Cannibalism  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

The Raft of the Medusa (1819) by Théodore Géricault

Sweeney Todd

Related e

Wikipedia Wiktionary Shop Featured: Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

Cannibalism (from Spanish caníbal, in connection with alleged cannibalism among the Caribs), also called anthropophagy anthropos "man" and phagein "to consume" is the act or practice of humans consuming other humans. In zoology, the term cannibalism is extended to refer to any species consuming members of its own kind.

Care should be taken to distinguish among ritual cannibalism sanctioned by a cultural code, cannibalism by necessity occurring in extreme situations of famine, and cannibalism by mentally disturbed people.

Myths, legends and folklore

Cannibalism features in the folklore and legends of many cultures and is most often attributed to evil characters or as extreme retribution for some wrong. Examples include the witch in "Hansel and Gretel", Lamia of Greek mythology and Baba Yaga of Slavic folklore.

A number of stories in Greek mythology involve cannibalism, in particular cannibalism of close family members, e.g., the stories of Thyestes, Tereus and especially Cronus, who was Saturn in the Roman pantheon. The story of Tantalus also parallels this.

The wendigo is a creature appearing in the legends of the Algonquian people. It is thought of variously as a malevolent cannibalistic spirit that could possess humans or a monster that humans could physically transform into. Those who indulged in cannibalism were at particular risk, and the legend appears to have reinforced this practice as taboo.

In popular culture

• In 1729 Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, a satirical pamphlet in which he proposed that poor Irish families sell their children to be eaten, thereby earning income for the family.
• The Raft of the Medusa
• more cannibalism in fiction

As used to demonize colonized or other groups

Unsubstantiated reports of cannibalism disproportionately relate cases of cannibalism among cultures that are already otherwise despised, feared, or are little known. In antiquity, Greek reports of cannibalism, (often called anthropophagy in this context) were related to distant non-Hellenic barbarians, or else relegated in Greek mythology to the 'primitive' chthonic world that preceded the coming of the Olympian gods: see the explicit rejection of human sacrifice in the cannibal feast prepared for the Olympians by Tantalus of his son Pelops. All South Sea Islanders were cannibals so far as their enemies were concerned. When the whaleship Essex was rammed and sunk by a whale in 1820, the captain opted to sail 3000 miles upwind to Chile rather than 1400 miles downwind to the Marquesas because he had heard the Marquesans were cannibals. Ironically many of the survivors of the shipwreck resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.

However, Herman Melville happily lived with the Marquesan Typees (Taipi), rumored to have been the most vicious of the island group's cannibal tribes, but also may have witnessed evidence of cannibalism. In his semi-autobiographical novel Typee, he reports seeing shrunken heads and having strong evidence that the tribal leaders ceremonially consumed the bodies of killed warriors of the neighboring tribe after a skirmish.

William Arens, author of The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, questions the credibility of reports of cannibalism and argues that the description by one group of people of another people as cannibals is a consistent and demonstrable ideological and rhetorical device to establish perceived cultural superiority. Arens bases his thesis on a detailed analysis of numerous "classic" cases of cultural cannibalism cited by explorers, missionaries, and anthropologists. His findings were that many were steeped in racism, unsubstantiated, or based on second-hand or hearsay evidence. In combing the literature he could not find a single credible eye-witness account. And, as he points out, the hallmark of ethnography is the observation of a practice prior to description. In the end he concluded that cannibalism was not the widespread prehistoric practice it was claimed to be; that anthropologists were too quick to pin the cannibal label on a group based not on responsible research but on our own culturally-determined pre-conceived notions, often motivated by a need to exoticize. He wrote:

"Anthropologists have made no serious attempt to disabuse the public of the widespread notion of the ubiquity of anthropophagists. ... in the deft hands and fertile imaginations of anthropologists, former or contemporary anthropophagists have multiplied with the advance of civilization and fieldwork in formerly unstudied culture areas. ...The existence of man-eating peoples just beyond the pale of civilization is a common ethnographic suggestion."

Arens' findings are controversial, and have been cited as an example of postcolonial revisionism. His argument is often mischaracterized as "cannibals do not and never did exist", when in the end the book is actually a call for a more responsible and reflective approach to anthropological research. At any rate, the book ushered in an era of rigorous combing of the cannibalism literature. By Arens' later admission, some cannibalism claims came up short, others were reinforced.

Conversely, Michel de Montaigne's essay "Of Cannibals" introduced a new multicultural note in European civilization. Montaigne wrote that "one calls 'barbarism' whatever he is not accustomed to." By using a title like that and describing a fair indigean society, Montaigne may have wished to provoke a surprise in the reader of his Essays.

See also

• Alferd Packer, an American prospector, accused but not convicted of cannibalism
• Androphagi, an ancient nation of cannibals
• Asmat people, a Papua group with a reputation of cannibalism
• Cannibalism in popular culture
• Cannibalism (poultry)
• Chijon family, a Korean gang that killed and ate rich people
• Homo antecessor, an extinct human species, suspected of practicing cannibalism
• Issei Sagawa, a popular Japanese celebrity who killed and ate a fellow student
• Manifesto Antropófago, (Cannibal Manifesto in English), a Brazilian poem
• Noida serial murders, a widely publicized instance of cannibalism in India
• Placentophagy, the act of mammals eating the placenta of their young after childbirth
• R v Dudley and Stephens, an important trial of two men accused of shipwreck cannibalism
• Self-cannibalism
• Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, a progressive condition that affect the brain and nervous system of many animals, including humans
• Vorarephilia, a sexual fetish and paraphilia where arousal occurs from the idea of cannibalism
• Wari’ people, an Amerindian tribe that practiced cannibalism