Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and SexualityUniversity of Wisconsin Pres, 2006 - 256 páginas Objects of fear and fascination, cannibals have long signified an elemental "otherness," an existence outside the bounds of normalcy. In the American imagination, the figure of the cannibal has evolved tellingly over time, as Jeff Berglund shows in this study encompassing a strikingly eclectic collection of cultural, literary, and cinematic texts. Cannibal Fictions brings together two discrete periods in U.S. history: the years between the Civil War and World War I, the high-water mark in America's imperial presence, and the post-Vietnam era, when the nation was beginning to seriously question its own global agenda. Berglund shows how P. T. Barnum, in a traveling exhibit featuring so-called "Fiji cannibals," served up an alien "other" for popular consumption, while Edgar Rice Burroughs in his Tarzan of the Apes series tapped into similar anxieties about the eruption of foreign elements into a homogeneous culture. Turning to the last decades of the twentieth century, Berglund considers how treatments of cannibalism variously perpetuated or subverted racist, sexist, and homophobic ideologies rooted in earlier times. Fannie Flagg's novel Fried Green Tomatoes invokes cannibalism to new effect, offering an explicit critique of racial, gender, and sexual politics (an element to a large extent suppressed in the movie adaptation). Recurring motifs in contemporary Native American writing suggest how Western expansion has, cannibalistically, laid the seeds of its own destruction. And James Dobson's recent efforts to link the pro-life agenda to allegations of cannibalism in China testify still further to the currency and pervasiveness of this powerful trope. By highlighting practices that preclude the many from becoming one, these representations of cannibalism, Berglund argues, call into question the comforting national narrative of e pluribus unum. |
Contenido
Introduction | 3 |
Colonial Performances | 27 |
Postcolonial Transformations | 103 |
Abortion Politics Focus on the Family andUS Feminists in Beijing | 171 |
Notes | 189 |
Bibliography | 209 |
227 | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and ... Jeff Berglund Vista previa limitada - 2006 |
Cannibal Fictions: American Explorations of Colonialism, Race, Gender, and ... Jeff Berglund Vista de fragmentos - 2006 |
Términos y frases comunes
African American Almanac American Indian Anna Lee Walters Apes barbaric Barnum Beaufrey become behavior Bennett body Burroughs Cannibal Fictions cannibalistic captives chapter characters Christian civilization claims colonial critical critique Crum pamphlet cultural Dahmer dead discourse display Dobson Eating Edgar Rice Burroughs edited English book explains feminists Fiji Cannibals Fijians film Flagg flesh Focus Frank Bennett Fried Green Tomatoes Gardenhire Gardenhire's gender George George Stringer Gerald Vizenor Ghost Dance Ghost Singer homosexuality Hopi human identity Idgie indigenous interest Jane Jon Avnet killed lesbian Leslie Marmon Leslie Marmon Silko literary living Mbongans missionaries movie murder museum narrative Native American Navajo nibalism novel P. T. Barnum's political race racial readers reading rhetoric Ruth savage says scene secret sexuality Silko Sipsey social story subject of cannibalism suggests Tarzan Thokambau tion treaty tribal tribe Trigg uncanny University Press Vizenor Walters Western women writing York