Download or read book Our Cannibals Ourselves written by Priscilla L. Walton and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why does Western culture remain fascinated with and saturated by cannibalism? Moving from the idea of the dangerous Other, Priscilla L. Walton's Our Cannibals, Ourselves shows us how modern-day cannibalism has been recaptured as in the vampire story, resurrected into the human blood stream, and mutated into the theory of germs through AIDS, Ebola, and the like. At the same time, it has expanded to encompass the workings of entire economic systems (such as in "consumer cannnibalism"). Our Cannibals, Ourselves is an interdisciplinary study of cannibalism in contemporary culture. It demonstrates how what we take for today's ordinary culture is imaginatively and historically rooted in very powerful processes of the encounter between our own and different, often "threatening," cultures from around the world. Walton shows that the taboo on cannibalism is heavily reinforced only partly out of fear of cannibals themselves; instead, cannibalism is evoked in order to use fear for other purposes, including the sale of fear entertainment. Ranging from literature to popular journalism, film, television, and discourses on disease, Our Cannibals, Ourselves provides an all-encompassing, insightful meditation on what happens to popular culture when it goes global.
Download or read book Consuming Grief written by Beth A. Conklin and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-10 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mourning the death of loved ones and recovering from their loss are universal human experiences, yet the grieving process is as different between cultures as it is among individuals. As late as the 1960s, the Wari' Indians of the western Amazonian rainforest ate the roasted flesh of their dead as an expression of compassion for the deceased and for his or her close relatives. By removing and transforming the corpse, which embodied ties between the living and the dead and was a focus of grief for the family of the deceased, Wari' death rites helped the bereaved kin accept their loss and go on with their lives. Drawing on the recollections of Wari' elders who participated in consuming the dead, this book presents one of the richest, most authoritative ethnographic accounts of funerary cannibalism ever recorded. Beth Conklin explores Wari' conceptions of person, body, and spirit, as well as indigenous understandings of memory and emotion, to explain why the Wari' felt that corpses must be destroyed and why they preferred cannibalism over cremation. Her findings challenge many commonly held beliefs about cannibalism and show why, in Wari' terms, it was considered the most honorable and compassionate way of treating the dead.
Download or read book Dinner with a Cannibal written by Carole A Travis-Henikoff and published by Santa Monica Press. This book was released on 2008-03-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting the history of cannibalism in concert with human evolution, Dinner with a Cannibal takes its readers on an astonishing trip around the world and through history, examining its subject from every angle in order to paint the incredible, multifaceted panoply that is the reality of cannibalism. At the heart of Carole A. Travis-Henikoff’s book is the question of how cannibalism began with the human species and how it has become an unspeakable taboo today. At a time when science is being battered by religions and failing teaching methods, Dinner with a Cannibal presents slices of multiple sciences in a readable, understandable form nested within a wealth of data. With history, paleoanthropology, science, gore, sex, murder, war, culinary tidbits, medical facts, and anthropology filling its pages, Dinner with a Cannibal presents both the light and dark side of the human story; the story of how we came to be all the things we are today.
Download or read book An Intellectual History of Cannibalism written by Ctlin Avramescu and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Based on the research he undertook in rare book collections housed in Scotland, the United States, Finland, Iceland, Holland, Germany and Austria, the author presents a systematic history of cannabalism as reflected in the mirror of philosophy.
Download or read book Cannibalism in Literature and Film written by J. Brown and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-11-14 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive study of cannibalism in literature and film, spanning colonial fiction, Gothic texts and contemporary American horror. Amidst the sharp teeth and horrific appetite of the cannibal, this book examines real fears of over-consumerism and consumption that trouble an ever-growing modern world.
Download or read book Eaters of the Dead written by Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2021-09-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning myth, history, and contemporary culture, a terrifying and illuminating excavation of the meaning of cannibalism. Every culture has monsters that eat us, and every culture repels in horror when we eat ourselves. From Grendel to medieval Scottish cannibal Sawney Bean, and from the Ghuls of ancient Persia to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, tales of being consumed are both universal and universally terrifying. In this book, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. explores the full range of monsters that eat the dead: ghouls, cannibals, wendigos, and other beings that feast on human flesh. Moving from myth through history to contemporary popular culture, Wetmore considers everything from ancient Greek myths of feeding humans to the gods, through sky burial in Tibet and Zoroastrianism, to actual cases of cannibalism in modern societies. By examining these seemingly inhuman acts, Eaters of the Dead reveals that those who consume corpses can teach us a great deal about human nature—and our deepest human fears.
