Title: The Museum Brazil: Cultural Cannibalism as an Answer to the Predicaments of a Shakespearean Culture

Abstract: Shakespearean cultures are the ones whose self-definition heavily relies on the determination of a foreigner’s gaze. Their self-perception originates in the gaze of an Other. Thus, in such circumstance, the centrality of the other demands the prominence of the mimetic impulse in the shaping of national identity, which cannot but evoke a paradoxical constellation, based upon a constant oscillation between the own and the foreigner. For a start, Latin American cultures emerged in the shadow of the Other, an (almost) absolute model.

Keywords: Shakespearean cultures, non-hegemonic circumstances, cultural cannibalism, mimesis, cross-cultural contacts

Author: João Cezar de Castro Rocha, Professor, Institute of Letters,State University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.