Er(r)go, (paste the English text) Wojciech Kalaga

Jacek Mydla

Aquinas, Caliban and Friday at a cannibalistic bonfire? The vagaries of the theology of anti-cannibalism.

The essay sets out to explore the ideological dispute over cannibalism during the Wars of Religion in its contemporary academic treatment. A special focus of interest is on the theological and metaphysical involvement of the contemporary discourse of cannibalism, represented here by two recent publications: Cannibals by Frank Lestringant (1994) and Cannibalism and The Colonial World (1995), a collection of essays edited by Francis Barker, Peter Hume, and Margaret Iversen. A glance at the recent discourse of cannibalism makes it possible to label it “Protestant" as opposed to “Catholic". References to the religious dispute over transubstantiation, and linguistic reformulations of the theological dilemmas do little justice to the metaphysical traditions on which the Catholic dogma originally rested. The much-discussed imputed allegorisation and symbolisation of the Eucharist corresponds to the allegorisation and symbolisation of the cannibal, characteristic of the colonial experience and its cultural appropriation in the Western world, is itself ridden with ambiguities. revealed in attitudes that scholars display towards religious controversies.

Marta Zając

Meatology

The starting point of these refeclions is the concept of the ,,metaphysics of meat". (developed in an essay by Jolanta Brach-Czaina). Metaphysics of meal draws attention to a certain law of man's existence, which says once you eat, you are also eaten, and thus defines life as .,the cannibals' feast": the process of exchange when body is flesh as much as meat. One can assume then the affinity between eating and other forms of relating ourselves to others, like the act of love and the act of speech (verbal exchange), the affinity whose visible sign is the mouth with its double function of production and consumption. The article points to the traps of individualism, which excludes one from the processes of exchange and, literally or metaphsically. makes one keep one's mouth shut. In meatlogy. (the form of logos whose ground is the metaphysics of meat) the words we utter are treated only as food for other words. their value is purely nutritional. The literary examples for the, failed ol' successful, acts of consumption as an expression of love range from the Marquis de Sade to Lewis Carroll and Patrick Suskind.

Lance Rhoades

The Spectre and Spectacle of Cannibalism in Consumerist Society

Attempting to explain the insistence of the image of the cannibal in contemporary popular culture, the author presents cannibalism as a symbolic practice perfectly representative of a proliferation of the symbolic competition on the contemporary marketplace and of other forms of ritualised interaction, where each individual represents a subjectivity that, by its nature, tends toward its own limitless expansion through the absorption of difference and exteriority. The first section of the paper explores the idea and nature of cannibalism. and various ways in which it translates into the structure of consumerist society. The second section looks at recent examples from popular entertainment in which depictions of cannibalism reveal cannibalistic mechanisms at work in commodity production and consumption.

Katarzyna Ancuta

The Things We Do For Love. Jeffrey Dahmer and Cannibal Love Culture

The article explores the romantic face of cannibalism. where the act of devouring human flesh is deconstructed as the ultimate expression of love. It focuses on the issue of love cannibalism and the romanticised myth of the loving cannibal. which has been functioning as a successful cultural metaphor since the 1990s. The article sets love cannibalism in the broader context of necrophilia, understood both in terms of a sexual disorder and a morbid fascination with the subject of love in death, Finally, it compares the romantic representation of cannibalism in contemporary texts to the similarly romantic depiction of AIDS, the infection which is treated as equivalent with taking control of the lover's body. The core of the article is the discussion of two criminal cases – Jeffrey Dahmer's and Issei Sagawa's -which serve to illustrate the relationship between love cannibalism and necrophilia. The argument is further expanded to examine various representations of necrophilia and love cannibalism in contemporary literature and film.

Kathryn Radford

Reading Literary Cannibalism through Specific Body Parts

This article outlines how the modem cannibal myth functions on the basis of prior references in Western art and literature (mythemes). By tracing the importance of the heart and brain plus the eating thereof. the author points up a semantic shift from 'sacred heart' to 'secular brain'. The cannibal reappears at the body part which represents the ultimate; in other words, ultimate act and ultimate body part, the locus of many contemporary societal preoccupations (Kuru. CJT, transplants). The article refers specifically to the trilogy of Thomas Harris. in particular, Hannibal. This is an extract of a broader study of the real act of cannibalism in twentieth-century Western literature.

