Cannibalism in Context ---> Exocannibalism
Reducing the enemy to food is the ultimate form of domination, for it strips the enemy of its properties as a person. They become simply another kind of meat. This kind of exocannibalism is the most common type found around the world, and can commonly be found accompanied by the belief that consuming one's enemy invites the animus therein to settle in the cannibal's body, allowing them to tap into the strength of the victim he consumes.
Cannibalism "is the elementary form of institutionalized aggression," according to Eli Sagan (Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form). His psychological background is Freudian, purporting that retreating to the oral stage is the natural regression caused by anger and frustration. Thus, by eating the dead, the cannibal is taking revenge on the person who died and abandoned them. Of course, Sagan's beliefs are that cannibalism is the mark of an undeveloped society and only happens during the breakdown of society, such as the famines in China and Eastern Europe following World War II. He also likens the creation of human skin lamps in Nazi Germany (Isle Koch was the accused in this case, where there was the presence of a shrunken head and three pieces of tattooed skin, but not actual human skin lamps*) to the primitive aggression of cannibalism. Freud being Freud, Sagan's brand of cannibalism originates with the male child being overly dependant upon the mother and the breast, and thus needs to overcompensate with typical masculine activities, of which, he says, cannibalism is one. The joy of reductionist Freudian thought.
Within Hannibal, the dominant type of cannibalism is exocannibalism as it is the kind our title character believes in. However, it is far from the kind that Sagan describes. Hannibal Lecter's cannibalism is predatory in nature and reflects various cosmologies in the Amazon that pertain to personhood. A human being is not born a person, they have to earn it. Hannibal creates abominations of his so-called friends by feeding them human meat under a disguise, though he would not view it as eating a person. Within his system of rules, one loses their personhood when they behave rudely.
Hannibal Lecter can only indulge in exocannibalism because he does not believe others to be on his level. He can build his own kin-group through the sharing of food, one of the most common ways of doing so, fitting in with Marcel Mauss's theories on The Gift. In this case, as the dominant of his kin-group, the gift that Hannibal uses to control others is his cooking. His cannibalism is derived through the breakdown of society in a different way that Sagan purports. Hannibal Lecter's cannibalism purifies society of the rude, eliminating the unnecessary as a public service, rather than out of necessity for food.
*The notion of human-skin lamps and Isle Koch's possession of one is purported by a film made by Billy Wilder to showcase the atrocities of the Nazis, with his film's narration stating that there was "a lampshade, made of human skin, made at the request of an SS officer's wife." The purported lamp in Wilder's film has never been seen again. However, a lamp discovered in the aftermath of Katrina, chronicled by Mark Jacobson in The Lampshade, that has a shade made of human skin, confirmed by the NCBI database, and purported by its seller to be an authentic Nazi-made lampshade. The degradation of DNA due to humidity and sunlight, however, have made it impossible to determine when the lamp was made, who made it, and who it was made from. (Excerpt)