Of Cannibals and Witches: Monstrosity and Capitalism at the Onset of Colonial Visual Culture
Abstract
This article provides preliminary insight into the creation of colonial visual culture. Using visual examples, the author shows how the encounter between European and Amerindian was, at first, apparently deprived of moral judgement, later being increasingly signified through moral and physical monstrosity, especially the female body, which served as an apparatus to assure colonial dominion. Looking mostly at the works of Liègeois artist Theodor de Bry, the author shows how increasing female protagonism may have helped to coin a proper visual culture that mirrored the development of productive force in early capitalism. Assuming that the European colonizer in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was still highly informed by Medieval culture, the author quickly retraces how the New World was imagined through cartography, following to the first depictions of the Amerindian and, finally, focusing on de Bry’s work and an argument on capitalism and how visual culture may help us understand its process.
Keywords
cannibalism; hexes; monstrosity; capitalism; Theodor de Bry; Brazilian visual culture
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University of Antwerp Netherlands
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4662-5009
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1988, Dr. Racy holds a B.A. in Social Sciences and in Philosophy. He was awarded his Ph.D. in Social Sciences in 2018 by the University of Antwerp, funded by the Ministry of Education of Brazil. His research interest is the intersection of historical materialism, visual culture, social anthropology, and the philosophy of social sciences. He is currently preparing a post-doc proposal on the role of images in contemporary culture, aiming to explore several cases, from analog to digital culture, from photography to ethnographic cinema, and from literature to cinematic adaptation. His latest research focused on the relation between the city, photography, and modernity, approached in two distinct 19th century cases: the works of Edmond Fierlants in Antwerp and of Militão Augusto de Azevedo in São Paulo. The study invites important considerations on the role of visual technology in the building of meaning for the social world, specifically in a materialist perspective. The study articulates the relation between economy and culture, knowledge, and power.
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