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- Title
Humboldt and the Monkeys: On the Friend-Food Distinction.
- Authors
Buhanan, Kurt
- Abstract
In this essay, I argue that the image of cannibalism in Alexander von Humboldt's Personal Narrative operates as a multistable image, an ideologically charged biopicture. The argument proceeds through three stages: first, I contextualize the cannibal as a stock image in Western thought, one that Humboldt inherits even before his journey to South America. Second, I examine this over-determined image, a veritable fixation in the European imaginary, against the claim advanced in recent Humboldt scholarship that he 'took the novel step' of asking the cannibals to speak for themselves. Finally, I propose a reading of Humboldt's image of cannibalism as a politically charged picture of social relations, which simultaneously resists and reproduces the ideologically structured representation of indigenous peoples that Humboldt attempts to subvert.
- Subjects
HUMBOLDT, Alexander von, 1769-1859; CANNIBALISM; TRAVEL writing; SOUTH America description &; travel; CANNIBALS; INTERPERSONAL relations; IDEOLOGY
- Publication
German Quarterly, 2014, Vol 87, Issue 4, p480
- ISSN
0016-8831
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/gequ.10220