Gananath Obeyesekere · 2005 · PDF · Calibre ID 8381
Resurfaced in The Log Breaks Off at the Morai (2026-10-07).
Role in the triad
Antithesis: god and cannibal as European projections; the quarterdeck proof as dialogical performance
Why this book
Extends the Apotheosis argument from the god to the cannibal; ch. 2 reads Cook’s 1773 quarterdeck experiment (quoting the same journal passage) and the 1779 Kealakekua bundle; ch. 6 is a second round with Sahlins over Fiji. Its ‘confusion’ answers Sahlins’s ‘clarity’ explicitly.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- ‘I point out that this myth was not constructed in Hawai‘i but in London’ (ch. 1, p. 18)
- ‘They could easily change into their white coats, for let it not be forgotten they were representatives of the Royal Society.’ (ch. 2, p. 25)
- ‘when Pickersgill brought the head on board, the ship’s officers wanted to produce empirical proof of cannibalism among the Maori.’ (ch. 2, p. 31)
- ‘For Cook and his crew the admission of cannibalism naturally proved its existence because, then and now, admission, like eyewitnessing, is an indicator of truth.’ (p. 55)
- ‘Our anthropological knowledge of Maori anthropophagy thus eludes us from the very start.’ (p. 59)
- ‘in respect of cannibalism, an eyewitness account is particularly suspect since it taps fantasy, fascination, and latent desire’ (p. 111)
- ‘what I read adds to my confusion as surely as it adds to Sahlins’s clarity.’ (ch. 6, p. 168)
Themes
cannibal talk · cannibalism vs anthropophagy · deconstructive-restorative · eyewitness · Fiji · heads trade · Maori · parody · projection · Royal Society