We-Others: On the Subject of the Anthropophagic Manifesto

Abstract

Throughout the entire Anthropophagic Manifesto, a subject speaks obliquely. Be it either, as Beatriz Azevedo points out, through the "implicit first-person plural in the text," a "we" that is sometimes inclusive, sometimes exclusive, or as a verbal complement or as a possessive pronoun; in both cases, the speaker of the text almost never explicitly reveals themselves with their whole body. However, what should be the most fundamental question about Oswald's manifesto, namely who is manifesting in it, has yet to receive proper attention from critics, perhaps because the way in which the subject manifests makes it more difficult to answer the question that the text never stops posing: "we, who?"