Can The Subaltern Eat - Gazi Islam

429396 ORG19210.
1177/1350508411429396IslamOrganization
Article
Organization
19(2) 159180
Can the subaltern eat? The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1350508411429396
as a Brazilian lens on org.sagepub.com
post-colonial theory
Gazi Islam
Insper Institute for Education and Research, Brazil
Abstract
I propose the concept of anthropophagy as a metaphor for understanding Brazilian organizational
knowledge, contributing to post-colonial thought, and better understanding issues of cultural
mix and hybridity essential to contemporary social theory. After describing the diverse meanings
of anthropophagy, I outline three important moments in Brazilian history where the concept
has been central to understanding intercultural mixture. First, anthropophagy was an important
component of indigenous reactions to intercultural contact, providing a ritual mechanism by
which to negotiate identity. This identity crafting mechanism became revived in the 20th
century modernist and tropicalist periods, where it took on symbolic functions in positioning
modern Brazilian identity with respect to both European and indigenous roots. More recently,
anthropophagy has entered the organizational literature, providing novel ways to make sense
of key concepts in the discipline. I discuss three central issues around which anthropophagy
contributes to contemporary theory, those of otherness, authenticity, and corporality.
Keywords
anthropophagic movement, Brazil, international management, latin america, organizational
anthropology, organizational culture, post-colonial theory, subaltern studies
The origin of cannibalism is the origin of culture. (Sahlins 1983: 72)
Anthropophagy, or the cannibalistic appropriation of cultural forms,1 has been described as the
most potent and durable metaphor is modern Brazilian culture (Dunn, 2010). Resurging at key
moments in Brazilian history, this metaphor has served to make sense of the hybridity, corporality,
Corresponding author:
Gazi Islam, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Insper Institute for Education and Research,
300 Rua Quat, So Paulo SP 04516-000, Brazil.
Email: gislamster@gmail.com
160 Organization 19(2)
and cultural mixture running through Brazilian culture, and has recently entered the organizational
literature (e.g. Wood and Caldas, 1998a, 1998b, 2002). Serving as a root metaphor navigating
cultural contradictions (Barley and Knight, 1992), anthropophagy illuminates contentious in
postcolonial organizational studies, such acknowledging cultural roots while avoiding essential-
ism, and embracing cultural mixture while avoiding colonial catechism (Andrade, 1990). Fitting
with post-colonial notions of hybridity (e.g. Bhabha, 1994) and remix (e.g. Tofts and McCrea,
2010), Brazilian thinkers digested European modernism while affirming indigenous cultural
sources. The resulting perspective on organizing and appropriating knowledge arising out of
Brazil engages contemporary theory and illuminates a unique theoretical direction. Exploring
the anthropophagic perspective heeds recent calls in organizational scholarship to examine the
hybrid co-production of ideas through intercultural encounters (e.g. zkazan-Pan, 2008)
In this article, I suggest that Brazilian scholarship offers a useful concept for understanding
complex and paradoxical process of cultural appropriation in the South. Previous work has
examined North-South cultural transfer (e.g. Gupta and Wang, 2004; Mir and Mir, 2009; Sahlins,
1994), noting the prevalence of multiple modernities (e.g. Eisenstadt, 2000). The anthropophagy
metaphor offers a complementary view by placing cultural contact against the background of an
ambivalent attitude of admiration and aggression, an attempt by cultural elites to affirm indige-
nous roots while appropriating the foreign.
Following Wood and Caldas (e.g. 2002), situating anthropophagy in the Brazilian context does
not imply that creative appropriation processes are unique to Brazil. Rather, the anthropophagy
metaphor can be used in post-colonial thinking more generally. This metaphor holds an important
place in Brazil, but encodes North-South relations in ways not exclusive to this context, addressing
topics of hybridity and cultural mixture (e.g. Frenkel and Shenhev, 2006). Following Peacock
(1994), I consider the Brazilian case as illustrative of general ideas, in the way that metaphors
generalize in an allegorical rather than a statistical sense. This approach aligns anthropophagy to
parallel projects in post-colonial studies, such as the Subaltern Studies project (e.g. Guha, 1994;
Spivak, 1993) in South Asia, and Orientalism (Said, 1978) with regards to the Middle East. Latin
American scholars (e.g. Dussel, 1977; Quijano, 1997; Rivera-Cusicanqui and Barragan, 1997;
Rodriguez, 2001) have struggled to find voices within these emerging trends, sometimes finding
solidarity with others from the global periphery (e.g. Ibarra-Colado, 2006), and sometimes
highlighting differences between Asian and Latin American colonialism (e.g. Mignolo, 2001).
I suggest that within Brazil, the metaphor of anthropophagy can complement subaltern and
orientalist perspectives.
Organizational scholars have long questioned how techniques and artifacts are appropriated by
actors in developing and emerging countries (e.g. Wood and Caldas, 1998b). Empirical work in
institutional diffusion in Brazil, for example, suggests that diffusion is driven more by ideological
considerations than economic interests (Sugiyama, 2008) drawing questions about the diffusion of
ideas in Brazil. The notion of anthropophagy describes an aggressive, creative appropriation of
cultural forms (Cals and Arias, 1997; Wood, 2010), aligning it with incipient work on creative
mimicry in management (e.g. Spicer, 2004). This perspective also aligns with some Brazilian
social theory (e.g. Santiago, 2002) that emphasizes the remaking and transformative elements of
cultural borrowing.
Although the anthropophagic metaphor has appeared in organizational thinking, past work has
not carried this metaphor far enough into its historical roots to retrieve what was theoretically
special about the concept. Instead, anthropophagy was treated simply as a type of organizational
selectivity. The current article expands the anthropophagic idea by entering the complex web of
significations that surrounds and buttresses this concept, positioning it among related post-colonial
Islam 161
concepts such as hybridity and mimicry to show how it illuminates particular key post-colonial
problematics.
In what follows, I outline the concept of anthropophagy as it appears at three (and a half) key
moments in Brazilian history, showing how the concept shifts from a cosmological and religious
practice to an ironic self-reflection. Following this brief historical outline, I explore three key
problematics of anthropophagy, regarding issues of otherness, authenticity and corporality. By
offering a novel angle on these three issues, anthropophagy contributes to organization studies
by: (1) situating within current post-colonial debates a widely ignored Latin American perspective
and (2) illustrating how this lens highlights key issues in contemporary social theory.
A note on metaphor
Before proceeding, I should pause to note that anthropophagy illustrates cultural mixture by means
of an extended metaphor. It thus relies on the metaphors ability to depict the world, a topic much
discussed in organizational studies (e.g. Cornelissen, 2002; Cornelissen et al., 2008; Palmer and
Dunford, 1996; Tsoukas, 1991). More than simply a methodological detail, using a metaphorical
approach is particularly appropriate to discussing cultural contact in Brazil, whose history and
culture (like those of many post-colonial societies) are marked by the slippage of literal representa-
tion and the positioning of the subject in an ambiguous liminal space (e.g. Bhabha, 1984).
As Tsoukas (1991) points out, metaphoric insight is often the first step in a process of analogi-
zation, whereby analogies are progressively worked into isomorphisms, resulting in scientific
theories (see also Cornelissen, 2002). Under this view, anthropophagy represents a preliminary
analogy, with future work parsing out the specificities and developing literal isomorphisms to
move beyond metaphor. Alternative views (e.g. Bloom, 1996) see metaphor as a way to represent
things not capturable directly by literal or empirical statements that escape categorization yet may
be represented through the carrying-over function of metaphor (Bloom 1996: 19). For Bloom,
metaphor acts as a bridge between the material and the ideal (a point also mentioned by Cornelissen,
2006), and is not a precursor to literal theorizing, but allows the indirect perception of an interme-
diate realm (Bloom, 1996: 18) lost in direct perception.
This approach to metaphor is relevant to a post-colonial tradition in which representing cul-
tures is a central issue. Theorists have struggled with representing subaltern groups while avoiding
imposing essentialist categories on these groups. Suleri (2003: 274), for example, spoke of post-
coloniality as a metaphoric condition. Said (in Parry, 2003: 41) describes the West advancing
unmetaphorically upon the Orient, and Bhabha (e.g. 1994) writes of a third space which is not
directly enunciable but from which the post-colonial situation can be voiced (I suggest that the
anthropophage inhabits a similar intermediate or liminal space). Focusing on Brazil, DaMatta
(1987) argues that Brazilian anthropology must begin with the encounter, and not with constitu-
ent categories. Echoing Blooms intermediate realm, DaMatta continues, The secret of a correct
interpretation of Brazil lies in the possibility of studying what is between things (1987: 26).
This echoes other Latin American scholars, such as Santiago (2002), who proposed a between
space between autonomy and dependence, to understand Brazilian culture Combining these Latin
American scholars voices with Blooms insight about metaphor, we can see the value of the
anthropophagic metaphor, which reflects the moment of encounter, taking in and being taken by
the culture of the other through the devouring of the material.
Expanding this point about materiality, metaphor can take on different modalities, both
linguistic and non-linguistic, including gestures (e.g. Cornelissen et al., 2008). Trice and Beyer
(1984) similarly present a general category of symbolic action including ritual action as well as
linguistic symbolism. Ricoeurs (1978, 1977) work on metaphor suggests that metaphor be thought
of as a productive, performative act that reconfigures the world, and not merely as semantic.
The living metaphor, according to Ricoeur (1977), recreates the reality it reflects, and does so
particularly by adding a sense of materiality or palpability to abstract concepts. Metaphor gives to
concepts a quasi-bodily externalization (Ricoeur, 1978: 144) and thus, as in Bloom, provides a
mediating function between the conceptual and the material. In this respect, the anthropophagy
metaphor is particularly rich as a cultural trope. As Oestigaard (2004) points out, since metaphor
embodies abstract concepts, metaphors of the body or flesh are particularly salient and appropri-
ate symbolic carriers across cultural boundaries. Oestigaard applies the embodied metaphor notion
(Lakoff and Johnson, 1999) specifically to cannibalism and body-oriented ritual, suggesting that
such rituals lend a sense of materiality to cultural forms.
As I will discuss, indigenous Brazilians used anthropophagic practices as gestural metaphors
for negotiating group boundaries, while artistic vanguards used the anthropophagic metaphor to
appropriate and invert relations to European culture, and Brazilian organizational scholars have
used the metaphor to discuss the filtering and transformation of organizational knowledge in local
contexts. The modalities of these usages shift quite radically across context. Because anthropophagic
symbolism appears in diverse moments of history at diverse sites, it should not be assumed that the
meanings of anthropophagy are either homogenous, nor conversely, entirely independent of each
other. There are, however, some peculiarities which distinguish the forms these meanings take in
the Brazilian context, peculiarities which become more marked as the concept develops into a
full-blown ideological movement in the 20th century.
The Brazilian use of the anthropophagy concept is, however, unique in its recurrence and
self-referentiality across seemingly diverse contexts. Later uses of the concept referenced earlier
forms as templates, despite the diversity of the anthropophagic agents involved. As we shall see,
something about 20th century Brazilian artists made them position themselves as Tupi warriors,
and this self-referentiality was reproduced both in 1960s musicians and by 21st century organiza-
tional theorists in Brazil. Although, at each step, the metaphor was used selectively, often focusing
on the more aggressive, hunter type variety practiced by the Tupi, local Brazilians in later periods
saw something informative in this metaphor, attributing it to themselves, taking upon their own
poetic, musical and organizational practices the anthropophagic label.
The metaphor of anthropophagy

