Lance Rhoades
The Spectre and Spectacle of Cannibalism in Consumerist Society
Attempting to explain the insistence of the image of the cannibal in contemporary popular culture, the author presents cannibalism as a symbolic practice perfectly representative of a proliferation of the symbolic competition on the contemporary marketplace and of other forms of ritualised interaction, where each individual represents a subjectivity that, by its nature, tends toward its own limitless expansion through the absorption of difference and exteriority. The first section of the paper explores the idea and nature of cannibalism. and various ways in which it translates into the structure of consumerist society. The second section looks at recent examples from popular entertainment in which depictions of cannibalism reveal cannibalistic mechanisms at work in commodity production and consumption.
Download files
Citation rules
No. 7 (2003)
Published:
10.31261/errgo
English
Język Polski