Introduction

This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in part 4 of this book. The part explores cannibalism, literal and as a trope, in colonial and decolonial contexts. It engages with travel writing, the museum space, neo-Victorian novels and literature from the Americas. The part also engages with the ambivalence of cannibalism and from images of literal anthropophagy and ‘savage’ tribes and rites, the focus returns to the metaphorical valence of cannibalism. It investigates Brazilian modernism and the emergence of Antropofagia as a decolonial praxis ‘masticating’ the colonisers’ discourse and proposing, by ingestion and hybridisation, a postcolonial one. The part shows how the potential of this 1920s movement and tradition can be revived by making anthropophagy a central operation of anthropology and how it can be seen as a critical approach to cultural studies and, in particular, comparative literature.