Peer-Reviewed Journal Details
Mandatory Fields
J. Griffith Rollefson
2007
July
Popular Music and Society
“Tom Zé’s Fabrication Defect and the ‘Esthetics of Plagiarism’: A Postmodern/Postcolonial ‘Cannibalist Manifesto.’”
Published
Optional Fields
Postmodern Postcolonial Primitivism Cannibalism Plagiarism
30
4
305
327
On his 1998 album Fabrication Defect the Brazilian composer-performer Tom Ze´ articulates the discourses of postmodernity and postcoloniality. More than simply touching on various aspects of ‘‘post-ness,’’ Ze´ forges from them an updated manifesto premised on Oswald de Andrade’s 1928 ‘‘Cannibalist Manifesto.’’ The former Tropica´lia musician proposes an ‘‘Esthetics of Plagiarism’’ as a way to appropriate and then reformulate the products of Western techno-capitalism. In this discussion, I will argue that the composer reconfigures the modernist and colonial tropes of primitivism and cannibalism in a subversively technophilic postmodern and postcolonial fashion - an oppositionality embodied in the album’s ‘‘defective android’’ figure.
0300-7766
10.1080/03007760600834853
Grant Details