Eating Anxiety: The Perils of Food Politics

248 Pages·2013·1.54 MB·English

by  Chad Lavin

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Philosophy/Political Science V
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“In Eating Anxiety, Chad Lavin steadfastly rejects what have come to be clichés
about our modern relation to food and gives us new answers to old questions
about food anxieties. His innovative analysis tacks back and forth between political
E A T I N G
philosophy and contemporary food treatises to show how ethical consumption
is founded on untenable notions of the liberal, disembodied subject—ironically E
so. Taking swipes at obesity hysteria, food localism, and posthumanism, A
Lavin asks us to confront our anxieties—including those about our failing T A N X I E T Y
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democracy—rather than to seek solace in individualist approaches to food
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system change.” —JULIE GUTHMAN, author of Weighing In: Obesity,
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Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism

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Exploring discourses of food politics, Chad Lavin argues that our culture’s N
obsession with diet, obesity, meat, and local foods enacts ideological and biopolitical X
responses to perceived threats to both individual and national sovereignty. Using I
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the occasion of eating to examine assumptions about identity, objectivity, and
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sovereignty that underwrite so much political order, Eating Anxiety explains how
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food functions to help structure popular and philosophical understandings of the
world and the place of humans within it. Lavin introduces the concept of digestive
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subjectivity and shows how this offers valuable resources for rethinking cherished h
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political ideals surrounding knowledge, democracy, and power. The Perils of Food Politics
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Eating Anxiety links the concerns of food—especially issues of sustainability, r
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public health, and inequality—to the evolution of the world order and the ls

possibilities for democratic rule. It forces us to question the significance of o
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consumerist politics and, simultaneously, the relationship between politics
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and ethics, public and private. o
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CHAD LAVIN is associate professor of political science and social, political,
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ethical, and cultural thought (ASPECT) at Virginia Tech. He is the author of o
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The Politics of Responsibility. i
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University of Minnesota Press s
Printed in U.S.A.
C H A D L AV I N
Cover design by Salamander Hill Design
eating anxiety
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EATING ANXIETY
The Perils of Food Politics
chad lavin
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
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A version of chapter 5 was published previously as Chad Lavin, “The Year of Eat-
ing Politically,” Theory & Event 12, no. 2 (2009); copyright 2009 by Chad Lavin
and The Johns Hopkins University Press; reprinted with permission by The
Johns Hopkins University Press. Portions of chapter 6 appeared in Chad Lavin,
“The Vegetarian Lesson,” The Chronicle Review (The Chronicle of Higher Edu-
cation), August 14, 2011.
Copyright 2013 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lavin, Chad.
Eating anxiety : the perils of food politics / Chad Lavin.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-8091-7 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-8092-4
(pb : alk. paper)
1. Diet—Political aspects—United States. 2. Food industry and
trade—Political aspects—United States. I. Title.
TX360.U6L38 2013
338.1'9—dc23 2012048338
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-o pportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction Food Politics in the Twilight of Sovereignty ix
1 Diet and American Ideology 1
2 Eating Alone 23
3 The Digestive Turn in Political Thought 47
4 Responsibility and Disease in Obesity Politics 71
5 The Year of Eating Politically 93
6 The Meat We Don’t Eat 115

