COLLAPSE
Philosophical Research and Development
VOLUME VII
Collapse; Philosophical Research and Development Issue #7; Culinary Materialism
Robin Mackay/Texts/Books/Editor/Collapse; Philosophical Research and Development/Collapse; Philosophical Research and Development Issue #7; Culinary Materialism.pdf
COLLAPSE VII
First published in 2011 in an edition of 1000
comprising numbered copies 1-950
and 50 hors-commerce copies
Reissued Edition 2012
ISBN 0-9557750-9-2
Published by
Urbanomic
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All text remains © copyright of the respective authors.
Please address all queries to the editor at the above address.
COLLAPSE
Philosophical Research and Development
VOLUME VII
F.dited by
Reza Negarestani
and
Robin Mackay
URBANOMIC
FALMOUTII
COLLAPSE VII
July 2011
EDITORS: Reza Negarestani, Robin Mackay
Editorial Introduction
3
IAIN HAMILTON GRANT
Tue Chemical Paradigm (Interview)
JOHN GERRARD AND MICHAEL A. MORRIS
Com Bomb: A Short History of Nitrogen 1 660-2008
39
85
FI E L D C L U B
Whey To Go: O n The Hominid Appropriation
of the Pig-Function
119
RICK DOLPHIJN
Tue New Alimentary Continuum
147
MANABRATA GUHA
Vague Weaponizations or, the Chemistry of
Para-Tactical Engagements
175
CAROL GOODDEN
FOOD and the City
AO&
Where's the Edge of the Pot?
23 9
]OHN COCHRAN
Object Oriented Cookery
299
1
COLLAPSE VII
RICHARD WRANGHAM
Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
33 1
VANINA LESCHZINER AND ANDREW DAKIN
Theorizing Cuisine from Medieval to Modern 'limes 347
SEAN A. DAY
The Human Sensoria and a Synaesthetic Approach
to Cooking
379
JEREMY MILLAR
Black Cake (A Recipe from Emily Dickinson,
for Emily Dickinson)
411
DAN MELLAMPHY AND NANDITA BISWAS M EL LAM PHY
Ec[h ]ology of the Desetre
41 3
EUGENE THACKER
Spiritual Meat: Resurrection and Religious Horror
in Bataille
437
EDUARDO VIVEIROS DE CASTRO
The Metaphysics of Predation
479
DOROTHEE LEGRAND
Ex-Nihilo: Forming a Body Out of Nothing
499
GABRIEL CATREN
On Philosophical Alchimery
561
FERNANDO ZALAMEA
Analytical Jelly and Transmodern Tatin
Appendix
Notes on Contributors and Acknowledgements
2
569
573
61 1
COLLAPSE VII
Ed itorial Introd uction
Negarestani
Cookery has never been so high on the agenda of West
ern popular culture. And yet the endlessly-multiplying
1V shows, the obsessive interest in the provenance of
ingredients, and the celebration of 'radical' experi
ments in gastronomy, tell us little about the nature of
the culinary. Is it possible to develop the philosophi
cal pertinence of cookery without merely appending
philosophy to this burgeoning gastroculture? How
might the everyday, restricted sense of the culinary
be expanded into a culinary materialism wherein syn
thesis, experimentation, and operations of mixing
and blending take precedence over analysis, subtrac
tion and axiomatisation? This volume, drawing on
resources ranging from anthropology to chemistry,
3
COLLAPSE VII
from hermetic alchemy to contemporary mathematics,
undertakes a trans-modal experiment in culinary think
ing, excavating the cultural, industrial, physiological,
chemical and even cosmic grounds of cookery, and
proposing new models of culinary thought for the
future.
Proto-scientific thought and experimental practice,
particularly in the form of alchemy, was linked to the
culinary arts' vital engagement with the transformation
of matter. Indeed, how could empirical inquiry into
nature, seeking to determine the capacities of matter
on the basis of what lay to hand ( see Bacon's recipes
in the Appendix) , be anything other than a culinary
endeavour? Yet with the increasing specialisation of
the sciences, philosophy has misplaced its will to
extend such inquiry into a speculative philosophy
whose power resides in its synthetic ambition as well
as its analytical prowess.
As observed by IAIN HAMILTON GRANT in the
interview which opens the volume, it is chemistry's
retention of this synthetic ambition that recommends
a 'chemical paradigm' for thinking, providing the
opportunity for philosophy to step outside the circle
of a 'critical' method according to which the condi
tions of possibility for a thinking of nature are purely
epistemological. In the thought of the nineteenth
century naturephilosophers on which Grant draws, the
production of 'nature' qua thought-system cannot itself
4
Editorial Introduction
be excluded from the chemical syntheses it discerns at
work in the inorganic realm; and thought as much as
matter must be subjected to an experimental regime.
Human thought, then, does not condition the pow
ers of chemistry; nevertheless, the latter are mobilized
in unprecedented fashion by the former. Under the
influence of modern chemistry, indissociable from the
industrial exigencies that have driven it, synthetic pro
duction - in the culinary as in other spheres - proceeds
to reprocess the nature that produced it. Augmenting
the modest chemical capacities bequeathed to the
human animal by its evolutionary history, it has pro
duced a new 'chemical earth' upon which we graze,
without having fully encompassed in thought the
prospects that its deterritorialization opens up to us.
Exemplary in this respect isjOHN GERRARD AND
MICHAELA. MoRR1s's 'Corn Bomb', which traces the
implication of nitrogen in the industrialised alimen
tary regime, and the way in which the ingredients for
postwar human culture were prepared and 'cooked' by
war and petropolitics, bringing about a new planetary
economy whose massive ramifications are yet to be
fully comprehended. This story of the entanglement
of military force, agricultural expansion and industrial
science provides a backstory to Gerrard's portraits
of austere, functional structures located in desolated
landscapes, symbols of the virtual climate of power
5
COLLAPSE VII
that the industrialisation of the chemosphere has made
possible.
Extending Gerrard and Morris's 'local' history of
nitrogen, which begins with the human harnessing of
chemical powers, into the distant past, we realise that
the preparation of food in fact takes place on a planetary
and even cosmic scale. The superficial landscape of
mass-produced corn and meat that Gerrard and Morris
correlate with the contemporary human condition is
a non-trivial section of a deeper chemical history: 2.8
billion years ago, cyanobacteria emerged on Earth,
able to transform sunlight and atmospheric nitrogen
directly to fixate carbon to form organic biochemical
compounds. Their production of oxygen as a by
product led to a catastrophic pollution of the planet,
the only survivors of which were the new lifeforms
that had adapted to consume oxygen, and which are
the origin of the diaspora of biological life as we now
know it. The industrial Haber-Bosch process is an
anthropogenic augmentation of a subsequent, weird
biological symbiosis between legumes and remnants
of that earlier bacteriosphere, an evolutionary con
tingency which allowed those nitrogen-hungry plants
to migrate from abundant to relatively inhospitable
environments. The advent of artificially-fixed nitrogen
intensifies massively the dependency that developed
between humans and these hardy deterritorialised
plants whose symbiotic adaptation had allowed them
6
Editorial Introduction
to escape the contingencies of atmospheric nitrogen
fixing. It locks in a new symbiosis between human
culture, nitrogen, and the petroleum that fuels its
artificial preparation to secure the yields demanded
by an exploding population.
In line with the ethos of modern chemistry in
broadening the range of chemistry's universality, the
terrestrial landscape of nitrogen can be traced back
yet further to its cosmic provenance: In the early
universe, the 'ur-chemical' agency of gravitation (as
discussed with Grant) locally breaks the homogeneity
of spacetime and leads to a form of regional contraction
(rather than spatial extension), creating local discon
tinuities and making possible the entropic conditions
and chemical activities that form the universe as we
know it. In the contracted regions, new morphogenetic
transformations and condensations of matter begin to
take place; stellar nucleosynthesis forms the furnaces
in which heavy elements, including stable nitrogen
isotopes, will be forged, thus brewing up, out of the
undifferentiated continuum, the elements of a properly
chemical, differentiated universe in which the terrestrial
sphere will emerge.
Thus, just as the artist selects a single location
to make a 'portrait' of the megasystem of anthropic
terrestrial depredation, the unravelling of the nested
ness of 'chemical valencies' within an organism or
a culture gives rise to an epic chemophilosophical
7
COLLAPSE VII
narrative in every case. It is in this way that a culinary
materialism can open up a continuous yet twisted
(topologically counterintuitive) depth beneath the
surface or the ground: by bringing out the non-trivial
relations between the cosmic continuum and its local
ized regions; by displaying relations between the earth
and the regional horizons for thought that belong to
it, and an unrestricted and unified conception of the
universe.
The examination of the 'new earth' wrought by con
temporary industrialised food production through its
accessing of chemical powers continues in FIELDCLUB 's
contribution. Offering an insight into the deranged
machinations of laboratory capitalism, their inves
tigation of the changing fortunes of the erstwhile
waste product whey implicates humans, agriculturally
adapted animals and advanced chemical processes
in an industrially-augmented culinary syntheses: the
redistributive function previously fulfilled by the pig
is usurped by a new chemically-enhanced human
consumer, ready to fulfil the capitalist exigency to full
exploitation of the earth.
In line with the general rise of the culinary, recent
years have also seen a resurgence of interest in food
in the contemporary art world - most emblematically,
perhaps, in the work of Rirkrit 1iravanija. The 'rela
tional' paradigm, with its emphasis on the convivial
potency of non-object-based art practices, finds a
8
Editorial Introduction
natural home in the social setting of cooking and eat
ing. This has also occasioned recent revisitations of
the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, and the restaurant
FOOD which he co-founded in New York in 1971 with
CAROL GOODDEN, who we interview in this volume.
An undecidable, experimental project, FOOD engaged
equally the multiple social, economic, convivial and
material aspects of cookery and eating. But what was
its relation to Matta-Clark's more well-known work,
in particular his architectural interventions? In our
interview with Goodden, we explore the extent to
which the artist's interest in disrupting structure and
breaking down closed spaces to produce new forms
of communication, can be related to a more general
concern with alchemical or culinary transformation,
exemplified in early works such as his agar pieces and
fried photographs. Here Matta-Clark's work is read as
addressing the metabolism of the urban environment,
where buildings and cities digest and are digested, as
part of a universal culinary process: in the words of
one of Matta-Clark's notes, reproduced alongside the
interview, 'building materials as nature's food - build
to feed the worms an organic eat-a-tecture' . . .
Recounting the origins of FOOD, Goodden depicts
a city that invited an exploratory art practice taking as
its 'point of departure' not only 'the whole of human
relations and their social context' (Nicolas Bourriaud's
aspiration for a relational aesthetics) but ways in which
9
COLLAPSE VII
they are intricated with other (urban, architectural
and alimentary) fabrics under this common culinary
or alchemical principle. FO OD clearly staged the
culinary, but Matta-Clark blended it with practices
that make his city a very different territory, in truth,
to the cities in which international contemporary art
practice stages its convivial events in galleries (ironic
exemplars of the 'independent and private spaces'
Bourriaud hoped to escape) . In exploring transfor
mations beyond the preparation and consumption
of food, FOOD pioneered conceptions alternative to
the mere preparation and consumption of artworks.
As Goodden suggests, for Matta-Clark FOOD was
'a grinding, regurgitating, consuming thing', a work
whose ingredients and methods surpassed the restrict
edly artistic or culinary.
The collective AO& offer another example of how
the restricted practice of the culinary can provide
a locus for the exploration of broader processes of
production, communication and consumption. As we
learn in our interview, AO&'s 'perverse' endeavour to
fully inhabit the problem of food production operates
through a deliberate and painstaking disclosure that
makes possible an enhanced perception or phenom
enology of the act of cookery. AO&'s meals do not
stop at providing striking gastronomic experiences for
diners, but operate as carefully-controlled experiments
in the communicational potencies of the dinner table.
10
Editorial Introduction
Crucially, AO&'s practice involves within the
ambit of 'food preparation' the personal sourcing
and assembly of all 'ingredients', including cooking
materials, the preparation of the site, and the forging
of connections with a network of producers. Hence
they ask, 'Where is the edge of the pot?', preparing
the way for a generalised culinarism that reaffirms the
centrality of an expanded notion of architecture found
in Matta-Clark's work.
AO&'s practice may, indeed, fulfil chef JOHN
CocttRAN's demand for a 'flat cookery' that acknowl
edges its non-human participants. For Cochran,
received practices of cooking - the haute cuisine chef's
as much as the fast food burger-flipper's - 'distort
ontology', creating an instrumental caricature of the
objects they employ. Chefs, like philosophers, there
fore, maintain uninterrogated 'ontological commit
ments' determined by their praxes. An' object-oriented'
approach to cookery, Cochran insists, would recognise
that objects have powers that exceed our intentional
interactions with them, and open itself up to this
continuum of objectal powers.
In his examination of two 'revolutionary' contem
porary food movements that claim to liberate them
selves from normative models of cookery - Molecular
Gastronomy and Slow Food - Cochran finds they fall
short of this ideal: Molecular Gastronomy investigates
the chemical composition of foods only to manufacture
11
COLLAPSE VII
sensory fireworks, producing professional chefs and
professional consumers alike; Slow Food lavishes its
sentimental attentions on the social and cultural import
of foods only to draw them into a global economy. In
both cases supposed radicality supervenes upon an
image of culinary thought that plays into the hands
of an economically-driven professionalisation of the
culinary, at the expense of amateur experimentation.
Both are found wanting, missing the insight that
'food continues to translate you, and you continue to
translate food, even after swallowing' .
Cochran's demand to open up the practice of cook
ery to this extended 'translation' raises the question of
how one makes oneself 'a good meal' for the outside,
detecting or inviting nonhuman contingencies into
cookery. It is perhaps worth pointing out that this
is not to be achieved through mere promiscuity or
practices of 'openness' based on the aleatory or free
expression. Paradoxically, it is AO&'s meticulously
controlled culinary regime that, operating in varying
settings, quietly affords an insight into what it is to
cook and to eat.
In his contribution, MANABRATA GuHA expands
upon the notion that sensitivity to the culinary powers
of objects can offer egress from a spontaneous 'image
of thought' into a wider continuum, an open system
whose chemical, military, logical and modal dimen
sions he unfolds in his essay on 'The Chemistry of
12
Editorial Introduction
Para-Tactical Engagements' . Guha reports on recent
efforts at the weaponization of the massively potent
Bhut Jolokia chili, finding the military project to har
ness its non-lethal power to incapacitate and disorient
indicative of a strategic shift on the part of a state
attempting to contend with a new threat, the 'enemy
of all'. Outlining the futile nature of this employ
ment of the Bhut Jolokia as a means to enhance an
ill-adapted military model, Guha turns instead to the
traditional culinary usage of the chili to reveal more
fundamental lessons for the transformation of the
schema of battlespace and the rise of a new vague and
inherently synthetic adversary that renders political
reason impotent, globally and locally.
