By MARCELO BARBOZA DUARTE*
Symbolic and figurative practices as instruments of appropriation of the other and their qualities
1.
The practice of anthropophagy in the literal sense of the word, as well as in the symbolic and figurative sense, was and in part still is a common practice in almost all societies and social, cultural, mystical, religious, economic, political and historical times. It is clear that we cannot generalize. Just as we need to specify and contextualize these terms and their literal, symbolic and figurative practices. Which are various and in various senses, types, modes, scopes and aspects.
We also need to inform you that there is cannibalism or anthropophagy involved in mystical, magical, political, religious and cultural practices, as well as cannibalism as a practice of a certain type of hobby, even though it may sound strange, cruel and inhumane. But it is a fact and it is real. The cannibals of modern societies can attest to this. However, many may already be dead or in prison. However, this practice is very old, as we will see.
There are several types, modes, aspects and forms of cannibalism or anthropophagy, such as literal, symbolic and figurative. Just as there is cultural, institutional, physical-corporal cannibalism and many others. Here we will focus on political cannibalism, a new or old practice. This is what we will reflect on, but without closing the subject or the discussion.
Cannibalism has been softened or softened by the term anthropophagy or cannibalism, and these are not new practices nor are they found only among African and indigenous peoples, accusations and practices commonly attributed only to these two peoples and their cultures, by and among alienated, ignorant, uneducated and unwary subjects. In other words, cannibalism or, in a more softened euphemistic way, anthropophagy or cannibalism, was in fact a very old practice and evident among many peoples, cultures and societies that are currently considered as supposed civilized and/or highly civilized peoples, cultures and societies.
The term anthropophagy or cannibalism is of ancient Greek origin, which meant the practice of eating human flesh or that of its species. We can say that this term was already used around or between the 2.800th and XNUMXrd centuries BC, that is, almost XNUMX years ago, and the practice itself was much older than the Greeks or the formation of the Greek people, as well as the name of eating parts or whole human beings, alive or dead, in rituals or not, as anthropophagy or anthropophagism.
Thus, in certain political, economic and historical contexts, the practices of cannibalism or anthropophagy were highlighted and criticized by some Roman writers such as Ovid, Cicero and others. And not only in rituals of human sacrifice. Therefore, we can say that rituals of and with human sacrifice, as well as anthropophagic practices, were highlighted in and among Etruscan, Egyptian, Greek, Jewish and Roman peoples and cultures, as well as among Normans, Sumerians, Mesopotamians, Babylonians, Persians, Phoenicians, Celts, Turks, Saxons, Germans, in the Scandinavian region and among many other places, peoples, societies and cultures.
We can therefore say that the practice of anthropophagy or cannibalism did not originate with African and indigenous peoples, but rather that it was a reality that occurred more than 3.000 years ago and in different cultures and societies. As well as for different reasons, occasions, contexts, meanings and objectives. Many ancient mystical “religious” rituals that sacrificed human beings, also in many cases in some form, type and direct or indirect way, had rituals of eating parts or drinking the blood of sacrificed human beings.
Not to mention hypotheses of starving human beings who literally devoured other human beings due to hunger, misery and food shortages. It may seem strange, but there are recent cases of plane crashes and other types of accidents in which human beings have devoured the corpses of others. In other words, extreme hunger and under extreme conditions can cause human beings to devour each other, whether alive or dead. This is not to put the need for human survival in certain circumstances together with mystical, magical, religious and other acts and practices. hobby in which humans devour humans, whether alive or dead. In rituals or not.
The fact is that the consummation of the human species by the human species, whether in part or in whole, alive or dead, is a type and mode of practicing anthropophagy. Regarding these practical issues, there are countless historical, literary, artistic and archaeological evidences, facts and records about such events in and of the peoples mentioned, especially the peoples of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Rome and others.
2.
In the Greek case specifically, and just as an example, the constant rituals and sacrifices to the Minotaur, in which Theseus the Greek hero saved himself and killed the Minotaur, may already be one of several samples of historical evidence on the theme and subject of ritualistic anthropophagy, as a hobby or out of necessity and survival of those who sacrifice and consume the sacrificed (VRGÍLIO, 2021; BULFINCH, 2009; COMMELIN, 2017; COLEMAN, 2018).
We can cite Vico, 2008, p. 86-92 when he mentions several peoples, cultures and kingdoms of Europe, Asia and the East that practiced sacrificial rituals with human beings and even anthropophagy or cannibalism, from Saxons, Germans, Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Persians, Trojans, Gauls, Celts, Norwegians, Chinese, Normans etc., where in some cases they also ate the flesh or drank the blood of the sacrificed person.
There are also reports of Bible about such practices, for example, in the book of Genesis, chap. 22, the patriarch Abraham was going to sacrifice his son Isaac (it is important to say that he somehow sacrificed his concubine Hagar and his son Ishmael with her, when he sent them away alone through the dangerous and deadly desert, there were religious orders and in some way, sacrificial of these two human lives).
Even though he did not sacrifice Isaac, there is room for speculation as to whether it was not a common practice among these nomadic peoples, who would give rise to the peoples known as Hebrews, Jews and later Israelites. In other words, if Abraham, in a lapse of religious trance, under psychic, spiritual forces, mysticism or even stress from life in the desert or traces of mental health problems, such as perhaps schizophrenia, etc., almost sacrificed his own son, there is a possibility that such religious, mystical and magical practices were common among the nomadic peoples and travelers of that time and context.
