Anthropophagy, as first conceived by the Brazilian modernist Oswald de Andrade in his 1928 Anthropophagic Manifesto, is an open process of dynamic transformations in which identity is never fixed but always open to transmutations. It produces a reservoir of heterogeneity. The European view of cannibalism is a taboo practice, which names the other as barbaric, heathen and outside of civilisation; a practice in which the other is constituted through a radical and threatening alterity. Against this negation of the other anthropophagy opposes a joyous assimilation of the other without discrimination. "I am only interested in that which is not mine" proclaims the Manifesto. Against the European family centric oedipal complex it offers an edible compote open to all. The anthropophagic strategy involves both a devouring of that which is desirable, in order to assimilate it, as well of that which is detestable so that one may rid oneself of it. This view also echoes C.Lévi-Strauss's seminal observation that: "...the practice of cannibalism, that is, those which regard the absorption of certain individuals possessing dangerous powers as the only means of neutralising, and even turning them to advantage, and those which like our own society, adopt what might be called "anthropoemy"(from the Greek emein, to vomit); faced with the same problem, the latter type of society has chosen the opposite solution, which consists of ejecting dangerous beings from the social body..."(C.Lévi-Strauss (1955), Tristes Tropiques , p.387-8).
In light of this cursory overview, it should become clear why I feel that anthropophagy and anthropoemy , can be linked to current tendencies in net.art, net.activism and the corporate raiding of cyberspace . The cybernetic lexicon itself is replete with a vocabulary of ingestion and digestion: input, number crunching, processing, feedback etc. However, the anthropophagic-cybernetic connection does not rest merely on these lexico-mechanical analogies, but rather on the modality of feeding and eating in an extended cultural sense. The endless appetite of corporate takeovers on the Net is evidently of an anthropoemic nature — keep what you need, vomit out the undesirable. Turbo-capitalism cannot digest otherness and hence turns everything into an image of itself. Murderous absorption, unfriendly takeovers and mindless expulsion. It is against this strategy that one can name the activities of the above named groups as following in the lineage of anthropophagic countertactics. ®™ark and Mongrel's stance is a 'to beat the beast eat the beast approach', whereas the likes of JODI, m9ndfukc, and Mark Napier's Shredder have sunk their code crunching teeth into the info-entrails of the beast. The former can be said to have adopted a macro strategy in which Web-based practices are deployed to counter the broader structures of corporate power and insidious inferential racism. While the latter have transposed cannibal tactics directly into the gastric juices of the Internet. They unleash dynamic devouring machines that eat and shred their way through boundaries, producing a horde of mutated offspring.
