My blog is going to get beat up at school for its name

What is an anthropophagite? I was sitting in a class this summer on Latin American female artists and the word and I grabbed for each other. It knew I needed a philosophy-box into which I could cram experiences and vocabulary and people. I like things to connect. It knew I could provide it with some good PR. So, let me make good on my promise and give a favorable definition:

(n): a person who eats human flesh; a cannibal

In the 1920s, a group of artists, writers and other avant-garde peeps took the European classification of Brazilians as "cannibals" and did the most fierce and classy thing that can be done with a derogatory word: they turned it on its head. The re-claimed the word and made it into a philosophy. The movement came to describe the act of taking in one's influences, experiences, surroundings, digesting them, and then creating a collage-like world as a response.

An overview of the "anti-imperialist" movement with which Brazilians took back the name "cannibal" for themselves and made it part of their emerging national identity: HERE

In 1928, from Sao Paulo, Oswald de Andrade wrote the Anthropophagite Manifesto. From his prose, I take two lessons for my pre-departure thinking/consumption:

1. "Before the Portuguese discovered Brazil, Brazil had discovered happiness" This is translated according to my dictionary as: "Before Rachel discovered Brazil, Brazil knew of its own existence/importance/happiness" I'm not discovering a place, I'm discovering what it's like to be me in that place.

2. I want to take in my surroundings (that includes the sounds and smells and weird looks I get as much as the literature and philosophy and language) and digest it, make some judgements, create something as a way to respond, and then be prepared to be dead wrong.

Two of Tarsila do Amaral's paintings (above) are associated with the movement. I want to blow them both up to poster size and let my host family think what they want.