Politics of Edibility: Reconceptualizing Ecological Relationality

ABSTRACT

Taking the Infinity Burial Project (IBP) as its inspiration, this essay theorizes a politics of edibility by way of decomposing the discursive boundaries erected between human bodies and environments. In particular, this essay reads the IBP as a deconstruction of another dualism—eater/eaten—that permeates and informs cultural practices from birth to burial. Mobilizing a rhetoric of carnality, the IBP decomposes the human body's relation to its environments, merging its statuses as eater and eaten. At the same time, this rhetoric of carnality also emphasizes the irreducibly productive nature of consumption as an articulatory practice in its own right. As this essay argues, a politics of edibility not only recognizes the superficiality of the body/environment and eater/eaten dichotomies but it also respects the relations generated in the wake of their deconstruction.

KEYWORDS:

• Edibility
• carnality
• human body
• decomposition
• deconstruction
• Infinity Burial Project

Acknowledgements

While writing and re-writing this essay I was sustained by encounters with many others, but especially Helene Shugart, Kevin DeLuca, Phaedra Pezzullo, Kathleen de Onís, Kirstin Wagner, Brandon Killen, and the three anonymous reviewers, as well as audience members at the 2015 WSCA conference in Spokane, Washington, where a version of this paper was presented during the Environmental Communication Division's top paper session.

Notes

1. Notably, not all modern burial practices are equally toxic. For instance, Jewish burials often follow traditional practices. As Rubin (2015) explains, conventional Jewish burials exclude formaldehyde, rely on biodegradable materials, and ensure contact with the earth.