Tag Archives: Edible Matter

Edible Matter and Joseph Conrad

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While researching an essay for another class, I came upon a miscellaneous document by Joseph Conrad that connects quite well with Jane Bennett’s “Edible Matter” chapter.  The essay, which is actually the introduction of his wife Jessie’s cook book, describes the the art of “good cooking” as a “moral agent” (146).  And, in a very edible matter-esque description, Conrad describes good food as:

“[t]he intimate influence of conscientious cooking by rendering easy the process of digestion promotoes the serenity of mind, the graciousness of though,  and that indulgent view of our neighbors’ failings which is the only genuine form of optimism. Those are its titles to our reverence”  (147).

This description truly made me think of how food is part of a massive assemblage that ultimately manifests its effects in myriad ways, but most importantly, it can influence how we feel.

Moreover, Conrad —in utilizing rather absurd pseudo-scientific claims— instists that the Native American Indians acquired their “sombre and excessive ferocity” from “perpetual indigestion,” which he argued was because their “wives had not mastered the art of conscientious cooking” (147).

given this description of Food, from Conrad, and Marion’s post on Virginia Woolf, it seems like there may have been more thoughts about the vibrance of matter and the fallacy of modernism going on than we would like to think. Reading essays like this make me believe that perhaps recent work in OOO and Actor-Network theory is actually giving a name to something that has long been thought about?

 

For further reading, the book and chapter is:

Conrad, Joseph. “Cookery.” Last Essays. Ed. Richard Curle. Freeport: Books for Libraries, 1970. 146-148. Print.

Questions on Edible Matter

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I was recently watching a stand-up comedy special featuring comedian, Louis C.K. He has this bit about getting fat and regarding Bennett’s properties of Edible Matter, he first agrees with her and then later contradicts himself.
He begins with his jealousy over his skinny friends and his inability to eat “just one doughnut”. He claims he cannot do it, as if the doughnuts hold some type of agency over him. This statement, I thought, was the same as Bennett’s theory that food holds its own agency (as we saw in the potato chip example). This thought is not one experienced only by Louis C.K. and Jane Bennett. I can not even count the endless times I’ve heard someone say “I can not have just one” or “If I start I won’t be able to stop”. This thought of the food having a stronger agency than our own is very common.
However, my question arises because later in his skit, C.K. tells a story in which he goes to a child’s birthday party begrudgingly, but once he sees the tray of cookies, decides that will be his activity for the afternoon. He goes on to explain that when people see him scarfing down cookies he makes a remark like “there’s just something about the cookies” when really it’s the fact that he has no will power to control himself around the sweet treats. He recognizes that he willfully makes a decision to eat the cookies, but then remarks that he has no control or will power to stop after just one. Is it he who is the actor, or the cookies? I get a little confused because his actions to eat the cookies are deliberate, however he claims that his lack of action or control is the reason why he finishes the platter, but he does not attribute any agency to the cookies the way he did earlier in the skit regarding doughnuts. So, I guess my question is in terms of edible matter, is it the food’s agency? or our lack of agency? Is it a mixture of both?

I’ll post a link to the video below. There is a lot of profanity, so be prepared, and I apologize if this offends anyone.
(The views expressed in this video do not necessarily reflect the views of the author.)

Edible Matter as “Vibrant” Matter

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Thinking of food or “edible matter” in terms of assemblages encourages us to go beyond treating food as something we consume on the basis free will. Without conscious acknowledgement, we all enter into a rather intimate relationship with food every day that isn’t entirely dependent on what we, as consumers, want to eat. The food has just as much of an effect on us as we have on it.

We eat to survive, but our survival isn’t the only part of the equation—we, like edible matter, are only one part of a larger network or assemblage. And while the act of eating is usually conceptualized as a reciprocal relationship, the implications of this reciprocity are rarely contemplated.

The act of eating a potato chip, for instance, can be thought of in terms of an “assemblage.” Bennett is not asserting that our actions are devoid of intention, but that intentionality is beset by other factors that lessen its importance. The hand reaching for the chip is “…only quasi- or semiintentional, for the chips themselves seem to call forth, or provoke and stoke, the manual labor” (Bennett 40). This scenario calls into question how much an action is dependent on the subject and how much is dependent on that which is considered an object. In contrast to how we view ourselves as the sole “actants” in an event, the potato chip is active in its influence over our actions.

As far as the debate over what influences our collective eating habits is concerned, we usually look to the media in ascribing blame. Asserting that the food itself is an active influence is something entirely unique. However, that doesn’t mean we should turn around and blame food for the “obesity crisis” in the absence of another more appropriate entity to blame. Bennett is trying to get away from this human tendency in emphasizing the fact that “matter” (whether intentionally or not) works within networks too complex to attribute individual culpability.

Everything (even food in this case) works together to create a “living” world. Vibrancy cannot be measured in weight, height, or value—all things are equally vibrant for the simple fact that they “persist in existing.” Things have a tendency to fade into the background, but they enrich our lives in numerous (often incomprehensible) ways. Jane Bennett’s notion that objects occupy the roles of “context, tool, and constraint” is an undeniably accurate description of how most of us perceive objects in relation to us. As part of an all-encompassing “background,” objects (including edible matter) blend into the world in a way that deemphasizes their agency.

Are drugs edible?

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The way we talked about food in class today was completely different that I have ever talked about it before. Food is the fuel that runs are bodies, sure, and I even knew it could change your mood, but it is astonishing how important food is to our everyday functioning. If we eat fish or drink beer we can become like different people and that is a kind of power that I had never really thought something so seemingly mundane can have on us. One thought I did have though, is how would prescription drugs fall into the assemblage idea that Bennett has in the Edible Matter section. If something like Omega-3 Fatty Acids can make you more focused, where how about Prozac, the birth control pill, or even Viagra? These seem to be a kind of edible matter, but with an assemblage function that is strictly based on the physical effects it can have on our body. Each of these can affect the way we view the world around us and we are hormonally different when we take them, so it seems to me that these are the kind of super-edible matter, at least when it comes the way they are able to make us less static and more vibrant people. Doctors proscribe these because of the assemblages they form with a patent’s biochemical make up and can be of help to the patient because of this. But what about side-effects like the low sex drive experienced by many of those people on anti-depressants or the stain that Viagra can have on the hearts of older men? By this token what about chemotherapy or dialysis?  Side-effects also come from eating hydrogenated fats or other unhealthy food, yet many people are willing to accept them in order to enter into an assemblage with the drug that is both positive and negative. The question I guess, is what are you willing to let into your body that can fundamentally change the nature of your lifestyle….