Category: Seminar Weekly

Triggering Passages:

“‘Too-muchness’ produces moments of spectacular visibility that exceed the advertisers’ intended and literal meanings. In the era of conspicuous consumption the ‘too-muchness’ of the black and Asian bodies as represented in these trade cards is of key importance. The affective excess and semiotic overload of these images encode the use of disgust to facilitate and accompany white bourgeois consumer’s disavowal and enjoyment of commodity pleasure”  (Tompkins, 150)

“Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture.” (Hooks, 366)

“Mutual recognition of racism, its impact both on those who are dominated and those who dominate, is the only standpoint that makes possible an encounter between races that is not based on denial and fantasy. For it is the ever present reality of racist domination, of white supremacy, that renders problematic the desire of white people to have contact with the Other.” (Hooks, 371)

News Media Context:

“A lot of Instagram-loving foodies are perpetuating racist stereotypes about ethnic dishes”

“We’ve never quite escaped the idea that Western is the status quo, so anything other is viewed as, well, ‘other,’” Noche says. “This leads people to exotify and overcompensate in styling dishes that aren’t normal to them, because they don’t understand or haven’t experienced how these dishes can exist on their own.” (Purdy)

While reading Bell Hook’s “Eating the Other” many of the ideas and concepts evident in Tomkins’ writing were explicitly laid out for me. Tomkins contextualizes themes of racial edibility and white palatability, while Bell Hooks explains these key ideas unambiguously. Both authors speak to the concept of  “The other”, and how this idea has been used to fetishize racial differences. Bell Hooks defines the other as anyone not a part of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, which is considered to be the hegemonic culture of the world.

Commodity culture exploits “the other” for new pleasure and allows for whites to assert their power within their intimate relationship with the other. The consumption of others culture allows for the white capitalists to expand their palate, viewing the other as an indulgence, while the other eats to survive. Such is the issue with foodie culture, as it most often does not change how we consume but sensationalizes exotic flavors. This desire for the other is to view them as something to be eaten, consumed, and forgotten about. Enriching or enhancing the white patriarchal identity with other “flavors” and “spices”. This appetite to possess the other and to be changed by the other has me wondering if the desire for “the other” can ever be innocent without the implication of race?  

Hooks, Bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation, 1st edition. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992.

Purdy, Chase. “A Lot of Instagram-Loving Foodies Are Perpetuating Racist Stereotypes about Ethnic Dishes.” Quartz. Accessed February 28, 2017. https://qz.com/909817/instagram-photos-of-ethnic-food-are-perpetuating-racist-stereotypes/.

Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

Triggering Passage:

“It is not enough, in other words, to create a rigid boundary between what goes into the body and what stays out. America had become too immersed, both in its commercial appetites and its imperial desires, in the business of the rest of the world; similarly, the body and the home are also immersed in the outside world, with all its attendant delights and anxieties. The boundaries that were meant to contain the body, the home, and the nation are thus far more permeable in Alocat’s work. The consumption of the exotic items and profit from overseas trade and the emergent forms of female independence – including interracial marriage – that are predicted on more porous boundaries are only some of the new possibilities that she imagines for her protagonists.” (Tompkins, 144)

News Media Context:

“What Is A Woman’s Role According To A Man?”

“Patriarchy operationalises power through the entrenched notion that women are not just different, but also subservient – and therefore, their spheres of work (‘care work’ and household chores) is naturally inferior to a man’s work out in the world. The notion of ‘honour’ embodied in the person of a woman becomes the logic of limiting women’s mobility, their education, and indeed, their aspirations.‘Honour’, as Jacqueline Rose puts it, is embodied in women, but is the property of men. Therefore, it serves as the perfect tool to rob women of their agency over their own bodies. This honour is damaged by others’ (men’s) actions – and the only way to protect it is to make themselves inaccessible – through veiling, through being confined, through having all sorts of limitations imposed on them, and in turn, self-imposition.”

