Anthropophagy, time and debt

Abstract

This paper presents the relationship between debt and temporality in the thought of Oswald de Andrade based on the dialogue between the author's thought and Nietzsche's work, especially the Second Dissertation on the Genealogy of Morals. To this end, some aspects of the role of the creditor-debtor relationship in the rise of bad conscience from a Nietzschean perspective will be discussed, a process that has similarities with what Oswald de Andrade called the “fall”, or the passage from Matriarchy to Patriarchy. One of the objectives of this work is, therefore, to elucidate the space-time relationship as a criteria of the Oswaldian cultural classification between matriarchy and patriarchy, considering that the way in which this relationship is established goes through the creditor-debtor relationship. Patriarchy, which is characterized by messianic and individualistic culture, is defined as a social expression of human beings in their state of negativity. The negativity of the human being is, for Oswald de Andrade, the fourth dimension of the cosmos: time itself. Also corresponding to the fourth dimension is a restrictive devouring property that opposes the devouring property of the positive dimension, which is the spatial dimension. Unlike negative devouring, anthropophagy (or positive devouring) would have the property of permanently transforming the taboo into a totem - the negative into positive. As a counterpoint to the deviation from the sense of debt that configures patriarchy, it is possible to identify leisure, art and the connection with the land.