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eBook details

• Title: Consuming the Other: Cannibals and Vampires in Carmen Boullosa's Fiction.
• Author : Romance Notes
• Release Date : January 01, 2009
• Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 186 KB

Description

As old as the rumored existence of cannibalistic practices is the fascination with mankind's consumption of fellow human beings. The term cannibal was coined by Christopher Columbus when native guides on his voyage to the "New World" told him stories of tribes that fed on human flesh. In 1979 William Arens published a study called The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy, in which he expressed concern over the field of anthropology's apparent need for the existence of cannibalism in order to form itself as a valid discipline. His study produced an uproar among anthropologists, who quickly wrote responses focused on proving the existence of cannibalism despite Arens' implications, and thus ironically confirmed Arens' argument--we need cannibals. This need is firmly rooted in the human psyche, as evidenced by cannibalism's consistent appearance in literature, whether in literal or metaphorical form. In the years that followed the discovery of the Americas, the cannibal was re-interpreted and re-presented with varying degrees of sympathy or condemnation, depending on the purpose behind each portrayal of his "reality." Whether anthropophagy occurs by necessity or from desire, through hatred or through ritual, in an act of vengeance or in an act of savagery, the possible motivations for such behavior are outnumbered only by the texts that explore them. The appearance of cannibalism in three works by contemporary Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa reminds us that the cannibal is just as much a part of human nature as it is of history. In his book Cannibalism: from sacrifice to survival, psychologist Hans Askenasy considers the various reasons why a person would want to consume another person. Besides the obvious reason--hunger--there are a slew of other possible "motivational factors" for cannibalism. In a chapter entitled "Punishment, Indifference, and Unification," Askenasy provides three factors that eerily coincide with separate instances of cannibalism in three different narrative works of Carmen Boullosa. While these three forms of cannibalism (namely, punitive, unitive, and profane cannibalism) appear neatly categorized in Askenasy's work, applying them to Boullosa's characters serves merely as a departure point for an exploration of acts of consumption that seem to result from both a psychological and a physical need to devour the Other. Set in the past, present and future, respectively, Boullosa's Son vacas, somos puercos, Isabel, and Cielos de la tierra all involve bizarre cases of cannibalism that serve to underscore the author's own concerns regarding the destructive impulses behind human behavior.

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