| Description |
1 online resource (xx, 320 pages) : illustrations, maps |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction: Anthropology and the maneating myth -- "British cannibals" : dialogical misunderstandings in the South Seas -- Concerning violence : a backward journey into Maori anthropophagy -- Savage indignation : cannibalism and the parodic -- The later fate of heads : cannibalism, decapitation, and capitalism -- Cannibal feasts in nineteenth century Fiji : seamen's yarns and the ethnographic imagination -- Narratives of the self : Chevalier Peter Dillon's cannibal adventures -- On quartering and cannibalism and the discourses of savagism -- Conclusion. |
| Summary |
In this radical reexamination of the notion of cannibalism, Gananath Obeyesekere offers a fascinating and convincing argument that cannibalism is mostly "cannibal talk," a discourse on the Other engaged in by both indigenous peoples and colonial intruders that results in sometimes funny and sometimes deadly cultural misunderstandings. Turning his keen intelligence to Polynesian societies in the early periods of European contact and colonization, Obeyesekere deconstructs Western eyewitness accounts, carefully examining their origins and treating them as a species of fiction writing and seamen's yarns. Cannibalism is less a social or cultural fact than a mythic representation of European writing that reflects much more the realities of European societies and their fascination with the practice of cannibalism, he argues. And while very limited forms of cannibalism might have occurred in Polynesian societies, they were largely in connection with human sacrifice and carried out by a select community in well-defined sacramental rituals. Cannibal Talk considers how the colonial intrustion produced a complex self-fulfilling prophecy whereby the fantasy of cannibalism became a reality as natives on occasion began to eat both Europeans and their own enemies in acts of "conspicuous anthropophagy." |
| Note |
Print version record. |
| Access |
Use copy Restrictions unspecified star MiAaHDL |
| Reproduction |
Electronic reproduction. [S.l.] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL |
| System Details |
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
| Processing Action |
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
| Subject |
Cannibalism.
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Customs & Traditions.
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SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
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Cannibalism. (OCoLC)fst00845849
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Kannibalisme.
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Mensenoffers.
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Kannibalismus. (DE-588)4163192-4
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Kannibalismus.
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Ozeanien.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Obeyesekere, Gananath. Cannibal talk. Berkeley : University of California Press, ©2005 0520243072 0520243080 (DLC) 2004018117 (OCoLC)56111856 |
| ISBN |
9780520938311 (electronic bk.) |
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0520938313 (electronic bk.) |
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