Cannibalims E-Book

Catherine Dumont

• Herausgeber: BookThug
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 27

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Why does cannibalism captivate and repel in equal shares? Why has it become the core plot of dozens of movies and series? Is there a group that is trying to naturalize this taboo? Is it a trend that will become fashion? These and many other questions will be answered in this brief compendium on cannibalism and the curiosities involved in the strange habit of eating human flesh.

Leseprobe

Eat Human Flesh

An unusual coincidence made “cannibalism” hit the headlines in 2022; it was also trending topic on Twitter and was mentioned as the core of a conspiracy theory. For many it is a taboo, for others it can be a fetish or a fantasy; for some people it is a resource in an extreme situation, for others a (macabre) way to demonstrate power. Many argue that it is simply part of nature and it is one of the practices that has accompanied us since the beginning of humanity.

Some fictional characters with cannibalistic tendencies have horrified us, and perhaps one of the most emblematic is Hannibal Lecter from the film The Silence of the Lambs. There are many cases of cannibalism in fiction, and this is not a recent phenomenon: it was already present in Homer’s Odyssey.

In terms of real cannibalism, there were many emblematic cases: from New York’s “cannibal cop” to the “Rotenberg Cannibal”, from the Donner Party to the survivors of the Andes. There are cases in which cannibalism is practiced to satisfy unthinkable desires, and cases in which people resolve to practice it as a last resort for survival.

It is a phenomenon that we cannot ignore: there are tribes that still practice it, it is a behavior that is used among drug cartels or criminal groups to show power, and from time to time a case like that of Armie Hammer pops up, an actor accused of sending cannibalistic messages to different women.

There are those who claim that some people are trying to “naturalize” cannibalism and slowly put it on the agenda as part of a conspiracy plan. A New York Times article unleashed a cascade of protests and denunciations: there it was assured that there is a time and place for cannibalism, and that that time seems to be now.

Cannibalism among humans is divided into two large groups according to the belonging of the dead to the same social group or not: endocannibalism (eating the remains of friends, relatives or dead members, as a way to honor and venerate them or to “acquire” some virtue from the deceased) and exocannibalism (eating the flesh of enemies either to frighten them or to show superiority, contempt or hatred).

There is another classification that divides cannibalism into three, according to the motives behind it: famine cannibalism (practiced in extreme famine situations), ritual cannibalism (practiced in a context of sacrifice, to demonstrate power or for ritual purposes) and gastronomic cannibalism (practice of eating human flesh associated with prehistory).

A recent book by biologist Bill Schutt explores the subject and suggests that, in addition to being a natural and logical response to overpopulation or shortages situations, in the future humanity could again resort to cannibalism.

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Anthropophagy

Cannibalism is the practice of feeding on members of one’s own species, and this is valid for any species. The word for the practice of humans feeding on other human beings is “anthropophagy”, although certainly “cannibalism” is much more widely used. Now, where does the term “cannibal” or “cannibalism” come from? The term is a deformation of Caribbean, and dates back to the time of the discovery of America. It is assumed that Caribbean was transformed into Caniba or Cariba of the Taino language, which was part of the Arawak