Thoughts on cannibalism are neither unique to Brazil nor to post-colonial theorizing, but have a
rich history mediating relations between the civilized core and the barbarous periphery. Early
Christian tribes practicing the Eucharist were called cannibals (Lindenbaum, 2004) and terrifying
tales of cannibalism were attributed to Mongols, Iriquois and Tupinamba (Sanborn, 1998).
Iberian explorers chided the childlike immoderation in cannibalistic practices in Latin America
(Bucher, 1981), whereas the British obsessed about cannibalism in the South Pacific (Obeysekere,
1992). The opulent Catholic mass was compared by Calvinists to Mesoamerican cannibalism
(Lindenbaum, 2004). Later, Australian settlers violently reacted to largely false allegations of
aboriginal cannibalism, leading to erroneous death penalties (Biber, 2005). In these cases, alleging
cannibalism was a form of othering, framing an exotic society in barbarous terms to establish
selfother boundaries.
However, anthropophagy has also played a role in social critique (Lindenbaum, 2004). Levi-
Strauss (1964) suggested that our shocked reactions to cannibalism reflect preoccupations about
our own cultures. Throughout occidental literature, the cannibal metaphor has been used to critique
Islam 163
prevailing social maladies (Rawson, 2001), the most famous being Swifts (1949) A Modest
Proposal, which satirized eating children as a progressive social policy. Diderots Encyclopedie
contains a section on the cannibal within all of us (Cottom, 2001). Goldman (1999) views
Montaignes (1964) writings on cannibalism as initiating cultural relativism in occidental thought,
demonstrating the ambivalent colonizercannibal relationship. According to Cottom:
The self-contradictory, self-consuming figure of the cannibal, confounding the distinction between self
and other, stood for all the uncertainties in the Enlightenment conception of the world. (Cottom 2001: xiv).
This anxiety is apparent in Obeyesekeres (1992) observation that colonial explorers were
obsessed with the practice, often shocking native peoples with their incessant queries about
cannibalism.
Importantly, anthropophagy may have been self-consciously used by native peoples to mediate
their relations with colonizing or dominant powers (e.g. Obeyesekere, 1992). According to
Sanborn (1998), European explorers noted the performative nature of cannibalism, an essentially
communicative practice used by native peoples to terrify the enemy. Aware of the salience of such
practices for colonizers, natives assumed the role of barbarian in order to terrify, in an ambivalent
act of both subordination and aggression.
In these cases, anthropophagy marks moments of intercultural contact, where devouring the
other at once acknowledges an appetitive desire for appropriation and an aggressive process of
deconstruction. Given that Brazil as an entity was not simply colonized by the Portuguese, but was
essentially constituted in and through colonization (Mignolo, 2001), the deconstruction of colonial
domination is simultaneously a self-reflexive and self-transformative act. Devouring the other as
work on the self is apparent in each historical moment of Brazilian anthropophagic consciousness,
to which we turn next.
Three (and a half) moments of Brazilian anthropophagy

