ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the regimes of thinkability which articulate the cannibal and the rapist are completely different: while cannibalism is only thought as a sort of savage nightmare that does not belong to Western society, sexual violence is understood, in what has been named ‘rape culture’, as a continuous threat for women, and an ‘always possible act’ for the male body. This discussion is framed by decolonial and feminist theory and is gravitated around a group of authors who allow for the formulation of a critique of Western epistemologies of violence. The decolonial and feminist frameworks that are taken as theoretical starting points in this chapter are linked by a productive critique on the traditional notion of nature and Cartesian dualisms that regulate long-established knowledge production in the West. Finally, the chapter draws upon the Brazilian movement of Antropofagia and the insights of Eduardo Viveiros de Castro around Amerindian cosmologies, two examples of positive reconceptualisations and theorisations of cannibalism.
