cannibalism

cannibalism Attitudes have changed considerably since the early twentieth century, when Sir James Frazer could blithely ask, of far-flung ethnographic correspondents ensconced among the ‘natives’, ‘Do they eat their enemies or their friends?’ The inevitable result of the inquiry was the concept of a universe of customary man-eaters beyond the borders of civilized society eventually enshrined in anthropological texts as ‘endo’- or ‘exo’-cannibals, depending on the status of the victims, lending a scientific tone to the discussion. Today's post-modern perspective assumes such questions produce ‘pre-figured’ responses indicating more about those who pose them than about those who have become known as ‘The Other’ — the exotic objects of discussion. Thus, some believe no objective truth, as opposed to subjective cultural representations, can result from the discourse. In this context considering cannibalism has become a complicated task.

Initially it must be entertained, if not accepted, that travellers' accounts of strange lands with anthropophagic (man-eating) inhabitants should be discounted. Famous representatives of this genre, such as Herodotus and Marco Polo, as well as a host of minor peregrinators, never actually encountered the phenomenon in question. (Often they never even encountered the presumed anthropophagi.) Instead they relied upon the reports of one exotic people about the peculiar behaviour of others even more distant. Nonetheless, a template had been set for followers, including Columbus and his contemporaries, who subsequently also issued accounts on the fantastical inhabitants of the New World. (In the process they introduced the term ‘cannibal’, as a perversion of the word ‘Carib’). In addition to relying on expectations and unsubstantiated reports, this generation of explorers and Conquistadors had the added impetus to provide a legitimization for their activities, which often had sad consequences for the indigenes. Subsequent exemplars also inevitably came upon cannibals in Africa, South America, Asia, and the Pacific in the colonization process. In some instances, those who failed to have the encounter merely plagiarized the work of others so as not to be outshone.

In the twentieth century, anthropologists — newly-minted professional interpreters of the exotic — whose self-proclaimed mandate was to de-romanticize the experience by direct observation and objective interpretation of contemporary cultures, continued, despite its absence, to reinforce the cannibalism theme on the authority of previous visitors. The usual explanation for the lacuna was the recent cessation or secret practice of the deed, due to the impact of colonialism and/or missionary activity. The retention of this ethnographic tidbit, as so many others were abandoned, obviously has much to do with the discipline's need for the exotic. This peculiar state of affairs led to the suggestion of a cannibal mythology as a feature of Western cosmology. This does not suggest that those responsible for the vision, including anthropologists, were engaged in a conscious hoax as opposed to maintaining a long-standing cultural projection. (Although their errors are understandable, it could be argued that the discipline had a greater responsibility to be more circumspect in its deliberations on this matter than others.) Nor does the argument imply that cannibalism has never been a feature of some societies; rather that such a conclusion is not supported by evidence. The best way to comprehend the situation in all its complexities invites a consideration of a more recent cannibal belief complex involving a number of academic disciplines, including medicine.

In 1957, while visiting Papua New Guinea, D. Carleton Gajdusek, a medical researcher, learned of an epidemic called kuru, savaging the highland area, principally among the Fore people. After arduous initial investigations, his preliminary results allowed for an expanded research team including cultural anthropologists. Of more immediate importance, laboratory results indicated that the disease could be transmitted — via the distillation of human victims' brain tissue — to chimpanzees. A reasonable extrapolation of this fact was that the illness had been transmitted among humans in New Guinea in some unknown fashion. A review of the literature indicates that the pre-figured notion of cannibalism entered into the discussion as the suspected agent of kuru transmission, first tentatively, and then with greater authority; the authors, including the anthropologists, began to cite each others' remarks in their publications until cannibalism eventually emerged as a scientific fact. The sensational nature of the claim soon enshrined it in the secondary and popular literature. However, none of the parties intimately involved had ever observed the deed, as opposed to learning of it from previous accounts. The inability to document the activity was explained as usual in terms of the cessation of the practice, or its continued secret occurrence. Thus, a common assertion about an exotic people was incorporated into an otherwise rational scientific discourse.

The recent concern over the spread of Creutzfeld–Jacob disease (a variant of kuru) in Europe provides an instructive example of how the matter is envisioned for ‘civilized’ populations. The implication of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in this instance suggests that the dietary habits of the Fore people, which included the consumption of undercooked pork, including brain tissue, should now be given greater consideration in the transmission of kuru. Customary funeral practices, which involved direct contact with the deceased's brain tissue, and institutionalized male homosexuality, also deserve greater appreciation as a disease vector, since they are well-documented activities, as opposed to cannibalism, which was merely assumed.

In sum, it no longer appears reasonable to assume the anthropophagic nature of others in the sense that they have been wholesale consumers of human flesh. This assertion does not deny some cross-cultural variation on the theme. For example, it has been reported on good authority that inhabitants of South America ritually consume the bone-ash of the departed. Yet, similar bodily substances were sold in European and American apothecaries until the beginning of the twentieth century and continue to be used today in some forms for their assumed medicinal qualities. The human use of the human body in all these instances raises interesting questions about the distinction between science and ritual.

W. Arens

Bibliography

Arens, W. (1979). The man-eating myth. Oxford University Press, New York.
Gajdusek, D. C. (1977). Unconventional viruses and the origin and disappearance of kuru. Science, 197, 943–60.

See also prions.