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Student Research
submissions 2013 (2013 research options) Research Post 2 |
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Valerie Mead
11 November 2013
The Darker Side of Human Nature:
Cannibals, Consumption, and
Crusoe
Cannibalism, no matter on what level, is something
that is deeply disturbing to the general public.
Even when animals do it, it is still alarming to
most people, and the fact that there are sometimes physical repercussions for
these actions (case in point: cows contract Mad Cow Disease from consuming
ground-up byproducts of other cows, though this is unwittingly done on the
animal’s part, and humans can get a disease known as kuru for the same thing) is
something that most of us take as comfort or confirmation that our negative
perceptions about it are correct.
However, just because we in the West are repulsed
by cannibalism, other cultures accept it.
Though we are disgusted by it, is our ethnocentrism
clouding our judgment?
Is this issue more than black and white?
Is cannibalism always a bad thing?
While our culture eats up zombie
flicks, we abhor cannibals because they “force you to confront something you
don’t want to understand, which is the truth of what you are consuming”
(Piepenburg).
This is perhaps because of the “humanity” (Piepenburg)
cannibals have, and the idea that they know exactly what they are doing and
continue to do it anyway, regardless of how modern or outside influences feel
about it.
Cannibalism shocks in a way that zombies do not because
they are not undead—they are very human, which means that they can and should
have control over themselves and rationale for their actions.
This means that practicing cannibals (not those who
do so during psychotic breaks or a drug-induced craze), for the most part, have
very human reasons for doing what they do.
This alone is why studying and determining the
exact motivations of these people is so crucial, elusive, and interesting.
As soon as one begins to delve into
the deep end of cannibalism, one finds a great deal of controversy.
This stigma of cannibalism actually extends to the
very reasons a person has to consume another’s flesh; a huge problem people have
with it is that “colonial history of attributing flesh-eating as a political
form of domination” (Harris).
We, as a people, seem unable to overcome the stigma
associated with cannibalism because of our ethnocentric nature.
Even though it is starting to be seen that
cannibals almost never consume out of hunger, but rather for cultural reasons,
including but not limited to religious sacrifices, to mourn the death of a
family member, and in times of war to show dominance.
Those living in the first world seem to forget that
the majority of cannibals are not blood-thirsty killers as is capitalized on by
the media, and that perhaps it comes about because of evolution and later
“adaptations to particular ecological conditions” (Harris) that we simply do not
take into account.
Recent advances in biomedical
engineering have found that there seems to be a biological reason for the
“forbidden taste of human flesh” (Wade) through the fact that virtually all
humans worldwide share the same genetic marker that “points to a long history of
cannibalism” (Wade).
The fact that this is something the entire human
race has antibodies for means that there could be a lot more exposure to
cannibalistic practices than previously thought.
It could also be tied to eating “infected animals”
(Wade).
I found this point particularly
interesting because while
Robinson Crusoe does deal
with the concept of cannibalism heavily,
both animal slaughter and cannibalism “must be
understood in tandem as highly politicized practices and considered in the light
of the Foucauldian distinction between sovereign and disciplinary power”
(Mackintosh 28).
By showing that humans have dominion over animals, and
eventually they have dominion over one another, Defoe could be showing that
“colonial power is shown to replicate the logic of cannibalism itself”
(Mackintosh 29).
With the first research post, I found
myself in the rough situation of asking the wrong question, but I feel I have
hit the nail on the head with this one.
After conducting my research, I have found that
perhaps we are blinded so much by our ethnocentrism that we cannot even continue
to study the question of why cannibals do what they do without the hint of
disgust tainting out thoughts.
Cannibalism seems to be something we associate with
psychological problems and/or mental illness, deranged serial killers and mass
sacrifices to foreign gods.
This is a huge misconception and is something that
we definitely view negatively.
There is more to the story, though, as most
cannibalistic practices are done in times of war or mourning, and not out of
malice or hunger.
There also seems to be an evolutionary and cultural
history and precedent that we do not take into account.
Maybe, in the dark recesses of our mind, we are so
focused on being socially acceptable that we cannot see the common strains of
humanity tied within the minds of cannibals.
After all, they are just as human as you or me.
Works Cited
Harris, Marvin.
Cannibals
and Kings.
Vintage Publishers: June 1991.
369 pgs.
Print.
Heims, Neil.
“Robinson
Crusoe and the Fear of Being Eaten.”
Colby Library Quarterly, Volume 19, no.4, December
1983, p.190-193.
Mackintosh, Alex.
“Crusoe's Abattoir:
Cannibalism and Animal Slaughter in
Robinson Crusoe.”
Critical
Quarterly.
Volume 53, Issue 3, pages 24–43, October 2011.
Piepenburg, Erik.
“Nothing Personal: They Just Want to Eat You.”
The New York
Times.
27 October 2013: SR7.
Online.
Vaknin, Sam.
“Cannibalism and Human Sacrifice.”
Global Politician, 21 May
2005.
http://www.globalpolitician.com/2745-cannibal-human-sacrifice.
(11 November 2013).
Online.
Wade, Nicholas.
“Gene Study Finds Cannibal Pattern.”
The New York
Times.
11 April 2003.
Online.
