INFORMATIONAL ANTHROPOPHAGY

APPROPRIATION AND EPISTEMIC SOVEREIGNTY IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Abstract

This paper proposes the concept of Informational Anthropophagy as a theoretical framework for understanding the appropriation of technical knowledge as a practice of epistemic sovereignty in peripheral countries. Drawing on the anthropophagic metaphor developed within the Brazilian Modernist movement (particularly the operation of transforming taboo into totem as formulated by Oswald de Andrade and elaborated by his contemporary interpreters) the paper articulates this framework with contributions from the Philosophy of Information, especially the notion of information as an entity that performs work in the world even without immediate material substrate. The objective is to demonstrate that practices of peripheral innovation, such as Cuban technological disobedience and Chinese blueprint futurismo, constitute informational phenomena that Information Science has yet to name with adequate conceptual precision. The methodology adopted is an exploratory and interpretive literature review, drawing on sources from literary theory, philosophy of information, innovation studies, and the geopolitics of knowledge. The results indicate that Informational Anthropophagy offers an analytical framework capable of repositioning knowledge appropriation from a subsidiary category to the center of the field's epistemological debate, with direct implications for technological sovereignty policies in the Global South. The paper concludes that recognizing and mapping these practices constitutes not only a theoretical imperative, but a political agenda for Brazilian and Latin American Information Science.