Cannibalism, anthropology and history

Anthropophagy in Medieval Sicily: a cultural theme between chronicle and representation. Anthropophagy is the consumption of human flesh and the most extreme form of destruction of the human body, a physical violence which is the quintessential taboo of the self-described “civilized” societies. It provokes disgust, surprise and sometimes fascination, creating a deep connection between the text and the reader, and between the message and the audience. With regard to Sicily, anthropophagy is a cultural theme useful to discern between the account of real events and their representation. The construction of the image of Sicily, and even more of its inhabitants, the Sicilians, is based on an accumulation of clichés, often of ancient origins, transmitted and interpreted over the ages. One of them is surely the “bestiality” of its first inhabitants, intended as the ancient Cyclops or the Giants sons of Saturn, both of them “tyrants” described as man-eaters. During the Early Middle Ages the idea that the Sicilians eat human flesh was transferred to the new conquerors of the island: the Muslims, an infidel enemy to be fighted and considered beyond the boundaries of humanity and nature, meant as a divine law and therefore “civilization”. In both cases the accusations came from the outside, i.e. from groups as the ancient Greeks or the Christians (both Byzantine and Latin-Norman) who had an interest in representing the old and modern inhabitants of the island as anthropophagists to be feared, conquered, subjugated and converted to religion and/or civilization.

The labeling of fellow humans as “cannibals” is a trope employed by people across the globe, often in an effort to cast doubt on the humanity of others. In this study I am interested in alimentation, and specifically anthropophagy, not only as a signal of belonging and exclusion, but also as a site of rationalized, intentional actions through which individuals demonstrate their humanity and so become human. Specifically, personhood is intertwined in much of Africa with actions and sentiments that express sociality, compassion, and circulation. These orientations are not, however, automatic. Very familiar human anti-social sentiments – such as envy, jealousy, spite, indignation, contempt, and selfishness – can be very personally gratifying. At the same time, however, they are destructive, insulating, and excessive, and therefore grotesque. Behaviors such as gluttony, incest, greed, and, of primary interest here, the eating of human flesh – acts that prioritize unbridled self-interest and callous accumulation of vitality for personal benefit and individuated wellbeing – are often associated in Africa with witches and sorcerers. Human personhood is about controlling or repressing (or, at least appearing to control and repress) these tendencies in favor of collaboration, porosity, and sympathy, most of the time. This makes the project of being and becoming human a perpetual act, and there exists a necessity to continuously craft and maintain personhood through everyday behaviors. Based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in which I conducted a year-long dietary survey, participated in community activities, and engaged 20 principle informants in regular, unstructured conversation in their local language, and then used emergent ideas to guide informal discussions with a wide substrate of additional townspeople, I argue that avoiding acts that can be conceived as anthropophagous offers opportunities for individuals to prove their commitment to pro-sociality, and so to socially become human. Specifically, I articulate a series of prohibitions on not only cannibalism (as all societies have), but also on eating animals that resemble human beings in physical, emotional, and spiritual form. While the forbidden meats are rarely even an option to consume, articulating the taboos and exhibiting repugnance at the thought of eating these animals are significant for their contributions toward actively performing the moral underpinning of social living and constructing humanity. What I am proposing, then, is that the avoidance of cannibalism and pseudo-cannibalism are not just symbolic statements, gustatory preferences, or an assertion of benevolence to counter European misconceptions – they also constitute the self. The language and rationale that my informants used to describe their dietary proscriptions suggests that values on sociality, porosity, and circulation were not only grafted onto food taboos, but also intimately enacted and embodied through them. People are doing things with food prohibitions, not just following them out of routine. While taboos on cannibalism are thus significant as one of few customs that are globally universal, which seems to suggest a biological basis, it is clear that there is also much to the construction of disgust at the consumption of human flesh that is culturally specific.

The imagery of appetite, consumption, and digestion that saturates Jacobean drama find its most extreme form in metaphors of cannibalization. This paper will look past those excesses to examine two of the several literal examples of human flesh being treated as foodstuff to determine what these depictions divulge about social anxieties in the period, and the reaction to those anxieties. The first is Middleton and Dekker’s revenge tragedy The Bloody Banquet, which, unsurprisingly, contains the most fully consummated cannibal feast in all early modern drama and manifests the destabilization of society caused by the Protestant Reformation.  The second is Fletcher and Massinger’s travel comedy The Sea Voyage, where the feast—attempted but foiled—is a humorous reaction to serious anxieties resulting from England’s interaction with the New World. Because the circumstance, tone, and outcome of these two depictions of cannibalistic behavior are essentially opposite, taken together they give a uniquely broad picture of the functions of dramatizations of cannibalism in literature of the period.

