Eating and Being Eaten

Yaya Fonye Odette

Description

This innovative book is an open invitation to a rich and copious meal of imagination, senses and desires. It argues that cannibalism is practised by all and sundry. In love or in hate, fear or fascination, purposefulness or indifference, individuals, cultures and societies are actively cannibalising and being cannibalised. The underlying message of: ‘Own up to your own cannibalism!’ is convincingly argued and richly substantiated.
The book brilliantly and controversially puts cannibalism at the heart of the self-assured biomedicine, globalising consumerism and voyeuristic social media. It unveils a vast number of prejudices, blind spots and shameful othering. It calls on the reader to consider a morality and an ethics that are carefully negotiated with required sensibility and sensitivity to the fact that no one and no people have the monopoly of cannibalisation and of creative improvisation in the game of cannibalism. The productive, transformative and (re)inventive understanding of cannibalism argued in the book should bring to the fore one of the most vital aspects of what it means to be human in a dynamic world of myriad interconnections and enchantments. To nourish and cherish such a productive form of cannibalism requires not only a compassionate generosity to let in and accommodate the stranger knocking at the door, but also, and more importantly, a deliberate effort to reach in, identify, contemplate, understand, embrace and become intimate with the stranger within us, individuals and societies alike.

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 07 juin 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9789956550739
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

ing on someone’s flesh” into a far more challenging proposition than what is possible within the identity-obsessed campaigns of the twenty-first century. He throws down the gauntlet of

Eating and Being Eaten

E DITED

BY

Eating and Being Eaten

E DITEDBY Francis B. Nyamnjoh

CANNIBALISM AS FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Eating and Being Eaten: Cannibalism as Food for Thought Edited by Francis B. Nyamnjoh L a ng a a R esea rch & P u blishing CIG Mankon, Bamenda

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-550-96-5

ISBN-13: 978-9956-550-96-8 ©Francis B. Nyamnjoh 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

About the Authors Chapter 1 Francis B. Nyamnjoh is a professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His most recent books include#RhodesMustFall: Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa (2016) andDrinking from the Cosmic Gourd: How Amos Tutuola Can Change Our Minds(2017). Chapter 2 Andreas Buhler is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. He is doing research on the relationship between entrepreneurship and land. His previous research was on the housing crisis in Cape Town. Chapter 3 Dr Artwell Nhemachena teaches Sociology at the University of Namibia. He has studied Sociology and Social Anthropology. His current areas of research interest are Relational Ontologies, Sociology and Social Anthropology of Science and Technology Studies, Decoloniality and Transformation. He has published eight books and several book chapters and journal articles. Maria B. Kaundjua teaches Sociology at the University of Namibia. She holds a Masters Degree in Population and Development Studies. She is involved in research on Sexual and Reproductive Health, Demographic Studies, Climate Change, Environmental Health and Development. She has published a number of journal articles. Chapter 4 Walter Gam Nkwi holds a Ph.D. from the University of Leiden. He has published books, articles in journals, book chapters and encyclopaedias. He is currently the Secretary General in the Faculty of Engineering and Technology and also a Senior Lecturer in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts, University of Buea, Cameroon.

Chapter 5 Ayanda Manqoyi is a Ph.D. Student in anthropology at the University of California, Davis, in the United States of America. His research interest is to understand how the family obligation, known in South Africa as ‘black tax’, mediates when one ascends to institutionalised middle class. Chapter 6 Veronica D. Masenya, is a social scientist and a graduate of the University of the Free State, South Africa. She holds a B.A. degree, B.A. Honours Degree (Anthropology) and M.A. Degree (Sociology). She is currently a Ph.D. candidate and her research focuses on ‘funerary practices in contemporary Bloemfontein, South Africa’. Chapter 7 Dominique Santos was born in Cape Town, bred in Johannesburg and buttered in London. Her Ph.D. explored the intersections of popular music and experiences of social change amongst various multi-racial communities in South Africa. She currently lives in Bloemfontein, where she is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of the Free State. Chapter 8 Moshumee T. Dewoo has spent the last decade researching post- independent African modes of identification specifically as these relate to access to political power. She has written and published various pieces on the subject and is currently focused on the case of the ‘Nasyon’ community in Mauritius, with the intent of submitting her primary findings thereon by way of a Ph.D. thesis to complete at the University of Cape Town. Chapter 9 Akira Takada is currently an associate professor at Kyoto University, Japan. His academic interests include language socialisation and the transformation of ethnicity. He has published many books and articles, includingNarratives on San ethnicity: The cultural and ecological foundations of lifeworld among the !Xun of north-central Namibia(2015).

