Anthropophagi and Cannibals: Reconsidering the Links between Futurism and Modernism in Brazil

Futurism is often cited as one of the movements that influenced Brazilian Modernism. The basis of this assumption is not only the idea that both sought a renewal of society, but also that Marinetti’s journey to South America in 1926 had a profound influence on Brazilian public opinion. However, when considering the links between the two movements, several factors must be taken into account: the limited information that Brazilian intellectuals had about Italian Futurism, the different socio-political contexts in both countries and the controversial association of Futurism with Fascism. That Brazilian intellectuals kept their distance from the Italian movement is evident not only from Oswald de Andrade’s Modernist manifestos (Manifesto Pau-Brasil and Manifesto antropófago), but also from their specific use of the metaphors of cannibalism and ‘primitivism’. For Marinetti, anthropophagy was a provocative metaphor for the purification of society; for the Brazilians, it was an important aspect of their cultural history and a means of distinguishing it from that of Portuguese colonialism. Furthermore, Marinetti used ‘primitive’ culture as both an autobiographical and an aesthetic element to spread Futurism worldwide, while for the Modernists the ‘savage’ matrix was a national feature that had to be ‘ingested’ to make the vanguard stand out from academic culture. This essay analyses the different phases of the proliferation of Futurist ideas in Brazil and explains why, despite sharing a certain amount of common ground, the two movements were destined to go their separate ways, especially in the course of the 1930s.