Anthropophagic encounters with the foreign reoccur throughout Brazilian history. Anthropophagic
appropriation occurs in the literal appropriation of outsiders bodies, but also in literary, musical
and organizational appropriations, suggesting a general approach to intercultural interaction. In
Nunes (1990) view, anthropophagy is a metaphor for, a diagnostic of, and a therapy for colonialism,
acknowledging ironically and parodying colonialism in a carnavalesque fashion (see also Dunn,
2010). Differently than cynical distancing strategies described in the organizational literature
(Fleming and Spicer, 2003), anthropophagy is affirmative rather than defensive, uniquely combin-
ing submission and aggression. As Ferreira (2002a, 2002b), claims, the affirmation comes from
reconceiving the native as an agent of transformation, technified (tecnizado) through devouring
European culture. The act of devoration of another culture allows actors to appropriate cultural
tools without positioning oneself as subordinate to the other culture. As Lindenbaum (2004: 493)
claims of Brazilian anthropophagy:
Adopting a cannibal identity transformed a taboo into a totem and redefined anthropophagic primitivism
as a positive valuea witty and self-reflective critique of colonialism.
Yet anthropophagic encounters also mark specific historical moments in Brazilian culture, par-
ticularly those marked by historical crisis and mixture. As van Gennep (1960) characterizes ritual
liminal space as representing moments of identity crisis, the ritual consumption of the Other
becomes necessary at those moments in which the Brazilian identity is called into question through
social and cultural transformation. The liminal notion, when put into a post-colonial context, is
echoed in Bhabhas (1994) notion of a third space or position of inarticulability that stands above
the identities of colonial dominance or subordination and mediates these identities. The third
space notion allows expression of the contradictions inherent in a post-colonial situation; that
colonizer and colonized somehow only exist in relation to each other, and yet are defined by their
separateness (Bhabha, 1994). This seeming paradox makes it impossible to assert identity without
also asserting otherness, and, it is this paradoxical self-assertion that anthropophagy attempts to
allegorize.
Thus, at key moments of historical self-questioning, the liminal or third space position provides
a vantage point from which to negotiate contradictory identities. The first of the moments I exam-
ine is the original moment of colonization, the second, the emergence of the modern Brazilian
Republic, and the third, the military regime of the 1960s. I describe anthropophagy at each of these
key moments, suggesting that a forth incipient moment, that of the contemporary international
opening of Brazilian organizations, presents an anthropophagic aspect
Moment one: indigenous anthropophagy

Current anthropological descriptions often describe the anthropophagic hunter as assuming a non-
human position, separating himself from the community and not partaking of the feast (Cocco,
2009; Vilaa, 2005). The anthropophagic hunter may self-identify as a jaguar (Vilaa 2005;
Viveiros de Castro, 1992), as dehumanized but not victim, and other depictions have noted that the
human-jaguar distinction is often breached during anthropophagy (Vilaa, 1998). In Vilaas
(1998) analysis, the act of devoration symbolically aligns the anthropophage with a predatory
identity, rather than that of prey. The ability to position the dehumanized as predator offers an
insight into how a culture may absorb or devour an alien culture without thereby slipping into the
role of subaltern or inferior.
Digging deeper, the definition of jaguar in Tupi culture is central in this respect (Agnolini,
2002). The carnivorous side of a duality, the jaguar contrasts to the herbivorous tiny-mouthed
tamandu, or giant anteater (Arcand, 1991). The distinction carnivore/ herbivore, moreover, maps
onto fundamental distinctions between hunter/gatherer, masculine/feminine, sexual/asexual and
mortal/immortal. The hunting jaguar, according to Agnolini (2002), lives a short and passionate life
of desire. What the jaguar loses in early death, he gains in the pleasure of good appetite, forgoing
immortality for sexual reproduction. Interestingly, Shipman (1987) notes the co-occurrence of
cannibalistic with incest taboos in Brazilian tribes, where both involve mediating inner-outer group
boundaries, and who may be eaten depends on the correct kinship distance, distances that also
inscribe mating rules.
Holanda (1994) notes that jaguar hunting rituals closely parallels anthropophagic rituals. The
death-symbolizing jaguar is neutralized by the hunting and ritual symbolic consumption, and just
as cannibalized enemies, the jaguars bones are used as amulets (Holanda, 1994). In consuming the
jaguar (or the outsider), the Tupi become jaguars (or outsiders). And because the dead are jaguars
(Clastres, 1995: 218), the anthropophage identifies with and overcomes death.
The view of anthropophagy as identification with and desire for a dangerous other is recurrent.
Clastres (1972) analyses Tupinamba raids resulting in a form of endocannibalism of brothers-in-
law and the sequestering of village women. Her analysis suggests that anthropophagy emanated
from the desire to rid the world of affine relationships, devouring ones in-laws in order to under-
mine dependency relationships on those who are at once interconnected yet outside.
Islam 165
In sum, rather than barbary, anthropophagy may represent a way of affirming a life of desire,
negotiating social connection from a non-human and predatory space, and dealing with mortality
by consuming the powerful, sexualized other. It is a sign of vengeance, yearning and respect. As
the work among native groups (e.g. Vilaa, 1998) shows, there was nothing particularly European
or colonial about this ritual, but the colonial encounter became interpreted using native cosmolo-
gies. That the anthropophagic relation was transferred to European colonists by the Tupi may have
been an accident of history, of mixed economic cosmologies, to use Sahlins (1994) term. That it
was later self-consciously appropriated by Brazilian intellectuals in the 20th century demonstrates
that the metaphor remained fertile in the wake of ongoing intercultural contact.
Moment two: the modernist anthropophage