Table of Contents Foreword .............................................................................. ix Harri Englund 1 Introduction: Cannibalism as Food for Thought ................ 1 Francis B. Nyamnjoh Introduction.................................................................................................... 1 There is more meat to cannibalism than meets the eye........................... 4 Compassionate Cannibalism ........................................................................ 18 Being Human as Eating and Being Eaten.................................................. 39 Humans and Animals as two sides of the same Cannibal Feast ...................................................................................... 41 Cannibalism in Camouflage.......................................................................... 52 Contributions to this Volume: an Overview ............................................. 62 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 68 2 The Violence of Translating People into Cannibals: The Man-Eating Anthropologists........................................ 99 Andreas Buhler The violence of translating people into cannibals .................................... 99 Anthropology, cannibalism and colonial violence .................................... 101 The problematic notion of cannibalism ..................................................... 104 The ethnography of cannibalism: representing the other ................................................................................... 109 Ethnography and the violence of making a text from data ................................................................................ 118 Cannibalism: beyond the modern world and towards a new anthropology ................................................................ 120

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3 Incorporated or Cannibalised by Posthuman Others? Sanctions and Witchcraft in Contemporary Zimbabwe ................................................ 127 Artwell Nhemachena & Maria Kaundjua Introduction.................................................................................................... 128 The Capture and Cannibalisation of Zimbabwe: on the Imperial Leviathan ............................................................................ 133 Luring and Incorporating ‘Delicious’ Africa in a Cannibalistic World: Zimbabwe and Sanctions.............................................................................. 142 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 148 4 ‘The Body of Christ? Amen’: Christianity and the Cannibalisation of the Bamenda Grassfielders (Cameroon) .................................... 157 Walter Gam Nkwi Introduction.................................................................................................... 157 Eating up Traditional Rulers: the Projection and Delegitimisation Argument................................................................... 164 Ex-soldiers or ‘Fernando Po Repartees’ and the Licence to Consume Grassfielders ....................................................... 171 The Ex-servicemen and Cannibalism Consuming and being Consumed: ‘Love’ and ‘Sex’ in the Church Compounds ............................................. 175 Domestication of Western Christianity by the Bamenda Grassfielders ................................................................................ 183 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 190 5 Researching Cannibalising Obligations in Post-apartheid South Africa ............................................ 197 Ayanda Manqoyi Introduction ................................................................................................... 197 Background on Black Middle Class in South Africa ............................... 198 Cannibalising Black Middle Class ............................................................... 202

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Cannibalising Obligations ............................................................................ 205 Media on Cannibalising Black Tax ............................................................. 208 Citizenship and Cannibalism ....................................................................... 212 Cannibalising Systemic Obligations ........................................................... 214 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 215 6 Lehu la gago le ya mphidisha ................................................... 223‘your death nourishes me’ Veronica Dimakatso Masenya The investment of ‘life’ ................................................................................ 235 The saga of human ashes ............................................................................. 240 Conclusion ..................................................................................................... 245 7 Rainbow Nation of the Flesh ............................................... 255 Dominique Santos The Kitchen .................................................................................................... 259 Appetisers........................................................................................................ 265 Main Course.................................................................................................... 268 Dessert ............................................................................................................. 271 Gluttony .......................................................................................................... 272 In Lieu of a Conclusion: After Dinner Mint, Coffee & Brandy ......................................................... 278 8 My African Heart: The Obscure Gourmandise of an Enlightened Man ........................................................ 283 Moshumee T. Dewoo Introduction.................................................................................................... 283 The Pale Tale of Extraction ......................................................................... 285 The Path of the Dying Heart ....................................................................... 291 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 298

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9 Consumerisation of cannibalism in contemporary Japanese society............................................ 309 Akira Takada Introduction.................................................................................................... 309 Exploiting the suicidal................................................................................... 312 Fantasising reality and realising the fantasy ............................................... 315 Fetish to rawness............................................................................................ 320 Consumerisation of cannibalism ................................................................. 323 Concluding remarks....................................................................................... 328 Index..................................................................................... 333

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Foreword Cannibalism is freshly palatable to scholarly tastes. Much more than a source for puns of variable ingenuity, cannibalism uncoupled from its connotations of human beings devouring human flesh has great potential to re-engage some of the most profound questions in what it means to be human. Once consigned to the dustbin of anthropological (or racist) fantasies, cannibalism has in recent years attracted new critical thinking, much of it philosophical or essayist in nature. To that body of scholarship the present volume adds a rich set of impassioned studies of intellectual history and current life- worlds. The promise here is not only to subject a rethought cannibalism to the rigours of empirical analysis, worthwhile as such an effort undoubtedly is. The promise is also to chart ways in which the understandable horror evoked by cannibalism can be qualified by the recognition that human beings necessarily partake of the lives of others, whether human or non-human. The challenge is to identify moral resources in the rethought cannibalism. The promise and the challenge appear less startling if an important piece of disciplinary history is borne in mind. Reaching beyond the tiresome scapegoating of anthropology for crimes committed by incomparably more powerful agents of history, the present volume reminds us of how often the elementary structures of kinship have turned out to be itsalimentaryforms. In other words, the well-documented uses of means of sustenance in making people feel related to one another underline the close connection between eating, being eaten and being human. Equally well-known and widespread are the metaphorical links made between sex and food. Sigmund Freud’s forays into the darkest recesses of intimacy might also have been prefigured by certain aspects of witchcraft and sorcery the world over. Those closest to oneself are also those capable of inflicting the greatest pain. The present volume, spearheaded by Francis Nyamnjoh’s remarkable essay, takes an important step further from merely bemoaning the misrepresentations of various others by European colonial powers. If the studies assembled here did little more than

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