Johann van Wyk

Killing a Story: The Discourse of Cannibalism in the History and Literature of the Basotho

This essay explores the theme of cannibalism in the historical and literary textsrelating to the Basotho. It points to the link between cannibalism and the historical period the lifaqane. which was an heroic epoch gone out of control. It show how the repression of cannibalism is inscribed in the founding moment of the Basotho nation. Therefore how it is linked to Basotho identity. Another aspect explored is the link between cannibalism and the supernatural (the use of human flesh in medicine and ritual). but also how cannibalism was used as a literary motif by the SeSotho within the contesting ideologies of traditional SeSotho world views and Christianity. Itfurther touches on the problem of the historicity and factuality of cannibalism. as well as its link to the mouth as performative instrument in story telling.

Helen Day

Modest proposals and love supreme: Metaphorical, literal and virtual cannibalism in capitalist society

Since Swift's notorious “A Modest Proposal" of the eighteenth century, cultural texts have used the images and symbolism of cainnibalism to interrogate the behaviour and consequences of capitalism. Swift's political pamphlet and its suggestion that the poor sell their babies to the prosperous landowners as luxury food. takes human relationships under capitalism to a logical conclusion where man becomes a dehumanised economic saleable commodity. The nineteen seventies' film Soylent Green and an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer both reveal how the dehumanisation of mass production provide for the construction of cannibalism. With films of the 1980's such as Society and Eat the Rich the focus moves from poverty to the excessive behaviour of the rich. In a society where everyone wants more and more one can only stay on top by consuming everyone else. In his X-rated video Rock DJ. Robbie Williams uses footage of his own literal cannibalisation to express his ambiguity about both the use of his image and the music industry in general. Robbie Williams' rise to fame has transformed him into a floating signifier detached from his own body, which is shown violently yet desirably decomposing. Life inside the velvet cage of consumerism means making choices and allegiance, which necessarily involve the ingestion of one group by another.

Stephen Tapscott

Bite me! Cannibalism and the Uses of Translation

In his essay Stephen Tapscott claims that a postmodern approach to modernist texts can be described as cannibalistic. As an example of that kind of approach he cites the literary history of Latin America and its experience of colonialism as well as postcolonialism. Also, he focuses on the postcolonial discourse present in Columbus' s diaries. Then Tapscott presents the evaluation of the Shakespearean metaphor of Caliban and its reception in South America. Finally, he goes on to discuss the openly cannibalistic poetry of Pablo Neruda. He argues that Latin American postmodemism is cannibalistic in at least two ways: first. in the sense that it derives from the rich tradition of moral and political (not necessarily physical) cannibalism, and secondly, that it cannibalises the very postcolonial discourse forced on America in the times of European domination. The conclusion is that postmodemism (including the Latin American postmodemism) cannibalises the cannibalised.

Sławomir Masłoń

Having Eaten One's Ears, ..

By means of developing some hints encountered in the works of Roland Barthes and Jean-Luc Nancy, the text tries to displace the traditional notions concerning validation of the site of meaning production when it comes to discussing the issue of concert hall vs. popular music. What is left out in both supportive or denigrating arguments is always the body as the site of pre-mimetic musical production and also as the place of fruitful material resistance (body vs. instrument). It is claimed that only music understood as 'bodily' practice, and not as meaning, can realise historically the act of communication implied in Adorno's understanding of promesse du bonheur as productive contradiction of human freedom.

A brief description of the contents in English

This essay explains the notion of liberature, lists its major representatives and provides a convincing rationale for its emergence.

This brief essay, inspired by Stanisław Sojka's Fracha, is concerned with the issues of self-knowledge, identity and locality.

In this review essay Gutorow takes a closer look at four different books concerned with deconstruction to compare the ways various authors approach Derrida's views.

This essay offers an in-depth discussion of Eli Sagan's Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural form.

A Polish translation of an excerpt from Michel de Montaigne's "Essays" (Book 1, chapter 31, 1588).

Marcin Sarnek's Polish translation of an excerpt from Eli Sagan's "Human Aggression and Cultural Form" (chapter 9, 1588).

Jacek Mydla's review of "Cannibalism and the Colonial World," edited by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme and Margaret Iversen (1998).

Adam Przystolik's review of "Boys Don't Cry? Rethinking Narratives of Masculinity and Emotion in the US," edited by Milette Shamir and Jennifer Travis (2002).

Ewa Łukaszyk's review of "The Reckless Mind. Intellectuals in Politics" by Mark Lilla (2001).

Critical notes on books

Summaries of the feature texts of the issue.

colophon