If 16th century anthropophagy marked an encounter with the first wave of colonial globalization,
the 20th century anthropophagic redux marked an encounter with a European modernity in crisis.
Contemporary to cultural critics in Europe, Brazils European-educated elite searching for a
national identity while sensitized to the value crises occurring in a post WWI Europe (Rolnick,
1998). Anthropophagy, described by Rolnick as a renaissance in Brazilian thought embodied both
a drawing upon European ideas, and an aggressive move for autonomy from the vulnerable
European cultural hegemony, now easy prey for revisionist manifestos.
The 1920s saw the advent of the Revista Antropofgica (Anthropophagic Review), a journal of
stories, art, poetry and miscellany that flouted existing conservative Brazilian cultural movements
(Helena, 1983). Its founder, Oswald de Andrade, led the anthropophagic movement with Manifesto
Pau Brasil (Andrade, 1972) and especially, Manifesto Antropofgica, (Andrade, 1990), clear ech-
oes of Andre Bretons Surrealist Manifesto. Andrade had hit upon the idea of using the anthropophagy
concept while reading Montaignes (1964) essay on Brazilian cannibalism, which he promptly
reappropriated and imported to So Paulo (Cocco, 2009) in a week-long series of readings and
performances. This event, which according to Freyre (1946) was of singular importance in
Brazilian cultural history, drew scandal from the cultural elite of the city with its bawdy and ludic
orientation.
The Manifesto Antropofgica is an important artifact, and Andrade (1990) later pleaded for
Brazilian thinkers to carry on and develop the anthropophagy concept as the key element of his
theorizing of Brazil. The Manifesto captures the ambivalent relation between modern Brazil, and
both its European and Indigenous influences. Aphoristic in form, it vacillates between affirma-
tions (e.g. necessity of the anthropophagic vaccine) and negations (e.g. against the vegetal
elites). This duality maps tensions between acceptance and rejection of knowledge from the
North, appropriating concepts popular in Europe (e.g. Anthropophagy. The permanent transfor-
mation of Taboo into totem).
Well-traveled in Europe and member of the So Paulo cultural elite, Andrade was in a position
distinct from earlier indigenous peoples to creatively and selectively appropriate European culture
in an ironic and sublimated way, rather than directly eating the flesh of Europeans. The irony is that
he does this while deriding sublimation and insisting on flesh:
What results is not a sublimation of the sexual instinct. It is the thermometric scale of the anthropophagic
instinct. From the carnal, it becomes elective, creating friendship. Affective, love. Speculative, science.
Thus, Andrade carved a territory between the stereotyped center-perifery divide, allowing
exchange despite the revolutionary flavor of the Manifestos. This is demonstrated in his depiction
of the Brazilian as cordial, an appellation which later was made famous in Holandas (1936)
Raizes do Brasil (Roots of Brazil). Andrade himself linked the notion of cordiality to anthropophagy
(Andrade, 1976), seeing cordiality as a form of ironic identification with the other. This description
links cordiality with Andrades analysis of alterity in anthropophagy:
One might call alterity the sentiment of the other, that is, to see the other in oneself, to establish within
oneself the disaster, the mortification or the joy of the other (Andrade, 1972: 14)
The anthropophagic movements marked an ambivalent position vis-a-vis coloniality, with its
founders educated in European high culture, while searching for a national identity (e.g. Budasz,
2005). Andrades encounter with Brazilian natives in Montaigne may be indicative in this respect;
ideas drawn from European authors that themselves were drawn from colonial interactions,
resulting in a mixture that both emphasized and undermined the distinction between Europe and
the tropics. In perhaps Andrades (1990) most famous trope, he asks Tupi or not Tupi? That is the
question, transforming Hamlets classic formulation of identity struggle into a post-colonial
struggle to make sense of ones historical identity. The generic and non-local verb to be is
displaced by an indigenous tribal name, localizing the abstraction of being, and refocusing an
existential question in terms of local identity. Both insider and outsider, international and tribal,
the cultural anthropophage struggled to navigate the space between Shakespeare and the bush
(Bohannan, 1966).
Rolnick (1998) elaborates how the anthropophagic moment of the 1920s promoted a complex
mixture whereby European cultural forms were appropriated without the autonomous state-
building tendencies of other post-colonial independence movements. Such a fact would impor-
tantly contrast with some versions of South Asian post-coloniality, in which the formation of an
autonomous identity went along with a national project (e.g. Anderson, 1991). The anthropophagic
movement, by contrast, was both revolutionary and utopian (e.g. Mascaro, 2004), but not national-
istic in the sense of creating a centralized state project. Mascaro (2004), for example, argues that
the project was both highly political and international.
Drawing further on Andersons (1991) important work on imagined communities, although
post-colonial elites embraced indigenous identity strategies, they were often driven (by their
education and nationalist imaginary) to think of identity in the very language of the colonizers,
recreating local identities using the matrix of social categories (i.e. people, culture, nation) of the
metropole. Similarly, Eagleton (1990) emphasizes that liberation movements at least temporarily
adopt the language of the hegemon to conceive their own liberty. Thus, a slave can only free him/
herself qua slave, a woman, by identifying herself with a womens movement, and an Indian
under colonial rule, using the largely colonial notion of India to gain independence.
As such, the self-conscious appropriation of the cannibal identity by Western-educated
Brazilian intellectuals is revealing of how these intellectuals viewed European stereotypes of
Brazilians. By identifying with the indigenous people, modernists appropriated the language of the
metropole, but interestingly, did so while avoiding the discourse of the nation-state (c.f. Anderson,
1991). Rather, they emphasized a pre-state conception of tropical humanism that was international
as well as Brazilian. Rather than post-colonial nationalism, the anthropophagic movement gave
homage to the matriarchy of Pindorama (land of many trees) an allusion to the Tupi name given
to pre-discovery Brazil.
Thus, while Andersons (1991) point about colonial self-searching is clearly illustrated in the
Brazilian case, the nationalist discourse of institutional statehood was replaced by the emancipa-
tory discourse of liberal humanism, in which the figure of the cannibal no longer served as an
Islam 167
abomination to human civilizations, but as the core of liberty. As Andrade (1990) states We want
a Caribbean Revolution. Larger than the French Revolution. The unification of all effective
revolts in the direction of man. Without us, Europe would no longer have its poor declaration of
the rights of man. Following Mascaros (2004) analysis, the internationalism in this statement
seems unavoidable, both revolutionary, utopian, and based on a European model, but at the same
time expressing its independence from such models (Budasz, 2005). Thus, the vision is neither
European nor anti-European, but a continuation of the European humanist project by means of its
anthropophagic dark side.
Moment three: the 1960s anthropophage

Moving forward 40 years, Brazil was again caught between a repressive nationalist establishment
and subaltern status in a foreign cultural mainstream (Young, 1998). At home, the military regime
repressed ideas and cultural products from the left and exiled artists gained exposure to the cultural
turbulence of the late 1960s. Again, anthropophagic appropriation coincided with international
crises, combining its own self-searching with that of its US and European interlocutors. Artists
self-consciously used hybridization as a statement of doubts (Dunn, 1993), doubts which in
Europe and the US came under the umbrella of post-modernism. In Brazil, this movement took
the name of Tropiclia or Tropicalismo, an ironic reaching to origins which was heavily influenced
by anthropophagic thinking (Dunn, 1993, 2010). Tropicalismo, according to one of its founders,
Caetano Veloso (1997), was the natural outgrowth and most efficacious divulgator of the
anthropophagic perspective. Although Veloso (1997) notes that the founders of Tropiclia were
acutely aware of the differences between the 1920s context of Andrade and their own, they saw
themselves as a generational continuation of the anthropophagic movement.
The Tropiclia movement cut across cultural forms, including the poetry of Augosto de Campos
(e.g. Perrone, 1990), and visual art of Hlio Oiticica, with its biggest impact in the musical album
Panis et Circencis by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Often compared to Andrades Manifesto,
Panis et Circensis alluded to the spectacles of ancient Rome to parody the military regime. Other
key figures such as Tom Z and the band Mutantes promoted ironic performances, mixing absurd
renditions of US style rock-and-roll with obscure references to African deities and indigenous
figures, often against a background of circus music.
Not surprisingly, Tropiclia embraced anthropophagy; as Caetano Veloso comments (Veloso,
1997: 247): the idea of antropofagia fit us like a glove: we were eating the Beatles and Jimi
Hendrix. Tropiclia embodied a complex mixture of integration and identity vacillation, with
tropicalistas borrowing and making fun of US styles in order to indirectly critique Brazilian nation-
alism. Veloso (1997) specifically cites Andrades athropophagy as a model in this regard, an
attempt to establish a Brazilian identity without reverting to nationalism, which Veloso regarded as
defensive in posture. Dunn (2001) points out, however, it is not always clear where the irony
ended; in true anthropophagic form, the Tropicalista movement exploited contemporary trends in
rock music, while simultaneously exposing and critiquing those trends.
And a halfthe organizational anthropophage

