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To Eat or Not to Eat? A Short Path from Vegetarianism to Cannibalism

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Abstract

Subjective reasoning and chemical composition are not the sole arbiters of our systems of alimentary taste; consumption of food is also defined by cultural orientation and other complex value systems. There are those who choose to consume only plant matter to respect the rights of animals, equally there are those who consume pets without a second thought. What informs these choices depends on how we understand our own place in the world, the values we attribute to the things that surrounds us, the relationships we maintain with our fellow beings and those with living things in general. It is in the space between those variable definitions that we find food taboos and the complex stories which entwine around them. Above all else comes cannibalism, present today not only as a hypothetical act in which only the wildest savages could take part but also as the basis of varying forms of current communication. Cannibalism is at work in advertising and in television programs, in modern rituals and in unconventional marketing campaigns. In this paper we will attempt to explain its meaning in connection with the more general way of how to catalogue and understand the consumption of food.

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Notes

  1. This is a suggestion from Paolo Fabbri (personal communication).

  2. Reference: Wikipedia (Italian page), my translation.

  3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYdZPwJfvxI.

  4. For a discussion of Calvino's work from the point of view of taste aesthetics, cf. Perullo [22].

  5. If the bodies shown in the images appear ugly, however, it is only to show the reader the adverse consequences of a carnivorous diet (obesity, impotence, etc.) through a strategy of manipulation based on threat [9].

  6. In the first episode of the first season, Dexter abandons a half eaten sandwich in his car and signifies his next murder by saying "I’m hungry for something different now”.

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  1. Dipartimento Culture e Società, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze ed. 15, 90128, Palermo, Italy

    Alice Giannitrapani

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  1. Alice Giannitrapani
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Correspondence to Alice Giannitrapani.

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Giannitrapani, A. To Eat or Not to Eat? A Short Path from Vegetarianism to Cannibalism. Int J Semiot Law 31, 531–560 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-018-9570-0

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