The Anatomy of Cannibalism: Religious Vocabulary and Ethnographic Writing in the Sixteenth Century

Abstract

In the middle of the sixteenth century the prevailing representation of New World cannibalism as a marker of a radical alterity was rendered problematic by elaborate ethnographic descriptions of its symbolic function and ritual performance. This essay analyses the first ethnographies of Tupinamba cannibalism in Jean de Léry's Histoire d'un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil (Geneva, 1578), André Thevet's Singularités de la France Antarctique (Paris, 1557), and Hans Staden's Warhaftig Historia (Marburg, 1557), describing the association they established between European and native ritual practices. The particular focus is on Staden's book, as well as on the intervention of its editor, a professor of anatomy and astronomy at the University of Marburg. The essay indicates how the discourses of religion and medicine intersect in the language used to represent Tupinamba cannibalism. The exploration of the carnivalesque and anatomical elements defining the festive framework of Staden's text suggests that they are not only appropriative, but also fulfil a specifically ethnographic function. The conceptualisation of cannibalism as a feast allows at once for the description of its symbolic, ritual aspects and the emphasis on the cross-cultural conditions of the traveller's experience in colonial Brazil.