Taking back taste: feminism, food and visceral politics

Abstract

Despite much thoughtful agro-food scholarship, the politics of food lacks adequate appreciation because scholars have not developed a means to specify the links between the materialities of food and ideologies of food and eating. This article uses feminist theory to enliven a discussion of what the authors call visceral politics, and thus initiates a project of illustrating the mechanisms through which people's beliefs about food connect with their everyday experiences of food. Recent work on governed eating and material geographies is brought together with poststructural feminism in order to move towards a non-dualistic, visceral understanding of (everyday) socio-political life. In showing how the mind–body whole can be conceived as a singular, albeit ambiguously-unified agent, the article prefigures a more complete disclosure of the play of power in food systems. Food is shown as a means to trace power through the body in order to understand the making of the political (eating) subject. Specifically, reconceptualizing taste and the ‘Slow Food’ (SF) movement of taste education helps to concretize what a visceral politics of food might look like. The authors conclude that appreciating how food beliefs and representations exist materially in the body is crucial to the ability of food-based movements to inspire action across difference and achieve their progressive goals.

A pesar de la existencia de mucha investigación de gran calidad sobre agroalimentos, la política de la comida carece de una adecuada apreciación debido a que los investigadores no han desarrollado una manera de identificar las conexiones entre las materialidades de los alimentos y las ideologías de la comida y del comer. Este artículo utiliza teoría feminista para reavivar la discusión de lo que las autoras llaman política visceral, e inicia así el proyecto de ilustrar los mecanismos a través de los cuales las creencias sobre los alimentos se conectan con las experiencias diarias con la comida. Investigación reciente sobre el “gobierno del comer” y las geografías materiales es unida al feminismo post-estructural con el objeto de avanzar hacia una comprensión no dualista, visceral, de la (cotidiana) vida sociopolítica. Al mostrar cómo el todo mente-cuerpo puede ser concebido como un agente singular aunque ambiguamente unificado, el artículo prefigura una revelación más completa del juego de poder en los sistemas de alimentos. La comida es mostrada como un medio para examinar y seguir los rastros del poder a través del cuerpo con el objeto de comprender la construcción del sujeto (comiente) político. Específicamente, reconceptualizar el gusto en la comida y el movimiento de educación del gusto ‘Comida Lenta’ (CL), ayuda a concretar cómo podría ser una política visceral de la comida. Las autoras concluyen que es crucial apreciar de qué manera las creencias y las representaciones sobre la comida existen materialmente en el cuerpo para que los movimientos sociales sobre la comida sean capaces de inspirar a la acción a través de la diferencia y lograr sus objetivos progresistas.

Keywords:

• feminist geography
• food
• Foucault
• biopolitics
• body

Keywords:

• geografía feminista
• comida
• Foucault
• biopolítica
• cuerpo

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Susan Hanson for much editorial help with this article, as well as Victor Gutierrez-Velez for very useful observations on earlier drafts. We also are grateful for the helpful comments of our three reviewers as well as Robyn Longhurst for her valuable suggestions. Appreciation also goes to Deborah Martin and Jody Emel, as well as Ben Anderson for inspiring parts of the work. Finally, a special thanks to Sam Binkley for getting us hooked on Foucault.

Notes

1. This is not to say that critical theorists should not be concerned with the potential elitist-bent of ‘foodism’, only that in turning issues of quality ‘on their head’ one finds that dismissing concern for ‘quality’ in food based on the idea that it is a bourgeois worry, disavows equal participation in the construction of food-based knowledges.

2. For further discussion of a radically relational view, see Deleuze and Guattari (1987).

3. Non-representational theorists might say that such labeling occurs in the representational realm and such affecting occurs in the non-representational realm. Instead, we like to conceive of a visceral realm that is not non-representational but rather fully encompasses (yet is broader) than the representational.

4. See Latham's (2003) guest editorial and subsequent seven papers on performance.

5. For a very good example, see Rachel Colls (2007) as well as Robyn Longhurst (2005).

6. Butler (1993, 1990, 2000) is clearly relevant here although attempts are now being made to move beyond her indication that the material world only ‘matters’ as it gets attached to meanings/representations.

7. See Pickett (1996) for a discussion of Foucauldian revolutionary action.

8. The interview was accomplished as part of a larger ongoing project on visceral politics.