‘Eat me’: cannibals as a symbol of evil
Originally posted on https://evilunravelled.wordpress.com/2018/06/05/eat-me-cannibals-as-a-symbol-of-evil/
evilunravelled Symbols of evil on Jun 5, 2018
As part of a collaborative class effort (ANTH 424)
“Cannibalism can be read ‘‘as a symbol of the permeability, or instability, of such boundaries’’ between a civilized ‘‘us’’ and savage ‘‘them’’ (Henderson, 2011).
Cannibalism is often referred to as the “last taboo” (Marriner 1992). In anthropological scholarship taboo is an important concept. It refers to something (a personal, place, object, or action) that is highly restricted by cultural norms and values. Emotions such as disgust, shame, or fear (often called ‘boundary-keeping’ emotions) police the moral lines around these taboos, and are strongly present when they are violated. Stories or images of cannibalism have certainly been known to evoke such feelings. However, many types of cannibalism exist, and not all can be equated.
Recorded accounts of institutionalised cannibalism within various cultural groups in the past, often indicate a deeply symbolic aspect, as in ‘ritual cannibalism’ which can be the eating of ‘others’ (exo-cannibalism), or the eating of owns own group (endo-cannibalism, much more rare). The meanings and beliefs surrounding these practices range from the ingestion of the power or qualities of the deceased to the renewal of the cycle of life. Anthropologists have analysed their social function as part of both warfare and mortuary/funerary ritual, in various ways. As an example, we can look to the endo-cannibalistic practices of the Wari’ people of the West Brazilian rainforest (prior to and briefly after their contact in the 1960’s). Eating the body was a part of their mortuary customs that both physically and symbolically bridged the gaps between life and death (Conklin pp76), relating to human-animal links in cosmology, and the idea of “eating and being eaten” in the circle of life, and additionally solidifying social bonds between sanguines (blood relatives, who didn’t eat the body) and affines (in-laws, who did).
Alternatively, other accounts show cannibalism is used last resort to save oneself from death (survival cannibalism). The Donner-Reed party is one of the most famous examples; several families were moving out to the Western United States in 1846 hoping to make their fortunes when a snowstorm trapped them in the Sierra Nevada Mountain range and to survive the winter the family were believed to have resorted to cannibalism. Out of the 87 people who began the trip only 48 made it out and were reported to have had uneasy lives after that disheartening experience (Stewart, 1936). In the long term, many periods of historical famine (from France to China and many others) have also shown records of cannibalism, as well as isolated incidents like plane crashes.
Other reasons for cannibalism practice also branch out to include psychopathy, and also medicinal cannibalism (common from the Greeks, right up to industrial Europe), including a still relatively common (through controversial) practice of plancentophagy, where the placenta is consumed by the person who gave birth to aid in the reduction of post-partum symptoms
Whether for survival or not, those who eat people have been looked at as being on “the borders of humanity” (Henderson, 2011). Considering that many stories of cannibalism arose through travellers tales, in an age of European conquest and colonisation, this shed light on why they had such a political edge. Enforcing the idea of indigenous (South American, or later Pacific) peoples as barbarous and primitive, formed part of the justification for taking land, slaves, and the power of governing newly ‘discovered’ nations.
Figure 1. Image Credit: "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas" from Dreamworks, 2003.
Anthropologists have hotly debated how much cannibalism existed in many of those cultures, outside of some clearly invented or exaggerated stories (Obeyesekere 2003). The truth is it is quite hard to tell, from the historical record. The people of Fiji reflected this trend in their stories. While they insisted for a time that they did not eat people, their language still contained words directly relating to cannibalism (Sahlins, 2003). Other sources show that even the joking about cannibalism by contemporary Fijians is part of an ongoing struggle for power and identity that is part of their colonial history (Banivanua-Mar 2010). Indeed the original stories may have been partly perpetuated by locals but as a deliberate form of resistance to scare off invaders (who often came across as weirdly obsessed with cannibalism anyway).
