March 6th 2017
Triggering Passages:
“What emerges is a sense that that consuming, writ large, and eating, in particular, speaks to racial embodiment in such a way as to allow consumers to blur the borders of their racial selves, both consuming the other and becoming the other, if only temporarily.” (Tompkins: 2012, 167)
“If for generations the black body was literally, in the minds of many Americans, a commodity to be sold, then it is no surprise that after slavery the black body seems made to sell other things.” (Tompkins 2012:)
“Could one of the next great global contracts be the humble cassava? Also called manioc, mandioca, and yuca, this starchy drought resistant root vegetable is a major source of dietary energy for more than 500 million people, particularly in developing countries.” (Newman: 2013, 154)
News Media Context:
“I think that food really connects people. Food is about bringing something into the body. And to eat the same food suggests that we are both willing to bring the same thing into our bodies. People just feel closer to people who are eating the same food as they do. And then trust, cooperation, these are just consequences of feeling close to someone.”
“Pairs of volunteers were sometimes given candy to eat together or sometimes given salty snacks. And sometimes, one of the volunteers was given one kind of food and the other was given the other kind of food. When the volunteers ate the same kinds of food, they reached agreement much more quickly than when one person ate the candy and the other person ate the salty food.”
Response:
Reading Newman this quarter has been an interesting process. Though her chapters and word choice are light and airy when read alongside Tompkins, I find myself tempted to rush through the passages and often feel a sense of frustration finishing my readings, knowing that though the book has helped inform me on commodities, her writing fails to include anything but the predominant white narrative.
At this point in history, commodification is an integral part of the United States. But beyond the commodification of crops Newman is such an expert on, the commodification and consumption of the “Other” body has been an integral part in the strengthening of white supremacy since this country’s foundation. As Tompkins states on page 167, “If for generations the black body was literally, in the minds of many Americans, a commodity to be sold, then it is no surprise that after slavery the black body seems made to sell other things.”
Throughout the book, commodities are addressed constantly, as well as the business suit-clad men trading them, but rarely are the farmers and peasants that worked to grow these profit makers mentioned. This trend is one that is all too familiar in the United States, the history of southern food being one of many. Southern food, as we think of it now, would not exist without the enslaved people that spent so many hours in fields, and kitchens of Antebellum America, but their stories are generally ignored in discourse about southern cooking because of the awkwardness in acknowledging the white south’s racist past. Despite black contributions to southern foodways, the face of southern food is a white one, just google “Best southern chef” to have this point proven, 17 images will appear in front of you, and just one black chef.