For Guha, the insurrectionary subject is the syn
thetic distillate of the unbound continuum or 'the
open', a singular field through which all chemical
fusions and transformations pass. In the figure of the
'enemy of all', war is revealed to be far deeper than the
political, the battlefield far broader than any number of
discrete spaces that the state or contemporary military
theory can envision. Since the synthetic horizon of
the continuum is a trans-modal web that smoothly
and gradationally blends the question of universal
constituency (the open) with the question of tacticity
(the opening of discrete fields), the battlefield is always
conceived as a gradient that focally reflects the free
expression of war and the unbound global battlespace
13
COLLAPSE VII
within regional and discrete battlespaces strategically
mapped out by the state according to the legacy of
political thought. For this reason, for Guha, drawing
on the mathematico-philosophical work of Fernando
Zalamea, the battlefield of the insurrectionary subject
is a regional approximation of the universal continuum
or the open, whose exact boundaries are blurred, logic
vague and topos purely synthetic. The insurrection
ary subject of the global battlespace does not resist
assimilation, but on the contrary, adapts a vague modal
geometry so as to soften its particular edges and turn
into a 'transplant' capable of inhabiting the state's
discrete battlespace as an agent of catalysis, fusing
the state's axiomatic structure with the non-axiomatic
and unmasterable geometry of the global battlespace.
It is this chemical softening of exact characteristics
and recapturing of the open (continuum) within the
discrete horizon that Gu ha finds manifested in the
traditional recipe for Bhut Jolokia chili pickle, whose
vague identity (itself the outcome of the chemical
fusion and synthesis of different global-local modali
ties) makes it a perfect supplement or side-dish that
stealthily unpacks a wide range of culinary sensations
within the unsuspected consumer, 'a catalysis-engineer
that exposes particular and discrete entities to a senso
rial continuum'.
Here, as in Gerrard's work, local chemical or culi
nary phenomena give us to understand how the open
14
Editorial Introduction
universal continuum reflects into (or experiences) itself
through various complex transitions, modal fusions,
global-local surgeries and transplantations whereby
contingencies, possibilities and actualities are welded
together or transplanted within one another: Hence,
for Guha, as for Grant, the 'chemical paradigm' marks
out a synthetic domain that precedes (without exclud
ing) the chemistry proper of elements, reactions, and
so forth.
RICK DoLPHIJN adopts another culinary approach
to the contemporary 'state of emergency', analysing
how the changing alimentary regime of the military
anticipated and accelerated the rise of biopolitical
governance through continual intervention. Accord
ing to Dolphijn, the militarization of the world's diet
and the territorialization implicit in dietary programs
have resulted in the emergence of a tetrestrial dietary/
military continuum whose vague and synthetic ele
ments are 'terroristsoldiers' (Guha's 'enemy of all') .
The more the nourishment of the state and the soldier is
drawn from the chemical earth, the more they become
synthetic in nature, as interior and exterior become
blurred; and the harder it becomes to distinguish them
as discrete recognizable entities: this 'new continuum'
becomes manifest in the terroristsoldier, who is figured
in every individual and whose diet is the entire synthetic
landscape of the earth. Dolphijn points to current
olfactory research as a critical stage in this process
15
COLLAPSE VII
since it involves topologically-'pointless' interventions
similar to those involved in the 'self-cooking' of the
Bhut Jolokia pickle (whose method itself echoes the
Baconian experiments and Arabic poisons collected
in the Appendix to this volume) .
Dolphijn's and Guha's contributions expose the
wider stakes of this intrusion of the chemical (con
tinuum) into the political sphere and its discrete
battlespaces: For both writers, the exploitation or
weaponization of the culinary or the chemical by the
state unwittingly exposes the latter's strategic political
horizon to an open and contingent expanse that proves
detrimental to the strategic and military integrity of the
political reason manifested in the architecture of the
battlespace or the biopolitical horizon. This highlights,
above all, the veritable potency of the culinary: Since
all chemical and culinary entities are already open to
(and open us to) the rest of the chemical continuum
through complex syntheses, interphased spaces and
vague boundaries, and since the continuum is a non
axiomatic landscape, such entities throw the axiomatic
structure of politico-strategic reason into incoherency
- registered as an expression of a war already-there. As
Dolphijn explains, this traumatic incursion, pioneered
in the military sphere, has generalised consequences:
here, as in the history of nitrogen, 'military intelligence
speed[ s] up modern life', bringing into play 'wholly
16
Editorial Introduction
other physicochemical, organic and anthropomorphic
contours of the earth' .
According to Grant, the fundamental tenet of the
'chemical paradigm' demands we accept that no chemi
cal process is identified and 'made available' without
chemical intervention, 'regardless of whether that's
done by chemists or by nature'. Dolphijn and Guha's
texts show us that, indeed, it is always the continuum
'itself' that opens up the chemical horizon, allowing its
local exploitation to 'take place', but that its unmaster
able synthetic power always threatens to exceed and
overwhelm this instrumentalisation.
In accord with this discovery that human cook
ery takes place within a prior (in Guha, even 'pre
ontological') complex that is already 'culinary', in
his contribution RICHARD WRANGHAM deepens the
notion that 'it is cooking that makes us human' - his
thesis being that the advent of cookery is one of the
major drivers behind the development of the human
brain. In identifying the consumption of cooked food
as an evolutionary commitment and thus a dependency - a
'decision' made for us and that determines our destiny
- Wrangham reveals how the human culture of cook
ing belongs to nature's chemical and physiological
horizon. For this reason, cookery must be seen in the
wider context of a culinary continuum that includes
the contingencies that formed the human as such, in
advance of the cultural machinations that then become
17
COLLAPSE VII
necessary to fulfil the energy acquisition requirements
of an exploding population ( Gerrard, F I E L D C L U B ) .
From a human point of view, cooking may be a cultural
phenomenon; but from the point of view of nature,
as Grant points out, this distinction cannot be made;
we are cooked as well as cooks (foryears I thought I was
cooking all this up, but nature was telling me what was on
the menu . . . ) .
Perhaps the voluntarist, preferentialist nature of
gastronomic consumerism may be disturbed by Wrang
ham's demonstration that we do not (as a species) have
a choice about whether or not to cook; there is therefore
indeed 'reason in the roasting of eggs', but it also fol
lows that reason and its emergence is ( as Nietzsche
argued) of a piece with other (intestinal and colonic, for
example) peculiarities that revolutionised the human
metabolism and ultimately provided the conditions for
both gastronomy and alloplastic chemistry. As Grant
states, 'nature can be produced by thought precisely
because thought cannot be produced outside of nature.
But this alters what "thinking nature" means' . It also,
we may add, alters, or even reverses, what a 'thinking
of cookery' may mean 'coquo, ergo cogi,to'.
In 'Theorizing Cuisine from Medieval to Modern
Times', VANINA LESCHZINER AND ANDREW DAKIN
chart the epistemic shifts implicated in the movement
from a medicinal to a hedonic model of eating. Their
contribution demonstrates how the norms of developed
-
18
Editorial Introduction
gastronomy harbour complexities occluded by their
omnipresence and apparent transparency. Prevailing
gastrological norms (in Leschziner and Dakin's exam
ple, the separation of sweet from non-sweet) exist at
the intersection of many influences, where emergent
sociological, institutional and epistemic conditions
drive the exploration of alternative conceptual articula
tions of the 'phase-space' of possibilities provided by
basic chemical, physiological, nutritional and adaptive
factors. Thus, a culinary object such as sugar, with its
basic chemical valence for human physiology, provides
a kind of pivot around which, historically, differing con
ceptual structures are articulated - its 'endo-relational
powers' (Cochran) exceeding the 'exo-relations' which
any one of those ordering structures assigns it.
We should of course recall here FI ELDCLUB's dem
onstration of how this plasticity with regard to what
is 'edible' is augmented - to the point of reversibility
(the transformation of whey from waste to ingredient)
by the advent of ever more sophisticated commercial
chemistry and constant innovation in markets. This
plasticity opens the way to an experimental gastrologi
cal practice that could be related both to the explora
tory 'flat cookery' recommended by Cochran and to the
naturephilosophical experimentalism recommended
by Grant: A cookery that addressed gastronomy in
such a way would not rest with exhibitionist displays
that inverted or recombined cultural norms (thus
19
COLLAPSE VII
Leschziner and Dakin's judgment on Molecular Gas
tronomy) , but that would map out the landscape
formed by zones of interference between 'objects'
of different types (chemical, physiological, hedonic,
institutional . . . ) so as to discover new routes within it.
A curious demonstration of the possible scope of
such a discipline comes in the form of the 'synaesthetic
cooking' proposed by SEAN DAY. Day introduces us to
the complexities of various types of synaesthetes' expe
rience of flavour in relation to colour and language,
demonstrating how the synaesthete's peculiar talents
extend the culinary palette into a trans-sensory 'synthe
saurus' that is at once polyphonic, polychromatic and
trans-modal. Molecular Gastronomy has, famously,
experimented with the integration of different senses
(not only olfactory but visual and aural) into dishes.
Day's synaesthesia prompts him to call for culinary
practice to engage further, not only with the sciences
that are able to analyse and synthesise its materials, but
also more fully with neuroscientific research that could
inform a more systematic approach to the interaction of
different sensory components. This expanded form of
multi-sensory cookery would transmodulate gustatory
sensation; but, as Day observes, since synaesthesiae are
often cemented in contingent individual associations,
it could result also in culinary events - such as the
'phoneme-to-flavour' and 'flavour-to-colour' recipes he
20
Editorial Introduction
and James Wannerton propose - whose gastronomic
appeal extends to only one person.
Following Day's recipe for ' Light Cyan' ,
JEREMY MILIAR's 'Black Cake', in an edition produced
especially for this volume, is based on a recipe passed
on by Emily Dickinson in an 1883 letter. We know, from
contemporary accounts, of Dickinson's culinary skills;
which are matched, of course, by the strong sense of
the domestic in her poetry. But while the poetry can
feel somewhat fragile, the same could not be said of
her cake, which promises to be substantial indeed, and
somewhat ill-suited to the taking of tea in an Amherst
townhouse. Millar's rendering of the recipe allows us
to think of the poetry differently, once more: beneath
the fragile and hesitant procedures of the everyday and
domestic, lurks the black earth [al-chem] of substantial
transformation.
As we know from Claude Levi-Strauss - a constant
reference throughout this volume - we eat not just
physical food, but also symbols. In his contribution to
the volume, EDUARDO VIVEIROS DE CAsTRO examines
the extreme point at which the culinary meets the
symbolic - cannibalism. An excerpt from his recent
Cannibal Metaphysics,1 the text reflects the reconsidera
tion of anthropological perspectivism advocated in
the book: Where anthropologists have sought to see
'from the native's point of view', Viveiros de Castro
1. Metaphysiques Cannibales (Paris: PUF, 2009) .
21
COLLAPSE VII
argues that their attempts to do so, paradoxically,
have been limited by a very culturally-specific form of
perspectivism. He proposes that within cannibalism,
we can discover another remarkable example of a
developed and socially-functional form of perspectiv
ism: 'anthropophagy as anthropology' .
Refusing an account of cannibalistic 'sacrifice' as
divine expiation, Viveiros de Castro examines the ways
in which the devouring of captives also amounts to an
inhabiting of 'the enemy's point of view' on the self,
with consumption of the other playing a central role in
the social construction of identity. In this 'movement
of reciprocal determination' by the enemy's point of
view, Viveiros de Castro sees a 'mechanism for the ritual
production of collective temporality' : the "'interior
ity" of the social body is integrally constituted by the
capture of the symbolic resources of the "exterior"' .
I n recounting the determining events fo r his recon
sideration of sacrifice, and his consequent proposal
to expand the field by 'structuralising' the thinking
of sacrifice as a thinking of forces rather than forms,
Viveiros de Castro prepares for further developments
in Cannibal Metaphysics, where he advocates Deleuzian
Becoming as a more favourable conceptual resource
than Levi-Straussian sacrifice for asking 'what [it] is
[ . . . ] that is devoured' when one human eats another.
(Reading of Viveiros de Castro's contribution should be
supplemented with Aparecida Vila<;a's account (in the
22
Editorial Introduction
Appendix) of the 'gustative pleasures' of cannibalism
and 'ingestion [as] a fundamental classificatory opera
tor [ . . . ] intrinsically bound to the notion of predation' .)
EuGENE THACKER offers another perspective on
cannibalism: Agreeing with Viveiros de Castro that the
crucial point is whether the eaten body is a 'thing' or
not - since in order to become food, corpses must be
symbolically rendered into objects - Thacker relates
the cannibalism theme to Anaxagoras' examination of
the paradoxes of corporeal resurrection. How can the
virtual integrity of the resurrectable material body be
squared with the corpse's evident reprocessing through
the anonymous continuity of material transformation
(Matta-Clark's 'primeval cannibal chaos') ? For if the
body persists as resurrectable and thus as individual
throughout its trituration and consumption by other
organisms, throughout the 'culinary transformation of
matter' through which 'the very materiality of the world
is continually "cooked" (and eaten) ' , this would ulti
mately render every act of eating cannibalistic. Thacker
finds Athenagoras' problem echoed in Bataille's notion
of the discontinuous human's thwarted attempts
to access 'divine' continuity - an access which, for
Bataille, is approached in our relation both to food
and to the corpse (here, as in Guha's argument, eating
is associated with a threat to 'somatic integrity') .
Thacker resists the temptation t o expand a
restricted notion of cooking to a generalised
23
COLLAPSE VII
culinarism-as-anonymous-transformation, turning
instead - via his reading of Bataille's theory of reli
gion - to the notion of a 'desolate cookery' rooted in
a negative concept of life and which (in an oblique
departure from Cochran's credo) calls for an 'abject
oriented ontology' .
As Cochran points out, an expanded, acute sensitiv
ity to the culinary situation is a necessity rather than an
option for those medically constrained to intentionally
regulate their metabolism. Constrained to exercise
such 'mange management' (to appropriate Matta
Clark's phrase), they have the same keen sense of the
'alchemy' involved in food preparation and digestion
that Goodden indicates as having instigated Matta
Clark's inquiries. More extreme forms of discipline,
and concomitantly acute levels of bodily awareness,
are the subject of DOROTHEE LEGRAND's contribu
tion. The self-administered regimes of anorectics, she
argues, sensitise us to the fact that eating is always a
locus for the administration of the self. Introducing a
move toward a deep (intra-subjective) phenomenology
of consumption (in general) and eating disorders (in
particular) , her contribution emphasises how identity
is produced through dietary discipline: diets are not
simply eating programmes or schedules, but rather sets
of procedures or recipes for the production of identity.
As Legrand demonstrates, this relation between the
diet and ( self-)production is manifestly highlighted
24
Editorial Introduction
in anorexia, where 'eating nothing' translates into a
series of complex semiotic, phenomenological and
cognitive procedures for the subject with regard to
the production of identity - ideally of an integrated
identity that would be a miraculous 'victory over
digestion' (Thacker) .
