Arens’ book came as a major blow to 20th century
anthropology and notions of human culture and origins. Even those who rejected
it as a false proposition could not free themselves from an unsettling perspective the book had laden on their previously established notions of humanity. As the title suggests, the ‘myth’ of man-eating was exposed and argued in forceful terms. The ethno-historical ‘reality’ of ‘cannibalism’, an accepted fact and figure of speech, used with relatively little thought to the phenomenon itself, has been fully challenged. Arens’ book serves to unsettle modern conceptions of human origins and bestiality.
The premise of the book states: ‘Recourse to cannibalism under survival conditions or as a rare instance of antisocial behaviour is not denied for any culture. But whenever it occurs this is considered a regrettable act rather than custom’ (p9), making clear from the beginning that it does not reject acts of ritual or symbolic cannibalism, but rather refutes the idea as a practised reality in some ‘primitive’ cultures, where, as early and some modern
anthropological and travel documents reveal, it has been practised as a norm and a preference. Not to mention the horrendous descriptions of unbridled lust, savagery, incest and several other taboos, which accompany even a casual mention of the word.
In a compartmentalized form, the book deals with the subject of cannibalism from antiquity to modern era. It may not be counted as a useful document in
anthropology; the subject of the book ranges from literature and cinematic representation of the theme to psychological and social attitudes towards it to a structural and historical study of the topic. Cannibalism has been studied from the perceiver's (European's) perspective, to accredit how their documentation of a phenomenon so widely spread has been come across to them through a host of linguistic, social, symbolic and cultural barriers. It maintains how any amount of 'cannibalistic' spectacle, seen outside of its cultural milieu, or prior to a proper understanding of its society of performance, is often only perceived wrongly than being wrong in itself.
The weakness in Herodotus' account is evident. But one is astonished at the same amount of ethnocentrism displayed by the voyagers of early 'Renaissance' exploration, and the subsequent bearers of colonialism after them. From Columbus (the beginner of the 'cannibal' complex) to Hans Staden, Vespucci and the like, accounts of cannibalism have not only been a desired tool for representing the we/they difference, but their resonant similarity have greatly decreased the amount of credibility they pose. Arens sites a few examples of cannibal horror from early texts on colonialism to find how even the circumstances and situations of the incidents have been strikingly similar in each of them (Hans Staden's encounter with the cannibals as a prisoner, and the spectacle of dismembering limbs and boiling pots is equally resonant of a similar fate met by many French and English travellers of the 16th and 17th centuries!). Moreover, there stands no chance of these travellers finding means to interpret and communicate in the natives' language in just about two months (the usual time of stay). Cultural barrier comes next. In an incident of 'symbolic cannibalism' quoted by Arens, where the observer was struck by a woman eating ashes of her child while in actual fact she was only substituting ash for the child, one is reminded of the Christian Eucharist Lestringant so vividly talks about. It is worthwhile quoting him with reference to Arens' stance on symbolic acts of cannibalism: 'In our own culture, at the very least, theophagy is the religious substratum of anthropophagy… It is this that makes the cannibalism of the Cannibal at once unacceptable and comprehensible. Unacceptable, because there is no further need for sacrificial anthropophagy
… comprehensible, because of the striking sin the Eucharist symbol and the actual anthropological rituals…' (1997, p9).
Arens' study of the modern-age cannibalism is mostly through its representation in film and literature. Actual accounts of cannibalism have either not been mentioned (he seems to have no interest in exceptions), or duly marginalized. The 'figurative reconstructions' of the image in film and culture are symbolic of how cannibalism ought to be taken as a metaphor for cultural strains run through a series of complex inter-related elements, which any 'developed' society, even those of the 'primitives' (as Mary Douglas and Arens' himself has shown to have complicated set of tools for themselves) is capable of maintaining.
As mentioned earlier, no anthropological incident is sited with due credibility. Arens seems to have lost any confidence in modern anthropology, which he dismisses as too over-stated and optimistic. Human nature, he believes, is a complex phenomenon, similar to cannibalism, which cannot be described in sweeping statements and universalized codes. Anthropologists like Marvin Harris and Eli Sagan (who is more of a psychologist) have been dishevelled in this narrative of about two hundred pages. Although anthropology may prove contrary evidences, Arens should be acknowledged for recognizing a complex series of barriers which ought to find consideration before judging any anthropological data.