www.youthkiawaaz.com/2017/01/act-like-a-man-act-like-a-woman-roles-defined-by-gender

Response:

Chapter 5 of Tompkins’ Racial Indigestion explores how the domestic role can be navigated as a place of liberation in a way that disrupts patriarchal frameworks but is still submissive to the overarching power structures. Tompkins demonstrates to the reader how domesticity is a prison that simultaneously opposes oppressive regimes through the molding, or “kneading”, of identity. Although those in the domestic roles have the ability to establish their own rules, allowing for a redistribution of power, these ideas are shaped by dominant imperialist patriarchal frameworks. The two texts that Thompkins references, Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott, suggest that those in subservient positions are allowed to make their own decisions, but only when given the proper support from those of a higher positioning within social classes. The individual identities of those who navigate subservient roles are at the mercy of those in the ruling class and are characterized by stereotyped personality traits and appearance. Through this mode of gendering and racializing domesticity, it allows for those belonging to the upper class white heterosexual male identity to view others in a way that is more palatable or more easily digestible. Although given wiggle room to move beyond enslavement, those who inhabit bodies that challenge imperial identities operate to appease the colonial power structures governed by a white upper class in order to twist a narrative that seeks to dehumanize and repress cultural differences.  

Works Cited:

Voices, Video Volunteers Empowering Community. “What Is A Woman’s Role According To A Man?” Youth Ki Awaaz, January 31, 2017. https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2017/01/act-like-a-man-act-like-a-woman-roles-defined-by-gender/.

Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

Triggering Passages:

“Although I am trained as an Economist, I am not sure how to do it (full cost accounting). That is because I cannot account for the spiritual and cultural impacts of everything… Some economists describe this measure as unquantifiable” (LaDuke, 15)

“The intent is hyper-acceleration of resource extraction and development, and these are on indigenous territories, and the way to accelerate that process is to create legislation, and to have that legislation part of the instrument through which poverty is utilized. This is the old colonial model, which is having the veneer of consent. It is to manufacture it. To manufacture poverty and then manufacture consent.” (LaDuke, 137)

“Decades of depriving Native farmers of access to resources to capitalize their production formed many off the land, resulting in many non Indians having cheap access to tribal lands.” (LaDuke, 229)

“Cattle grew increasingly important in terms of food as the indigenous buffalo (or bison) that once ‘blackened the prairies’ quickly disappeared during the railroad’s westward expansion…. To gain land on which to build the railroads and graze cattle, it was deemed necessary to push out the Native Americans who lived on the land, and exterminating their primary food source- the buffalo- was considered a prime means to that end. With the buffalo gone, cattle assumed greater importance as a food supply.” (Newman, 96)

News Media Context:

“wildlife is being threatened. Last year it was reported that wild buffalo were being corralled and held behind razor wire fencing without food or water near DAPL, and that the construction company planned to kill the animals. Overall, the Standing Rock Sioux and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribes have believe that the pipeline and its construction threatens the tribe’s way of life including their water, people, and land.”

LaDuke’s words continuously stuck me with the feeling of an immense resentment toward the corrupt systems that benefit a greedy upper class, while enforcing systematic economic and social oppression. She exposes how these colonial strategies have sought to steal, deplete, and destroy natural resources that sustain indigenous communities. LaDuke presents a narrative that seeks to empower and give voice to indigenous activism. Her accounts of Native resistance and protest bolster the autonomy of Indian communities.

Although Newman touches on the histories which led to a colonizer economy based on commodity trading, her perspective seems out of touch with indigenous narratives. Newman glazes over how the extraction of indigenous resources affected native communities, and only provides a snapshot of  how westward expansion of capitalism coincides with the erasure indigenous food systems.

