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| The Korowai People only eat witches |
https://www.flickr.com/photos/47372552@N06/4343341886/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/on-ethnocentrism/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sleeping-with-cannibals-128958913/?no-ist=&page=3
Monday, November 17, 2014
Cannibalism and Cultural Superiority
In The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, the author several times describes cannibalism occurring on islands east of Ind. In addition to the inhabitants of the islands being naked and having sex with many partners, they also greatly enjoy eating human flesh, even buying children from merchants to eat them. Given Sir Mandeville's description of the islands, I would guess that the islands are part of countries we know today as Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Cannibalism is believed to still exist among certain groups in New Guinea, but rather than eating it as regular food, New Guineans who practice cannibalism usually eat the flesh of a dead friend or family member as part of the mourning process, a practice called endocannibalism that Sir Mandeville also mentions. In addition, some communities eat people who have been accused of being witches.
Exaggerating or emphasizing certain cultural practices in order to make others look uncivilized is nothing new. Sir Mandeville may have done the same to excite his readers or exotify the people living on the islands. Early European colonizers in the Americas wrote of violent cultural practices, torture, and human sacrifice done by native Americans, but some scholars today believe that such accounts were exaggerated in order to dehumanize the natives and create justification for colonization. The French essayist Michel de Montaigne wrote of this cultural superiority in his 1653 essay "Des Cannibales." Montaigne had met 3 cannibals from Brazil, who had never left their homeland before and were visiting France for the first time. The cannibals explained to Montaigne things they found unusual, such as how some people had enormous wealth and ate everything, while some men were starving in the streets. According the them, it was strange that the poor tolerated such inequality and didn't kill the rich or burn their houses. Montaigne challenged European feelings of superiority over people like the Brazilian cannibals, arguing in his essay that some European practices were even more barbaric than the Brazilian custom of eating their dead enemies, and that the Brazilians in some ways were more humane. I would agree with him, considering that Europeans at the time, like some cannibals, killed accused witches and believed in all sorts of superstition. It seems that whether we consider a practice to be barbaric or not depends on what our culture deems normal.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/47372552@N06/4343341886/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/on-ethnocentrism/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sleeping-with-cannibals-128958913/?no-ist=&page=3
https://www.flickr.com/photos/47372552@N06/4343341886/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/on-ethnocentrism/
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sleeping-with-cannibals-128958913/?no-ist=&page=3
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Interesting topic. I have to ask, have you ever read "A Modest Proposal"? (you can read it here: http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html) It's a relatively famous essay in which the author presents a pro-cannibalism argument as a form of social satire. Your points about "barbaric" practices and the problems of class inequality really got me thinking about it.
ReplyDeleteAnd how do you think Mandeville really feels about cannibalism? From what I could tell, most of the people he depicted as cannibals in his Travels were also depicted as savages, but there were some variations on this line of thinking (if I remember correctly, at least one or two of the cannibal peoples were also supposed to be civilized or noble). Do you think it's possible that his attitude was more complicated than one of basic revulsion?
I have read it, and I guess that Jonathan Swift uses uses his society's view of cannibalism as barbaric to satirize inequality and the upper class' attitudes towards the poor. Montaigne does the opposite, using class inequality in France to mock Europeans' attitudes of cultural superiority towards those who practice cannibalism.
DeleteI think that in general Mandeville is repulsed, but the cannibalism also adds an aspect of the exotic to the people he describes. Even if the people are civilized, their cannibalism would "other" them from Europeans and could possibly be a way to justify them being slightly lower than Europeans, which would not challenge Europeans' beliefs of superiority. Even today, I have heard westerners say that well off Asian countries are still uncivilized due to the weird things they eat, and I theorize that they say that to reassure themselves in a time during which some Asian countries are challenging established western superiority.
It's interesting when reading Mandeville's accounts of all these people voluntarily resorting to cannibalism especially when we live in a world where it's unimaginable. I didn't realize there were still cultures that still partook in the cultural aspect of eating dead relatives and friends, to each their own I guess.
ReplyDeleteHave you read about one of the most known cases in the US about cannibalism during the gold rush? The Donner Party was traveling to California in 1847 and ended up becoming trapped in the mountains due to weather. They ran out of food, and according to journal entries by family members ended up eating their family dog and certain members of the group to survive. It's interesting to think about class inequality versus the need of survival? Do you think some of the lower end classes result in cannibalism because they can't get food elsewhere? Could you picture Mandeville visiting areas that he explained to us as civilized and experiencing people eating people? Do you think there's a reason that those who partook in cannibalism were seen as lower class?
I have read about the Donner Party. They took a new, untried route to California after taking bad advice and got trapped. There have been cases of cannibalism in supposedly civilized parts of the world like America and Europe, but Mandeville would probably say that such cases happened due to dire situations like famine and war and would probably not see Europeans, lower class or not, as savages. However, Europeans do have a history of using ground up Egyptian mummies and human blood, fat, and bone in medicine. I usually don't see such practices referred to as cannibalism though. I don't know what Mandeville would say to European use of humans in medicine, but I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to define it separately from the cannibalism he saw on the islands.
DeleteAs for why cannibalism is taboo, I'm not sure if there's one answer. I would guess it's because we don't like the thought of eating something very similar to ourselves.
Do you think that the people of these cultures ate fellow humans strictly because of superstitions, or did they do it out of necessity? I can't remember where I read it, but I know there were instances during the Crusades where people ate other dead people because they were starving and had nothing else to eat. Maybe Geoffrey of Monmouth and others of his same societal and cultural standing knew that certain cultural groups ate humans out of necessity, so maybe they thought of being poor or desperate as barbaric rather than solely the act of cannibalism itself. This is all speculative, and I think the topic you chose for your post is very interesting. :)
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