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Eating The Past: Proto-Zombies In Brazilian Fiction 1900-1955, M. Elizabeth Ginway

Alambique. Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasía / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

Taking Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 “Manifesto antropófago” [Cannibalist Manifesto] as a point of departure, this article analyzes how zombies in Brazilian literature from 1900 to 1955 represent a kind of cultural cannibalism, consuming bodies as a way of resisting hegemonic power, oblivion and marginalization. Zombies variously represent rural inhabitants, modern consumers, prostitutes and hustlers who often become invisible, faceless, and voiceless, symbolizing the historical silencing of subalterns or “cannibals.”

Several Brazilian short stories and legends from the first half of the twentieth century serve to illustrate the cultural cannibalism of the proto-zombie: Lima Barreto’s “A Nova Califórnia” (1910), Monteiro Lobato’s …