Eating human meat: the fantasy that runs into a deep taboo
Eating human meat: a fantasy that draws mockery, rejection and an old anecdote from journalist Jaime Peñafiel.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Human meat on the barbecue: a taboo that invites mockery
Have you ever fantasized about tasting human meat? The question, asked with all the seriousness of someone specifying "salt, freshly ground pepper and a good rack of ribs," works like a Rorschach test: some respond with outrage, others with laughter, and a few with references to real cases that dismantle the joke. Anthropology calls it endocannibalism or exocannibalism, depending on how closely related you are to the menu; ethics settles it in one sentence: people are not food.
The whole conversation moves within that tension between morbid curiosity and revulsion. Some invoke the carnivorous past of our species, others cite journalist Jaime Peñafiel, who once recounted that he unknowingly ate human meat at the wedding banquet of an African emperor, a story that made it into the pages of La Voz de Galicia. The anecdote, true or not, shows that the taboo does not stop curiosity: it only pushes it toward urban legend.
Social rejection, however, is overwhelming. Responses range from disgust to the easy joke, and hardly anyone takes the nutritional or anthropological argument seriously. There is no need for sarracena outrage either: civilization was built, among other things, on the idea that your neighbor is not a dish. Asking is not a crime. Eating him for dinner is.
Have you ever fantasized about tasting human meat? The question, asked with all the seriousness of someone specifying "salt, freshly ground pepper and a good rack of ribs," works like a Rorschach test: some respond with outrage, others with laughter, and a few with references to real cases that dismantle the joke. Anthropology calls it endocannibalism or exocannibalism, depending on how closely related you are to the menu; ethics settles it in one sentence: people are not food.
The whole conversation moves within that tension between morbid curiosity and revulsion. Some invoke the carnivorous past of our species, others cite journalist Jaime Peñafiel, who once recounted that he unknowingly ate human meat at the wedding banquet of an African emperor, a story that made it into the pages of La Voz de Galicia. The anecdote, true or not, shows that the taboo does not stop curiosity: it only pushes it toward urban legend.
Social rejection, however, is overwhelming. Responses range from disgust to the easy joke, and hardly anyone takes the nutritional or anthropological argument seriously. There is no need for sarracena outrage either: civilization was built, among other things, on the idea that your neighbor is not a dish. Asking is not a crime. Eating him for dinner is.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (45 replies).
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