ABSTRACT

Interdisciplinary Essays on Cannibalism: Bites Here and There brings together a range of works exploring the evolution of cannibalism, literally and metaphorically, diachronically and across disciplines. This edited collection aims to promote a conversation on the evolution and the different uses of the tropes and figures of cannibalism, in order to understand and deconstruct the fascination with anthropophagy, its continued afterlife and its relation to different disciplines and spaces of discourse. In order to do so, the contributing authors shed a new light not only on the concept, but also propose to explore cannibalism through new optics and theories. Spanning 15 chapters, the collection explores cannibalism across disciplines and fields from Antiquity to contemporary speculative fiction, considering history, anthropology, visual and film studies, philosophy, feminist theories, psychoanalysis and museum practices. This collection of thoughtful and thought-provoking scholarly contributions suggests the importance of cannibalism in understanding human history and social relations.

part I|59 pages

Cannibals with (Pitch)Forks

chapter |5 pages

Introduction

A Severed Head on a Silver Platter: Bloody Banquets, Revenge Cannibalism and Future Foodways

chapter 1|15 pages

‘I’ll Play the Cook’

Titus Andronicus and the Cannibalism of Revenge, from Seneca to Julie Taymor’s Titus

chapter 2|18 pages

Cannibalism and Femininity

From the Old English Judith to Game of Thrones’ Arya Stark

chapter 3|18 pages

‘You Eat or You Die’

Sixth Extinction Cannibalism in Contemporary Speculative Fiction

part II|73 pages

The Anthropophagus Complex

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

The Anthropophagus Complex: Despotic and Overbearing Ogre Figures in Ancient and Medieval Texts and in Psychoanalysis

chapter 5|17 pages

The Medieval Roots of Anthropophagy

Stereotypes, Metaphors and Practices

chapter 6|18 pages

Iconology and Metaphors in Viennese Actionism

Critical Actions against a Cannibalistic Society

chapter 7|16 pages

‘We’ve Both Been His Brides’

NBC’s Hannibal, Cannibalism and Psychological Violence in Platonic Relationships

part III|71 pages

Not Just Another Piece of Meat

chapter |5 pages

Introduction

Not Just Another Piece of Meat: The Sexual and Epistemological Violence of Gendered Othernesss

chapter 9|15 pages

Constructing Transgression

Cannibalism, Witchcraft and Womanhood in Lo Stregozzo

chapter 10|14 pages

The Better to Eat You With

The Anthropophagy Plots of Fairy Tales

chapter 11|16 pages

Cannibalising Violence

Rethinking the Cannibal in Order to Theorise an Unthinkability of Sexual Violence

part IV|75 pages

(De)Meatifying and Digesting the Other

chapter |4 pages

Introduction

Decolonising Cannibalism from Travel Writing to Brazilian Antropofagia

chapter 12|17 pages

‘Savages are but Shades of Ourselves’

Central African Cannibals in Herbert Ward’s Narratives (1890–1910)

chapter 13|20 pages

Gastronomes of the Old School

American Iterations of the Cannibal Idea

chapter 14|16 pages

Neo-Cannibalistic Spaces

Revisiting Museum Practice through Literary Fiction