete poets devour non-poetic so as to renovate poetry in a public sphere in crisis. I conclude by elucidating continuity of anthropophagic preoccupation in concrete poetry as an untimely matter of counter-constructing present with a reading of Augusto de Campos's iconic poem, Mercado (2002).