Is the current epoch in Brazilian Organization Studies anthropophagic? Although perhaps suspi-
cious of indigenous discourses resurrected by business scholars, we may remember that expres-
sions of hybridity and cultural ambivalence emerge among elite sectors of peripheral countries.
Earlier anthropophagic movements came from literary and cultural elites, and previously,
anthropophagy was a device of the victorious group, and of the jaguar, and thus, differently from
other subaltern perspectives, was never a weapon of the weak (Scott, 1985). While Brazilian
business education has historically imported western models (e.g. Caldas, 1997), much aca-
demic production has been critical (e.g. Motta and Alcadipani, 1999; Paes de Paula, 2008; Viera
and Caldas, 2006). If, as Imasato (2010) suggests, contemporary colonialism is epistemic and
knowledge-based, academia would be ripe for anthropophagic discourse, and organizational
scholarship from developing countries might be uniquely poised at the intersections of interna-
tional and local cultures.
Within Brazil, scholars have stressed the importance of differentiation and hybridization (Cals
and Arias, 1997; Wood, 2010) noting the importance of the foreigner in developing complex local
organizational knowledge (e.g. Caldas, 1997). Similarly, some note the shifting character of cultural
and political organizations in Brazil, marked by hybridity and fluidity (e.g. Martins, 2000; Wood,
2010). Analysing Brazilian political parties, for example, Sader (1987) notes the hybrid nature
of post-dictatorship politics, combining aspects of democratic and authoritarian governments in
apparently incompatible ways, but each of which is quite intelligible in its context (Sader, 1987:
97). Using the example of the Workers Party, Sader argues that the complex mixture of liberalism,
syndicalism, progressivism and religiosity characterizing the party history would only be possible
where hybridity was tolerated and ideological purity was not a primary value. Such mixtures and
fluidity of influence might be more intelligible through the lens of anthropophagy.
The hybridization theme had appeared in literature on Brazilian culture (e.g. DaMatta, 1991).
Brazilian management (e.g. Alcadipani and Crubellate, 2003; Wood, 2010), and in the organiza-
tional literature more generally (e.g. Frenkel and Shenhev, 2006). Perhaps closest to the current
treatment within organization studies, Spicer (2004) cites Taussigs ethnographic work in
Columbia, where representations of the colonizer (including samples of hair or nails) were appro-
priated and modified by the Cuna people as a way to appropriate their power. Taussing (1993)
describes the function of these representations as the trick of dancing between the very same and
the very different, and Spicer (2004) notes the close relationship between such identity negotia-
tion and corporal contact, an observation that closely approximates the anthropophagy concept.
Such work, however, only recently included the term anthropophagy, linking these diverse
literatures (Faria et al., 2001; Wood and Caldas, 1998a, 1998b, 2002). Wood and Caldas directly
cite Tupi and modernist literary traditions, applying them to international business. Using
anthropophagy to describe a process of creative adaptation (Wood and Caldas, 1998b), Brazilian
managers selectively adopt elements of foreign strategy. Faria et al. (2001) recognize that the
term anthropophagy might open spaces for future interdisciplinary work between management,
anthropology, and the arts, leading to innovative social theory from Brazil. However, until now,
the anthropophagy concept has remained almost entirely invisible outside of Brazil, waiting to be
unpacked in its full social and cultural ramifications.
Although insightful, the incipient nature of the Wood and Caldas use of anthropophagy may
have prevented a full exploration of its conceptual contribution. Presenting the concept, they cite
organizational examples in which selective appropriation took place (e.g. Wood and Caldas, 1998).
As described above, however, the creative appropriation of foreign knowledge is not at the heart of
the anthropophagy symbolism; rather, the concept envisages the creation of relational identities
based on capture and absorption of the other. While it is certainly true that creative appropriation
does take place, the current literature does not explore how the act is constitutive of cultural selves.
Most importantly for the post-colonial tradition is that the concept of anthropophagy goes beyond
a pick and choose process of selective appropriation, and reflects a deep sense of historical irony
and ambivalence, a fact acknowledged by Wood and Caldas, but in need of exploration.
Islam 169
Perhaps by framing anthropophagy as equivalent to selectivity, rather than as a fundamental

ontological and epistemological position, what was theoretically innovative in the concept was
glossed over, and the usefulness of the concept in interpreting intercultural contact was obscured.
Within organization studies, the shift from selective use to hybridity comes closest to furthering the
project outlined in Frenkel and Shenhev (2006; see also Shimoni and Bergman, 2006), by which
essentialist cultural perspectives from orientalism and cross-cultural management are to be replaced
by hybridization themes that recognize cultural essentialism as a form of purification in a neoco-
lonial context (Frenkel and Shenhev, 2006: 870). Anthropophagy adds to this theme by showing a
case where hybridization is affirmed as a part of the appropriation ritual itself, whereas other
treatments have suggested the unconscious or implicit nature of hybridization (c.f. Shimoni and
Bergman, 2006: 79) or mimicry (Brathwaite, 2003), even suggesting this implicitness as a source
of false consciousness (Brathwaite, 2003). Anthropophagy, on the other hand, does not operate by
hiding its appropriation of the foreign. Rather, by reveling in this appropriation openly, as well its
transformative potential as an agent of cultural hybridization, anthropophagy can engage in
cultural appropriation without taking on a subaltern position, To highlight the self-conscious nature
of anthropophagy is thus to fundamentally distinguish it from an unconscious mimicry of the
colonizer.
Having described anthropophagy at key historical moments, I turn to the fundamental
problematics encoded within this root metaphor (Barley and Knight, 1993; Dunn, 1993), otherness,
authenticity and corporality. By its novel contributions to understanding these problematics, I ague,
anthropophagy takes on its full scholarly import.
Problematics of anthropophagy
The problematic of otherness
As suggested earlier, a key field of anthropophagic struggle involves positioning oneself with
regards to an other, Scholars note the complex relations between Brazilian organizations and the
outside (e.g. Bertero and Keinert, 1994; Caldas, 1997; Chu and Wood, 2008), citing the imported
nature of Brazilian formal organization as neither integrated with, nor alien to, local actors (e.g.
Santos, 2004). For example, Merklinger (2001) uses anthropophagy to describe the organization of
the So Paulo Biennial Expo, whose 1998 theme was anthropophagy. The Expos organization
was modified by the inclusion within the heart of the Brazilian section of a unique exhibit of 55
diverse international producers, thereby devouring the international as focal element of Brazilian
culture. Similarly, Imasatos (2010) discussion of the Brazilian sugar industry emphasizes how a
symbol of coloniality (sugar cane, a particularly pernicious symbol of the Atlantic colonial
economy) was transformed into a source of local legitimacy by highlighting its use as a source of
renewable energy (ethanol).
Another interesting example is Vilaas (2005) study of hybrid Christian-Wari identity in the
US-based New Tribes Mission organization. The Wari group, in her study, took surprisingly well
to the organizations evangelical movement. According to Vilaas, the idea of religious conver-
sion so as to absorb a community of non-believers resounded well with an indigenous group
whose anthropophagic tradition involved integration of the body to consolidate social solidarity.
In the groups translation of the book of Genesis, where the animals are divided into the wild and
domestic, the text was substituted for those animals that are strange, and cannot be eaten, and
those that are real, and edible, a syncretic and anthropophagic twist.
The presence of the foreign other, as some Brazilian scholars have pointed out (e.g. Alcadipani,
2010), takes a double sense. As post-colonial scholars have noted, intercultural contact involves
a kind of double consciousness (DuBois, 2003), in which consciousness is displaced and

