To Serve Man

‘If I feel entitled to eat animal meat, what stops me from eating human meat? … it's clear that some people are convinced that eating human parts is not such an unnatural thing.’ So writes Dr Motsamai Molefe, a philosophy lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, interviewed in the Huffington Post about the arrest of five alleged cannibals in the South African town of Escourt in 2017. In this case, the perps claimed to be spiritual healers, able to confer health and/or riches through their concoctions.

 

Image: Théodore Géricault, Le Radeau de la Méduse, 1819, oil on canvas, 491 x 716 cm. Photograph © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Michel Urtado

This is a preview of "To Serve Man". The full article can be found in Art + Australia Issue Three.
Buy Issue Three

Desmond Bellamy

Desmond Bellamy is currently researching a PhD in the School of Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne, titled 'If You're Gonna Dine with the Cannibals: Becoming-Meat, Becoming Animal'. Desmond was born in the UK and lives in Australia. He has always been involved in animal rights causes and is a member and staffer for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).