Lindenbaum Shirley
Department of Anthropology, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, NY 10016-4309, USA.
Folia Neuropathol. 2009;47(2):138-44.
This essay discusses the image and practice of cannibalism in a wide range of studies. It also presents the anthropological research on kuru which led to the proposal that cannibalism had enabled transmission of the infectious agent, as well as doubts about the hypothesis, and the assertion by some that cannibalism as a socially approved custom did not exist. The figure of the cannibal as an icon of primitivism took form in the encounter between Europe and the Americas. Cannibalism was to become the prime signifier of "barbarism" for a language of essentialized difference that would harden into the negative racism of the nineteenth century. Anthropological and medical research now challenge the derogatory image of the cannibal as we learn more about the many past consumers of human flesh, including ourselves.
本文在广泛的研究中探讨了同类相食的形象与行为。文中还介绍了关于库鲁病的人类学研究，该研究提出同类相食可能是传染病原体传播的途径，同时也提及了对这一假说的质疑，以及一些人认为不存在作为社会认可习俗的同类相食现象的观点。食人族作为原始主义象征的形象形成于欧洲与美洲的相遇之时。同类相食成为了一种本质化差异语言中“野蛮”的主要标志，这种语言后来演变成了19世纪的负面种族主义。随着我们对包括我们自己在内的众多过去的人肉食用者有了更多了解，人类学和医学研究如今对食人族的贬损形象提出了挑战。