Following from Thacker's observation that 'to eat is
always to [ . . . ] incorporat[e] oneself into the realm of
anonymous [ . . . ] processes', and Guha's insistence that
the culinary continuum harbours a 'threat to somatic
integrity', Legrand demonstrates that in the act of
eating, the multidimensionality of bodily self-con
sciousness is foregrounded; we experience ourselves
not only as subject but simultaneously as object and
as anonymous material. As she meticulously sets out,
this daily reminder that 'each of us does nothing but
carry a corpse about' (thus Thacker's epigraph, from
Philo) can precipitate precarious existential experi
ments whose aim is to fully integrate the self through
a process of 'constitutive self-negation' - a building
of identity through an 'infinitesimal' process of sub
tracting self-as-object from self-as-subject. Such 'inti
mate projects' of 'controlled transformation' involve a
culinary ascesis, but one that is based in a tortuously
acute sense that eating involves the maintenance of
the self qua constitutive tension between self-object
and self-subject; or - in Bataille's terms, as discussed
by Thacker - between continuity and discontinuity.
25
COLLAPSE VII
As Legrand argues, the anorectic in a certain sense
presents us with the truth of food, potently distilling
the problem of 'the demonstration of one's existence'
in the face of the 'narcissistic wound' inflicted by the
knowledge that one must incorporate the anonymous
in order to pursue the subject-self's ideal of integrity.
For Hegel, the externality of the food and its objec
tive exactness provided the digesting subject with
a dialectical opportunity to reclaim its identity on
behalf of the subject.2 But for Legrand, as for Guha
and Thacker, food enforces a form of exteriority that
cannot claim such exactness. The subject is vague
and already-indistinguishable, and here it is food that
becomes a 'mirror' in which one sees oneself 'from the
enemy's point of view' . Legrand finally suggests that
anorexia may emerge as symbolic process from the
frustrated intersubjective demand that food be given,
not as need-fulfilling object, but as a gift that feeds
desire. Here, perhaps, is the fundamental function and
ploy of gastronomy and its cultural overvaluation - the
cultural exacerbation in discourse and culture of a
necessary obfuscation of our relation to food, obscur
ing the anonymous, objectal dimension of subjectivity
to which eating exposes us.
As in the martial alimentary regimes described by
Dolphijn, for Legrand, consumption itself becomes
2. See G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy ef Nature, ed. M .J. Petry (London:
Allen and Unwin, 1970), vol. 3, 162·4.
26
Editorial Introduction
a form of production (of identity) from the inside
out, in '(non-)eating projects representative of one's
subjecthood, and thereby constitutive of it' . Food
produces the subject-as-object, and a 'new people for
a new earth' . Legrand's understanding of consumption
also recalls Ferenczi's account of assimilation as 'alien
transplant', recalled by Guha in his 'exegesis' 'Serving
the Open' (in the Appendix) . For Ferenczi, eating and
consumption create a polyvalent or nested chemical/
culinary structure: Food is a foreign body that cannot
be wholly identified in terms of its capacity for absorp
tion (food simply as nutrient that is wholly reintegrated
within the system) or for wastage (food as something
which distinguishes the object from the subject, where
all that is wasted is no longer part of the subject) . While
for Hegel eating ends with the overcoming, through
digestion, of the foreign body that entered the sphere
of the living being, and results in the dialectical rec
lamation of the individuality and being-for-self of the
animal, Guha, Ferenczi and Legrand identify digestion
as an interiorization of xeno-economical relations,
wherein the subject - far from reclaiming its subjectiv
ity - is chemically transformed by an object that resists
full assimilation. In this sense, all food, no matter
how well-cooked, is poisonous. Awareness of this
xeno-economical space of extra-subjective chemistry,
of which the subject is now seen to be a product, fully
schizophrenizes the culinary cogito 'I am what I eat',
27
COLLAPSE VII
just as the powers of its continuum vex the cookie
cutter battlespaces of the state. The dialectical valence
of food for the subject, in its attempt to conclude its
reality and self-relatedness, is challenged by this new
model of assimilation in which food, the interiorized
object, can no longer be distinguished as a discrete
or exact body that can be either fully assimilated or
conveniently ejected. Food, the agent of repletion,
is instead vague (Guha) or ambivalent (Legrand) ,
suggesting an economy of consumption in which the
digesting subject cannot bring its relation to its food
to any conclusive resolution. The identity that the
consumer or the subject produces for itself through
digestion is the result of devouring the object or food;
but also the result of being internally devoured by it
(Ferenczi) - as the terroristsoldier is consumed by
the new chemical earth he is put to work on. In this
sense, thinking in terms of a philosophy of nature, we
might revisit the recapitulation thesis - characterised
by Grant as a 'dynamics of the totality of nature' - as
a process of 'eating the ancestors' (Ferenczi) , a process
in which digestion is never complete, in which traces
- alien insiders - remain within, encrypted pathways
into the labyrinth of the chemical continuum: this
would be a 'chemophilosophy in the recapitulationist
sense' (Grant) in which 'the discrete and the particular
is always infiltrated by 'the open' (Guha) .
28
Editorial Introduction
Here we return to the theme of our previous vol
ume; for it becomes clear that a culinary materialism
opens up new vistas for geophilosophy. Nietzsche
demanded that thought be 'true to the earth', extending
the genealogical method so as to ground culture and
thought in the stomach and on the terrain to which it
is adapted ( an aspiration satisfied in a different way
by Wrangham's thesis ) . But Nietzschean genealogies
only chart the history - after all, a restricted, local
ized history - of the surface; it will demand a further
'Copernican' effort to extirpate from philosophical
thought the last vestiges of the human's spontaneous
image of its dwelling place.
To be truly terrestrial, one must renounce the
superficiality of the encrusted model of geophiloso
phy. Culinary materialism sets against geophilosophy
as the philosophy of or for the earth - a thought that
is 'true-to-the-earth' - chemophilosophy as a universal
philosophy - a thought whose topos is an earth that
is 'true-to-the-universe' ( that is, an earth syntheti
cally envisioned within the full spectrum of the open
continuum) . It is only this universalist earth that can
serve as the veritable plane of thought upon which a
chemophilosophy - a philosophy that opens up the
earth to the continuum - is conceived. Chemophil
osophy therefore marks the transition from geophi
losophy to a philosophy whose earth belongs to a
unified and open continuum whose regions are vague,
29
COLLAPSE VII
gradationally open to various spectra that lie beyond
the manifest surface and body of the planet. Within
the continuous environment of the continuum, earth
is then understood analytically and synthetically. If,
for pre-Copernican alchemy, the earth was the founda
tion of all elements and the mother of all, containing
within herself the seed of everything mineral, vegetable
and animal, the chemical revolution - still in progress
under the auspices of astrobiology and neurochemistry
- subverted the centrality of earth to chemistry. By
establishing that compounds can be synthesized across
different domains, and subsequently by emphatically
linking the particulate to the chemical, biological and
psychological, the chemical revolution rediscovered
the earth, not as mother of life or receptacle of celes
tial rays, but as a fuzzy and synthetic region of the
chemical continuum, the outcome of a local 'recipe'
that enjoys no synthetic or analytical privilege over
the space beyond it. We can thus understand this vol
ume on 'Culinary Materialism' not only in terms of a
radicalisation of 'Geo/Philosophy' (COLLAPSE VI) but
also as a continuation of the legacy of the 'Copernican
Imperative' (COLLAPSE V) - that orbital subversion
which also shatters the alchemical parental hegemony
of sol and tuna over the earth. The cardinal ingredients
of this subversion can be read in Newton's recipe (in the
Appendix) : the homogenization of nature as one (con
tinuum) , combined with orbital humiliation (gravity) ,
30
Editorial Introduction
puts the earth into a new culinary relationship with
itself: The gravity of the unanchored earth becomes
at once a means to extend the chemical continuum of
the earth and its compounds to the culinary landscape
and the realm of taste and sensation, and a mortifica
tion of the earth by its own natural compounds and
elements - earth literally cooked to death.
It is this decentralism that loosens the earth to
the extent that the unheard-of syntheses discussed
by Gerrard, FIELDCLUB, Dolphijn and Guha become
possible; and as for the gastronomic products of the
kitchen, the same kitchen that provided the conditions
- historical (Grant) and pre-historical (Wrangham)
for scientific experiment and enquiry, their savour (as
Grant anticipates) can and must now be understood in
the very terms of the activity of the continuum revealed
by that enquiry.
DAN MELIAMPHY AND NANDITA BISWAS MEllAMPHY
develop such a post-geophilosophy, rethinking plan
etary 'ecology' as an 'ec[h]ology' wherein the thinker is
'translated back into nature' as its echo, and where the
planet 'feasts upon itself' . Connecting the ourobouric
or ovoid figure of this autophagy to the Nietzschean
will-to-power, this ec[h]ology escries the al-chem, the
black earth, as a stomachos or 'pit of blackness' - what
Guha describes as the 'self-churning' continuum. It
is also a vermicular thinking: as the worm translates
all things back into black earth (see Darwin's recipe,
31
COLLAPSE VII
in the Appendix) , Nietzsche suggests that to be true
to the earth is to be retranslated and to retranslate
back into the 'terrible ground-text of homo natura' - a
'hideous gnosis' that, once again, involves the poisonous
contemplation of one's incorporation into/as anony
mous process.
Mellamphy and Mellamphy's demonstration of the
persistence and continued pertinence of alchemical
thought sets the stage for our concluding contribu
tions, which both advocate the compositional (perhaps
even synaesthetic) kernel of philosophical thinking
expressed and explored most resolutely in the her
metic tradition of alchemy, a tradition that bridged
astronomy, medicine, gastronomy, mathematics, optics
and art, and was conceived in the philosophical and
pro to-scientific furnace of such figures as J abir ibn
Rayyan, Arnaldus de Villa Nova, Ramon Llull and
Nicole Oresme.
Although in the transition from proto-science to
modern science and with the birth of modern chem
istry, the alchemical ladder of nature (scala naturae)
was effectively toppled and the hermetic tradition
dislodged from the centre of philosophical inquiry to
the margins, philosophy's compositional kernel and its
culinary ability to globally combine analytical loci of
thought and coalesce incommensurable ingredients so
as to mediate the universal experience of a bottomless
nature was never fully abandoned. The compositional
32
Editorial Introduction
ambition of philosophy and its engagement with syn
thetic environments, mixtures, synoptic perspectives,
spectra of knowledge and modal transits (contingency,
potentiality, possibility, necessity . . . ) across the contin
uum of nature, has been reappropriated and extended
by Novalis, Schelling, Peirce, and most recently by
Fernando Zalamea and Gabriel Catren. In the alchemi
cal tradition, the synthetic and compositional valence
of elements or local fibres was tested by a process
known as tinging, whereby metals were introduced to
fire in order to reveal their transmutational hierarchy
(tints or tones) and synthetic powers on the basis
of a projection of the spirit or redness of fire or the
Sun. For these latter traditions, philosophy's synoptic
and compositional kernel systematically unfolds the
synthetic threshold and compositional valence of all
local fields of thought and the universe according to
how the omnipresent and open universal continuum
flows through them and comes into 'focus' . Therefore,
philosophy becomes an 'alchemical paradigm' in itself
that 'tinctures all thought and nature', 3 and in doing so,
deepens the reflexive and trans-modal self-experience
of the open universal continuum, bottomless nature, or
'b[l]ackground' (Mellamphy and Mellamphy) .
In line with his study of an open or non-Canto
rian continuum built on Peirce's late logical thought,
3. F. Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum: A Methodological and Mathematical
Approach, available at: http://files.acervopeirceano.webnode.es/20000006848c2649bc4/Zalamea-Peirces-Continuum. pdf, 6 1 .
33
COLLAPSE VII
involving topics such as the continuum, the topologi
cal basis of logical distribution, modal geometry and
synthetic thought, FERNANDO ZALAMEA has in recent
years pursued a mathematico-philosophical project
committed to a de-rigi,dification of thought. For Zalamea
this de-rigidification cannot be properly undertaken
without having a systematic mathematical account of
the unbound continuum. Absent any observation of
the mathematical universe and the labyrinth of the
continuum, philosophy's ontological and epistemologi
cal claims tend to lean toward one aspect or regional
partition of the continuum, and accordingly rigidify
the continuum in one way or another. Philosophy
in this way becomes a myopic discipline that sways
either toward realism or idealism, synthesis or analysis,
integration or difference, thus becoming incapable of
radically thinking compositions, mixtures, contamina
tions, decompositions, transitions of nature to culture,
cultural fusions and transits - in short, the full chemical
spectrum or culinary constitution of the universe. In
other words, without maps and compasses to explore
and survey the landscape of the continuum, philosophy
ultimately fails to develop a synoptic view constituted
of both analysis and synthesis4 - it falls prey to the
same kinds of distortions that Cochran describes as
being at work in Molecular Gastronomy, that recent
4. For a view, both detailed and panoramic, of cultural mixtures and
compositions in relation to contemporary mathematics and its transmodernist
implications, see F. Zalamea, Ariadne and Penelope: Webs and Mixtures in
Contemporary World ( Oviedo: Ediciones Nobel, 2004) .
34
Editorial Introduction
return to the ancient bond between science and the
culinary whose overanalytical jellies tend to disappoint;
or worse, like fusion cuisine, it succeeds only in inef
fectually aping the trans-regionality that is its vocation.
As is the case with 'rigidified' philosophies, failure to
achieve a deep and synoptic scope consigns such efforts
to cultural myopia: dabbling in or 'applying' science
or cultural difference, they remain unable to deepen
their cultural and gastronomic aspects in relation to
a universalist chemical horizon capable of giving rise
to culture or cultural experiment.
The recipes Zalamea contributes to our volume
(to be taken with a pinch of salt) examine, firstly, the
failed recipe for thought that aims only at an astrin
gent clarity; and secondly, the villageoise constitution
of a transmodernism fit to counter such petit cuisines
philosophiques.
In Zalamea's recipe for a transmodern thought,
so in GABRIEL CATREN's 'alchimirical' instructions
for baking a philosopher's stone. In instructing us
in the contemporary procedure, Catren presents phi
losophy in terms of the alchemical tinctura universalis
discussed above. The result is as much a polychro
matic and polyphonic - that is, broadly universal and
non-trivial - unfolding of the real as it is a synaes
thetic, even psychedelic, experience of the culinary.
In an epistemic exacerbation of the deregulation of the
sensory faculties advocated by Day, Catren proposes
35
COLLAPSE VII
that the transmodern vocation for philosophy consists
in a 'true-to-the-universe' regime counteracting the
'spectral decomposition of experience' prismatically
produced by various modes of thought; his black
earth is a concretion effected by the 'polychromatic
mediators' of a 'philosophical synthesizer' .
