Comparative Analysis: Russian Cultural Assimilation and Oswaldian Anthropophagy

Abstract

This article conducts a comparative analysis of identity formation in Brazil and Russia, using Oswald de Andrade's concept of cultural anthropophagy as its theoretical framework. The metaphor of "critical devouring" serves as a heuristic tool to examine how both countries negotiated European cultural hegemony. While in Brazil anthropophagy presents itself as an explicit aesthetic program of resistance, in Russia this logic is implicit, manifested in the tensions between Westernizers and Slavophiles and in modernizing reforms. The aim is to demonstrate that, despite distinct trajectories, both nations faced the common dilemma of assimilating external influences without losing their singularity, operating through cultural processes of adaptation and identity creation.