{"id":647,"date":"2009-10-24T01:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T05:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/?p=647"},"modified":"2009-10-24T01:44:29","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T05:44:29","slug":"embrace-your-inner-cannibal-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-eat-dead-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/archives\/647","title":{"rendered":"Embrace Your Inner Cannibal! or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Eat Dead People"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my optional blog post make up extravaganza, (one post can be an extravaganza), I am going to look forward to The Road<\/em> while also looking back (a smidge) at Parable of the Sower<\/em>. \u00a0I actually read the entirety of The Road<\/em> last night, but there shouldn\u2019t be any spoilers in here.<\/p>\n

I want to examine cannibalism in these two novels, and as a theme overall.\u00a0 Cannibalism\u00a0 is the big no-go of the post-apocalyptic good guys. Lauren is very matter of fact about what she\u00a0 is willing to do to survive.\u00a0 She will kill others who threaten her own existence.\u00a0 But she won\u2019t\u00a0 eat anybody.\u00a0 Likewise, the father of The Road<\/em> promises his son that no matter what, they won\u2019t\u00a0 eat any of their fellow human beings. (So, no, you probably <\/em>won\u2019t get to see Viggo Mortensen eat\u00a0 anybody in theaters this Thanksgiving.) Why, amidst all the moral ambiguity and nihilistic\u00a0 destruction of these wastelands, are our beloved protagonists refusing to eat the supporting cast?\u00a0 Looking from a purely amoral standpoint, and strictly as a matter of survival, cannibalism may be seen as justifiable . \u00a0But it is one of the few practices that is a near universal cultural taboo.\u00a0 And even in the dire situations the protagonists find themselves in, it is one taboo they are unwilling to break and which remains to them unbroken by the onset of dystopia.<\/p>\n

I think this has more to do with psychology than it does with social mores.\u00a0 Significant to this idea is the concept of the abject<\/em>, a term, that in literary criticism, is closely related to Freud\u2019s uncanny.\u00a0 Critic Julia Kristeva discusses the \u201cabject\u201d in her 1982 book Powers of Horror<\/em>.\u00a0 She cites the human corpse as essentially the ultimate source of abjection. To crib from a Wikipedia paraphrase of the essay, which I don\u2019t have on hand: \u201cTo confront a corpse of one that we recognize as human, something that should<\/em> be alive but isn’t, is to confront the reality that we are capable of existing in the same state, our own mortality.\u201d\u00a0 And this is from merely encountering or viewing a corpse.\u00a0 Kristeva further characterizes the abject as those things which we cast out, and separate from ourselves, (psychically or literally) in order to create a secure psychological identity.\u00a0 To consume the abject then, to take in the abject, is to invite total psychological crisis and the dissolution of identity, potentially resulting in insanity.\u00a0 In this regard cannibalism is the ultimate confrontation with abjection and an acute risk for psychological breakdown.\u00a0 So maybe there is more to not eating dead people than setting a good example for your kid.<\/p>\n

(Possibly TO BE CONTINUED next week)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my optional blog post make up extravaganza, (one post can be an extravaganza), I am going to look forward to The Road while also looking back (a smidge) at Parable of the Sower. \u00a0I actually read the entirety of The Road last night, but there shouldn\u2019t be any spoilers in here. I want to… Continue reading Embrace Your Inner Cannibal! or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Eat Dead People<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2009\/459\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}