It is evident that the various alchemical operations,
absorbed into the mundane activity of cookery, can
then become metaphorical tools for a generalized
culinarism; yet to satisfy oneself with this metaphori
cal transport is to fail to realise the more fundamen
tal pertinence the latter could achieve. In Catren's
alchimirical cauldron as in Zalamea's transmodern
tatin, the procedures indicated to operationalise and
concretise regional echoes of the universal culinary
spectrum are stripped of all metaphorical reference to
the restricted practice of cookery. Instead they invoke
the abstract operations that contemporary mathematics
uses to synthesise its complex variety of confections
and recipes (Freyd's allegories, sheaves, fiber bundles,
etc.) from the elemental materials of the continuum.
This points the way toward a refinement of a transcen
dental 'chemical paradigm', a culinary materialism that
not only escapes the 'reductionism [of the] culinary
[ . . . ] analogous to anthropism' (Thacker) , but entirely
renounces dependence on any empirical model.
This volume, together with the Appendix of recipes,
should be taken as a preliminary exploratory exercise
36
Editorial Introduction
- to be continued by the reader - in the mathematico
philosophical vista of culinarism revealed and brought
into focus here. A prospect that certainly answers to the
original recipe for this volume (from which, however,
the editors have not resisted straying) ; but which,
thanks to the transmodern spirit of our contributors,
surpasses it, suggesting not only a culinary thematics
for philosophy outside bourgeois gastroculture, and
a variety of new perspectives on cookery itself, but a
true 'proliferation of possibilia' (Guha) ; a taster menu
for the unheard-of philosophical feasts, bouillabaises
and concoctions heralded by a chemophilosophy,
alchimery, or culinary materialism.
Robin Mackay and Reza Negarestani
Vienna and Seremban, June 2011.
37
i
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•••
COLLAPSE VII
The Chem ical Parad igm
Iain Hamilton Grant, one ef the four philosophers who
spearheaded 'Speculative Realism', 1 is distinguished h'y being
the sole proponent among them ef a renewed philosophy ef
nature. He has argued convincingly2for the erroneousness
ef the modern and contemporary dismissal ef the Natur
philosophen who sought to think the absolute according
to the generative power ef nature, integrating knowledge
ef the contemporary deliverances ef the sciences into their
speculative systems.
Collapse spoke to Grant about this indistinction between
philosophy and science, about the particular importance ef
chemistry as a new modelfor the thinking ef nature, and
about the pertinence ef the culinary for a contemporary
synthetic philosophy.
1 . See Appendix to COLLAPSE III.
2. See I . H . Grant, Philosophies efNature after Schelling, 2nd edition (London:
Continuum, 2008), 19-2 1 .
39
COLLAPSE VII
COLLAPSE : In the context of this volume on Culi
nary Materialism - cookery as a possible model for or
provocation to philosophical thought, as an activity as
unique to humans as philosophical thought, we would
like to delve into the specificity of chemistry, and to
understand why you have proposed it in various places
in your work as a particularly important model for
thinking. In particular you re-examine its importance
in the age of 'natural philosophy', when the sciences
had not yet attained the success necessary for them
to extract themselves from philosophy, and yet were
making momentous, and demonstrable, discoveries
about nature.
Firstly, what constitutes the specificity of chemistry
as a science - and how does this distinguish it from
physics as a model for thought?
IAIN HAMILTON GRANT: There are two things that
serve - particularly in the era you mentioned, but also
I think beyond that - as what we could call a 'chemi
cal paradigm' for thinking. The first is that it gives
an additional dimension to the empirical domain, a
dimension that the other natural sciences - bar medi
cine - didn't have. Medicine simply involves working
out animal economy - circulation, patterns of blood
lymph and so forth, and so involved messing around
in the interiors of bodies; chemistry involved messing
around in the interiors of bodies that had no such
40
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
organic complexity. It involved a messy experimenta
tion, a grubbing around in the earth - whence the word
alchemia derives (according to some) : the 'dark earth'
[keme] of Egypt becomes al-chemia, becomes alchemy
and then chemistry.
So that's one thing about chemistry: it gives an
additional visceral dimension to the empirical, which at
one and the same time enables chemistry as a practice
to have a specificity that separates it from the other
natural sciences, and gives an additional character to
experiment. And this is the other, more conceptual
side of the question: in all the other natural sciences,
certainly around the eighteenth century, there is nothing
that compares with the model efknowledge that chemists
were proposing: analysis is one part of the equation,
but one understands nothing until synthesis has taken
place. In other words, it's not just about understanding
the 'nature of nature', not just about metaphysics - its
about recreating nature. That synthetic ambition is
unique to chemistry - it's about production as well as
analysis. And the idea that knowledge is only complete
once production has taken place, is something that
informs Kant's immediate inheritance from chemistry.
He mentions this in terms of experiments with calx,
especially in relation to Georg Ernst Stahl, a noted
vitalist of the era, but also someone who had insisted
that to analyse calx was one thing, to resynthesise it
was precisely the goal of chemical knowledge.
41
COLLAPSE VII
So it's those two dimensions - the additional ele
ments of the empirical and the additional elements
of the conceptual and thus of the experimental.
The empirical side is to do with messing around in
bodies with internal complexities which are both irre
ducible and non-organised ( in organic sense) . And the
other side is that, as a model for epistemology, there
is nothing that substitutes for chemistry's ambition to
synthesise its products as well as analyse them.
C: Regarding this 'grubbing around in the earth',
Dumas says: 'the science of chemistry was born at the
potter's wheel, in the glazier's workshop, the black
smith's forge and the perfumer's salon.' We would,
of course, like to add that all of these practices were
most likely born in the kitchen. For instance it has
been suggested that chemistry was 'invented' with
the burning of malachite, which would release molten
metals that would run out from under the cooking
pot . . . Which is to say that chemistry has this rela
tion to everyday praxis. Would be right to say that
at the root of the still-reigning hegemony of physics
as a model for the philosophical thinking of nature is
the fact that the Greeks categorised chemistry under
manual work - under logistika - separating it from
theoretical speculations on the nature of things? So
that, although chemistry may be the oldest science,
its lowly origins preclude it from being recognised as
42
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
the most fundamental, and this conflict continues to
resonate through our contemporary epistemologies?
IHG: The normal stratification of the sciences in terms
of fundamentality has physics at the bottom, and
chemistry as the intermediary between it and biology;
and thereafter everything else is merely subdepart
ments of those. Although there's a really fascinating
sense in which no-one really knows where chemistry
lies on the spectrum of the sciences. But as you say,
there is an immanence of chemistry to life not merely
understood in the abstract, but understood in terms of
the most concrete practices: one could create a glorious
spectrum of chemical activities, from breathing, to the
osmotic porosity of our skin in respect to liquids with
which we come into contact; but on the other hand,
this quite abstruse range of human activities involved
in the production of things; and again it's the element
of production that distinguishes all of these.
If you look at the alleged fundamentality of the
physical sciences, this is still regarded as a Platonic
dream. One finds it in even in the criticism of natural
ism as Platonism by authors such as John McDowell
recently: physics is still considered not just as the
domain of armchair theorists but as this linear specu
lative model intended to serve as the fundament for
everything else, if only we can pull the theory back
43
COLLAPSE VII
together, if only we can find the Grand Unifying
Theory . . .
C: The physicist-platonist would, presumably, argue
that in attributing any fundamental role to chemis
try, one would confuse ontological with historical
or anthropological priority; in which case the ques
tion then becomes, what do we include in ontology:
if ontology includes the structural principles of the
synthesis of matter, then chemistry is ontological,
since the greatest achievement of modern chemistry
lies not in breaking down the elements, but, as you
say, in identifying invariants in the way they can be
assembled isomerisation, the fact that different com
pounds can be made of the same elements yielding
different properties.
-
IHG: The elements of ontology are produced, natural
ising historicism while denaturing critique, so to speak.
This is a favoured response of the late eighteenth
century philosophers of nature (Ritter, Steffens), and
retains its pertinence so long as the question can still
be put. What remains, however, is priority.
C: Historically, how do thinkers in the period you
are particularly interested in work out that priority?
44
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
IHG: If one rehearses the order of priority on the
basis, not of ontology or in terms of philosophical
anthropology - and a brief parenthesis on that: there
is a fascinating extent to which you could deliver
chemistry as the furthest reaches of a philosophical
anthropology a la Heidegger; you could really develop
a question of Being as posed by elements, in so far as
these are immediately involved in the exchanges that
constitute us physically. Another way perhaps of look
ing at the animal/world distinction, where a further
stratum might be interposed between them in order
to generate both animal and world, and to sustain
them. In this, the idea of animal economy might again
be important. At the outer limits of philosophical
anthropology, you could do something like that with
chemistry which would be fascinating. Here there are
the beginnings of a reversal that is quite interesting
and which neither relies on Dasein nor on somaticism;
this reversal is Schelling's account of what is involved
in sensation, which is what he calls a 'chemical dynam
ics'3: He sees the fundamental elements of sensation
as being what happens when you have exchanges,
when there are possibilities of fundamentally chemical
exchange; although physics may be viewed as funda
mental in terms of providing light, in terms of the sun,
3. 'Chemistry is nothing else but sensory dynamics', Ideasfor a Philosophy of
Nature, SW II, 323-4 tr. E. E. Harris and P. Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 257.
45
COLLAPSE VII
astrophysics and so forth, there is nevertheless a proc
ess of exchange that constitutes the very Sun.
So, the idea of ontological priority being attached
to physics rather than chemistry rests on a version of
linear production that chemistry confutes, and this is
why we could comfortably talk about, as it were, the
genesis of all things, in chemical terms, or at least in
terms that directly reference chemistry.
So the other side of that is, I think, that there is
this fascinating question that arises in the context of
the thinking of the philosophy of nature at the end
of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
century: this question is basically 'what is nature' - one
of the most fundamental questions, the Greek ques
tion obviously, the question of the pre-socratics, also
the question of Aristotle, and Plato's question. The
answer they all give is that nature,phusis, is generation
first and foremost - it's not such and such an entity,
object, structure or whatever, it's generation. So, for
example, even Plato, in the Timaeus, when he talks
about nature, talks about the generation of things.
There are structural elements in it - he does talk about
fundamental ontological elements in the constitution
of things presented as the 'world soul', although it is
important to note that for Plato 'soul' is arche kineseos,
the source of motion, rather than substance - but they
are elements of the constitution of things, and the science
of the constitution of things is, in the terms in which
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
we are discussing, a chemical science - it involves
exchanges, it involves reciprocity.
So, the question 'what is nature', 'what is phusis',
is answered by the Greeks as 'genesis'; and for the
eighteenth century Naturphilosophen, that also becomes
the dominant paradigm. And what's interesting is
the relationship between the changes that are tak
ing place in the nomenclature for chemical elements
post-Lavoisier - changes that, if you like, lend those
elements the appearance of metaphysical simples - and
the role chemistry plays in changing the thinking of the
scientists and philosophers of the period concerning
how to pose this question of nature, and what kinds
of terms it would be satisfactory to answer that ques
tion in. The interest there is centred around this basic
question of what is a chemical element on one hand,
and what is a chemical process on the other. The set of
nomenclatures that Lavoisier invented were intended
to be simples that one could always analyse out of
any process, through chemical intervention. But it's a
mistake to regard these processes as being 'available'
without chemical intervention, without processes of
analysis and synthesis. Because the idea is, in effect, that
the elements are constants in the process of breaking
things down and putting them back together again,
regardless of whether that's done by us - by chemists,
scientists - or whether it's done by nature. So it is
the entire process of analysis and synthesis that is the
47
COLLAPSE VII
object of chemistry, rather than the element. And it's
that reciprocal relation between analysis and synthesis
that is key in rethinking nature, phusis, generation, in
terms of chemistry rather than in terms of structural
invariance or whatever.
C: Could we see the Naturphilosophen, and this dawn
of a new productivist, synthetic model of knowledge,
as transitional between the 'first' (rationalist) scientific
revolution, and the massive industrialisation of chemi
cal processes in the nineteenth century? If so, then
what is their relation, and that of chemistry, to the
romanticism that is contemporaneous with the latter?
IHG: Absolutely. And even in England, you could con
sider Humphry Davy's experiments on leather tanning,
and the miner's lamp, all of these renowned practical
solutions to practical problems. But the problem of
engagement is being posed here - the question of what
is happening when there is any engagement whatso
ever in nature. Now 'romanticism' is a misnomer in two
crucial respects: as regards romantic natural science,
the immediate scientific paradigm that comes to mind
is biology. The replacement of mechanics with some
form of organics is the story that is told, and it's wholly
misleading. If you look at the biologists, they're not
reducibly biologists, indeed the word 'biology' only
becomes current only in about 1802, considerably
later than a lot of this so-called 'romantic science'
48
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
was happening. Consider for example someone like
Kielmeyer (who taught Cuvier - he was not a nobody
in the context of the natural sciences ! ) In 1793, he
wrote a discourse on the proportions of forces, which is
ostensibly - or is recounted in books of the history of
science as - the first proposal of the Mekkel-Serres law,
the recapitulation thesis, that ontology recapitulates
phylogeny. However, what he's actually after is what
has been characterised by Timothy Lenoir in terms of
a Laplacian dynamics of the totality of nature - from
geogeny through to noogeny, from the production of
planets through to the production of thought.
This question about recapitulation is a question
about the fundamentality of the cell. In microbiology
the question of levels is quite simply: what's basic
and what isn't? If the cell isn't basic - and it isn't,
phylogenetically (that is, in the genesis of phylla at
all), it's a late acquisition, and is highly conditional
(there are all sorts of conditions required) - then what
is the unit of analysis sufficient to reveal any relation
between phylogenesis and ontogenesis? And it's quite
clear that this question is evident in Kielmeyer: he was
asked by Windischmann: Is it possible that creatures
recapitulate not just from the plant to lower animal to
higher animal, in the development of species; but actu
ally recapitulate the entirety of earth history? In other
words, how many processes have to be gone through
in order that later creatures emerge rather than earlier?
49
COLLAPSE VII
And it strikes me that once you admit that prospect,
you very quickly lose any particular somatic referent
to pin the basics to. That's chemophilosophy in the
recapitulationist sense - the bottom drops out of the
picture, the element drops out of the picture, and in
place of that you have a non-determinable series of
recapitulative cycles.
So, once again, it's a mistake to see the romantic
notion of science in terms of biology. This is what
defines romanticism, I think: it's not this or that aspect
of nature, but nature as such and as a whole. The
reason no-one's a Cartesian is the total supplanting of
this or that part of nature with the idea of nature as a
whole: nothing that happens is not a part of nature, by
definition - otherwise it wouldn't happen. And this
includes the most ridiculous of adjuncts, what Aristotle
would calls 'accidents' and therefore non-essential
components. It's that elimination of the distinction
between necessary and accidental.
C: During the period we are discussing, we find a con
fluence between chemistry - before it really had a word
for itself - and philosophy. It wasn't just philosophy
reflecting on chemistry.