The systematic oppression that Newman is referencing is still very much present in current day capitalism. The Standing Rock Sioux and the Cheyenne River Sioux tribes are fighting a pipeline that threatens indigenous autonomy. A pipeline that will pollute and inevitably destroy resources that support and maintain indigenous life, as well as economic prosperity within these communities, is being built to make a few already very rich individuals much richer. The epitome of colonial capitalism.

Works Cited

LaDuke, Winona. Chronicles: Stories from the Front Lines in the Battle for Environmental Justice. Edited by Sean Aaron Cruz. 1st edition. Spotted Horse Press, 2016.

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
Why We Can’t Stop Standing With Standing Rock Now. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/why-we-cant-stop-standing-with-standing-rock-now/

Triggering Passages:

“…white appetite signifies unthinkable privilege and aggression, but it also represents the desire on which both white female citizenship and the future of the postemancipation republic rests. The text thus aligns the white reader with sentimentality’s political paradox: to empathize with the slave is to internalize her, but to do so is also to annihilate her subjectivity.” (Tompkins, 113)

“Despite an80-year attachment to a mascot, it’s just a mascot. It’s not like you had homeland buried under a dam project, or had your village burned by the military. And, the Lakota people and other native peoples deserve to be recognized as more than mascots.” (LaDuke, 105)

“The $100,000 complaint was filed against the Minneapolis theater and its star, actress Frankie Heath, charging that when the actress sang the song “Butter and Eggs,” she used “certain tones and gestures to convey that all dealers in butter and eggs were men of immoral and licentious character.” (Newman, 72)

 

These three passages examine themes of stereotyped bodies and the circumstances of degradation in white society in which these racial characters are produced to other and erase subjectivity. In the third chapter of Tompkins’ book, she highlights how black slave bodies were commodified as labor in the 19th century, thus othering them as inhuman and edible. She used the metaphor of ingestion to demonstrate how the erasure of black subjectivity reemerges to undermine the authority of social order, and how the kitchen, viewed as a “back of the house”(107) operation, transforms to become a space of resistance to this authority. Similarly, LaDuke speaks to how the Lakota and other native people have been offensively stereotyped by the “Red Skins” mascot. This caricature of a native person represents a violent history of bounty hunters literally skinning Indians to present their bloodied skin as a proof of the murder. This racist logo has been used to other native people and attempts to remove their selfhood by being portrayed as an obnoxious sports mascot. Lastly, my Newman quote stretches this idea that identities that oppose the dominant class are degraded. When actress Frankie Heath lyrically stereotyped “Butter and Egg men” as immoral and corrupt, she and the theater where she worked were charged and scrutinized for suggesting these men were inherently of a fraudulent nature. My guess is the same men who filed this complaint were conscious of the possibility of being exposed and possessing characteristics in which Frankie Heath stereotyped them as, and falling from their position of economic and social power.

Works Cited

LaDuke, Winona. Chronicles: Stories from the Front Lines in the Battle for Environmental Justice. Edited by Sean Aaron Cruz. 1st edition. Spotted Horse Press, 2016.

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York: NYU Press, 2012.

 

“The term ‘paradoxical Euro-American indigeneity’ here refers to the ways in which the United States, as a settler nation, both co-opted and erased the bodies of native peoples in order to naturalize the European claim to the land” (85, Tompkins)

“Corn was integral to the dietary system… Diets changed the most radically as populations growth reached its most accelerated pace to date. Growing urbanization spurred the separation of producer and consumers…. European growth relied on American plants.” (29, Newman)

 

“If Trump Builds the Wall, What Will Happen to our Food System?”