Review of Brazilian visual artist Adriana Varejão's survey show at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston as seen through the lens of Oswald de Andrade's 1928 "Manifesto Antropófago" and José Lezama Lima's 1957 "La curiosidad barroca", both expressions of Latin American cultural cannibalism and transformation as an aesthetic mode of resistance against the colonial condition.

Ważnym wkładem książki Ewy Domańskiej jest zwrócenie uwagi na te obecne w nowej humanistyce i podejmowane przez historie niekonwencjonalne awangardowe idee, które są bagatelizowane lub pomijane przez badaczy reprezentujących główny nurt rozważań historycznych. Należy jednak podkreślić, że książka ta w żaden sposób nie jest "postmodernistycznym" atakiem na tradycyjną historiografię. Jest ona raczej uważnie przestudiowaną i wrażliwą prezentacją nowego rodzaju przedmiotów (i podmiotów) badań historycznych, powołanych do życia przez nowożytność, modernizację oraz ekstremalne sytuacje.

Cannibalism has been connoted negatively among many Western civilizations throughout history, medieval Iceland included. Icelandic giants were characterized by a diet consisting mainly of horsemeat (banned by the Church) and human flesh (an ancient taboo). But cannibalism was also connoted positively when it was performed by heroes in accordance with the laws of sympathetic magic: in this case, eating specific parts of the human body would transfer the qualities of the eaten to the eater. The intention of this article is to discuss the role that the human body played as identity marker, and its different connotations depending on who consumed it.

Cannibalism (more precisely, anthropophagy) is an age-old tradition that, judging by a constant stream of flabbergasted news reports, is far from extinct. Much-debated indications exist that our Neanderthal, Proto-Neolithic, and Neolithic (Stone Age) predecessors were cannibals. Similarly contested claims were made with regards to the 12th century advanced Anasazi culture in the southwestern United States and the Minoans in Crete (today's Greece).

In recent years, scholars and commentators within and outside Japan have argued that a victim consciousness or mentality (higaisha ishiki) took hold of the nation in its postwar years, through which Japanese came to see themselves primarily as victims, rather than as aggressors, during the Pacific War. The horrific accounts of cannibalism in the latter stages of the war – a common outcome of abandonment and starvation, and committed by Japanese troops against Allied soldiers, prisoners of war, civilians, and each other – sit uneasily within this discourse of victimhood because the line between victim and perpetrator is often ambiguous or exists on multiple fronts. Depending on the context, victim status can be spread widely, and even a soldier who practiced cannibalism may be perceived to be a victim, a perpetrator, or both simultaneously.

The tiny number of Japanese films that have tackled the issue of war cannibalism likewise blur the distinction between victim and victimizer; as such, they are well equipped to respond to historian Tanaka Yuki’s call to examine “wartime Japan as aggressors and as victims at the same time”. This chapter focuses on four films which foreground war cannibalism and examine the complexities of its victimhood: Ichikawa Kon’s Fires on the Plain (Nobi, 1959), Tsukamoto Shinya’s eponymous 2014 remake, Fukasaku Kinji’s Under the Flag of the Rising Sun (Gunki hatameku moto ni, 1972) and Hara Kazuo’s documentary The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Yukiyukite shingun, 1987). In these works, cannibalism extends well beyond a theme, image or narrative device used to evoke horror or express antiwar sentiment. They all engage with the horrors of cannibalism to consider what the war meant, how it ought to be remembered, and why defining victimhood in such extraordinary circumstances can be an elusive pursuit.

