Cannibalism and Religious Ritual Practices (Graduate Paper)

Folia neuropathologica, 2009

This essay discusses the image and practice of cannibalism in a wide range of studies. It also presents the anthropological research on kuru which led to the proposal that cannibalism had enabled transmission of the infectious agent, as well as doubts about the hypothesis, and the assertion by some that cannibalism as a socially approved custom did not exist. The figure of the cannibal as an icon of primitivism took form in the encounter between Europe and the Americas. Cannibalism was to become the prime signifier of "barbarism" for a language of essentialized difference that would harden into the negative racism of the nineteenth century. Anthropological and medical research now challenge the derogatory image of the cannibal as we learn more about the many past consumers of human flesh, including ourselves.

The AAG Review of Books, 2018

In the history of philosophy, cannibalism plays a pivotal role in the development of early modern medicine across the world. In its early years, cannibalism, in the form of ingesting mummies, was recommended by Avicenna (980-1037) as a subtle but resolutive remedy that could be used as an antidote to poison, and could cure epilepsy or nausea, and other popular cold symptoms. 1 By the late sixteenth century, the ingestion of mummies became a renowned pharmaceutical drug used widely all over the Europe, and were still sold at reputable German phamacies as recent as 1908. 2 Further, ingestion of human bodies was practiced in many of the islands in the Pacific Ocean until the second half of the twentieth century. The question necessarily occurs: what's good about it?

Tigor: rivista di scienze della comunicazione e di argomentazione giuridica , 2024

The aim of the present contribution is to analyze the concept of cannibalism from different points of view: from the historical one to the classification one, then moving on to a brief anthropological examination and focus on the Freudian vision of cannibalism and its symbolic meaning, concluding with an attempt at a sociological analysis of the phenomenon. The conclusion reached in this contribution is the persistence of the concept of cannibalism in individuals, even if under a merely symbolic profile.

Journal of Early Christian Studies, 1994

Annual Review of Anthropology, 2004

The discourse of cannibalism, which began in the encounter between Europe and the Americas, became a defining feature of the colonial experience in the New World, especially in the Pacific. The idea of exoticism, like that of the primitive, is also a Western construct linked to the exploring/conquering/cataloguing impulse of colonialism. We now live in a world where those we once called exotic live among us, defining their own identities, precluding our ability to define ourselves in opposition to “others” and to represent our own culture as universal. This chapter reviews anthropological approaches to cannibalism and suggests that we may now be in a position to exorcise the stigma associated with the notion of the primitive. If we reflect on the reality of cannibal practices among ourselves as well as others, we can contribute to dislodging the savage/civilized opposition that was once essential to the formation of the modern Western self and Western forms of knowledge.

The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2011

This is a paper I wrote in a course on Cultural Encounters in history. It touches on topics I would be very interested in examining further in later research.