Download or read book Through Your Eyes Religious Alterity and the Early Modern Western Imagination written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-09-20 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The focus of Through Your Eyes: Religious Alterity and the Early Modern Western Imagination is the (mostly Western) understanding, representation and self-critical appropriation of the "religious other" between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Mutually constitutive processes of selfing/othering are observed through the lenses of creedal Jews, a bhakti Brahmin, a widely translated Morisco historian, a collector of Western and Eastern singularia, Christian missionaries in Asia, critical converts, toleration theorists, and freethinkers: in other words, people dwelling in an 'in-between' space which undermines any binary conception of the Self and the Other. The genesis of the volume was in exchanges between eight international scholars and the two editors, intellectual historian Giovanni Tarantino and anthropologist Paola von Wyss-Giacosa, who share an interest in comparatism, debates over toleration, and history of emotions. Contributors are: Daniel Barbu, Vincent Carretta, Ananya Chakravarti, Talya Fishman, Rolando Minuti, Fernando Rodríguez Mediano, Paul Rule, Knut Martin Stünkel, Giovanni Tarantino, and Paola von Wyss-Giacosa.
Download or read book The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture written by Dina Khapaeva and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2017-03-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular culture has reimagined death as entertainment and monsters as heroes, reflecting a profound contempt for the human race
Download or read book Eat Thy Neighbour written by Daniel Diehl and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2012-05-30 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cannibalism is unquestionably one of the oldest and deepest-seated taboos. Even in an age when almost nothing is sacred, religious, moral and social prohibitions surround the topic. But even as our minds recoil at the mention of actual acts of cannibalism there is some dark fascination with the subject. Appalling crimes of humans eating other humans are blown into major news stories and gory movies: both Hitchcock's 'Psycho' and 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' were based on the crimes of Ed Gein, who is profiled, along with others, in this book. In ' Eat Thy Neighbour' the authors put the subject of cannibalism into its social and historical perspective.
Download or read book Zombie Culture written by Shawn McIntosh and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2008-02-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why have zombies resonated so pervasively in the popular imagination and in media, especially films? Why have they proved to be one of the most versatile and popular monster types in the growing video game industry? What makes zombies such widespread symbols of horror and dread, and how have portrayals of zombies in movies changed and evolved to fit contemporary fears, anxieties, and social issues? Zombies have held a unique place in film and popular culture throughout most of the 20th century. Rare in that this enduring monster type originated in non-European folk culture rather than the Gothic tradition from which monsters like vampires and werewolves have emerged, zombies have in many ways superseded these Gothic monsters in popular entertainment and the public imagination and have increasingly been used in discussions ranging from the philosophy of mind to computer lingo to the business press. Zombie Culture brings together scholars from a variety of fields, including cinema studies, popular culture, and video game studies, who have examined the living dead through a variety of lenses. By looking at how portrayals of zombies have evolved from their folkloric roots and entered popular culture, readers will gain deeper insights into what zombies mean in terms of the public psyche, how they represent societal fears, and how their evolving portrayals continue to reflect underlying beliefs of The Other, contagion, and death.
Download or read book The Sophisticated Savage written by Carla Seidl and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthropological memoir with a romantic twist. A Harvard student and an ex-cannibal may seem like an unlikely pair, but on a dance floor in Ecuador, their steps matched. Author Carla Seidl met Amazon-Jungle-born surfer Fredy Andi while teaching on the Galapagos Islands at age nineteen, and her life has never been the same since. Several years later, thinking that perhaps simple living was the key to happiness, Seidl returned to the islands to unearth more about Fredy's story and see if their connection, and his seemingly carefree lifestyle, were for real. The duo ended up traveling to the Amazon Jungle to try to find Fredy's family, and Seidl survived to tell the tale.
Download or read book This Horrid Practice written by Paul Moon and published by Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Though stronger evidence of this horrid practice prevailing among the inhabitants of this coast will scarcely be required, we have still stronger to give.' - Captain James Cook This Horrid Practice uncovers an unexplored taboo of New Zealand history - the widespread practice of cannibalism in pre-European Maori society. Until now, many historians have tried to avoid it and many Maori have considered it a subject best kept quiet about in public. Paul Moon brings together an impressive array of sources from a variety of disciplines to produce this frequently contentious but always stimulating exploration of how and why Maori ate other human beings, and why the practice shuddered to a halt just a few decades after the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand. The book includes a comprehensive survey of cannibalism practices among traditional Maori, carefully assessing the evidence and concluding it was widespread. Other chapters look at how explorers and missionaries saw the practice; the role of missionaries and Christianity in its end; and, in the final chapter, why there has been so much denial on the subject and why some academics still deny that it ever happened. This Horrid Practice promises to be one of the leading works of New Zealand history published in 2008. It is a highly original work that every New Zealand history enthusiast will want to own and read.
