Cannibal Consumption

Held on March 1 2024, this one-day conference run by five resident scholars from the UCD Humanities Institute invited scholars and researchers from diverse disciplines to delve into the multifaceted theme of cannibalism or anthropophagy.

Cannibalism is a provocative and unsettling theme, often eliciting fear, disgust and fascination. Historically, colonial and imperial projects deployed racialised discourses of cannibalism in order to legitimise violence on allegedly ‘savage’ or ‘primitive’ populations (Francis Barker, Margaret Iverson, Peter Hulme, 1998). However, the resurgence of cannibalism in contemporary fiction and film has subverted these traditional narratives, offering nuanced perspectives that challenge established norms, societal taboos, and questions of identity by reevaluating the concept of cannibalism as a form of resistance, for instance as a metaphor for the reclaiming of female desire and sexuality. Responding to the provocations raised by cannibalism today, the conference intended to expand the ways in which it can be conceptualised.

The keynote speaker was Dr Xavier Aldana Reyes, Reader in English Literature and Film at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and co-president of the International Gothic Association. Dr Reyes’s academic research focuses on corporeal representation and embodiment, the relationship between aesthetics and affect, the transnational nature of modes and genres, and the ability of the Gothic/horror to mediate personal and national trauma.

Dr Reyes’ keynote speech was recorded as a podcast and can be found at https://soundcloud.com/ucd-humanities/xavier-aldana-reyes-keynote-from-ucdhi-phd-conference-2024-cannibal-consumption. The conference was also livestreamed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7KXOUr3aj0