[Sca-cooks] Fw: Response to Crusades and cannibalism

[Edouard de Bruyerecourt]

Laura C. Minnick wrote:

>
>Well, as I mentioned before, the basic line of thought in the dept when I
>was there was that it was basically a topos- you accuse your enemy of the
>atrocities you are most afraid of, which most disgust you, or conversely,
>are the most secret, ugly urges that you have yourself.
>

>
>
>The Pacific Islander accounts of cannibalism are in a very different vein-
>they are highly ritualized, specific acts (of only specific parts, I might
>add), mostly having to do with ingesting the qualities of the person being
>eaten, be it bravery, loyalty, or garlic. ;-) It is also the most
>humiliating thing you can do to an enemy (and therein is the resemblance to
>Hannibal Lecter- the desire to demonstrate power and control).
>
Plopping on the Anthro hat for a second (well, maybe not. Maybe more
like forensic psychology). It's not just an overt act of domination to
eat another human.  It's a circular thought process that 'it' is okay to
eat because it's not a person, it's 'just an animal.' Likewise, the act
of eating confirms this. And when you attach such behavior (cannablism)
to other tribes, you are, in a reverse thinking, assigning _them_ to
non-human status, much like any wild, man-eating beast. Since it's okay
to kill tigers, lions, jaguars, wolves, sharks, etc that pose a threat
to humans, it's okay to kill 'man-eating' two-legs. And most 'normal'
societies don't eat predators anywhere near as much as prey species.

The character of Dr. Hannibal Lector doesn't see his 'victims' as the
enemy so much as an inferior species to be preyed on like so many sheep.
Fully developed sociopaths don't see other people as like themselves.
They have no emotional or social bond to 'them (as a plural of 'it not
'he' or 'she') and have as little hesitation or remorse as stepping on a
bug.

I just read part of _The Crusades Through Arab Eyes_. The account of
cannablism I read was written by a 'Franj' (Frank, generic European
Crusader to the Arabs) cleric to the Church, apologizing for the act, as
they had taken a remote fortified town with specific goal of capturing
the food stores. When they did, and found the stores empty, and miles
from any other possible source, and near starvation after the march and
seige already, they resorted to opportunistic survival cannablism. Maybe
no so much apologetic as an explaination: We had to for survival, and it
was only the already dead Saracens at that. It was given as a _non-Arab_
source of the story, to rule it out as a dehumanizing PR campaign by
Arabs. Since the actual response by Arabs was capitulating fear rather
than enraged and unified vengence, if it was just an Arab story, it
backfired.

I'll have to go dig it out.  But the story got out around to the other
towns about what the Franj did. Along with that and other acts,
"Crusader" is not a noble word in Arabic like it usually is in English.

--
Edouard, Sire de Bruyerecourt
<bruyere at mind.net>
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"Je suis, je sais, je sers!"