Cannibalism, graphophagy, and sympathetic "magic" in medieval times (500-1500)

Il volume raccoglie una serie di casi studio relativi a pratiche magiche, religiose e mediche in diverse aree dell'Occidente medievale, presentate in ordine cronologico dal VI al XV secolo, e accomunate da un principio fondamentale: la "simpatia", ovvero l'idea che "il simile produce il simile". Lo studio mostra come la fiducia nei poteri magici, miracolosi o medicinali di elementi naturali, cibi e bevande, sebbene radicata nell'antichità greco-latina, sopravvisse alla diffusione del Cristianesimo in forme più o meno manifeste. Tale continuità di conoscenze e pratiche trovò una fondamentale spinta nella comune necessità delle società medievali, così come di quelle antiche, di affrontare le sfide quotidiane. Particolare attenzione viene posta su esempi di grafofagia, di cannibalismo "simpatetico" e su pratiche presentano una fusione di magia, religione e scienza, attraverso lo studio critico di un ventaglio di fonti che spaziano da cronache ad agiografie, da testi di medicina a raccolte di incantesimi, da saghe norrene a exempla.

This paper examines the lively dynamics that take place in a colonial exhibition by focusing on the food consumption of the “natives” than were showcased in reconstituted villages. It will to show that and attention to daily routines and situated practices such as food consumption throws a new light on the culture and politics of the colonial exhibits. It will show that in the context of colonial exhibitions, food was indeed a political issue, not just in the obvious sense of food as a symbol or embodiment of colonial power, Western imperialism or cultural Orientalism, but in the more material sense of being an object of constant tensions that draws attention to the vulnerability of bodies and also uncovers oppositions and negotiations in the daily and mundane governance of what “natives” were eating and drinking.

Anthropophagy is a controversial subject among anthropologists, ethnographers and archaeologists.  For many years it has been at the centre of heated debate with regard to the extent of its existence both archaeologically and ethnographically.  In more recent times biological, anthropological and archaeological evidence appears to be supporting the idea that anthropophagy was very much a part of the human experience throughout antiquity and remained so up until at least the middle of the 20th century.

This research investigates a commonly held view in certain peri-urban areas around Chimoio, Mozambique, that German Pentecostal pastors and missionaries, as well as German communists, have been operating as witches from the 1990s until the present time. Drawing on ethnographic material (1999–2016), the chapter explores the popular perception that these ‘Germans’ (alemãos) were promulgating an egalitarian value of sameness and an ethos of purity: gradually, however, they came to be regarded as witches, engaged in nocturnal bloodsucking and undertaking savage hunts for children who were subsequently kidnapped or devoured. Drawing on colonial era cases and comparing the material with other African as well as Melanesian cases, the chapter also relates these ideas about the violence of German witches to long-standing experiences of enslavement, domination and violence, which involve dynamics of memorialization common across both Africa and Melanesia.

The article deals with the cannibalistic discourse which is used by many cultures – in art, literature and public rhetoric in general. The aim of the article is to bring to light the specific ways in which Soviet and post-Soviet writers, artists and other public intellectuals exploit the imagery of cannibalism. It fo- cuses on significant shifts in the rhetoric of cannibalism, taking into account the latest clearly observed trends in literature and public discussion in Russia.

This article explores the impulse behind the outpouring of extraordinarily ornate maps representing the inhabitants of Brazil that emanated from Normandy in the mid-sixteenth century. It aims to understand the reasons behind the iconography of Brazil, a region of particular commercial interest for the French. Whereas maps produced elsewhere in this period emphasize the presence of fierce cannibals in Brazil, Norman examples highlight peaceful relations, particularly the dyewood trade. By analysing the maps in comparison with extant maps from other centres of production (particularly Portugal and the German lands), travel accounts, and wider visual culture, this article explores their relationship to possible sources and considers the extent to which their iconography had a basis in experience. By investigating the use of these maps as gifts to French kings, it suggests that the mapmakers’ selective use of trading imagery also played a persuasive role in the Norman maritime world’s disputes with the Portuguese crown over the extent of Portugal’s Atlantic empire.

Dado que el mito del caníbal se ha manifestado de manera profusa en los medios de comunicación, y de que permea en la cultura contemporánea, en este artículo se analiza, desde un punto de vista mitocrítico, la manera en la que se despliega en el cine del siglo XXI. Se revisa como ejemplo el mitema de la asimilación en la cinta _Grimm Love_ (Martin Weisz, 2006) para demostrar la configuración del mito y se ofrece una reflexión sobre la manera en que concita ideas sobre el consumo como metáfora, la soledad y la incomunicación.

