Becoming Cannibal. A Postcolonial History of German Masculinity around 1900

Principal Investigator: PD Dr. Eva Bischoff

Duration: 2003-2009

The project reconstructs the interconnections between the colonial, criminological-anthropological, and medical discourses of cannibalism around 1900 and reveals the cannibal as a central reference point for the construction of male gender identities. At the same time, it demonstrates how, instead of a binary difference between the white male and the cannibal Other, a continuum of masculine (ab)normality was instead designed. It is thus an innovative contribution to the question of the intersectionality of gender. Numerous publications have resulted from this project, including the slightly modified version of the principal investigator’s dissertation, which was completed at LMU Munich in 2009.

Publications (selected)

Bischoff, Eva (2016): Amongst the Cannibals: Articulation Masculinity in Postcolonial Weimar Germany, in: What Postcolonial Studies Does Not Say, Eds. Ziad Elmarzafy, Anna Bernard, Stuart Murray, London: Routledge, 141-155.

Bischoff, Eva (2013): The Cannibal and the Caterpillar: Violence, Pain, and Becoming-Man in Early Twentieth Century Germany, in: Body Politics. Zeitschrift für Körpergeschichte 1,2 (Special Issue: Gewaltverhältnisse, Ed. Pascal Eitler), 199-229.

Bischoff, Eva (2011): Kannibale-Werden. Eine postkoloniale Geschichte deutscher Männlichkeit um 1900. Postcolonial Studies 8 (Bielefeld: transcript).

(Reviewed in: Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung 2011 12(1). Ulrich van der Heyden; H-Soz-u-Kult 30.01.2012. Marc Thielen; Historische Anthropologie 2012 20(2). Marie Muschalek; IASLonline 18.04.2013. Thomas Kailer; Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 2013 (2). Bea Lundt.)