Our Cannibals, OurselvesWhy does Western culture remain fascinated with and saturated by cannibalism? Moving from the idea of the dangerous Other, Priscilla L. Walton's Our Cannibals, Ourselves shows us how modern-day cannibalism has been recaptured as in the vampire story, resurrected into the human blood stream, and mutated into the theory of germs through AIDS, Ebola, and the like. At the same time, it has expanded to encompass the workings of entire economic systems (such as in "consumer cannnibalism"). Our Cannibals, Ourselves is an interdisciplinary study of cannibalism in contemporary culture. It demonstrates how what we take for today's ordinary culture is imaginatively and historically rooted in very powerful processes of the encounter between our own and different, often "threatening," cultures from around the world. Walton shows that the taboo on cannibalism is heavily reinforced only partly out of fear of cannibals themselves; instead, cannibalism is evoked in order to use fear for other purposes, including the sale of fear entertainment. Ranging from literature to popular journalism, film, television, and discourses on disease, Our Cannibals, Ourselves provides an all-encompassing, insightful meditation on what happens to popular culture when it goes global. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Donner Party of Fifty | 9 |
The Body Politic | 35 |
Mad Cow Disease | 85 |
Diet Disorders | 105 |
If You Love Someone Hunt Them Down and Kill Them | 121 |
Cannibal Culture | 141 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
African American AIDS animals anorexia anthropology anthropophagy antibodies appeared argues becomes begins behavior blood body boys brain cannibalism cannibalistic chapter Clarice coli color constructions consume consumption contagion contemporary Cook corpses Crusoe cultural dead death depicts devour Diana discovered discussed Donner Dracula eaten eating disorders Eating Raoul Ebola epidemic fear feed fever fiction fictive film flesh-eating Fore Gajdusek germ Heart of Darkness homosexuality Hot Zone human flesh hunger imperialist infected island killed Kinshasa Highway Klitzman kuru later Lecter live mad cow disease meat metaphor murder narratives natives nibalism novel offers organs outbreak Papua New Guinea plague postmodern practices Rampton and Stauber Rocky Horror Salem's Lot scientists scrapie self-cannibalization serial killer sexual shift Soylent Green spread story strange suggests survive survivors threat throughout tion transubstantiation turn twentieth century vaccination vampire various victims virus Western women York young