From the Anthropophagy to Anthropocene. The Rhetoric of the Forest

Prof. Dr. Eduardo Jorge de Oliveira, Institute of Romance Studies, UZH

“The rhetoric of the forest” in Brazilian literature and culture was developed between the 1920s and the early 2000s. The “Anthropophagic Manifesto” (1928) by Oswald de Andrade serves as a starting point. Andrade uses the historical narratives of the Amerindians “devouring” the European colonizers. Cannibalism became part of the European imagination about the tropics, horrifying explorers and later becoming a cultural metaphor. The early 2000s are marked by another publication, “The Falling Sky”. The book was the result of a “pact” between Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa and French anthropologist Bruce Albert and reveals the Yanomami’s world view and shamanism as a political practice. Instead of practicing cannibalistic rituals, Amerindian people struggle for survival in the forest, exposed to violence and epidemics from missionaries, road workers, cattle ranchers and gold prospectors. The tropics have indeed become a horrific place, no longer in the European imagination but in Amerindian reality.

Talk in English