ABSTRACT: This lecture examines mid-late Dynasty 11, starting with Montuhotep II, the conflict with the rival northern kingdom (the Herakleopolitans), and reunification.  The lecture poses and attempts to address various questions: Why did the Theban kingdom feel the need to reunite all of Egypt? (i.e., a return to glory days of ED-OK Egypt? Ancestral linkage to OK? Abydos?); How did the Theban kingdom (i.e., Montuhotep II) reunify all Egypt? ca.2040 BC?; What territories did the northern enemy kingdom control? Middle Egypt only?; What evidence is used to recreate this process of re-unification? Texts? Archaeology?; Having re-unified all Egypt, what else did Montuhotep II do, if at all, to recreate/draw upon the “Old Kingdom”?; (i.e., subduing frontier peoples; grand building projects; adopting Old Kingdom art forms); How did Montuhotep II reward his followers? loyal officials within Southern Egypt?; How did Montuhotep II treat the defeated enemy ruler(s) & northern governors?; What evidence do we have for preferential treatment of Southern Egyptians?; What major innovation occurs regarding Montuhotep II’s mortuary complex? (i.e., How is it similar to and dissimilar to Old Kingdom pyramid complexes?); What evidence do we have for the last rulers of Dynasty 11? Montuhotep III-IV?; How does Dynasty 11 end? Why does it disintegrate? No heir? Civil war? Etc.; What important data can we glean from the surviving Middle Kingdom literary sources? (i.e., Using diverse textual sources appropriately as “historical sources”).  The Heqanakht papers/letters provide a reference to famine and cannibalism (to the south of Thebes), and also daily life intrigues, household administration, and farming practices in southern Egypt. The lecture also provides an example of some Coffin texts using the tomb of Nakht-Ankh, and summarizes important pieces of Middle Kingdom literature, with a focus on two pieces for student reading (e.g., Tale of the Eloquent Peasant [i.e., regional trade; justice; law]; Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor [sailing; Red Sea; Punt]). UPDATED: April 7, 2023: This lecture was edited, reformatted in some areas, and had a few new slides added (especially in a selected bibliography at the end).

SUMMARY: Lecture 12 discusses the end of Early Minoan period, the rise of Middle Minoan period, and the emergence of palace centres on Crete. This lecture is designed mainly as an educational resource for college students (i.e., normally posted only on my institution's course website), the public (e.g., people auditing my course), and interested colleagues from other disciplines (to whom I provide copies privately).  I am posting it here, both as a broader access, educational tool, and especially to promote the study of this region and its past societies.  For further knowledge about this region and period, I refer interested parties to the textbooks and other sources from which the materials were extracted (see syllabus), and/or the bibliographies in these works and my online resource guides (see other files in my academia folders).  The lecture summarizes the pertinent materials in the course textbook(s), adding in other data, and furnishing numerous images to clarify information encountered within the textbook(s).  Some generic imagery (usually indicated as such) is posted to aid in transmitting various concepts visually, and/or when a specific image remains not located (temporarily).  I update and revise such lectures each time, with such elective courses normally being taught once every two years.  I try to cover the most current, mainstream views, and usually place summary notes at the end of each lecture alongside some of the key sources used for compiling the ppt.  Over time, each lecture is improved, errors rectified, and additional data placed within the lecture.  These ppt. lectures take many hours to compile, but they have proved useful to many of my more serious students and I hope they can be of benefit to others as well.  My apologies for any errors I may have made, and my liberal usage of educational imagery from professional sources and vetted internet sources. REVISED: Feb., 2024: Some new formatting, revised text, images, etc.

Los kirineris constituyen un subgrupo matsigenka de contacto reciente. Desde las primeras noticias de su presencia han sido considerados, por matsigenkas ribereños y blancos, como los salvajes de las cabeceras en la margen derecha del Urubamba. En tal escenario regional aún de actualidad, un jefe kirineri explora e incorpora la alteridad mientras produce su propia identidad. Este ensayo examina los discursos y acciones con los que este jefe ejecuta la «facultad mimética». Son dos las entidades a las que hace frente con este propósito: el caníbal salvaje desprovisto de intencionalidad, y la intencionalidad invisible del libro. Con el fin de entender este idioma de la alteridad, un foco central de este ensayo será la teoría matsigenka de la persona.