“The report found that stemming the flow of undocumented immigrants across the southern border—which currently accounts for between 50 and 70 percent of the agricultural workforce—would cause retail food prices to jump an average of five to six percent, and that ‘the quantity and variety of grocery store produce would diminish.’” (Modernfarmer.com, Barth)

In the third chapter of Tomkins’ book, we are introduced to Sylvester Graham, a man who was “among the most breathtakingly literary of the antimasturbation campaigners.”(53, Tompkins) Graham being one of America’s first nutritionists, claimed that dietary restrictions were essential to stopping an epidemic of youthful masturbation. He preached that through our pursuits for sexual stimulation as well as oral stimulation, the body becomes weakened and reproductive energies waste away through overstimulation.  This was crucial in an era where Western expansion and the development of a “Euro-American nation” depended on producing healthy offspring of European descent while erasing indigenous identities from the American landscape. Graham perpetuated his belief that the ideal American citizen adheres to a strict diet, while also bolstering the mentality that an ideal American citizen of the 19th century is a man of European descent, who is married and utilizing their sexual energies to reproduce more “American” offspring. Being coined as one of the first locavores in American food history, by Kyla Wazana Tompkins in an interview on BackStory Radio, he was a proponent of the consumption of crops that were transplanted into America from Europe. Idealizing wheat agriculture and including corn as an ideal “farinaceous” food, expansion into the west displaced Native nations who viewed corn a crucial piece of Native culture, and who were the first to cultivate it. Corn became a hugely traded commodity throughout the 19th century, and a staple in the American diet, shaping a dietic identity. It was the crop that helped to fuel European expansion while expelling Native peoples from their homelands. Throughout the conversation of corn in a period that sought to create a white supremacist diet we are now well into the 21st century currently facing down a white supremacist presidency. Donald Trump amped up crowds on his campaign trail with his plans to build a wall and has since made many more horrific statements on his proposal to build a wall along the 1,933-mile southern border of the United States and to deport immigrants. This would be detrimental to our food system in many ways, driving the cost of retail food up while decreasing quality and variety according to a multitude of studies done regarding his strategy.

 

Barth, Brian. “If Trump Builds the Wall, What Will Happen to Our Food System?” Modern Farmer. Modernfarmer.com, 13 Jan. 2017. Web. 31 Jan. 2017.

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print

Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print

“‘The mistress of American families, whether they like it or not, have the duties of missionaries imposed upon them by that class from which our supply of domestic servants is drawn.’ in this metamorphic economy the kitchen become and uncivilized space, the women who worked within it unfinished or uncooked, the project of running a home was metonymic of the civilizing work of empire”

Tompkins examines the eighteenth-century hearth and its evolution into the nineteenth-century kitchen. She unpacks the ways in which the hearth became characterized as a household hub for socializing as well as a place of dirtiness and contamination. As the hearth was replaced by cleaner and more efficient cooking technologies, Tompkins inspects attitudes that romanticized the space of the hearth and grieved through the transitional era of household stoves.  She exposes how the kitchen was a divisive space that established gendered domestic responsibilities, as well as class hierarchies and racial duties. The American ideal of gendered domestic roles represents centuries of patriarchal oppression. Tomkins explains how cooking granted women a certain degree of power in society, through turning raw ingredients into sustenance, establishing the labor to be as essential as the food itself. The kitchen simultaneously became a space of citizenship and selfhood, as well as a tool for nation building, imperial expansion, and racialized servitude.

 

“So important were spices, they famously launched Christopher Columbus around the world, as he searched for a route to the Indies on behalf of the Spanish monarchy. And most important for Americans, this spice lust led to the discovery of the New World without which the following chapters about markets in New York and Chicago would be nonexistent.

 

According to Henry Hobhouse: “The starting point for the European expansion out of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic continental shelf had nothing to do with, say, religion or the rise of capitalism but it had a great deal to do with pepper.” (Newman,19-20)

Newman offers an interesting review of the history of commodity spice markets, and how peppercorns have been used as a tool of commerce and their function in society as currency. It is interesting to think that the European “discovery” of America was through the pursuit of more flavorful spices and that the financial market we know today was built through the trading of spices. The colonization of the Americas and spice based financial structuring is evocative of the ways in which kitchens were used as a tool for nation building and imperial expansion, mentioned in my examination of the Tompkins text.