decentered, and the subject sees him/herself though the foreign gaze. This decentering of sub-
jectivity aligns post-colonial studies closely with postmodern thinking, by examining the power
relations by which subjectivity is established.
This line of thought can take divergent paths, either questioning the colonized subjects ability
to speak at all in his/her terms (e.g. Spivak, 1993), finding liberation only in the flight toward
unintelligibility (e.g. Butler, 2000) or, conversely, insisting on the revolutionary reappropriation of
consciousness from colonial domination (e.g. Fanon, 1967). Anthropophagy navigates the same
straits as these approaches, but neither rejects intelligibility totally nor fights for its consolidation
on local terms.
Leibing and Benninghoff-Luhl (2001) describe cultural anthropophagy as an intelligibility that
devours time, rejecting historical origins for an incomplete and remixed conception of history.
They cite Derridas (1983) chiding of Levi-Strauss, who lamented the incomprehension of the
Brazilian Nhambiquara group faced with European written language. Finally adopting the Latin
alphabet only to mimic it ritualistically, Leibing and Luhl summarize, the Nhambiquara used the
symbols differently than the Europeans, integrating them into an ongoing flow of cultural transmis-
sion that embodied an alternate form of intelligibility.
Moreover, anthropophagic intelligibility is ambivalent in both emulating and aggressing toward
hegemonic culture, indeed preying on it. The hegemonic institutional order and its cannibalistic
deformation are co-productions of each other (Biber, 2005). While much of post-colonial studies
seems to lament the dependency of its subjectivity upon the Other, anthropophagic cordiality
relishes in it:
to discover and desire the singularity of the other, without feeling shame in discovering and desiring
without fear of contaminating oneself, because it is through that contamination that the vital powers
expand, where the batteries of desire are charged, where a series of becomings incarnatesthe Tupi
formula. (Rolnick, 1998: 10)
The problematic of authenticity

Recent work has critiqued notions of organizational authenticity and highlighted performativity at
the heart of organizations (e.g. Sinha, 2010). Anthropophagic discourse is poised to add to such
critiques, since the history of cannibalism discourse has centered on power and colonial represen-
tation and the question of realism (Lindenbaum, 2004). Although some anthropologists argue that
indigenous cannibalism is a European myth (Arens, 1979), it is well established that cannibalism
has occurred in highly ritualized acts; this however, leaves unexplained widespread attempts to
characterize cannibalism as the essential defining feature of indigenous peoples (Biber, 2005), also
obscuring that cannibalism is well documented in European history as well (Obeyesekere, 1992).
In this sense, the representation of peoples as anthropophagic involves a subtle play of colonial
representations and counter-representations.
For example, Sanborn (1998) noted that Tupi cannibalistic rituals were not wholly internal ,
but rather were used dramaturgically to induce terror in foreign audiences, thus constructing a
displayed identity that only functions in the presence of the colonizer. Wood and Caldas (1998a)
discuss the incorporation of foreign managerial techniques for the English to see, that is, the
dramaturgical adoption of technologies as power displays, aligning managers with dominant
managerialist symbols from developed economies.
In some cases, appropriating anthropophagic labels may be less a search for original, authentic
identities than an allusion to the contested and power-ridden dynamics behind authentic identity
Islam 171
itself. In the context of anthropophagy, Conklin (1997) argues that the principle of authenticity
was largely a European presumption of cultural essentialism, imposed on a local population that
did not think in such terms, and thus appropriated cultural practices without regard to authenticity.
Andrade (1990), critiquing but embracing the inauthentic gaze of the foreigner, for example,
writes Children of the sun, mother of the living. Encountered and loved ferociously, with all the
hypocrisy of longing (saudade), by immigrants, by the trafficked, and by tourists. The encounter,
although inauthentic, is not thereby negated, but is positively affirmed, even through the senti-
mental and hypocritical eyes of outsiders. As Mignolo (2001) importantly observes, the role of
colonialism in Latin America was largely constitutive, with the colonial administrative structure
going to the core of local institutions. In such a scenario, authenticity seems to make little sense
as a fundamental value.
In the context of organizational knowledge, I note Wood and Caldas (2002) warning that while
Brazilian organizations actively implement managerial techniques from the US and Europe, such
adoption must not be taken at face value, and can be deceiving. Perhaps relevant, Perkins (2005)
notes the particularly high rate of failure for foreign firms that come to Brazil, even among inter-
nationally experienced firms, and suggests an idiosyncratic style in Brazil that favors ambiguity.
Managerial techniques, appropriated and consumed as foreign, may rely for their meaning relies
on this very foreignness. Barros (2010), for example, discusses the conflicts over authenticity in a
Brazilian communitarian organization, and notes the organizations emancipatory potential despite
conflicts over authenticity. Similarly, studies of religious organizations in Brazil have demonstrated
mirroring of practices and symbols even when the organizations specifically see each other
as evil or false (Reinhardt, 2007). French (2004) explores how, in the Brazilian northeast,
communities may juxtapose indigenous and African identities with little sense of contradiction or
inauthenticity. Finally, in a corporate context, Stephen (2001) uses anthropophagy to discuss
HRM policy adoption in Brazilian contexts. Rather than stressing notions of proper implementa-
tion and faithfulness to the technology, Stephen emphasizes that HRM technologies should be
metabolized in their local contexts, leading often to very different technologies, without attempts
to retain a sense of authenticity to the original program. Referring to these resultant HRM practices
as juxtapositions, Stephen (2001: 31) argues that the resulting new technologies can produce
local innovations, and calls for an anthropophagous model of cultural portability.
In the above cases, borrowed practices or identities do not reflect inauthentic copies of culture.
Rather, it may be that the notion of (in)authenticity of Brazilian organizational knowledge runs
counter to a principle borrowing whose anthropophagic perspective flouts authenticity.
The problematic of corporeality

