Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

Cannibalism is an important area to study, Schutt asserts, because of the way in which it has been historically used to justify acts of violence. In Chapter 9, Schutt delvers into the history of the first European expeditions to the Americas by Christopher Columbus. Across these voyages, Columbus’s experiences with the Indigenous peoples—and particularly with the Carib people—were documented by men such as Diego Álvarez Chanca. In these documented accounts, the Carib people were portrayed as violent cannibals. They were not Christian and, importantly, they were presented as “primitive” (246) due to their apparent tendency to consume human flesh. The writing of people like Chanca became an important foundation for European justifications for the violent colonialism which followed. The “greatest act of genocide in recorded history” (107), Schutt suggests, is inextricably linked to the way in which the people suffering from the genocide were presented as cannibals. This accusation became the permission needed for the colonizing forces to do whatever they wanted to the Carib people and others. As such, Schutt suggests that discussions of cannibalism are inextricably linked to discussions of colonializing because of this apparently permissive moral effect which was deliberately fostered by the colonizing powers. This linkage reveals how the image of the cannibal was not merely descriptive but instrumental—a rhetorical tool wielded in service of empire.

Schutt is particularly vehement in his assertion because, as he points out, so many of the accusations against peoples such as the Carib were built on shaky evidence. Chanca’s famous description of a “cannibal hut” (109), for example, is secondhand knowledge. Chanca was not a part of the expedition party which found the infamous hut; his secondhand account was taken out of context and blown out of proportion so as to justify terrible acts of violence against the Carib people. Schutt refers to Arens, who asserts that “colonial groups had been guilty of making false accusations of cannibalism against native populations across the globe and throughout history” (118). Evidence of the proliferation of such colonialist claims can be found in story books, for example. Schutt references Marina Warner, who says that such lurid “stories served to reinforce the idea, for readers of all ages, that cannibalism was the stuff of nightmares and naughty children” (188), illustrating how fears of a cannibalistic ‘other’ were used to discipline children. A distinction was created between white Christian colonizers and the so-called primitive Indigenous people. Cannibalism was a clear moral outrage among the European colonizers, Schutt suggests, which helped to “otherize” the Carib people and others, making it permissible to commit violence and exploitation. Cannibalism became a weapon in the hand of the European colonizers, functioning as a propaganda tool to justify any and all violence. In this way, cannibalism becomes both a metaphor and mechanism of control, reinforcing narratives of Western superiority.

As such, Schutt feels an added weight of responsibility to create a sincere, credible, and accurate discussion of cannibalism throughout history. The extended discussion of the interplay between colonialism and cannibalism is a vital part of the novel because is illustrates the ramifications of disingenuous framing of the topic. Cannibalism is a real and a serious subject matter; the colonizing powers took the subject to be serious, but deployed it in a self-serving, insincere way, spreading rumors by word of mouth which metastasized into malicious libels and fueled brutal violence. But, Schutt suggests, this tendency to treat cannibalism as a moral point of no return is both hypocritical and still in use. Later in the book, Schutt describes how many Europeans (from the colonial era and beyond) engaged in practices which may be considered cannibalistic. Furthermore, the “otherization” of non-white people continued into the modern era. Schutt describes modern Western attitudes toward Chinese medicine and 20th-century anthropology as examples of the way in which non-Western cultures are “otherized,” often through the lens of cannibalism. By tracing the rhetorical use of cannibalism from colonial propaganda to modern cultural biases, Schutt invites readers to confront the moral inconsistencies of Western narratives—and examine whose stories get told and why. Schutt’s broader project is not just to study cannibalism, but to expose the systems that have manipulated it for power.