The Cannibal Within

The Cannibal Within
Title The Cannibal Within PDF eBook
Author Lewis F. Petrinovich
Publisher Transaction Publishers
Pages 248
Release
Genre Social Science
ISBN 9780202369501

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The Cannibal Within offers an evolutionary account of the propensity of human beings, in extreme circumstances to eat other human beings, despite the strong Western taboo against such practices. What sets this volume apart from the large body of literature on cannibalism, both popular and anthropological, is the underlying premise: cannibalism as an alternative to starvation is tacitly condoned by the same biological morality that would condemn cannibalism of other sorts in non-threatening situations. Deep as the taboos may be, the survival instinct runs even deeper. The title of the book reflects the author's belief that cannibalism is not a pathology that erupts in psychotic individuals, but is a universal adaptive strategy that is evolutionarily sound. The cannibal is within all of us, and cannibals are within all cultures, should the circumstances demand cannibalism's appearance and usage. Petrinovich's work is rich in historical detail, and rises to a level of theoretical sophistication in addressing a subject too often dealt with in sensationalist terms. The major instances in which survival cannibalism has occurred convinced the author that there is a consistent pattern and a uniform regularity of order in which different kinds of individuals are consumed. In considering who eats whom, when, and under what circumstances, this regularity appears, and it is consistent with what would be expected on the basis of evolutionary or Darwinian theory. In short, he concludes that starvation cannibalism is not a manifestation of the chaotic, psychotic behavior of individuals who are driven to madness, but reveals underlying characteristics of evolved human beings. Lewis Petrinovich is professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology of the University of California, Riverside and is currently a resident of Berkeley, California.

Cannibal Fictions

Cannibal Fictions
Title Cannibal Fictions PDF eBook
Author Jeff Berglund
Publisher Univ of Wisconsin Press
Pages 262
Release 2006-08-15
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 9780299215934

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Objects of fear and fascination, cannibals have long signified an elemental "otherness," an existence outside the bounds of normalcy. In the American imagination, the figure of the cannibal has evolved tellingly over time, as Jeff Berglund shows in this study encompassing a strikingly eclectic collection of cultural, literary, and cinematic texts. Cannibal Fictions brings together two discrete periods in U.S. history: the years between the Civil War and World War I, the high-water mark in America's imperial presence, and the post-Vietnam era, when the nation was beginning to seriously question its own global agenda. Berglund shows how P. T. Barnum, in a traveling exhibit featuring so-called "Fiji cannibals," served up an alien "other" for popular consumption, while Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan of the Apes series tapped into similar anxieties about the eruption of foreign elements into a homogeneous culture. Turning to the last decades of the twentieth century, Berglund considers how treatments of cannibalism variously perpetuated or subverted racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies rooted in earlier times. Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes invokes cannibalism to new effect, offering an explicit critique of racial, gender, and sexual politics (an element to a large extent suppressed in the movie adaptation). Recurring motifs in contemporary Native American writing suggest how Western expansion has, cannibalistically, laid the seeds of its own destruction. And James Dobson's recent efforts to link the pro-life agenda to allegations of cannibalism in China testify still further to the currency and pervasiveness of this powerful trope. By highlighting practices that preclude the many from becoming one, these representations of cannibalism, Berglund argues, call into question the comforting national narrative of e pluribus unum.

Cannibal Talk

Cannibal Talk
Title Cannibal Talk PDF eBook
Author Gananath Obeyesekere
Publisher Univ of California Press
Pages 344
Release 2005-06-06
Genre Social Science
ISBN 9780520938311

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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 intrusion 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."

Resurrecting Cannibals

Resurrecting Cannibals
Title Resurrecting Cannibals PDF eBook
Author Heike Behrend
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Pages 226
Release 2011
Genre History
ISBN 1847010393

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Accompanying DVD is entitled: "Satan crucified : a crusade of the Catholic Church in western Uganda / a video by Armin Linke and Heike Behrend.

The Sign of the Cannibal

The Sign of the Cannibal
Title The Sign of the Cannibal PDF eBook
Author Geoffrey Sanborn
Publisher Duke University Press
Pages 274
Release 1998
Genre Literary Criticism
ISBN 9780822321187

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By exploring cannibalism in the work of Herman Melville, Sanborn argues that Melville produced a postcolonial perspective even as nations were building colonial empires.

Hitler, Religion and Other Types of Cannibals

Hitler, Religion and Other Types of Cannibals
Title Hitler, Religion and Other Types of Cannibals PDF eBook
Author Dr Donald J. Phillips
Publisher Xlibris Corporation
Pages 237
Release 2012-05-09
Genre Biography & Autobiography
ISBN 1462849997

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When the author started writing this book, it was to be about living amongst the cannibals of the Kukukuku people of Papua New Guinea. Nevertheless, the longer he worked in that country, he began to realize that there were many types of cannibals there. For instance, there were those people who ate other people, then there were people who dug up their dead and ate them, then there were people who only ate the brains of their leaders and so on. Many of these people would be horrified by the practices of other types of cannibals and many of them had different reasons for doing what they did. As the story emerged, the author then realized that other people around the world, practised cannibalism in a symbolic way, or their actions might be described as all consuming or cannibalistic. In all, as a result of his research, he came up with 11 different types of cannibals, and that throughout his life; he had actually encountered and suffered from these types of cannibals. His twelve years of living amongst the people of Papua New Guinea; his university qualifi cations, including a BA Hon., Dip. Ed., MA., and a PhD, plus 20 years in university teaching and research, make him more than adequately qualifi ed to write this book.

Axelrod & Cooper's Concise Guide to Writing

Axelrod & Cooper's Concise Guide to Writing
Title Axelrod & Cooper's Concise Guide to Writing PDF eBook
Author Rise B. Axelrod
Publisher Macmillan
Pages 516
Release 2006
Genre Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN 9780312434397

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Provides six guided writing assignments along with readings and strategies for writing and research -- all in a brief, flexible, easy-to-use format.