Scholars have shown recent interest in the body as a site for the inscription of social meanings (e.g.
Aho, 2002; Butler, 2000) and organizational struggles (e.g. Brewis and Linstead, 2000). Corporality
has drawn somewhat less attention in the post-colonial and subaltern studies literatures (although
see Spivak, 1993). Yet Lakoff and Johnson (1999) frame metaphors of the flesh as challenges to
Western thought, and Oestegaard (2004) uses the case of cannibalism explicitly in this context. The
challenge resides in the fact that the distinction between the primitive body and the civilized is
called into question in rituals where the body takes on complex symbolic significance. Thus, the
anthropophagy metaphor seems particularly suited to the context of post-colonial theorizing, by
calling into question basic distinctions that characterize European modernity.
Regarding the corporality of colonialism, Brazil stands out because of the highly sexualized
nature of Portuguese-indigenous relations as a purported foundation for ethnic mixture (e.g.
Freyre, 1933). In contrast to English experiences in the South Pacific, Tupi cannibalistic practices
seem not to have horrified and alienated the Portuguese, but were viewed as a form of raw, immod-
est desire (Bucher, 1981; Lindenbaum, 2004), a natural tendency requiring civilization, or
Andrades term, catechism. This aspect should be seen not as an aspect of indigenous Brazilians,
but as a function of the colonizers historical context; for example, according to Shapin (2002),
Renaissance views of cannibalism, based on the humor theory of blood, were relatively accepting,
while later Protestant and Enlightenment views were highly damning, relating cannibalism to the
bloody nature of Catholic mass and images (Rawson, 2001). Thus, rather than dehumanizing,
Brazilian anthropophagy was seen as a sensuality and corporality, still a sin, but also a hidden
desire. Rather than racial inferiority (as in later English narratives, Biber, 2005), cannibalism was
considered a taboo desire, and thus contained a kind of inner truth.
As the anthropophagic metaphor developed, the focus on the body became an important way to
represent the relation between self and other (Facchinetti, 2001), where devoration represented the
internalization of the other but also the appropriation of the other within the self. Drawing on
Freud, Andrades Manifesto saw the hidden desire between colonizer and colonized as a principle
of encounter that could be raised above, and overcome, the distinction colonizer-colonized. As in
DaMattas in-between, and Santiagos (2002) between-space, the bodys predicament of being
both separated from other bodies, yet needing nourishment from the outside, could be reflected in
the metaphor of devoration.
The link between anthropophagy and appetitive desire allows anthropophagy to be differenti-
ated from earlier concepts of mimicry as a tragic copying of the other (e.g. Brathwaite, 2003).
Rather than mimic-men (Brathwaite, 2003: 203), who, lacking consciousness of their own
creativity, copy a metropolitan ideal, later conceptualizations stress the element of desire and
ambivalence, with mimicry producing both reproduction and difference from the colonizer
(Bhabha, 1994). Anthropophagy follows this later conception in recognizing the desire inherent
in mimicry strategies (e.g. Sharpe, 2003), adding that such strategies can be self-conscious and
culturally affirmative, and in addition to mimicking the colonizer, can self-mimic, self-positioning
as an indigenous cannibal while simultaneously appropriating European cultural forms.
That anthropophagy came to stand for desire may help explain why this metaphor emerged as
an affirmation and a project within Brazil As repressed desire, cannibalism was not pathological,
but taboo, as alluded by Andrade. The return of the repressed creates a space for self-affirmation
as the re-discovery of nature in its chaotic libidinal form. Thus, anthropophagic knowledge is
embodied, both corporeal and representation, rejecting a distinction between mental and physical
central to modernist Enlightenment thought. According to Rolnick (1998: 12) anthropophagic sub-
jectivity involves a body that knows through vibration and contamination and not only through
representation. An epistemology based on vibration and contamination frames subjectivity as a)
corporeal, inscribed in bodily experience (vibration), and b) communal, flowing though networks
of social interaction (contamination). This view of corporeal, network-dependent epistemology
can be seen in Lewis (1995) study of Brazilian capoiera dance groups, where the relative social
positions of members are based on their ability communicate nonverbally by means of rapid
transitions from states of bodily flow to moments of intense concentration. Interestingly for notions
of corporality and the hybrid, Lewis notes the ambiguity of capoeira as dance, aggression, or ritual,
and theoretically links this to Brazils intermediate position between European, Cartesian culture
and African forms of embodied engagement (Lewis, 1995: 230).
The corporality of anthropophagy helps understand, for example, the interesting and perplexing
case of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit (Vilaa, 2005), where indigenous presenters created an artificial
Islam 173
copy of their own indigenous village, refusing entry to those not dressed in indigenous dress. While
Conklin (1997) interprets the re-appropriation of bodily ornament as a native borrowing from
Western stereotypes of the Amazon, Vilaa (2005) points out that such stereotypes spread so
quickly among the natives precisely because (a) the body was already a locus of culture and
identity transformation, and (b) that such borrowing was not proscribed by a norm of cultural
purity. In this case, it becomes impossible to judge the authenticity of bodily ornamentation,
which must be taken at face value and not symbolically sublimated, which, as Vilaa stresses, is
exactly the point. The culture is embodied directly, coded through the body itself.
Moving from epistemological to political dimensions of corporality, emphasizing the return of
the repressed helps explain the ambiguous status of anthropophagy as a movement of contestation.
Similarly to organizational carnival (e.g. Islam et al., 2009), anthropophagy contains elements of
both protest and complicity. On the one hand, carnivalesque ritual inverts social roles, using
grotesque humor and mockery of power holders to subvert social norms and open spaces for creative
improvisation (Islam et al., 2009). However, rituals have also been used to vent social tensions
and reinforce the social order (e.g. Rosen, 1985). Like carnival, anthropophagy involves an act of
ritual feast (Masters, 1969) and can symbolize social upheaval and reversal, although often with-
out a specified political program. Wood and Caldas (1998b), for example, view organizational
anthropophagy as a creative act, not as protest or complicity per se, but as an unwillingness to
take received knowledge at face value.
The historical refusal of anthropophagic thinkers to define any specific political program
(Andrade, 1990), should not be confused with not being political. Rather, although revolutionary
and utopian (Mascaro, 2004), it was antagonistic to the institutionalization of a political agenda
(Ponge, 2004). This reluctance to specify a program could be read as a sign either of a search for
liberty outside of established categories (e.g. Butler, 2000), or a mystifying technique suggestive
of the evasions of ideological discourse (e.g. Zizek, 1989). For instance, in a fascinating yet
perplexing study of womens police stations in Brazil, Santos (2004), shows how womens bodies
became the locus of hybrid state-society institutions (p. 35) involving women police officers who
were both charged with creating sex-based solidarity and reinforcing macho institutional norms.
Within the station, the feminist ethos involved in setting up special services for womens protection
coexisted with a macho organizational culture, making it difficult to specify a coherent ideological
outlook for the organization. She concludes by warning against essentializing Latin American
institutions, which are marked by complex and often contradictory relationships (p. 30). The
womens police department was clearly an ideological and political field of contestation; however,
that is different from a political program or a movement.