Fear is a common thread that is pulled in order to make a scapegoat, especially when customs are different and there is a great deal of historical tension, and not just in colonial history. The ongoing anti-Semitic views are easy to point out around this when the most ridiculous lies were created to turn the Jewish people into monster cannibals. Medieval Christians of the area in Western Europe developed rumours and stories about how part of the Jewish tradition is sacrificing Christian children and using their blood as a replacement of “the wine” and “the flesh” instead of matzo within Jewish ceremonies (Bemparod, pp 224). This attempts to excuse a hatred of Jewish people to justify whatever terrible things that are done to them.
Figure 2 – TV show image credit: Star City Books & Posters on ebay – Depicts Hannibal Lector about to eat human meat with the antlers of the Indegious American cannibalistic monster spirit, the Wendigo
For the Catholic Christians who fought against them, it seems odd to demonize people for eating other, as during Catholic communion it is believed that the bread and wine which is served ‘transmutes’ into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ respectively. They are, therefore, taking part in a form of cannibalism – in their minds at least. This particular instance of symbolic cannibalism is still widely practised today, so it seems almost hypocritical for people to judge other humans for taking part in various cannibalistic rituals when all participants freely consent. Yet consent alone seems to shock as much as justify. For instance in Germany in 2004, came the famous case of Andrew Miewes (or the ‘Butcher of Rotenberg’), who placed ads online and received messages back from people who wanted to be eaten. He eventually killed and ate one willing respondent. When he was brought before a tribunal, he was found guilty, with an initial conviction of manslaughter being changed to murder after a retrial.
Life mirrors art in cases such as this, and cannibalism has featured strongly in art of many forms, from colonial painting to contemporary popular media. For example, a television series follows the German cannibal, Hannibal Lector, who eats people he deems as ‘rude’ or ‘bad’. In the past few years, the television series version Hannibal has been normalizing cannibalism for a wide audience, much like the Danish reality show “Guinea Pigs” which had cannibalism take place. The two hosts had small pieces of flesh removed from their bodies and were served them in fancy dishes on live national television. This upset many people, but legally no one involved was in trouble because no one was harmed and nothing happened without legal consent (Beers, 2012).
This does, however, raise important issues of personhood and how this is impacted when the human body is reduced to simply being a piece of meat, and when consumed effectively dissolves the boundaries between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. In this way, it has both visceral effect and symbolic power. Cannibalism then becomes a metaphor for ultimate consumerism within a capitalist society, as well as being part of navigating the boundaries and difficulties associated with cultural appropriation.
There are certainly wide-ranging ideas about, and examples of, the actual act of cannibalism. Whether in the rainforests, the mountains, or in a city it, in some ways it doesn’t seem to matter if cannibalism is actually occurring, only that the myths around the breaking of this last taboo, continue.
Written by: Renée Whitehouse, Athena Macmillan, and Susan Wardell
Work Cited
Banivanua-Mar, T. (2010) ‘Cannibalism and colonialism: charting colonies and frontiers in nineteenth-century Fiji’ Comparative studies in society and history. Cambridge University Press, 52(2), pp. 255–281.
Beers, B. (2012) ‘TV Cannibalism, Body Worlds and Trade in Human Body Parts; Legal-Philosophical Reflections on the Rise of Later Modern Cannibalism’, Amsterdam Law Forum. VU University Amsterdam, 4, pp. 65–75.
Bemporad, E. (2017) ‘THE BLOOD LIBEL AND ITS WAR TIME PERMUTATIONS: Cannibalism in Soviet Lviv’, in Ritual Murder in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Beyond: New Histories of an Old Accusation, pp. 219–237.
Henderson, H. (2011) ‘Cannibalistic Delights: Human Consumption in Contemporary German Literature’, The Journal of Popular Culture. Wiley, 46(4).
King, C. R. (2000) ‘The (Mis)uses of Cannibalism in Contemporary Cultural Critique’, Diacritics. John Hopkins University Press, 30, pp. 106–123.
Obeyesekere, G. (2003) ‘Cannibalism reconsidered: responses to Marshall Sahlins’, Anthropology Today. Ebeschost, 19(5), pp. 18–19.
Sahlins, M. (2003) ‘Artificially maintained controversies: Global warming and Fijian
cannibalism’, Anthropology Today. Wiley, 19, pp. 3–5.
Stewart, George R. (1936). Ordeal by Hunger: The Story of the Donner Party: supplemented edition (1988), Houghton Mifflin.
