Anthropophagy: “the only original Brazilian philosophy”?

Abstract

In his introduction to the fac-similar edition of the Revista de Antropofagia, Augusto de Campos stated that Antropofagia, expressed in the works of Oswald de Andrade and others, is "the only original Brazilian philosophy and in some ways the most radical of artistic movements that we have produced". To determine the truth conditions of Augusto de Campos's sentence one would have to understand how Amerindian anthropophagy could be taken by the authors of the Revista as the index of an unprecedented philosophy and anthropology that would compose a true Weltanschauung, anticipating the definitive descent of reason to the body operated by the works of Marx, Nietzsche or Freud. However, as a philosophical concept, Antropofagia subverts precisely the elements of Augusto de Campos's sentence: "philosophy", "originality" and "Brazilian" can no longer mean exactly the same thing.