The corporalized nature of anthropophagy, finally, contrasts with the identity politics of some
postmodern discourse. Rolnick (1998: 11) specifically distinguishes anthropophagic social
theorizing with the de-eroticized discourse of political correctness. Different from political
correctness, which sees language as a form of domination, anthropophagy recognizes language
as a tool of desire, opens up a hybrid liminal or third space (Bhabha, 1994) where the dyad
colonizer-colonized can be unsettled though changing the meanings of colonial language.
While some postmodern perspectives describe how marginalized groups reappropriate negative
terms such as ethnic slurs (e.g. Jagose, 1996), to be anthropophagic describes an identification
with the appropriation act itself. That is, to be anthropophagic is not to call oneself a cannibal,
and thus take ownership of or reappropriate a formerly derogatory term. It is rather, to identify
with reappropriation itself, defining oneself as an agent of reappropriation of difference in its
various forms.
Conclusion
In this article, I traced the concept of anthropophagy through various instantiations in Brazilian
history, showing how it comprises a dense web of significations characterizing a certain Brazilian
posture toward intercultural mixture. Early indigenous anthropophagy navigated the boundaries
between inner and outer, establishing identity and power relations through consuming the other,
and dramaturgically performing a predatory subjectivity. Modernist anthropophagy turned this
gestural metaphor into a poetic trope, simultaneously emphasizing carnality, fluidity, and irony.
Contemporary anthropophagy remade the modernist literary movement in protest of a repressive
military apparatus, while parodying its own status as a borrowed cultural form (Treece, 1997).
Finally, some work in the organizational sciences has recognized the importance of the concept
in describing a Brazilian cultural style while postponing the full exploration of the anthropophagic
lens. Perhaps because of its rapid treatment, or because of the esoteric and difficult nature of the
anthropological, literary, and artistic writings on the subject, the concept has remained understudied
in our field. Given this nascent literature, anthropophagy is at a crossroads as an organizational
concept, awaiting further exploration which would allow it to contribute to social and organiza-
tional theory. The current article attempts to provoke such an exploration. Following this theoreti-
cal presentation, what are needed are in-depth case studies in Brazilian organizations to add thick
description and grounding to the general ideas presented here.
Seemingly distant from mainstream views of organizing, is studying this metaphor nothing
more than an exoticising glimpse into the no-longer practiced rituals of indigenous peoples on the
periphery of the world system? The fact that the concept has seemed intuitive to intellectuals so
distant from its origins seems to suggest its continued relevance. Certainly the search for local
identity in a world increasingly marked by cultural mixture is relevant in contemporary social
theory.
First, with some key exceptions (e.g. Duarte, 2006) most extant work in the international
organizational literature on Brazil uses essentialist categories such as Hofstedes dimensions (e.g.
OKeefe and OKeefe, 2004), or examines Brazilian organizations without specifically exploring
Brazilian historical or cultural aspects (e.g. Mesquita et al., 2007), or focuses on economic indica-
tors rather than symbolic figures (e.g. Griesse, 2007). Thus, the relatively sparse treatments of
Brazil in the international organizational literature tend to treat Brazil in a monolithic and context-
independent way, and can benefit from a historical and cultural analysis of intercultural contact.
Additionally, anthropophagic thinking adds to Latin American contributions to post-colonial
thinking. Recently, Latin American scholars (e.g. Ibarra-Colado, 2006; Mignolo, 2001) have
pondered the role of the region in contributing to a post-colonial literature that emanates largely
from the South Asian (e.g. Guha, 1994; Spivak, 1993) and Orientalist (e.g. Said, 1978) experiences.
While a long history of thought about identity and the post-colonial situation exists in Latin
America, these perspectives await a stronger voice in the international literature. Contrasting with
the thesis of a falsification of a Latin America where European culture has been naturalized,
as some have noted previously (Ibarra-Colado, 2006), I show that while mimicry is important in
Brazil, the hybrid forms it takes demonstrate creativity and agency by local actors. As some
scholars have pointed out (Mignolo, 2001), Iberian colonialism left epistemic and cultural lega-
cies distinct from later Enlightenment colonialism, emphasizing religious notions of desire and
passion over race and exclusion, for example. As we have seen in the case of anthropophagy, this
led to a complex appropriation and digestion of European values and identities. Such complexity
reinforces post-colonial discussions, such as those of hybridity (e.g. Bhabha, 1994; Frenkel and
Shenhav, 2006).
Islam 175
Finally, this article treats anthropophagy as both historically situated and embedded in the
Brazilian reality, and as addressing problems central in social scientific thinking more generally.
This combination of particular and universal, the singular trope with allegorical generality, serves
as an epistemic model consistent with the anthropophagic ethic itself. It is an ethic that Brazil can
offer to the theoretical table, a cordial offering to be consumed as it has itself consumed.
Notes
I would like to thank the three reviewers and special issue editor for their useful and detailed comments on
this article.
1 In the current article, I use the terms cannibalistic and anthropophagic synonymously, following cur-
rent literature in the area (Ferreira, 2002a, 2002b). Cannibalism has, at times, been used to refer to the
physical act of consumption, while anthropophagy has referred to the symbolic act. However, as Ferreira
points out, and as I argue in the article, physical cannibalism is most significant in its symbolic and
ritualistic aspect, and its symbolic use functions specifically because of the reference to physicality. Thus,
the two terms are impossible to completely tease apart. In addition, as Ferreira (2002a, 2002b) argues,
Brazilian media and artistic uses of the terms have used the two interchangeably, suggesting that such use
is most consistent with the cultural import of the concept.
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Biography
Gazi Islam is Associate Professor of Business Administration at Insper Institute of Education and
Research, where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Leadership and Organizational
Behavior, Negotiations, and International Management. He completed his PhD in Organizational
Behavior at Tulane University, where his research focused on organizational identity, voice, and
power relations. His current research interests include the organizational antecedents and conse-
quences of identity, and the relations between identity, group dynamics and the production of
group and organizational cultures. In addition, he attempts to link identity and organizational
culture to wider issues of national culture, ideology, and civil society. Address: Associate Professor
of Business Administration, Insper Institute for Education and Research, 300 Rua Quat, So
Paulo SP 04516-000, Brazil. Email: gislamster@gmail.com

Can The Subaltern Eat - Gazi Islam

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The origin of cannibalism is the origin of culture. (Sahlins 1983: 72)

The metaphor of anthropophagy

Three (and a half) moments of Brazilian anthropophagy

Moment one: indigenous anthropophagy

Moment two: the modernist anthropophage

Moment three: the 1960s anthropophage

And a halfthe organizational anthropophage

Perhaps by framing anthropophagy as equivalent to selectivity, rather than as a fundamental

a kind of double consciousness (DuBois, 2003), in which consciousness is displaced and

The problematic of authenticity

The problematic of corporeality

Bohannan, Laura, (1966) Shakespeare in the Bush, Natural History Aug/Sept.

Merklinger, Martina (2001) S me Interessa o que no meu: Elementos Antropofgicos no Bienal do So

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