In “Dead Capital,” Diana Taylor references Oswald de Andrade’s notion of cultual cannibalism, which asserts “that cultures remain strong by eating and digesting others” (Taylor 2). The metaphor of cannibalism is indeed an illuminating one, if a bit unsettling, in how it succinctly figures incorporated processes of hybridity, (re)appropriation, and consumption as cultural phenomena. The manifesto is a break from more traditional theoretical writing, and is at once playful and urgent.

In his book Canibalia, Carlos A. Jáuregui explores culture and consumption in Latin America through the lens of cannibalism. The book draws from the spirit of de Andrade’s Manifesto to construct various critiques capitalism and consumer culture by reading the body as the site of consumption. Jáuregui writes that the Manifesto “cancela el debate vanguardista sobre la brasilidade versus las influencias estéticas europeas y hace del canibalismo un tropo modélico de apropiación cultural” (Jáuregui 38). His cogent analysis of de Andrade’s text gives way to a book project that is worth discussing, if time allows. He maintains that “En lugar de rechazar la cultura y las tendencias artísticas europeas por extrañas, Andrade proponía devorarlas, aventurando una exitosa correspondencia analógica entre el rito caníbal y los diversos procesos de producción, circulación y apropiación cultural” (Jáuregui 39). In a sentence, the Manifesto can be summed thusly: “El canibalismo en Andrade alude a la erótica, a la insolencia del parricida, a la ausencia de propiedad privada y al desafío discursivo de la moral, la monogamia, el catolicismo y la autoridad de las instituciones culturales” (Jáuregui 40).

To me, the Manifesto occupies the queer intersection between Marxist theory and decolonial theory, or as Júaregui calls it, “marxismo antropofágico” (ibid). Like Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, it is not meant to be read as a complete, cohesive text, but rather as a challenge that can inspire future action, analysis, and scholarship. Therefore, as Diana Taylor notes, reflecting on the performance Bom Retiro 958 metros, “What started as a Cannibalist Manifesto written as a critique of colonialism… now turns into a critique of self-consuming capitalism” (Taylor 19). We can read the Cannibalist Manifesto as a jumping-off point, as a shattering of binary figurations of colonizer/colonized. How might we embody the demands of this manifesto through our own scholarship?