Including because they had contact with several other peoples, cultures and religions from those regions. In other words, there were signs of diverse exchanges and cannibalism, whether cultural, mystical, religious, etc., between peoples, civilizations, cultures, religions and individuals who lived many centuries before the Christian era. In Bible There are many reports of direct and indirect human sacrifices, as well as cannibalism among Hebrews in situations of hunger and misery. After the ancient age, the medieval period also did not escape the practices of anthropophagy or cannibalism. Whether they were carried out in mystical, ritualistic and religious practices and manifestations or due to issues of hunger and misery.
From the 2004th century AD to the 1983th century AD, there were reports of cannibalism practices due to hunger and misery by the peoples of Europe. Now, we remember that when the colonizers arrived in the indigenous lands called the Americas, they were astonished to see rituals with practices of sacrifices and cannibalism, which were or had been common and frequent throughout almost the entire history of Europe until that present 2008th century AD of the colonizers before all the indigenous peoples to be colonized in the future America (COULANGES, 2016; FRANCO JR, 2014; VICO, 2017; BATAILLE, 2004; ELIADE, 2007, 2010; LANGER, 2017; JOSEFO, XNUMX; BÍBLIA, XNUMX, XNUMX).
3.
After the European colonization movement and process, the emergence of commercial and/or mercantilist capitalism, industrial capitalism and currently financial capitalism, various forms and practices of cannibalism were still evident, both literal and symbolic and figurative. However, the dominant European historiography managed to provide only such practices related to African and indigenous peoples in and through their rituals. Little or almost nothing is reproduced about the fact that thousands of Europeans devoured themselves through hunger and misery during the process of construction and formation of Europe.
Even indigenous peoples in those contexts of their cultures, when they practiced cannibalism, did not do so out of hunger or misery, but in certain rituals in specific contexts and moments. Unlike Europeans, who largely devoured themselves out of hunger and misery. But the historiography, anthropology, sociology and archaeology officialized by European-Americans do not demonstrate such historical facts, that of cannibalism among them and among themselves, even on others different from them, but rather only that of indigenous and African peoples and cultures and in their past.
A good example of cannibalistic practices after the medieval periods of the 14th and 19th centuries AD and during the bourgeois and industrial revolutions of the 16th to 19th centuries AD were precisely the transition of the starving wretches of Europe from the feudal era to the commercial and industrial capitalist era, which led countless people to hunger, misery and new cannibalistic practices. Among these processes, there were those in which they were practiced either through rituals or through hobby.
But what does this have to do with politics? In other words, how does this relate to political anthropophagy or modern political cannibalism? symbolic and figurative practices as instruments of appropriation of the other and their qualities? Well, let's restrict the facts to Brazil at this moment. Even though they can be extended to other continents, countries and their respective politicians, we will restrict our reflections to today's Brazil.
4.
Brazil is a country of diverse cultures of anthropophagy, indigenous, black, European and American, who reside, move around and act here. Figurative, cultural and symbolic anthropophagies. Perhaps there is a way to relate it directly or indirectly to literal anthropophagies as a hobby or ritual without the direct consummation of the other, perhaps symbolically. This may be relative.
But as for the political issue, it is more limited or restricted to the symbolic, figurative and typological aspect, scope and mode. This is because political anthropophagy or modern political cannibalism are centered on a political figure and specialized in it. Perhaps at this point we can invoke and relate to the political theories of the work The prince of Niccolò Machiavelli. And also with anthropological, sociological, historical, philosophical and other researches of FRAZER, 1984; DURKHEIM, 2014; TURNER, 2005; MAUSS, 1987; BARTH, 2000 and VAN GENNEP, 1996, which address, among many other subjects, issues of transitions of political power, linked to magical, mystical, religious, symbolic, economic power and control of some over others.
In addition to these transitions, they also involve rituals of passage and pedagogies that divide the groups involved into superiors and inferiors, masters and disciples, specialists and non-specialists, initiates and non-initiates, victims and executioners, and so on. But, above all and fundamentally, these works, in their observations and commentaries, involve the aspects of rituals, sacrifices and death. There are those who are the sacrificers, just as there are those who will be the sacrificers and, consequently, there are those who will be the sacrificed.
All of this involves procedures, practices and ways of acting to ritualize and mystify the process of sacrifice, death and soon anthropophagy. And political anthropophagy or modern political cannibalism. modern because in The prince by Niccolò Machiavelli if it is possible to ascertain the way in which a leader, ruler or political specialist tries and must do to remain in power and under its control, as well as to render useless and immobilize his current and future adversaries.
If we relate these theories and their aspects to the aspects, symbologies, meanings and objectives of certain anthropophagic rituals, we can see that the consummation and destruction of the other, while I devour and destroy it, simultaneously I acquire the capacities, instrumentalities, powers, abilities, influences and domains of the other who was ritualized, sacrificed, devoured and destroyed. It was exactly in this way that the imaginary of control over chaos, administration of the present, control over evil and the future over the possessions of those who consume what or who is sacrificed and devoured, anthropophagically speaking, was created.
*Marcelo Barboza Duarte indegree in Education, Management and Dissemination in Biosciences from the Institute of Medical Biochemistry of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).
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