A taste for otherness: Anthropophagy and the embodied self in organizations

•Examines organizational anthropophagy as a mode of organizational understanding.•Gives historical overview of anthropophagy as an approach to social relations.•Discusses the body in the context of anthropophagy.•Examines identity, authenticity and hybridity as embodied notions.

SummaryThe current paper contributes to organizational thinking about cultural mixture as an embodied, sensory process, by examining the concept of organizational anthropophagy as a metaphor for a particular mode of organizational understanding. An emerging Brazilian literature on anthropophagic thinking combines a focus on the body, the passions and ideas of physical desire and aggression with cultural notions of hybridity and mixture, making the notion ripe for debates in contemporary organization theory. To develop these connections, I give a background to the anthropophagic movement, an artistic and cultural vanguard movement, discussing how this movement provided a unique angle on embodied forms of knowledge that can be applied to understanding dynamics of self-and otherness in organizations. Next, I examine how the body can be understood anthropophagically, linking issues of selfhood, authenticity and relationality to the bodily emphasis in anthropophagy. Finally, I discuss directions and limitations of anthropophagic thinking, suggesting that metaphorical and local movements like the anthropophagic movements can have ramifications for the literal and general in organizational theory.