Abstract
The article analyses the programmatic content of the anthropophagic movement, arguing that it contains a proposal for the emancipation of man, frequently expressed through utopian imagery. For Oswald de Andrade, the life experience of the Brazilian Indian represented a utopia founded on a cosmovision centred on the ideals of freedom and equality, an experience that was, however, irremediably destroyed by Portuguese colonization, making it impossible and even inopportune to restore it in the present. However, the aim is to show how, for Oswaldian anthropophagy, the primary impulse of aggression, which inspires the actions of the native, should be recuperated in a historical context of crisis in western civilization, favouring the emergence of a new utopian era.
Keywords Brazilian modernism; anthropophagic movement; utopia; Indian cosmovision; Western civilization