Son muchas las teorías existentes sobre esta práctica. Algunos autores plantearon una hipótesis (hoy en día descartada) sobre la presión demográfica, y las circunstancias ecológicamente precarias para recurrir al consumo de carne humana. Otra explicación, con mucho más arraigo histórico y con una amplia aceptación, se basa en un modelo sacrificial y pone énfasis en el consumo como una comunión con los dioses por medio de un cuerpo divinizado. Recientemente, otros autores han estudiado la antropofagia con puntos de partida diferentes, en donde el elemento sacrificial ya no es la esencia de la explicación, aunque en contextos rituales, muchas veces se combinan. Dentro de estas perspectivas, el consumo de carne humana se integra en un modelo más amplio que incorpora también dioses, animales, paisajes y hasta objetos. Se considera que la antropofagia no se puede entender si nos enfocamos únicamente en el hombre (y, por lo tanto, el término antropofagia no es realmente muy adecuado).

Different theoretical frameworks have played a major role in interpretations of ethnographic material collected among the Aborigines of Central Australia. This article explores the theoretical frameworks that anthropologists, scholars of religion, and missionaries used to interpret the material that was collected in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries among the Western Aranda people of the Ntaria/Hermannsburg area of the Upper Finke River in Central Australia. Though the religious backgrounds and convictions of researchers influenced how the Intichiuma ceremonies were interpreted and how notions of the Eucharist were employed or implicated, I argue that the ethnographic material on the Intichiuma ceremonies also reshaped the ways in which early anthropologists of religion defined concepts of sacrifice and ritual, and demarcated the study of magic and religion. As the uses of different research methods and anthropological theories show, the discovery of the Intichiuma ceremonies—however accurate the ethnographic accounts might be—and resulting interpretations that considered them to be a sacrament of communion, had a lasting impact on the formation of theoretical approaches to the study of ritual and religion. This article aims to examine how different frameworks guided the interpretation of ethnographic material in a way that distorted the meaning of the Intichiuma ceremonies as a sacrificial ritual in Central Australia, refracting broader theoretical assumptions about the study of religion and reframing it as a sacrament of communion. The objective is to demonstrate how these frameworks—anthropological, theological, and cosmological—impacted the methods in which ethnographic data were conceptualized within different frames of reference. Special attention is placed on the Intichiuma ceremonies, as their interpretation became a point of contention in the debate encompassing theoretical and methodological foundations in the study of religion.

"Andreas" is generally read as a conventional conversion narrative in which Andrew is considered the literary representation of the Christian self, whereas the cannibal Mermedonians represent the non-Christian other.

This paper, however, will consider "Andreas" from a fresh perspective and I will propose a new reading context for Andrew and his Mermedonian counterparts. The aim is to read the depiction of cannibalism as a late AS mentifact that addresses and expresses a subtext about changing social conditions and, very specifically, evolving conceptions of the Anglo-Saxon Christian self.

In Search of a Romanian Poetics of Ethnography

The paper is intended to define a Romanian anthropology in the Western sense as a fieldwork study of exotic peoples. As opposed to nations of Western Europe that experienced a rich tradition of colonial administration and the related opportunities for extensive travel,
exploration and later on of ethnographic research, Romanians and Eastern Europeans generally postponed with centuries the actual experience of the so-called primitive places and peoples. In the absence of the “savage outside”, Romanian anthropologists were propelled to
examine the “savage inside” – i.e. their rural traditional compatriots. Among the restricted number of Romanian travelers in exotic cultures a few of them proved an anthropological vision or employed ideas, methods and clichés specific to this discipline in its Western sense.
Mihai Tican Rumano and Hanna Bota, travelogue authors of different time periods and intellectual profiles, are analyzed here as appropriate representatives of an “invented” Romanian ethnography which combines the Western tradition of the genre with an autochthonous perception of distant cultures.

In the much debated research on the practice of cannibalism, several general categories seem to have emerged. These categories include "Cannibal Talk," wartime cannibalism, religious cannibalism, and survival cannibalism. These categories include both endocannihalism (consumption of another human who the consumer knows personally), and exocannihalism (consumption of a human not known by the consumer personally). There is much overlap among these categories. I will also explore the biological implication of cannibulism, namely Kuru.