At a Global Dialogue meeting Clarissa introduced me us to Oswaldo de Andrade’s Cannibal Manifesto. This is one of those rare documents we should all read. The Manifesto Antropófago dates from 1928 and celebrates Brazilian remediation (such a stuffy word compared to “cannibalism”) of other literatures. The third line, which is in English in the orginal, captures the idea:
Tupi or not tupi that is the question.
The Tupi were an indigenous people of Brazil who were supposed to have ritually eaten their enemies. Not to belabor the point, but the joke eats Shakespeare and English into a modernist manifesto simultaneously rejects Western patterns. The manifesto starts with:
Only Cannibalism unites us. Socially. Economically. Philosophically.
The unique law of the world. The disguised expression of all individualisms, all collectivisms. Of all religions. Of all peace treaties.
It could be the law of blogging that eats the web or the law of social media that eat their versions. Remediation with teeth.