Political Eating
Posted on July 31st, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
|
Not enough has been said about John Schwenkler’s fine TAC essay on culinary conservatism, and unfortunately too much of what has been said has been ridiculous, so it is gratifying to see my Scene colleague Alan Jacobs taking up the subject in this first of two posts. Before I say anything more about the essay itself, there is something that needs to be addressed whenever we try to discuss the relationship between food culture and philosophical and political persuasions. Something that culinary conservatives and their good friends the “crunchy” cons and agrarians generally take for granted, as John notes in his essay, is that eating is a political act.
This scandalizes and terrifies many modern conservatives because they seem to have a limited or debased understanding of what it means to say that something is a political act, and they tend to associate it for the most part with the government and the business of electioneering and passing legislation. Were you to say that there is so much more to the life of a community, ta politika, than its government, laws and elections, these same conservatives would agree wholeheartedly and would probably make a point of saying admiringly that most people who would call themselves conservatives today are not activists and are concerned mostly with their families and churches. Their conservative politics derives not from movement boosterism or extensive familiarity with the texts of the postwar American conservative canon, but from their habits and the virtues they try to cultivate in their own lives. If you pressed these conservatives a bit more, they would acknowledge that it is better for families to eat together for many reasons, and many would recognize the integrative role that shared meals at religious celebrations have. Some would even allow that it matters that the Eucharist is a re-enactment, or at the very least a commemoration, of the Lord’s last meal on earth. Even so, to then say that it matters in some important way what they eat, where it comes from or how the animals and soil that provide them sustenance are treated is usually to lose much of their interest. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the language of unfettered desire and autonomy crops up: “I want what I want, and who are you to say otherwise?” At least with many libertarians, this is to be expected, but it is a strange reflex for those who are supposed to prize restraint and wisdom.
To say that eating is a political act worries conservatives because many seem to cling, oddly enough, to an old liberal conception of private, personal life that they wish to preserve free from outside interference, including ultimately the “interference” of neighbors, relatives and local community. Where social conservatives are often keenly aware of the effects that individual choices concerning marriage, child-bearing and child-rearing have on society as a whole, there often seems to be a strange disconnect when it comes to eating, as if an act that ties us into an elaborate web of economic relationships has no greater significance and no other implications other than providing nourishment. It is one kind of activity, perhaps the only kind, where many conservatives act as if the consequences of personal choices do not extend beyond the front door.
At the same time, eating as a political act is nonetheless also a question of how we are governed, whom we choose to empower and how we choose to govern ourselves. As John says:
“Eating is an agricultural act,” writes Wendell Berry. But Slow Food International founder Carlo Petrini argues that it is also a political one—a deed no less significant than the ways we cast our votes. Hence even the smallest acts of resistance to the hegemony of the present system, where corporate representatives and industry-funded scientists at public universities collaborate with government officials on regulatory policies and nutritional guidelines, are crucial steps in recovering local culture and reconstituting our “little platoons.” This will nurture the ability to govern—or resist being governed.
Cross-posted at The Daily Dish
Of course the McCain campaign is trying to exploit racism, just as it’s trying to exploit the all the other memes teh Republicans have used against liberals since the Reagan era. The argument can be boiled down to a sentence: “Democrats are anti-American, intellectual, unpatriotic, free-spending libertines who will tax you to give away the country to minorities. At this point, after eight failed years of Bushism, it’s all they have left. They’re morally and intellectually bankrupt.
Democrats, for the most part, aren’t much better, but please don’t fall into the Rovian game of accusing your opponent of the sins (in this case, race-baiting) you commit.
Okay, this comment has nothing to do with this post and I don’t support McCain, but I’ll respond anyway. The complete lack of evidence that McCain is “trying to exploit racism” seems to be a rather telling problem with your position. Saying “of course” he’s doing something for which there seems to be no evidence is not very persuasive. Are there McCain supporters who are doing the things his campaign is being accused of? Possibly, but we would need to be specific about who we’re talking about. No doubt the GOP is morally and intellectually bankrupt, and you have stumbled on their real tactic, which is to deny that their opponents are good Americanists and Americans, and this is the line of attack McCain’s campaign is using. But that really isn’t race-baiting or exploiting racism.
Oops–this was my first comment here and I apparently haven’t figured out your system. I obviously meant to comment on the post that preceded this one.
I didn’t mean to imply that you support McCain. Instead, it’s clear that the McCain camp picked up on a single comment by Obama (that he did not look like the other presidents on our currency) to accuse him of playing the race card. It’s typical of the Rovian tactics that McCain has adopted to win this race–accuse your opponent of doing something that you’re actually doing. McCain’s people obviously could have chosen from a wide range of empty-headed celebrities, male and female, black and white. It was no accident they picked two young blondes. I think Marshall is exactly right about that:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/mccain_accusing_obama_of_playi.php
That McCain is now exhibiting a level of false outrage about Obama playing the race-card that is out of all proportion to anything Obama said is part of the cynical game Rove has perfected to play up the divisions in American culture-race being one of them. More disturbing is that the mainstream press haven’t figured out the game by now, and that they’re still licking McCain boots despite the fact that he’s reversed himself on almost every position he ever held and has embraced the lowest of political roads.
I haven’t seen the ad–Paris Hilton and Britney Spears? Two celebrities who have the reputation for being airheads. Now if the McCain campaign were to put a Latina/Asian/or just African-American female celebrity, what would the reaction have been? Wouldn’t they still be accused of some sort of racism? And what minority celebrities of their generation have the same sort of reputation regarding the lack of depth? There are perhaps a few, but none with that sort of reputation like the two. They could have included Lindsay Lohan, but then perhaps would be overkill, and the campaign would be accused of bashing ‘young Hollywood’.
Nonetheless, they probably should have avoided making the ad in the first place.
So, as a Lefty kind of guy, I completely agree with the thrust of Schwenker’s article, though I would emphasize that “political eating” is by no means UNIQUELY conservative. (A point you weren’t trying to make, of course – but if I limited myself to the points you were making, all of my comments would be, “Quite so!”)
Most of the Far Left has been devoted to various food/ecology/communitarian issues for quite a while now, and I think this is another area where thoughtful people on both sides can make common cause. And perhaps this area is likely to be less a marriage of convenience than opposition to wire-tapping or the occupation, since the ideals of building a functioning local community go to more timeless human needs.
The broader point that people seem to be incapable of recognizing genuinely political issues echoes Christopher Hayes. People now seem to regard “politics” as little more than posturing over who will deliver the next tax cut, and who is insufficiently “American” in their Respect for The Troops. This in itself is a terrible denunciation of our culture.
PS. A catchy video game making many of the same institutional points as Schwenker’s article, where you try to optimize profits at McDonald’s.
Okay, i wrote a comment that appears to have been eaten (no pun intended).
Main points:
1. Schwenker’s article is very good.
2. Food is a conservative issue, but it’s also a liberal (or at least, a Far-Left) one (not that anyone denies this). Community-building, and localism, is a shared value among thoughtful people of either political tribe. Re-building communities is yet another area where there’s a lot of common ground.
3. The remark that people seem unable to recognize genuinely political issues–i.e., those matters which connect the individual to the world–echoes Christopher Hayes’s post here: http://www.chrishayes.org/articles/decision-makers/
It seems politics is perceived as little more than distributing tax cuts, and Supporting the Troops.
4. A very catchy web-game makes many of the same points as Schwenker’s article.