Conclusion Democracy and Disgust 135
Notes 155
Index 189
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I started writing this book in the fall of 2005, soon after a hurricane and
a shameful display of political neglect sent me fl eeing from Louisiana
to Texas to Pennsylvania, fortunate enough to fi nd helpful friends, fam-
ily, and strangers at each step along the way. I fi nished writing six years
later, fi ve days before the birth of my son. These events do more than
bookend the writing of this book. They each, in their own way, capture
the exposure and intimacy that are rarely avoidable in considerations
of food and politics and that are at the center of this project. In fl eeing
a fl ooded city (an experience of fear and outrage punctuated by great
moments of compassion) and witnessing the birth of my own child (an
experience of joy and wonder marked with tremendous anxiety), I found
myself experiencing similar feelings of vulnerability and gratitude that
come, invariably, from the sharing of spaces, ideas, tragedies, and op-
portunities with others. Digesting such experiences— as well as countless
other more prosaic events— would be impossible without the material
and psychological sustenance provided by people and institutions daily
and as a matter of course.
This book was nourished in similar but more immediate and obvi-
ous ways by the various people and communities who read, solicited,
listened to, or commented directly on its contents. Individually, these
people include Asma Abbas, Rebecca Bamford, Mark Barrow, Ryan Carey,
Bill Chaloupka, Kevin Corrigan, Jodi Dean, Kennan Ferguson, Johnnie
Goldfi nger, Jim Klagge, Mike Lipscomb, Nancy Love, Tim Luke, Brad
MacDonald, Elizabeth Mazzolini, Wolfgang Natter, Amy Nelson, Paul
Passavant, Lydia Patton, Joe Pitt, Andrew Radde- Gallwitz, Chris Rus-
sill, Holloway Sparks, Maryann Tebben, Katie Terezakis, Larry Torcello,
Shane Vogel, Deborah White, and Kathryn Wichelns. They also include
.
vii
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the students in my classes on food at Emory University, Hobart and Wil-
liam Smith Colleges, and Virginia Tech. These folks were all kind enough
to indulge my often frustrating engagements with this material, and they
somehow managed to inject their own critical approaches into my own
occasionally imperious readings. Pieter Martin at the University of Min-
nesota Press shepherded this manuscript through the various hurdles of
academic publishing and offered some very thoughtful last- minute sug-
gestions for revision. The book is surely better because of each of their
contributions. (I have to think I am as well.)
Great thanks go to Martine Watson Brownley, as well as the wonderful
staff and my fellow fellows at the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanis-
tic Inquiry at Emory University for generously hosting (and feeding) me
during the 2006– 7 school year. This project never would have proceeded
past the fi rst chapter without both the moral and material support I
received while there. The College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences
at Virginia Tech later came through with another welcome grant to help
me fi nish the project in the summer of 2011. Thanks to the division of
Social Sciences of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, the departments of Polit-
ical Science and Environmental Studies at Winthrop University, and the
department of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology for
inviting me to talk through some of these issues as I worked on them.
Additional thanks to the departments of Political Science at Hobart and
William Smith Colleges and Virginia Tech and to my colleagues in the
ASPECT program at Virginia Tech for providing welcome and inspiring
places to live, work, and write.
But it is surely to Elizabeth, my true companion, whose life has inter-
sected with mine in ways too wonderful to state, whose critical eye has
greatly improved how I write and think, who pointed me toward food
politics then provided both focused and casual remarks that improved
every part of this book (even the parts that continue to irritate her), and
whose love, humor, and strength helped me endure too many years of
commuting up and down the Eastern Seaboard, that I owe the most. And
to Walter, who somehow manages a smile as breathtaking as his moth-
er’s. Here’s to never eating alone.
.
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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INTRODUCTION
Food Politics in the Twilight of Sovereignty
In recent years, food has emerged as one of the more per-
vasive issues in political struggle, popular entertainment, and humanist
scholarship. Politically, the media warns of a global food crisis owing
to rapidly rising prices and drought- induced shortages, even as the de-
veloped world faces a mounting public health threat stemming from
widespread overeating and continues to redirect so much grain toward
biofuel production. On television, contenders for Iron Chef or Top Chef
delight audiences with their spectacular meals and culinary skill, while
the contestants on The Biggest Loser remind the audiences of the perils of
indulgence. Academically, the growing interest in “food studies” wrangles
anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and nutritionists together to
reveal the hidden machinations of an exploitative, inequitable, and un-
sustainable global food system while also celebrating the opportunities
for human expression and joy through cultural rites and regional identity.
In each case, with a precious and tempting resource implicated in dis-
courses of personal identity, global inequality, and cultural authenticity,
food appears as paradoxically both fascinating and frightening. Eating
Anxiety, as a work of political theory, situates each of these factors, and
each of these issues, in a historical condition anxious about the meaning
of and possibilities for human freedom. The aim of this study is, there-
fore, threefold: fi rst, to explain how food functions culturally, politically,
and metaphorically to help structure popular and philosophical under-
standings of the world and the place of humans within it; second, to
introduce the concept of “digestive subjectivity” and show how it offers
valuable resources for rethinking cherished political ideals surrounding
knowledge, identity, and power; and third, to unpack some of the debates
in contemporary food politics, showing how digestive subjectivity offers
.
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