 

“Women-led marches took place in over 600 locations spread across seven continents—including Antarctica. In addition to Washington, massive protests took place in Boston; Chicago; Denver; Los Angeles; Madison, Wisconsin; New York; Oakland; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul; San Francisco and Seattle. According to one count, as many as 4.6 million people took part in the global day of action.”

The fight continues to transform society and gender inequality. Trump threatens the progress that has been made by the women’s rights movements and embodies harmful sexist values that are reminiscent of the misogyny that got us into this mess so many years ago.

 

Works Cited:

“Women’s March on Washington: Historic Protest Three Times Larger Than Trump’s Inaugural Crowd.” Democracy Now! Accessed January 24, 2017. https://www.democracynow.org/2017/1/23/womens_march_millions_take_to_streets.

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print
Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print

“Eating is often a site of erotic pleasure itself, what I call, as a means of signaling the alignment between oral pleasure and other forms of nonnormative desire, queer alimentary… the mouth and the genitals function as coeval sites of erotic intensity… both can be overstimulated, and indeed sensual indulgence at one of those sites inevitably drives the appetitive needs of the other.” (Tompkins, 5)

These words grabbed my attention immediately and provoked an investigation of how the site of the mouth evokes pleasure as well as being a site of queer nourishment. When queer theory enters the conversation, the discussion often revolves around sexuality. When eating is sexualized, the body becomes a material manifestation of the shifting dynamics of class, gender, race, and sexuality. Tompkins argues that what we ingest, where we ingest, and how we ingest informs our identities. With this knowledge, eating then has the ability to challenge how we think about queer identity formations. The term “eating someone out” fetishizes the act of eating genitalia. We classify more innocent sexual acts as being “vanilla”.  If eating creates who we become, then gustatory motifs perpetuate dominant narratives and social constructs. Alimentary and the sexual have fused to eroticize consumption and shifts between the lines of identity.

“In The Omnivore’s Dilemma, writer and activist Michael Pollan describes food commodities as “an economic abstraction,” … instead of buying or selling a particular bushel of corn, traders buy or sell a bushel of corn that meets certain grading standards. Those standards might specify some combination of size, moisture content, level of insect or other damage exhibited, color, or origin. But within those standards, commodities are “without qualities; quantity is the only thing that matters.” (Newman, 11)

This particular passage struck me because it highlights how food commodification does not place a price based on how delicious a product is but valuing large quantity that meets specific standards that do not reflect flavor. I feel there is a major disconnect between how our food is produced, and the quest for quality food that is tasty. Safeway may sell organic carrots, but how can we be reassured that the carrots we throw into our grocery cart will taste sweet with a great crunch? Will they taste soapy and make you wish you had picked out some mouthwash? Can the mass production of agricultural goods ever bring  the consumer fresh produce that is at the height of flavor? How can we advocate for quality food that factors in flavor? What price are we willing to pay for the satisfaction of something pure that tastes exquisite?

News Media:

Looking for healthy fast food? Try Taco Bell

“Taco Bell, the home of a Doritos-wrapped taco, could actually help you keep your New Year’s resolution to eat healthier when you dine out this year.The fast-food chain has made a series of changes over the years, from eliminating artificial flavors and trans fat to the low-calorie ‘Fresco” menu and reducing sodium across the menu by 15% since 2008.”

Taco Bell has found a way to market themselves to consumers who are in search of healthier food options, but willing to sacrifice quality for the sake of convenience and affordability.

 

Works Cited:

“Looking for Healthy Fast Food? Try Taco Bell.” USA TODAY. Accessed January 18, 2017. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2017/01/05/taco-bell-may-healthiest-fast-food-option-out-there-doritos-taco/96204454/.

Newman, Kara. The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Super Markets. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Print
Tompkins, Kyla W. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York and London: New York University Press, 2012. Print