KJCKorea
Journal Central

This study aims to overcome the barbaric and fearful connotations that have been associated with cannibalism, introducing efforts to imagine cannibalism in a new way and exploring the implications of how that kind of trend can provide unique insight from today's non-human perspective. Although the custom of cannibalism has not been proven, it exists in numerous documents through countless rumors. It has been read as a symbol of barbarism, as seen in the subject matter of Chinese national writer Lu Xun and Spanish impressionist painter Goya. However, the cannibalism movement that took place in Brazil in the 1920s cheerfully reversed the concept of cannibalism, which was a symbol of barbarism, and showed a new imagination based on post-colonialism. From this point on, the cannibalism debate enters a new phase. Subsequently, in an extension of this imagination, Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro introduces the idea of ​​'hostile symbiosis' through two books, The Metaphysics of Cannibalism and The Inconstancy of the Indian Soul: The Encounter of Catholics and Cannibals in 16-century Brazil, he introduces a new worldview of indigenous Indians, which states that all beings on earth cannot be connected only through reciprocal symbiosis. He argues that the Tupinamba people's cannibalistic practices can be accepted as an example of a kind of hostile symbiosis. Castro's 'new anthropology' attempts to bring a new twist to the discussion on anthropocentrism. Based on this theory, the cannibal films recently received attention, such as director Luca Guadagnino's <Bones & All> and director Eli Roth's <Green Inferno>, can be read as a counterattack against anthropocentrism. In particular, this paper suggest that such Western discourse can be rich by meeting with the revolutionary interpretation of the concept of eating/being eaten by Donghak, a unique Korean ideology, especially the idea of 'Icheon-Sik Cheon(以天食天).' The heterogeneous nature in Icheon-sikcheon's ideas is similar to Castro's hostile symbiosis. Still, it provides a basis for new criticism in that it develops revolutionary ideas about food that were presented much earlier. This is sufficient as a resource to form an expanded discourse on ecological non-human and the Anthropocene beyond the human-centered view in terms of eating and being eaten and to make the new conceptual definition of cannibalism that began with the Brazilian cannibalism movement that is blooming again today enriched.

Cannibalism, hostile symbiosis, Brazilian cannibalism, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, ‘Icheon-sikcheon(以天食天)’, heterogeneous change process of Ki(Ki-hwa, 氣化).