Download or read book Eat Me written by Bill Schutt and published by Wellcome Collection. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cannibalism. It's the last, greatest taboo: the stuff of urban legends and ancient myths, airline crashes and Captain Cook. But while we might get a thrill at the thought of the black widow spider's gruesome mating habits or the tragic fate of the 19th-century Donner Party pioneers, today cannibalism belongs to history - or, at the very least, the realm of the weird, the rare and the very far away. Doesn't it? Here, zoologist Bill Schutt digs his teeth into the subject to find an answer that is as surprising as it is unsettling.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of Food and Material Cultures written by Irina D. Mihalache and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cookbooks. Menus. Ingredients. Dishes. Pots. Kitchens. Markets. Museum exhibitions. These objects, representations, and environments are part of what the volume calls the material cultures of food. The book features leading scholars, professionals, and chefs who apply a material cultural perspective to consider two relatively unexplored questions: 1) What is the material culture of food? and 2) How are frameworks, concepts, and methods of material culture used in scholarly research and professional practice? This book acknowledges that materiality is historically and culturally specific (local), but also global, as food both transcends and collapses geographical and ideological borders. Contributors capture the malleability of food, its material environments and “stuff,” and its representations in media, museums, and marketing, while following food through cycles of production, circulation, and consumption. As many of the featured authors explore, food and its many material and immaterial manifestations not only reflect social issues, but also actively produce, preserve, and disrupt identities, communities, economic systems, and everyday social practices. The volume includes contributions from and interviews with a dynamic group of scholars, museum and information professionals, and chefs who represent diverse disciplines, such as communication studies, anthropology, history, American studies, folklore, and food studies.
Download or read book An Archaeology of Desperation written by Kelly J. Dixon and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Donner Party is almost inextricably linked with cannibalism. In truth, we know remarkably little about what actually happened to the starving travelers stranded in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–47. Combining the approaches of history, ethnohistory, archaeology, bioarchaeology, and social anthropology, this innovative look at the Donner Party’s experience at the Alder Creek Camp offers insights into many long-unsolved mysteries. Centered on archaeological investigations in the summers of 2003 and 2004 near Truckee, California, the book includes detailed analyses of artifacts and bones that suggest what life was like in this survival camp. Microscopic investigations of tiny bone fragments reveal butchery scars and microstructure that illuminate what the Donner families may have eaten before the final days of desperation, how they prepared what served as food, and whether they actually butchered and ate their deceased companions. The contributors reassess old data with new analytic techniques and, by examining both physical evidence and oral testimony from observers and survivors, add new dimensions to the historical narrative. The authors’ integration of a variety of approaches—including narratives of the Washoe Indians who observed the Donner Party—destroys some myths, deconstructs much of the folklore about the stranded party, and demonstrates that novel approaches can shed new light on events we thought we understood.
Download or read book The Cannibal s Cookbook written by Brandon Clifford and published by Oro Editions. This book was released on 2021-03-08 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cannibal's Cookbook fiercely consumes the body of past cyclopean constructions. It assembles, re-packages, and offers this latent knowledge for your contemporary consumption. It is a manual for the hungry, for those who are not satiated by the careless building practices of the present. With one foot in the past and another in the present, the cookbook bridges the realities of our ancestors and ourselves. We propose a series of architectural "recipes" after dining on this body of past expertise. The recipes are deciphered from ancient cyclopean masonry systems, but with a contemporary twist. They cannibalize leftover debris--building rubble that typically stuffs our landfills--to construct new buildings
Download or read book What s Eating You written by Cynthia J. Miller and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Divided into four thematic sections, What's Eating You? explores the deeper significance of food on screen-the ways in which they reflect (or challenge) our deepest fears about consuming and being consumed. Among the questions it asks are: How do these films mock our taboos and unsettle our notions about the human condition? How do they critique our increasing focus on consumption? In what ways do they hold a mirror to our taken-for-granteds about food and humanity, asking if what we eat truly matters? Horror narratives routinely grasp those questions and spin them into nightmares. Monstrous “others” dine on forbidden fare; the tables of consumption are turned, and the consumer becomes the consumed. Overindulgence, as Le Grande Bouffe (1973) and Street Trash (1987) warn, can kill us, and occasionally, as films like The Stuff (1985) and Poultrygeist (2006) illustrate, our food fights back. From Blood Feast (1963) to Sweeney Todd (2007), motion pictures have reminded us that it is an “eat or be eaten” world.
