Devouring legal theory: cultural legal translations in Brazil as Antropofagia
Research Project
The research project ‘Devouring legal theory: cultural legal translations in Brazil as Antropofagia’ explores how German legal theories are interpreted and recreated within the Brazilian context. It tackles this process from both historical and contemporary perspectives. I claim that legal theory is not universal and test this hypothesis by examining Brazil and how it has uniquely reinterpreted the theories of Hans Kelsen and Robert Alexy by means of its cultural-legal lens. I argue that the signature of this recreation hearkens back to (Antropofagia) anthropophagy. This metaphor became paramount in the wake of Brazil's 20th-century modernist art movement to describe the anxiety shaping the country's post-colonial setting. Relying on the 16th-century travel literature and its depiction of the Tupinambá, the modernist movement underscored the subtle but insistent resistance of localness vis-à-vis foreignness, thereby portraying translation as a matter of digestion.