Anthropophagy’s Wild Palimpsest

About the book:

Anthropophagy’s Wild Palimpsest is the first truly microscopic reading of the Manifesto Antropófago, a foundational text for contemporary cultural sensibility, both “here in” Brazil and, increasingly, “out there”. Beatriz Azevedo’s book is a close reading of inestimable historical, didactic, and analytical value.
To the already vast canon of “Oswaldiana”, she adds a layer of commentary predestined to become an obligatory reference for any student or scholar that has an interest in the work of Oswald de Andrade – a figure who is without a doubt, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.
Anthropophagy’s Wild Palimpsest by Beatriz Azevedo is at the forefront of anthropophagic thought.
EDUARDO VIVEIROS DE CASTRO [National Museum’s anthropologist UFRJ]

Beatriz Azevedo is a brilliant academic, who wrote one of the best books on Brazilian Modernism and Oswald de Andrade, Anthropophagy’s Wild Palimpsest, a deeply informed and beautifully written gloss on Oswald’s famous Manifesto Antropófago. She is truly multi-talented: besides being an academic, she is also a poet, performer and songwriter who has worked with some of the most distinguished artists and performers in Brazil, such as Adriana Calcanhotto, Moreno Veloso (the son of Caetano Veloso), the iconic Maria Bethânia, and others. Beatriz is also an actress who has collaborated with Ze Celso’s endlessly renewed avant-garde theater. For me as a scholar of Brazilian cinema and culture, it has been a delight to work with someone who shares so many passions with me and so many of us – music, literature, theater, modernism, indigeneity.
ROBERT STAM [New York University’s Professor]

Beatriz Azevedo follows in Oswald de Andrade’s footsteps: she reads the “Manifesto” by separating its parts. In this way, she ritualizes her reading, and in the process offers us the most unusual flavors of Oswald’s text that have the potential to disturb the domesticated palate of our time. More than an anatomy of the Manifesto, Azevedo’s reading gives us a curatorship, or better yet, a curanderia by way of Oswald’s text. In her writing, the familiar academic protocols are purified of their sick pomp. Her reading underscores that the importance of anthropophagy is in the “de-Europeanizing” potential of Brazilian cultural creation. In the potential to become indigenous, a wild becoming, open to the other, decolonizing, surrendered to the forest, we find the Brazilian challenge.
So, we can start by celebrating the re-inauguration of Brazil on a mythical date. If 462 years ago the devouring of Bishop Sardinha took place, it’s time to move on to the banquet and help yourself to the appetizing words of Beatriz Azevedo. Just like Morubichaba as he devoured his roast, I can guarantee it’s tasty.
MARCIA TIBURI [Folha de S. Paulo / Université Paris 8]

The greatest findings of Anthropophagy’s Wild Palimpsest can be attributed to the author’s artistic “antennae”. As an accomplished musician, Beatriz Azevedo attends to the “orecular/auricular world” of the Manifesto, reading its “signs”. Furthermore, the proposal of listening to the Manifesto enables her to elucidate not only its content, but also its form (in what is perhaps its greatest contribution, if we are to highlight one), paying attention to its “refrains” and its “mantras”, to the “architecture of echoes” that serves to “merge the space-time dimension”, creating the context of the text, the “matriarchy of Pindorama” and evoking the “rhythmic vivacity of the Indian”; in short, for the “textual score” that shows itself through the lenses – or perceptive ears – of the author, including in the graphic signs, carriers of a “rhythmic function”. In this way, Azevedo brings to light how the text arms and rearms, arranges and rearranges, an enunciative scene; the way it manifests the anthropophagus, and how such a cannibal manifests himself through it.
ALEXANDRE NODARI [541 Magazine]

In Portuguese:

Antropofagia Palimpsesto Selvagem
Beatriz Azevedo
Cosac Naify, 2016

Desenhos: Tunga
Prefácio: Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

Trecho do prefácio:
“Que temos nós com isso?”
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro.

“Tive o prazer de conhecer Beatriz Azevedo quando ela assistiu um curso que Alexandre Nodari e eu demos no Museu Nacional em 2012, “Do matriarcado primitivo à sociedade contra o Estado e além. Cartografia da hipótese antropofágica”. Oswald de Andrade era, obviamente, o personagem principal — o convidado de honra, digamos assim — do curso. Beatriz nos ajudou imensamente, com seu conhecimento tão extenso como profundo da obra e da biografia de Oswald. Sempre que falhava nossa memória bibliográfica ou gaguejava nossa sapiência magisterial, ela estava lá para nos lembrar ou esclarecer. O livro que ora apresento dá uma ideia do tanto que ela terá contribuído para o curso, e muito mais.

Antropofagia – Palimpsesto Selvagem é talvez a primeira leitura realmente microscópica do Manifesto Antropófago, texto fundacional para a sensibilidade cultural contemporânea, tanto “aqui dentro” como, cada vez mais, “lá fora”. O livro de Beatriz Azevedo é um close reading de valor histórico, didático e analítico inestimável.

Em um verdadeiro trabalho arqueológico, a autora recobra muitas das fontes esquecidas ou ignoradas das abundantes alusões enigmáticas (sobretudo para o leitor de hoje) contidas no Manifesto; comenta e elucida linha a linha, aforismo a aforismo, esse texto extraordinariamente complexo, por baixo — palimpsesto — de sua concisão telegráfica e sua alegre ferocidade lapidar; destaca-lhe a arquitetura rítmica, verbal como visual, sua (a)gramaticalidade poética e sua radicalidade político-filosófica; persegue, na produção posterior de Oswald, os fundamentos, os desenvolvimentos, as explicações — no sentido literal de desdobramento do que estava implicado, implícito, compactado — e as retomadas em modo dissertativo ou conversacional das teses, revolucionárias então como revolucionárias hoje e amanhã, enunciadas, ou melhor, anunciadas no Manifesto.

O livro de Beatriz Azevedo, somando-se à já vasta “oswaldiana”, acrescenta-lhe uma camada de comentário destinada a se tornar referência obrigatória para todo estudante ou estudioso da obra deste que é, sem a menor sombra de dúvida, um dos maiores pensadores do século XX”.

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro