José Oswald de Souza Andrade (January 11, 1890 – October 22, 1954) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, and writer who analyzed culture. He was born in São Paulo, lived there most of his life, and died there.

Andrade helped start the Brazilian modernist movement. He was part of the Group of Five, which included Mário de Andrade, Anita Malfatti, Tarsila do Amaral, and Menotti del Picchia. He took part in the Modern Art Week (Semana de Arte Moderna).

Biography

Born into a wealthy middle-class family in São Paulo, Andrade used his money and connections to support many modernist artists and projects. He helped publish several important novels from that time, created many experimental plays, and supported several painters, including Tarsila do Amaral, with whom he had a long relationship, and Lasar Segall.

Andrade joined the Communist Party in 1931 but left it in 1945, feeling disappointed with its direction. He remained controversial because of his strong political views and his tendency to speak loudly and directly about his opinions. His role in the modernist art community became difficult due to a long disagreement with Mário de Andrade, which began in 1929 after Oswald de Andrade published an essay written under a fake name that criticized Mário for his appearance. This conflict continued until Mário de Andrade's unexpected death in 1945.

Manifesto Antropófago

Andrade is especially important for his Manifesto Antropófago (Anthropophagist Manifesto), which he published in 1928. The manifesto argues that countries that were once colonized, like Brazil, should take in the culture of their colonizers and use it in their own unique way. The text was influenced by thinkers such as Michel de Montaigne, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and André Breton. It was created by taking ideas from famous Western manifestos, such as the Manifesto of the Communist Party and the Surrealist Manifesto, and combining them through a process called "deglutition."

Andrade explains that Anthropophagy is different from cannibalism, which he calls "low anthropophagy." He says that Anthropophagy is a ritual practiced by some Indigenous peoples in Brazil. In this ritual, Anthropophagy is a way to accept and incorporate the beliefs of others.

By using Anthropophagy as the main idea of his manifesto, Andrade turned practices that were once used to label Indigenous peoples as uncivilized into a way for Brazil to express its own culture and resist European influence after colonization. The manifesto’s most famous line is "Tupi or not Tupi: that is the question." This line honors the Tupi people, who were sometimes falsely accused of cannibalism, and also shows how the movement "eats" or incorporates the works of Western writers like Shakespeare.

The Antropofagia movement had a major influence on many areas of Brazilian culture, including theater (Teatro Oficina), music (Tropicalismo), and film (Cinema Novo). Some scholars, like Augusto de Campos and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, believe it is Brazil’s most important artistic movement and the only "original philosophy" created in the country. However, other critics argue that the movement was too varied to form clear ideas and that it was not always connected to efforts to challenge European cultural dominance (Jauregui 2018, 2012).