IHG: No; in fact the idea of separating the two was
as alien to the Naturphilosophen as it was to those
who overtly opposed them: who opposed them
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
fundamentally on grounds that cannot be reduced to
either the philosophical or the scientific. I don't just
mean that in a modern sense, I mean simply that the
model of knowledge across the community of investi
gators of the problem of nature does not rely on one set
of tools rather than another. And one can identify two
reasons why that would be the case, neither historical,
both conceptual: One is that, to see the production of
concepts as being in any way separate from the produc
tion of other natural phenomena is bizarre. No-one's a
Cartesian by the end of the eighteenth century; at best
what you have is attempts to generate the phenomena
of life by artificial means - hence the importance
of Galvani's electrical experiments with the voltaic
pile, for both philosophers and scientists. There was
a German term, Natuiforscher, which we translate as
'natural scientist' , but 'student of nature' is the direct
translation, and that's probably the best way to refer to
people working either side of the conceptual schism, as
it were But as I say, there's no way of separating them.
The reason, firstly, is that no-one regarded thought as
being alien from the rest of the processes of production
that take place in nature. But secondly, the idea that
conceptual activity constitutes or is limited to a reflec
tion upon pre-established entities, simply doesn't cash
out in terms of practice. There's a terrible tendency in
the history of science to rewrite periods that we don't
agree with in terms of what we do. So if you look at
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COLLAPSE VII
some of the essays in the mid-twentieth-century, up to
about 1975, on the speculative philosophy of nature, on
the one hand they are full of venom about the work of
the earlier period; on the other hand they want to say
that anything that might have been of value in it, was in
fact arrived at by different means. But this is actually a
staggering admission: if there is more than one means
to arrive at a given product, whether this be urea or
concepts, then why resist the opportunity to pursue
that? And the business of the study of nature could not:
If there is nothing that is not a part of nature, then any
starting point, anywhere, of any nature whatsoever, is
going to arrive, if not at the same conclusions, then
at parallel conclusions, or at conclusions that stand
in certain structural relations to other conclusions, to
other investigations . . . Once again, the model is one
of production rather than just understanding, and so
we're not dealing with epistemology, we're dealing
with fundamental meta-physics, which rests in nature
qua production, rather than simply being about it.
C: The birth of chemistry in culinary praxes that we
have postulated, is extended by later developments
of chemistry which were to a large extent industrially
driven; and implications of the 'synthetic interven
tions' of chemistry continue to unfold now in the
biochemical and biomedical sciences. A key moment
was in 1838 when Wohler made urea in the laboratory,
52
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
and the way this is presented make it clear that this is
an early example of the sort of experiments that are
the stuff of indignant media outcry: Wohler exclaims,
'I can make genuine urea without using the kidneys
of man or beast ! ' - an incredible revelation, and one
that should perhaps be numbered amongst Freud's
'great humiliations' of man . . .
IHG: Yes, and it is the model ofproduction rather than
mere understanding that is the basis of the 'chemical
humiliation' . This recalls OncoMouse™, about which
Donna Haraway made such a delirious noise4 and
also the synthesis of skin - all repetitions, precisely,
of the production of urea - piece of piss !
• • •
C: Which contradicts the retrospective illusion that
earlier science was somehow purer, was merely con
cerned with analysis and understanding; and that it
is only in late modernity that we come to the point
when we are pushing it too far, and creating industrial
monsters . . . in fact it's always been about tinkering
with the creation.
IHG: Yes, hence the apologias with which works
of natural science - and of philosophy, it should be
said - open; hence the discounted questions; hence
4. D. J. Haraway, Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium. FemaleMan©_Meets_
OncoMouse™ ( New York: Routledge, 1 997) .
53
COLLAPSE VII
Newton's otherwise unforgivable dualisms: they have
at least an historical, sociological explanation. But
I think, in addition, the model of science as being
about understanding, about analysis, is regrettably
impoverished.
And the same question, I think, can be posed to
philosophy: to what extent is philosophy just sitting
on the sidelines, wondering how we can understand
X, rather than entering into a process of investigation,
the investigation of thinking nature but not thinking
nature reductively: nature can be produced by thought
precisely because thought cannot be produced outside
of nature. But this alters what 'thinking nature' means.
It's about experiment not simply in terms of results,
but in terms of design, in terms of what sorts of interven
tions provide what sorts ofreaction - Bacon understood
that, but what do we take from Bacon? Merely the
rejection of Aristotle.
C: The notion that there is an 'overcoming' of aristo
telianism - an overcoming of qualitativism - in the
quantitative approach to chemistry?
IHG: Exactly that notion, but it rests, of course, on
unacknowledged occlusions: certainly Aristotle's phys
ics and zoology and so forth are inherently qualitative
in ways that acknowledge it as nothing other than a
description of nature. However Aristotle's account of
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
the natural world is itself parasitic on the rejection of
various structural models, various abstract models
that one finds in Plato for example. So, not simply the
example of mathematics, but the idea that there aren't
abstract models that coexist alongside Aristotelianism,
and indeed that are made out of Aristotelianism after
the neoplatonists' synthesis: the compromise between
Aristotelian physics and Platonic physics is made
precisely in terms of abstract models of production
and cycling and exchange of 'phenomena amongst
themselves' - phenomena on their own, so things rather
than phenomena, really. All in terms of a dynamics. So
the idea that there would be a period that we could
call 'Baconian' that begins to supplant qualitative
description by means of abstract modelling, I don't
think is an accurate portrait of the history. However,
given that something does happen, and that Bacon is
doubtless a substantial contributor to that, we have
to ask what it is to which they're responding. And
some of the continuities between Cartesianism and
the medieval precursors, late Aristotelianisms - to
what extent are they purely qualitative, to what extent
do they become not merely quantitative but highly
abstract. So the grammar, the logical grammar of
objects, ceases to be the syllogism, substance and its
accidents, that Aristotle presents.
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C: Let's now try to test this suggestion that physics and
chemistry might represent two different paradigms or
models for philosophy: The model of physics envisions
a philosophy that deals with analysis into ultimate
entities, whereas a 'chemical paradigm' would include
a certain experimental component and a 'synthetic
ambition' for thought. Can we challenge this simple
dualism by exploring the ways in which physics, in
fact, is continuous with chemistry (is there, in fact, any
specific point at which we can disjoin them?) ; doesn't
physics itself incude its own chemical way of thinking?
Consider the 'cosmic cooking processes' that gen
erate the universe as differentiated, before there is
'chemistry proper') : If gravitation precedes heat and
elements (the general requirements of material chem
istry and cooking processes) , then it deepens the
chemical horizon, from that of processes and matter to
that of the continuum itself: Gravitation creates a new
form of modality in the universe, outside the qualita
tively homogeneous continuum. Whereas we usually
associate physics with the qualitative homogeneity of
spacetime, we should note that gravity serves as the
universal thermodynamic motor of complexification,
and synthesises the 'ingredients' that generate regional
contraction or intensification and thus local syntheses.
So gravity could be seen as the force which creates
a bi-modal web: universal-local, generic-particular;
revealing the gradational spectrum of the continuum
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
wherein transitions and transports along complex
modalities unfold as modes of cohesion, liquefaction,
production and synthesis . . . at which point the objects
of chemistry 'proper' emerge. In this case, the 'chemical
paradigm' would not belong to chemistry, since there
couldn't be a chemistry unless physics was already a
synthetic rather than a nomological science.
IHG: If chemistry opens up the paradigm of the
synthetic as a way not simply of doing 'philosophy
of science' but of doing philosophy of nature, then
yes; clearly there's a chemical way of thinking about
physics.
Do we understand chemistry and physics as rep
resenting different extensive domains, or as having
different extensive quanta with regard to their field of
objects - being ontologically more or less comprehen
sive? If that were so, it would suggest that chemistry is
in fact related to a circumscribable domain of nature.
What then would be the status of thinking synthetically
about physics? If it remains analogical, then we're
back at the situation of being able to talk about nature
only analogically, in its fundaments, exactly as Kant
could; we're no further along than Kant's biologism,
even though we're calling it chemistry. It cannot be
merely analogical. Therefore it cannot be the case that
this synthetic paradigm that belongs to chemistry can
be limited to the chemical domain: it must be actually
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COLLAPSE VII
instantiated in gravity. And if this is the case, then
are we merely talking about a chemical paradigm for
thought, or are we talking about a chemical process?
You see the same thing with [cosmologist] Lee Smolin
talking about whether the laws of physics in the early
universe are the same as the laws of physics in the
late or middle-aged universe. If they are the same,
regardless of time, then what precisely is the status
of evolution in terms of nature? Is it just the exhaus
tion of local possibilities with respect to inherently
contingent particular spatio-temporal creatures or
entities? Or does it apply to nature as a whole? If to
nature as a whole, then it cannot be the case that the
laws of nature are the same in the early and the late
universe. So there you would have a biologism that
would extend to the totality of nature. I think it would
be a question therefore of by what means we could
conceivably manage the relationships between local
and universal with respect to chemistry and physics:
Is there a conceptual apparatus that could do that
without in fact creating the correlationist problem;
without creating, as it were, a reality that sits outside
of what can only be referred to analogically by dint of
access by, let's say, a restricted creature, or a synopsis
that fails with respect to the totality?
The other way of thinking about it is to talk about
particular processes, particular expressions that man
age or do not manage to achieve a certain degree of
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
extensity with respect to the all. That's how I prefer
to think of it. I talk about the 'extensity test' in Phi
losophies efNature After Schelling. I thought about this
as a practical programme for doing the history of
philosophy. You could take various philosophical
systems and ask, how far do they reach, what do they
exclude; so you measure the success of ontology by
virtue of what it excludes. And anything that excludes
is manifestly wrong - a basic Schellengian principle
- and invites a problematic of either eliminativism or
productivism on the one hand, or ofhyperinflationism
with respect to a presumably limited ontology on the
other. So the test of extensity merely says, where's the
biggest metaphysics . . .
Stengers and Bensaude-Vincent, in their work on
the history of chemistry,s do write about chemistry
as being the science that invents its own universal,
and they invoke Schellingian aid in doing so. And
there is something interesting about the 'invented
universal' - it's doing the same undercutting, but with
respect to constructivism, any constructivist solution
of the sort that you find in various neokantianisms,
but also I think in various strands of contemporary
5. Bensaude-Vincent writes: 'Chemistry creates its own object, manufactures
its Universal'. 'Lavoisier: Eine wissenschaftliche Revolution', in Michel
Serres (Ed.) Elemente eine Geschichte der Wissenschaflen (Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1 994) . 671 . See also B. Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers, A History
qJ Chemistry A History qJ Chemistry, trans. 0. van Dam (Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press, 1996) .
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COLLAPSE VII
philosophy, many of which make claims beyond their
fundamentally Fichtean metaphysics.
C: What are the implications of extinction for a chemi
cal paradigm of nature and chemophilosophy? If
proton decay really occurs, then this means the end of
chemistry proper. How can chemophilosophy get past
chemistry proper, and the regime of matter, without
essentially dismissing materialism?
IHG: If 'materialism' is reducibly and exclusively
about bodies, then we do indeed have a chemical
philosophy, but a chemical philosophy of the sort that
Lavoisier dreamt of, and indeed beyond the sort that he
dreamt of: a nomenclature that represents the primary
bodies of the universe, which are immutable, etc. So,
it's only in such an instance that proton decay would
result in a challenge to chemophilosophy. Whereas
if matter is more than body, then it follows that this
isn't the same type of problem at all. If it makes sense
to talk about materialism in the context of anything
other than body, then it's a very interesting question.
Plato, for example, does not talk about 'Idealists' in
Statesman (273b5) the word is asomatoides the
incorporealists. And the Stoics obviously picked this
up. So the really big question is what comes first,
powers or bodies; must powers inhere in bodies, or
are bodies consequences of powers? If powers inhere
-
-
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
in bodies, then powers do not explain the origins of
bodies; and therefore we have a fundamental dualism
between powers and bodies. If bodies are the products
of powers, then not only do we heal the dualism, but
also the decay of the body then tells us nothing about
the nature of matter.
C: Thus we arrive at field theory, which you discuss at
length in Philosophies efNature After Schelling.
IHG: And this relates directly to the history of chem
istry - electrochemistry, electromagnetism, Faraday . . .
the issues o f the identifiability o f processes stem not
from bodies, but from fields and the interactions they
have as their consequences: particular realisations and
instantiations in particular bodies. The idea is that if
being incorporates more than just body - and if it
doesn't, then the origin of bodies is incomprehensible
- if it does, therefore, incorporate body and powers,
powers sufficient to make bodies, then we have this
dualism: if being therefore incorporates anything more
than bodies and powers in a dualistic relation, it must
be powers first, and bodies later. And if that's the case,
then the ontological bases are not this or that body,
but powers that coalesce and accrete in them.
C: We could bring this back to the question of gravity's
cauldron again . . .
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IHG: Yes, and Plato: Sophist 2 4 7e - 'I hold it as a mark
of being that it consists of power'.
C: Does the pursuit of a philosophy of nature amel
iorate the anxieties attendant upon scientific elimi
nativism, leading to an inclusivism that satisfies the
intellectual instinct for the 'universal' in a different
way? So that rather than scientific thought being (as
in Ray Brassier's Nihil Unbound) a trauma that dispos
sesses us of everything we 'knew', it becomes a means
to engage in a more 'Ferenczian' examination of trau
mata as cosmic elements that are already indwelling,
bored through us, that compose us?
IHG: I think the anxiety of loss, the anxiety of dis
enchantment in certain post-Sellarsian eliminativists,
and certain strategies for re-enchantment, have this in
common: that if the sciences are able to achieve this
elimination, it rests on the assumption that ontology
is subject not only to scientific determination, but
to scientific revision - at the level ef ontology. In other
words, that there are no entities left over to which folk
psychology may have referred, or to which animists
may have referred. In other words, we no longer even
have to ask the question of what is it that animated
these rocks in order to make such and such an event
to occur - because that rests on a mere misunder
standing. However, does this mean that at any level
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we have achieved the elimination of animism? One
strategy in this ( and I take this to be the one that
rests on the interminable reciprocity of nature and
culture ) is the Adorno/Horkheimer one, which is to
say, as the response to positivism, that this brave new
world is as animistic as can be imagined: Tue archons
continue to haunt the surface of the earth even as
they're ensconced around ocean-floor volcanic vents.
But on the other hand, what is it that reduces the
local conditions at every level for every phenomenon
whatsoever to 'mere' conditions as opposed to enti
ties and processes that in fact take place? So in other
words, what's the status of the tunnelling or boring?
There are several kinds of real tunnelling or boring.
Some of them result in real trauma for animals able to
talk about it; some result in areas of Cornish fenland
that are unable to support life; some of them result
in the deaths of animals that have been sent down to
collect the tin from it; some of them result in a species
of magical realism such as Novalis dreamt of, such
that he sought to write an encyclopedia not simply
after the image of the Diderotian disenchantment of
superstitious nature, and not simply to respond by
re-enchanting nature; but to provide a system capable
of everything. So, what is the scope of universalism?
