The contemporary technized barbarian

submerged rivers of anthropophagy

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to build a brief archaeological analysis of the notion of Brazilian modernist anthropophagy, based on the methodology of Michel Foucault. We depart from the publication of Oswald de Andrade's manifesto in 1928, considering its redefinition in tropicalism in the late 1960s until it reached the contemporary. The archaeological path of anthropophagic thinking in the Brazilian cultural field demonstrates different appropriations, sometimes serving the interests of capital, in the form of an uncritical flexible subjectivity, as pointed out by Suely Rolnik. The contemporary crisis of the Anthropocene, aggravated by the covid 19 pandemic, created, however, new conditions of listening and visibility for the indigenous discourse, giving new meaning to the figure of the technized barbarian alluded to by Oswald in his manifesto. The space for the ontologies of indigenous matrix resonates with a popular mixed Brazilianity of the quilombola nuclei, of non-domesticated forms of existence, which are placed as political resistance, even if this occurs on the increase of violence against these populations. We try to think about the interdiscursive presence of anthropophagy in these practices and discourses of resistance, including from past errors.