Is it to establish the universal, such that everything else
becomes a particular determination of it, in Spinozist
manner, and to give universal names, or to give it a
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COLLAPSE VII
hinge such that the name might not be insufficiently
determined by the actuality. Or is it in fact to continue
to be part of the process of the whole self-manufacture?
The universal manufactures itself - it is not manufac
tured by chemistry - I think that would ultimately be
my answer to Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers.
C: There is a certain affinity between what we have
described as the 'chemical paradigm' of thinking,
and the legacy of 'universalism'. In the latter, thought
begins with the mixture and the mixed rather than
the elementary, from ratios of magnitudes ( de Villa
Nova, Bradwardine) , from combinatorial configura
tions ( Llull ) , from compositional potencies ( Novalis)
and from synthetic bundles of incommensurable fibres
or ideas; thought must proceed from these mixtures
in order to approximate or ( re) produce the universal.
We can go so far as to claim that chemistry is the first
synoptic philosophy, in that its starting point is the
full spectrum of nature as a universal mixture, or more
precisely a unified continuum where the synthetic topos
and the analytic locus, the universal and the regional,
are mediated. So there must surely be an intrinsic
relation between chemophilosophy and universalism.
But is this relation simply a matter of observing how
chemistry proceeds in the production of universals?
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IHG: What immediately occurs to me about the uni
versalism problematic - the problem of universals
and particulars - vis-a-vis thought beginning with the
synthetic, or indeed with the analytic, is something
like the following: The universal, as contrasted with
the particular, entails precisely the same kind of ontic
restrictions that the particular does. In other words, if
there is a universal, or indeed many universals, then it
entails precisely the restrictedness of those universals
to being particulars once again - particulars of a cer
tain sort, i.e. ones that cover many. It's not clear that
this would satisfy the demands of a properly synthetic
or indeed synoptic philosophy.
I am interested, though, in the idea that chemistry
is a synoptic philosophy that proceeds from the full
spectrum of nature. It boils down to the following
question: Does nature consists of particulars or not?
And if it does consist of particulars, then, if thought
begins with a mixture, then it's a mixture of particu
lars, ultimately, to which we would want to reduce
it. If nature does not consist of particulars, on the
other hand, then particulars are abstractions from,
or processes of, the very nature that thought tends to
synthesise, analyse, or synopticise with. And it strikes
me that nature cannot therefore consist of particulars,
precisely for the reason that chemistry is a synoptic
philosophy - a philosophy that both synthesizes and
self-analyses. In other words, if chemistry is properly
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a science of nature: if it offers itself as a model for
thinking nature, a model for thinking nature that
refuses an upper limit to synthesis or a lower limit to
analysis, that begins in medias res, from the universal
which is given as universal and of which the synoptic
philosophy itself is an expression.
C: From the time of Lavoisier's chemical revolution
onwards, we can see that there is an implicit connection
between chemistry and political thought. Whilst the
socio-political is recaptured and understood within the
chemical continuum, the political chemistry underpins
certain strains of philosophies of Nature which fun
damentally determine the characteristics of modem
European philosophy. How do you see the influence
of chemistry on political thought and political chem
istry on philosophies of nature since the inception of
modem chemistry?
IHG: There's a really fascinating question about
nomenclature - Lavoisier as being simply a 'nomen
claturist' of the elements. And the kinds of battles that
were contemporaneous with that - Gay-Lussac, for
instance, the anti-phlogistical crew and the phlogistical
crew and so forth - they're all battling away, and one
way that that's been regarded by historians of science
is as a regional politics of scientific advance. Clearly it
would be foolish to disregard that perspective entirely.
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
On the other hand, I want to know exactly how far we
can take the analogy - or rather, how far we can take
the reality - of a chemical politics, or a political chem
istry. For example, it seems to me that if politics has a
chemical basis, and let's say for example that it takes
place independently of animals capable of political
interactions, then and then only would it be possible
for it to escape any kind of chemical base - but, assum
ing, therefore, that politics is of a chemical base, then
what would it mean to talk about a political chemistry,
other than a derivatively secondary parasitic account of
the discovery of this or that element, or the domestic
ownership of various chemical paradigms, of various
means of doing chemistry? But that would surely entail
a renewedly reciprocal relationship between chemistry
and politics, such that the one determines the other, at
the cost of the latter determining the prior. At which
point, we have no direction; there is no relation any
more between politics and chemistry at all. That, I'd
suggest, destroys both politics and chemistry, rather
than, as it were, situating the political as an interest
ingly complex region, dare I say, of chemistry.
So there is that reciprocity problem, I have a
worry about there being such a thing as the politics
of chemistry that's approached in anything other than
a metaphorical way. So the question I would want to
ask in response, is: At what cost do we get a politics
of chemistry? Are we talking about the politics of how
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chemistry happens to have been conducted in certain
places at certain times? Because if so, then there clearly
is a 'politics of chemistry' . But if we're talking about
anything more substantial than that, such that it's
determining the limits of the thinkable, or the limits
of the actual, or the limits of what is, then we must be
talking about a very bizarre form of politics that takes
its cue from creation narratives of one sort or another . . .
C: This is part o f your general caution with regard to
precipitate politicization.
IHG: Yes: under what conditions is it established that
the conceptual is subject to ownership by its users? I'm
aware that the cost of this is a species of Platonism,
but I think the grounds for the refutation of Platonism
have been grossly exaggerated !
C: Nevertheless: if political models of early chemical
thought used to be the French Revolution and various
affect-driven forms of socialism and class struggle,
what would be the political model of contemporary
chemistry in which chemical humiliation has been
wedded to neuroscientific humiliation and planetary
capitalism has its own chemical paradigm (from circu
lation, consumption and transformation of fuels and
minerals to producing its own nature for the horizon
of thought) ?
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
IHG: One comes across this in Marx, where Wechsel
wirkung - 'metabolism' - is a constant trope. It's in the
Grondrisse, it's in Capital, it's in the Early Manuscripts,
and it's in the later scientific work. So the one thing
that undercuts the althusserian rupture is precisely
metabolism - which suggests one of two things: either
Marx is an arch-romantic, in exactly the same way
that Nietzsche is, thinking about Bildung in precisely
the sense of the formative processes that take place in
'life', in living nature - and there are good grounds for
making such a reading of Marx - or, that this really
is a mere metaphor. And Marx himself is conflicted
about it, insofar as he's a politician of lebensrealismus,
believing that only certain types of entity can possibly
be conceived of as being alive - 'Nature builds no
machines', he says in the Grondrisse. 6 Equally there is
no such thing as an automaton that moves itself - this
is entirely a specious species created by the engines of
capital for ideological purposes. And I'm simply not
sure what it means to suggest that there is anything
other than a metaphor of circulation that capitalism
uses; just as there's a 'survival of the fittest' narrative
that capitalism uses, and so forth. At which point,
what is the additional question here? What is the real
6. ' [N]ature builds no machines' writes Marx in Grundrisse (trans. Martin
Nicolaus [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973], 692) .
69
COLLAPSE VII
question at the basis of this - can there be a politics of
nature such that the latter is derivative of the former?
C: From a socio-cultural angle, cooking is distin
guished from nature's generative and synthetic proc
esses, which span all cosmological processes. But
from the point of view of nature, such a distinction
is regional and myopic: Nature's self-cooking simply
doesn't distinguish itself from culture or the culinary
art. For Freud and Ferenczi, this relation between
nature and culture is not merely limited to the syn
thetic field of cooking; it also holds true for eating
and consumption. With that said, is it still possible
to give a rigorous and systematic account of the culi
nary art without falling into the myopic realm of
gastronomic fetishism? - Within the generative and
universal nature, how can consumption and cooking,
the gastronomic and the culinary, be distinguished
from one another?
IHG: I'm intrigued by the point at which nature's
'self-cooking' arises, and the notion of fetish. For
Freud as for Evans-Pritchard, for the late nineteenth
century anthropology of primitive societies, fetishism
is precisely what results from an animist metaphysics.
Things are alive, fundamentally, they're animated by
spirit that moves them, and so forth. So it seems to me
that the idea that nature cooks itself is already fallen
70
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
prey, if not to a gastronomic, at least to a culinary
fetishism. So the general question of fetishism is that it
must be balanced against some species of panpsychism
or panbiologism - maybe the antithesis of the fetish
would be precisely the demonstrability of panspermia.
But there's a fascinating point here about the rela
tionship between two sides of a problem: One situating
gastronomy with respect to cosmology - or cosmogony,
more importantly; and the other about extending the
culinary all the way back to cosmogonic origins. There
are two sets of problems there: one is that cosmogony
would surely assert that the culinary, if it's the same
as the origin of all things, defeats fetishism a priori
in so far as it means that the entire universe simply
is cooking itself; and the gastronomical is simply the
differentiator between toxin and nutrition - a very
long way down the chain, if you like. Or, if that's
not an overextension of the culinary model - which
it might well be, along the lines of my responses to
the previous question - then on what grounds do we
assert a 'self-cooking' of nature? It's a peculiar image,
if you think about it - it's a schizogenic rather than a
cosmogenic image. It's the self-production of cookery
at the origin of time - which I agree can be thought,
but at various well-known costs.
C: All that you have said about chemistry could
be applied to your own philosophical work, which
could be read entirely as a riposte to the notion that
71
COLLAPSE VII
philosophers have a right to dismiss all questions of the
history and contingent stratification or organisation
of matter and thought - Kielmeyer's 'dynamics' - by
way of ontologies (whether 'fundamental', mathemati
cal, subtractive, or whatever) which still claim that
there's nothing philosophically interesting about such
'accidents' or their metaphysical treatment. What's
interesting about Quentin Meillassoux's point of view
is that he takes this to new heights, claiming that even
the laws of nature are accidental, non-necessary, not
just their products. Let's attempt to crack open the
Speculative Realist alliance in a new direction - what
would be your counter-position here?
IHG: The short answer is that natural history is
entirely, necessarily contingent; however, necessita
tion happens as a component of that.
C: Necessitation is contingent . . .
IH G : . . . Not the other way round: Necessitation takes
place within contingent universes, and that would be
necessarily true of any universe generated by any kind
of process whatever.
C: Since for Meillassoux, contingency embraces not
only the unreason of becoming and productivity but
also indefinite states of frozen fixity, then maybe we
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
should ask how chemistry could cope with these latter
states, that are bereft of any processual dynamics? Is
chemophilosophy able to think such an account of
contingency?
IHG: So: If we accept that chemophilosophy is syn
thesis, and that synthesis has no upper or lower limits,
then are there laws governing its development, and
if so, are they universal with respect to that entire
synthetic process? They would be, if and only if they
were not themselves subject to synthesis, which has no
upper or lower limits - which suggests that there cannot
be laws that are co-extensive with the process - the
laws must be emergent from it - that would be the
difference.
C: Wouldn't that be consistent with Meillassoux's
construction of hyperchaos: even randomness is a
valid 'quotation' of hyperchaos - there is a hierarchical
'lamination' of laws and meta-laws at different levels
(so that, for instance, randomness is regular and law
ful at a meta-level) . But hyperchaos is the intellectual
intuition of the collapse of this whole stratal system
- a 'pure chronics' - which makes possible to think a
'hard-edged' flipping from one state to another, from
one regime of law or lawlessness to another, with
out reason. Is that 'intellectual intuition' of absolute
73
COLLAPSE VII
contingency something unthinkable within a
synthetic paradigm?
IHG: Does a chemophilosophy in fact rule out the
sort of radical contingency that would have no deter
minable consequence? Is process, in other words, too
rooted in nature to allow access to the kind of intel
lectual intuition that one can read from Meillassoux?
I've rephrased the question in a loaded way, I guess:
to say 'is it too rooted in nature' presupposes the
nature of nature such that it would not be subject to
the same sort of hyperchaotic possibilities of a sudden
hard-edged change.
I don't see that there's any inconceivability to the
idea that processes are suddenly emergent, immediately
emergent, that there is spontaneity, and so forth, in
the midst of natural process. There's an interesting
parallel, actually, with a process that derives from Kant
and the problematic of the transcendental account of
causation. If you ask the question, what is the synthetic
a priori, it's very easy to answer that in terms whereby
the synthetic a priori becomes nothing more than an
epistemology. But Kant's own account vitiates this: he
says later on that the extendability of practical reason
into the domain that theoretical reason cannot tread
is one prospect for the transcendental, and therefore
for the realization of synthetic a prioris, that is not
simply epistemic, but practical. But then we have,
74
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
at the conclusion of the Third Critique, this moment
of terror in the face of the absence of finite rational
beings from the surface of the earth; at which point
it becomes clear that the stakes of the transcendental
are the re-engineering qfcausality such that time becomes a
creature qi.finite rational beings, rather than the other way
around. And there's a clearly interesting consequence
that flows from this with regard to the current question:
If causality is subject to radical reorganization such
that prior and posterior, ground and consequent, are
entirely reorganisable, then what are we asking about
when we ask about causality? Are we asking about
anything that has any implicit a priori form that is
subsequently realized - or does the re-constructibility
of causality, the non-necessity considered in relation
to causal form, does the number of possible causes, of
thinkable causes, subject the very idea of causality to
such indeterminism that the arrow of time is removed,
at least potentially, that there being any cosmogenic
process whatsoever becomes just one among many
radical contingencies? Clearly it does; but crucially,
this is on the back of an initial experiment which runs
thus: is it possible that causality can be thought by
finite rational beings in such a way as to make finite
rational beings the causes rather than the consequence
of causal processes? And it depends fundamentally,
I would say, on an answer to that question, whether or
not the species of radical contingency is cosmologically
75
COLLAPSE VII
instantiable in the way that it might be intellectually
intuited for, let's say, an ontologjcal project. But if that's
the case, if there is that difference, then what is the
relationship between cosmology and ontology? And all
of a sudden, we're back in the domain of metaphysics,
which must have an account of the relation between
ontology and nature, at some point.
So I think there's a similarity in the experiment
about the re-engineering of time and cause . . .
I t seems to me that what allows the questioning of
the distinction between ontology and metaphysics is
simply the thesis that there is something that is neces
sary, whatever that might be. If one starts from the
question 'what is necessary?' and answers that with
'nature' - i.e. a more concrete rather than material
response to the question 'what is necessary?' - then
one has to ask, what is necessary about nature? To
which the only possible answer would be: that there
is one, or not - a bivalent solution. Now, one can't
claim the absolutely necessity of nature; therefore
it must necessarily be that nature is contingent. But
nature is also composed of contingency: manifestly
nature could be otherwise. Xenobiology has made
an impact not because it studies actual alien life on
alien worlds, but because shows that it can't be ruled
out in principle that biologies respond differently to
different environmental conditions, and so on. So, the
idea of experimentation in the production of different
76
Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
natures is a forerunner to its analysis here - again, a
chemically-inspired account.
C: In-vitro, in-silico, or even in-ratio synthesis before
or without analysis.
IHG: Exactly, or with an analysis that takes place
after the event - look at the various manifestos about
artificial life, for example.
C: So in the absence of the fundamental hypothesis
that something must be necessary, the periodic table,
posited on the basis of its contingency, becomes the
figure of knowledge: 'these are the ones we've found
so far'.
IHG: The periodic table is never settled, so who knows
at what point one is dealing with discovery and at which
point invention? This is something that Stengers and
Bensaude-Vincent deal with in their history of chemis
try - that chemistry is entirely concerned with inventing
both its universals and, even if only through nomen
clature, its own beings. Ontology as a process of pro
duction, heterogenesis, is prior to Being, in that sense.
To complete the point, if contingency is necessary for
any nature that is possible, then necessitation takes
place within a given nature such that in that nature
it ceases to be possible to produced otherwise than,
77
COLLAPSE VII
in fact, it is. However, how many ways there are to
produce that nature is open to question. And that's
why there are chemical, philosophical, and physical,
biological and ecological accounts of what it is that
nature is. Start anywhere, and ask: what are the con
tingent processes of necessitation that characterise
this nature?
C: Questions which the culinary situation presents in
microcosm: one can start anywhere, to discover what
are the fundamental 'elements', and one cannot distin
guish between discovery and invention in the kitchen.
IHG: I could answer that with an anecdote: One of
Isaac Asimov's novels Robots qfDawn consists of a char
acter who grows up on earth in what are called 'metal
wombs', with no exposure to the outside, because the
outside's a shit place. In the process of the narrative
he goes to this place called Aurora where they grow
fruit, and his immediate reaction is that 'there was
something offensively carrotty about the carrots'. Now,
for that character, for Elijah Bailey, clearly there is a
process of discovery in terms of the responses of his
tastebuds: he ceases to look at it in terms of pleasure or
familiarity and starts to look at it in terms of sensation.
And there's an interesting question about the effects of
chemistry, culinary chemistry as it were, on sensation,
that he is exploring as a matter of experimentation.
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
As an extension of this thesis, culinarism in general
might operate an interesting affront to taste, which
would be simply that it is not about pleasure, it's about
the possibility of sensation. There's an entire Sadean
algebra of possible chemical combinatorials.
C: Perhaps we could imagine some culinary version
of the experiment Ritter made - in the Schellingian
conviction that ( as you describe above) sense experi
ence is derived not from intellect at all; but rather
sense experience, and intellect with it, is derived from
physics - whereby he attached a battery to his eye . . . !
In any case, there's already a kind of asceticism that
goes with 'developing a palate' - one foregoes pleasure
in order to be educated - although to speak of this i
as an education that is arrested at different points for
different individuals would be to assume a kind of
teleology, when in fact there is a whole field of perver
sions available . . .
IHG: Deferred gratification through education . . . I
think of Freud's troubles with identifying qualitative
and quantitative dynamics in the relationship, for
example, between intensity as a raw measure of dif
ferentiation, and pleasure and pain. His conclusion
is that no such distinction is possible - that is, there
is no quantitative absolute point at which qualities
become the qualities they are.
79
COLLAPSE VII
C: lndistinguishability of pleasure and pain at high
intensity - the Vindaloo Principle?
IHG: On the other hand, to pursue the fictionalisation
line, one could imagine a Crash-type novel about the
sensations of which tongues, stomachs, eyes, skin,
are capable - entirely to do with the characteristics
of food, a kind of piling in rather than a piling up . . .
C : Orwell achieves a kind o f culinary horror in Coming
upfor Air, where the abject indeterminacy of an ersatz
sausage is the apotheosis of the oppressive, malignant
atmosphere:
The frankfurter had a rubber skin, of course, and my
temporary teeth weren't much of a fit. I had to do
a kind of sawing movement before I could get my
teeth through the skin. And then suddenly - pop !
The thing burst in my mouth like a rotten pear. A sort
of horrible soft stuff was oozing all over my tongue.
But the taste ! For a moment I just couldn't believe
it. Then I rolled my tongue round it again and had
another try. It was FISH ! A sausage, a thing calling
itself a frankfurter, filled with fish!
Totally Lovecraftian, this pulp icthyoid horror . . .
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Grant - The Chemical Paradigm
IHG: In Beckett's More Pricks than Kicks, Belacqua talks
about toast that shatters like glass, to be spread with
stilton that is not to be used until it walks on its own:
He looked sceptically at the cut of cheese. [ . . . ] He
rubbed it. It was sweating. That was something. He
stopped and smelt it. A faint fragrance of corruption.
What good was that? He didn't want fragrance, he
wasn't a bloody gourmet, he wanted a good stench.
What he wanted was a good green stenching rotten
lump of Gorgonzola cheese, alive, and by God he
would have it.
C: After the divergence from a common origin of
'grubbing around' (in your apt phrase, since it ety
mologically connects shallow digging - supposedly
superficial inquiry - and the 'scraping together' of
'grub'), in postmodern food science's obsessive pursuit
of new combinatorial resyntheses and novel 'mouth
feels', the culinary, and chemistry and its 'tinkering',
are reunited, in this productive perversity.
IHG: You should visit a Scottish sweet shop, they
seem to excel in the production of foodstuffs that are
truly grotesque - quite shocking.
C: Children have a paradoxical combination of fussi
ness about food and a taste for the most aggressively
81
COLLAPSE VII
synthetic products. Tunnocks Teacakes, also a modern
Scots delicacy, I would have thought of as an early
example of chemically-inspired ( quite literally) food
production - what is the foam stuff inside them?
IHG: I've no idea. Cavity wall filling? . . . I was think
ing of soor plooms - they're little globules of boiled
sugar filled with such excessive quantities of lime-like
substances as to make them totally and utterly unpalat
able. The principle upon which these are sold is: see
how many you can eat before you throw up.
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COLLAPSE VII
AM M O N IA ( HABER-BOSCH STYLE)
First, clean the methane to remove sulfur oxide and hydrogen
sulfide.
React the clean methane with steam over a catalyst of nickel oxide:
CH4 + H20 -+ CO + 3 H2
Add air to convert any remaining unreacted methane:
2CH4 + 02 -+ 2 CO + 4 H2
CH4 + 2 02 -+ C02 + 2 H20
Then use the water gas shift reaction to yield more hydrogen from
CO and steam:
CO + H20 -+ C02 + H2
Pass the gas mixture into a methanator, to convert most of the
remaining CO into methane for recycling:
CO + 3 H2 -+ CH4 + H20
The methane and steam should now be entirely converted into
carbon dioxide, steam, and hydrogen. To complete the ammonia
synthesis, use an iron catalyst promoted with K20, CaO and Ai203:
N2 (g) + 3 H2 (g) '¢ 2 NH3 (g) (L',.H -92.22 kJmol-1)
This should be done at 15-25 MPa (150-250 bar) and between 300
and 550 °C, passing the gases over four beds of catalyst, with cooling
between each pass to maintain a reasonable equilibrium constant.
On each pass only about 15% conversion occurs, but any unreacted
gases are recycled, so that eventually an overall conversion of 97%
can be achieved.
=
84
COLLAPSE VII
Corn Bom b : A Short H i story of
N itrogen 1 660-2008
85
COLLAPSE VII
I NTRODUCTION
In wo6, John Gerrard discovered a photographic image,
taken on April i4th i935, ofa vast dust storm travelling across
Texas, in what were becoming the agri-industrial heartlands
ofthe US. In the early decades ofthe twentieth century, the
exploitation of petroleum enabled an agricultural inter
vention on an hitherto unimaginable scale, resulting in a
hundred million acres ofthis area being ploughed within a
twenty year period, thus destroying an ancient and stable
grass ecosystem. The catastrophic result was a desertification
ofthe landscape, and the creation ofwhat came to be known
as the Dust Bowl. The photograph became the basisfor Dust
Storm ( Dalhart, Texas) [ 2007], a work which consists ofa
virtualportrait ofthe landscape as it stands today, reunited
with a realtime 3D model of the historic storm placed as
a slowly developing sculpture on the land. This work was
first shown in Marian Goodman Gallery, NY in a project
titled Equal, that is, to the Real Itself, curated by Linda
Norden, in mid-2007.
'Corn Bomb ', written by Gerrard in collaboration with
chemist Michael Morris, recounts the backstory ofthis trau
matised 'dead zone'. At the centre ofthis plot is the discovery of
the.function ofnitrogen in synthesizing organic compounds,
and the development of the Haber-Bosch nitrogen-fixing
process, exploitedfor the production ofexplosives, but which
Preceding pages:
Dust Storm at Stratford, Texas. April 14th 1935.
PPC. Centre for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
88
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
also enabled large-scale production ef the nitrogen-based
fertilizer upon which the world's ever-growing population
is now largely dependent.
In thefollowing years, Gerrard returned repeatedly to
this depleted landscape, making a series ef works, includ
ing Grow Finish Unit (near Elkhart, Kansas) [2008],
Lufkin (near Hugo, Colorado) [ 2009] and Oil Stick
Work (Angelo Martinez / Richfield, Kansas) [ 2008],
all based on buildings and objects discovered within its vast
expanse. The area across which the duststorm once passed
is now home to new production units, whose enmeshing
in automated networks effood production, reflected in
their eery 'virtuality ' and geographical disengagement, is
redoubled by Gerrard's precisionist modelling: Unmanned
pig/arms on the outer edges ifmechanically-irrigated arable
fields; melancholy post-peak-oil derricks sucking up the last
reserves. Gerrard's works concern themselves with power
in the broadest sense, epitomising the structures ef power
and the networks efenergy that characterise the 'new earth'
wrought by modernity.
With these newfacilities, the sterile surface efthis land
has once again been returned to 'productivity ', packed
with remote-controlled batteries that power hungry cities.
Though currently invisible, the vast dead zones in the Gulf
efMexico, the result ef the excess ef nitrogen created in the
regi,on prompt the question efhow long these batteries can last,
thus announcing the next chapter efthis geotraumatic saga.
89
COLLAPSE VII
A SHORT HISTORY O F NITROGEN
1660
World population stands at circa 500 million.
Robert Boyle, an Irish scientist and one of the founders
of modern chemistry, is the first to suggest that air is
composed of tiny 'corpuscles' or molecules. A keen
alchemist, Boyle spent many years trying to turn iron
into gold.
I 675
John Evelyn, an English writer, gardener and diarist,
suggests that rainwater is not pure but instead impreg
nated with a beneficial substance which he names
'celestial nitre'.
I 77!1.
Elemental Nitrogen is isolated by the Scottish chem
ist and physician Daniel Rutherford but remains
unnamed.
1770
World population stands at circa 900 million.
1773
Carl Wilhelm Scheele, an apprentice apothecary from
Sweden with no formal education, discovers 'fire
air' (oxygen) , an 'air' that supports combustion. He
produces it by reacting aqua fortis (nitric acid) with
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Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
potash to produce a colourless gas. He also demon
strates that 'common air' consists of 'fire air' and a
second component that does not support combustion
and causes asphyxiation in animals. This he describes
as 'foul air' .
1774
Joseph Priestley, a Unitarian Church Minister and radical social reformer who went on to become one of the
greatest chemists of his generation, shows that 'fire air'
(oxygen) could support life up to five times better
than normal air. He travels to Paris to visit the chemist
Antoine Lavoisier, who the following year discovers
and formally names oxygen.
1780
The onset of the Industrial Revolution in the United
Kingdom creates a need for large quantities of chemi
cals in the form of soaps, bleaches, acid and dyes for
use in the production of textiles.
1790
Nitrogen is formally named in jean Antoine Chaptal's
Elements de chimie. His choice of 'nitrogene' combines
the Greek word VLTQOV [nitron] sodium carbonate,
saltpetre and French word gene from Greek yEtvoµm
[geinomai] to engender, bring forth. It is also referred
=
=
91
COLLAPSE VII
to as Phlogisticated Air by Priestley, and Azote (or
'lifeless') by Lavoisier.
1800
Amount of arable land needed to feed one person for
one year: 60 acres.
1827
The role of soluble forms of nitrogen in crop cultivation
is outlined in the groundbreaking work of Justus von
Liebig, known as the father of the fertiliser industry.
He recognises that nitrogen is needed in a fixed form.
Note
The earth's atmosphere is 80% nitrogen, but this nitro
gen is non-reactive. Each nitrogen atom is tightly
bound to another (N2) . They must be split and 'fixed'
to other atoms to form nitrogen compounds: either
with oxygen (to form nitrates) or hydrogen (to form
ammonia and other amines) . Nitrogen is fixed natu
rally by bacteria that live in the roots of leguminous
plants (clover, peas, beans and alfalfa), or by lightning
strikes during which nitrogen bonds are broken in the
air and bound to oxygen.
1846
The modern history of petroleum begins with the
discovery of the process of refining kerosene from coal
92
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
by Nova S cotian physicist and geologist Abra
ham Pineo Gesner. In 1852 the Polish pharmacist
Lukasiewicz improves Gesner's method by develop
ing a means to refine kerosene from the more readily
available 'rock oil' (petr-oleum) seeps. In 1853 the
first rock oil mine is built in B6brka, near Krosno in
western Poland.
1847
John Hutchinson, a 22-year old chemist and industrial
ist, recognises the importance of scale to economy in
the chemical industry and acknowledges that chemi
cals are needed for domestic as well as industrial use.
He opens a factory in northwest England (a region
with salt deposits and a sophisticated canal network) ,
and recruits three established chemists: Ludwig Mond,
John Brunner and J:W. Towers.
1850
World population stands at circa 1,200 million.
Widespread farming on the Great Plains of the United
States begins. The advances of the Industrial Revolu
tion and the onset of commercialisation, augmented
by a new understanding of the relationship between
crop yield and nitrogen and the need to avoid soil
depletion, radically changes farming practices across
the world. With arable land under significant pres
sure to feed an increasing population, crop rotation
93
COLLAPSE VII
between crops and leguminous plants as well as the
use of manure, guano and mineral nitrates to increase
production become commonplace.
1854
Benjamin Silliman, a professor at Yale University, is the
first to fractionate petroleum by distillation. His dis
coveries rapidly spread around the world. In 1861
Meerzoeff builds the first Russian refinery in the
mature oil fields at Baku. Within a short space of time
the area is producing almost 90% of the world's oil.
1859
Former railwayman Edwin Laurentine 'Colonel' Drake
drills the world's first successful oil well in Titusville,
Pennsylvania.
2,000 barrels of oil are produced this year in the
United States.
1862
The Morrill Act is passed in the United States to estab
lish State Agricultural Experiment Stations to develop
modern techniques in animal husbandry.
1865
California's first productive well is drilled by the Union
Matolle Company in the state's Central Valley.
94
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
1866-77
A cattle boom accelerates inhabitation of the Great
Plains, leading to a series of land-related disputes
between farmers and ranchers.
1869
4,�:n5,ooo barrels of oil are produced in the United
States.
1876
German inventor Nikolaus Otto, working with Gott
lieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach, develops the first
four-stroke piston cycle internal combustion engine.
1879
Karl Benz is granted a patent for his two-stroke gas
engine, based on the same technology as Otto's.
A short time later, Benz designs and builds his own
four-stroke engine. He develops his first automobile in
1885 and patents it in 1886. Soon afterwards it becomes
the first automobile in production.
1879-1883
The importance of mineral fertilizers in crop production
leads to dramatic increases in fixed nitrogen prices.
Its sourcing becomes a major political concern. India,
Norway and Egypt each discover resources of various
nitrate-containing minerals, but by far the largest are
95
COLIAPSE VII
found in South America. Among them is a 220-mile
long deposit of guano (fixed nitrogen laid down in the
excrement of birds over millions of years) and saltpetre
(potassium nitrate) . The value of the mineral rights
within this field is a direct cause of the War of the
Pacific ( 1879-1883, also known as the War of Saltpetre)
between Chile, Peru and Bolivia. The government of
the United Kingdom sponsors Chile with financial
support and arms on the condition of guaranteed
exploitation contracts. Following the war's conclusion
Chile establishes itself as the world's largest supplier
of nitrates.
Companies from the United Kingdom soon own 70%
of the Chilean nitrate industry.
1892
John Froelich develops the first successful gasoline
powered tractor, a machine that will ultimately wel
come in the twentieth century and usher out the use of
animal power. His company is later purchased by
Deere & Company and becomes the John Deere Tractor
Company.
1893
Patillo Higgins, a Texan businessman and self-taught
geologist, founds the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manu
facturing Company in the belief that modern industry
will soon switch from coal to oil.
96
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
1898
Chile builds a vibrant economy on guano and saltpetre
sales, accounting for around half of its GNP. Exports
of copper provide an additional quarter. Over-reliance
on these products quickly becomes a major problem.
Original forecasts that the nitrate fields would last for
100 years or more appear optimistic as global demand
for fertilizer begins outstripping supply. Sir William
Crookes, a chemist and senior British government
official, delivers a lecture titled 'The Wheat Problem' .
It proposes that the world might face starvation if
nitrate sources run out ( a situation he forecasted would
occur in 19�;n) .
1899
Average annual consumption of commercial fertilizer
in the United States: 1,8 45,900 tonnes.
1900
90% of the United States population lives on farms.
Although Crookes's warnings regarding the diminish
ing resources of natural nitrate are initially ignored, the
potential impact of a shortage becomes glaringly
apparent within a few months. The expectation of war
in Europe and the consequent stockpiling of explosives
contributes to a steep rise in the demand for and
price of fertilizer. Further pressure comes from the
food industry, with crop yield in Europe having
97
COLLAPSE VII
doubled over the course of the last century to feed
rapidly-expanding populations. Nitrogen is available
in Europe, but only in the atmosphere. At this point,
neither plants nor humans can make use of it because
a technically feasible method of fixing it in chemical
compounds has not yet been discovered.
Note
The growing demand for nitrate, in part to produce
explosives during the First World War, eventually
caused the collapse of the Chilean nitrate market and
the departure of large numbers of British extraction
companies. The Chilean economy did not regain stabil
ity until the late twentieth century.
The demand for clean ammonia for use in the produc
tion of explosives and fertilizer led to the small scale
development of two processes:
L The arc process
( N2 + 02 � 2NO NO + � 02 � N02 )
which took place at temperatures greater than 1200°C.
This was energy-inefficient and I tonne of fixed N 2
equivalent to 1500 kWh.
2. The cyanamide process:
CaO + C � CaC CaC + N2 � CaCN2
at temperatures greater than 1000°C
CaCN2 + H20 � CaC03 + NH3
Although more efficient, the process was not as easy
to operate or as safe.
98
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
1900
World population stands at circa 1,600 million.
Amount of arable land needed to feed one person for
one year: circa 5 acres.
German funding for research into synthetic munitions
grade nitrate begins.
1901
On January 10, the first major oil well is discovered
in Texas. A 'gusher' in Spindletop, near Beaumont,
rises to a height of more than 150 feet (50 metres) .
Called 'Lucas 1', it flows for nine days before it can
be capped. It begins delivering oil at an initial rate of
close to 100,000 barrels per day, greater than all the
other wells in the United States combined.
1905
The German chemist Professor Fritz Haber, then just
36 years old, publishes 'Thermodynamik technischer
Gasreaktionen' (The Thermodynamics of Technical
Gas Reactions) in which he details the iron-catalysed
reaction of hydrogen and nitrogen to create ammo
nia at temperatures below 1000°C. Soon afterwards
N2 + H2 � NH3 is patented as the 'Haber Process'.
At this time Germany is still 95% reliant on Chilean
nitrate.
99
COLLAPSE VII
1906
126, 493,936 barrels of oil are produced in the United
States.
1909
A dryland farming boom begins on the Great Plains
with the arrival of itinerant, seasonal 'suitcase farmers',
mining the land for valuable wheat crops but typically
resident elsewhere. It will reach its peak in the 1920s.
1910
Considerable work is required to make the Haber Proc
ess commercially viable. 'The interest of a wider circle,'
Haber later stated, 'has its source in the recognition
that ammonia synthesis on a large scale represents a
useful way to satisfy an economic need. This practi
cal usefulness was not the preconceived goal of my
experiments. I was not in doubt that my laboratory
work could furnish no more than a scientific statement
of the foundations and a knowledge of the experi
mental equipment, and that much had to be added
to this result in order to attain economic success on
an industrial scale.'
1910
BASF chemist Carl Bosch takes out patents on the
use of high pressure and separation processes and
moves the concept towards a manufacturing method.
100
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
The reaction requires high temperatures (750°C) and
pressures and is energy-intensive. Bosch and Haber
develop a process to fix atmospheric nitrogen and
produce synthetic ammonia.
1910
Large, open-geared gas tractors are used for the first
time for farming in the United States.
1913
The world's first commercial ammonia synthesis plant
to produce mineral fertilizer according to the Haber
Bosch Process opens in Oppau, Germany.
Worldwide production of synthetic nitrogen: 7 arc
plants (20,000 tonnes of nitrogen a year) , 15 cyana
mide plants (66,ooo tonnes of nitrogen a year) , and I
direct synthetic ammonia plant ( Oppau, 7,000 tonnes
of nitrogen a year) . The ammonia produced is con
verted to nitrate for use as explosives or fertilizers.
1913
The United Kingdom government (with the help of
spies) initiates its own synthetic ammonia programme.
Despite recognising the importance of synthetic pro
duction, they fail to recreate Germany's success.
101
COLLAPSE VII
1914
The assassination on 28 June of Archduke Franz Fer
dinand of Austria in Sarajevo leads to the outbreak of
the First World War. The United Kingdom government,
which has its own nitrate source in India, expects that
war will last just six months due to German munitions
shortages. In order to prevent German access, a block
ade of Chilean nitrate begins. Despite early successes
in defying the British Navy, German ships are soon
confined to home defence. The further development of
domestic synthetic production suggests that Germany's
munitions supply would last until early 1916. A combi
nation of the Haber-Bosch Process to produce ammo
nia, and the Ostwald Process to convert it into nitric
acid and nitrates, prolongs the war until 1918.
Note
All explosive production was based around nitrate,
e.g. gunpowder (nitrate + sulphur + sugar) , TNT =
CH3C6H2(N0)3, and nitroglycerin = CH5(0N02)3.
1915
Haber supervises the first gas attack in military history
at Ypres, France, on April 2 2 . Somewhere around
10,000 Allied troops are killed or incapacitated by
chlorine on that single day. Poison gas remains a focus
of Haber's work, and he leads the effort to develop
and deploy mustard gas ( dichlordiethylsulfide) .
102
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
Haber's wife Clara Immerwahr, in 1900 the first female
student at the University of Breslau to receive a PhD,
expresses her objections to the use of chemistry for
making weapons.
After attending a dinner on May 2 to celebrate her
husband's appointment to Captain, Immerwahr shoots
herself with his service revolver. Tue morning after her
death, Haber leaves home to stage the first gas attack
against the Russian army on the Eastern Front.
Note
In 1986 Fritz Haber (son of the chemist) and his sec
ond wife, Charlotte, published a book on the history of
poison gas, The Poisonous Cloud.
1916
During the wartime boom in grain prices, petroleum
driven tractors remove 100 million acres of American
midwest prairie grass cover to sow wheat. As a national
defence measure to ensure the supply of nitrates used
in the production of munitions, the United States
Congress authorizes the construction of two nitrate
manufacturing plants and a dam for hydro-electric
power. President Woodrow Wilson chooses Muscle
Shoals, Alabama as the site for both the plants and the
dam, the latter of which will later be named after him.
103
COLIAPSE VII
1918
Following the conclusion of hostilities, Haber is
awarded the Nobel Prize. He is a controversial recipi
ent, having been named but found not guilty of being
a war criminal.
Bosch, whom many think in fact made the greater
contribution, would be awarded the same prize in 1931.
It becomes apparent that the German technology
for ammonia synthesis is key to continued industrial
growth and increased food production. The United
Kingdom government hires the company Brunner
Mond to spearhead its research effort. Some time
later Aldous Huxley visits their recently-opened and
technologically-advanced plant at Billingham, north
east England.
The introduction to the most recent edition of Huxley's
1931 classic novel BraveNew World states that the author
was inspired to write the book ( in which Mustapha
Mond figures as a character) after this visit.
1920
World population stands at circa 1,900 million.
1922
The United States National Live Stock and Meat
Board is founded.
104
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
1926
Muscle Shoals Fertilizer Company and the Muscle
Shoals Power Distributing Company are created by a
consortium of southern United States power compa
nies to utilise wartime facilities for the production of
fertilizer.
1926
A light tractor is successfully developed for use in
farming in the United States.
1930s
An all-purpose, rubber-tired tractor with complemen
tary machinery comes into wide use in the United
States, particularly on the Great Plains.
1931
A severe drought hits the midwestern and southern
plains of the United States. Crops die and 'blackbliz
zards' (great walls of dust whipped up from over
plowed and over-grazed land ) sweep through the
region.
1933
Franklin Roosevelt takes office in the United States.
105
COLLAPSE VII
1934
An even more more serious drought, the worst in the
history of the United States, affects more than 75
percent of the country. Dust storms spread across an
area of 100 million acres ( 400,000 square kilometres) ,
centred on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma,
and adjacent parts of New Mexico, Colorado, and
Kansas. This area becomes known as the 'Dust Bowl'.
1935
On April 1 4 , now known as 'Black Sunday', the worst
storm of the Dust Bowl occurs. Travelling at a speed
of sixty miles an hour, it causes massive damage. 850
million tonnes of topsoil are blown off the Southern
Plains during the course of the year. Millions of acres
of farmland become useless, and hundreds of thou
sands of people are forced to leave their homes. Many
travelled to California and other states in search of
more beneficial economic conditions. Owning no land,
others travelled from farm to farm picking fruit and
other crops at starvation wages.
Facing Page:
Top: DustStorm (Dalhart, Texas), 2007, Realtime 3D projection, 480 x 360 x 5 cm.
Installation view, Directions: John Gerrard, Hirshhorn Museum and
Sculpture Garden, Washington d.c., 2009. Curated by Kelly Gordon.
Photograph: Lee Stalsworth
Collection: Daniel Sallick amd Elizabeth Miller.
Bottom: Dust Storm (Dalhart, Texas), 2007
106
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
1939
Rain finally comes in the autumn, bringing an end to
the drought. The outbreak of the Second World War
on September 1 contributes to a regeneration of the
United States economy, dragging it out of the Depres
sion. The plains once again become golden with wheat.
1950
World population stands at circa 2,500 million.
1960
11 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser are used
worldwide.
1970
32 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser are used
worldwide.
1970s
The first 'dead zone' in the Gulf of Mexico is discov
ered. Nitrates leak into the Mississippi River from
the fields of the midwestern United States, which
in turn feeds directly into the gulf. Such zones, it is
later understood, are caused by eutrophication - an
increase of chemical nutrient compounds containing
Facing Page:
Top: Lufkin (Near Hugo, Colomdo), 2009, Realtime 3D projection, 400 x 300 cm.
Installation view, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK, November 2010.
Bottom: Lufkin (Near Hugo, Colorado), 2009.
109
COLLAPSE VII
nitrogen or phosphorus within an ecosystem causing
algal blooms which consume all available oxygen,
thereby causing the death of all other organisms in
the area.
1980
World population stands at circa 4 , 400 million.
Average meat consumption in the United States stands
at 45kg per person.
1980
61 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser are used
worldwide.
1990
Iraq invades Kuwait, leading to the First Gulf War.
79 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser are used world
wide. The amount of fixed nitrogen used in farming
in the period 1980-1990 exceeds all previous use prior
to 1980.
Somewhere between 50-60% of the global popula
tion now rely on fertilizer to eat. The nitrogen used
in ammonia manufacture is derived exclusively from
fossil fuels: as a consequence, the price of fertilizer
has run parallel to that of oil for more than 70 years.
Facing Page:
Top: SOOJ Farm (near Libbey, Oklohama), 2009, Realtime 30 projection, 400 x 300 cm.
Installation view, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, UK, November 2010.
Bottom: Artist's photographic documentation for Sow Farm (near Libbey,
Oklohama), 2009.
110
COLLAPSE VII
1995
The Oklahoma City bombing takes place on April 19,
targeting the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building,
an office complex belonging to the United States
government.
The attack, using nitrogen fertiliser, claims the lives
of 168 people and injures over 800 others.
1997
World population stands at circa 5,900 million.
2000
82 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser are used
worldwide.
2001
A dead zone in the Black Sea, previously the largest
in the world, is found to have largely disappeared
between 1991 and 2001. Fertilisers have become too
expensive to use following the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the demise of centrally-planned economies
within Eastern Europe. Fishing again becomes a major
economic activity in the region.
Facing Page:
Top: DustStorm (Dalhart, Texas), 2007 (foreground); Oil Stick Wor* (Angew Martinez /
Riclifield, Kansas), 2008 (background).
Installation view, 'John Gerrard: Animated Scene', Isola Di Certosa, Venice
Biennale 2009. Curated by Jasper Sharp & Patrick Murphy / Rha Projects
Bottom: Oil Stick Wor* (Angew Martinez /Riclifield, Kansas), 2008 .
1 12
COLLAPSE VII
September 11 attacks on the United States, leading to
the Second Gulf War.
2004
The United Nations Environment Programme pub
lishes its first Global Environment Outlook Year Book.
It details the existence of 1 4 6 dead zones in the world's
oceans where marine life cannot be supported due to
depleted oxygen levels.
2007
Total meat production in the United States reaches
40.5 billion kg. Exports account for Q .5 billion kg,
compared to just 0.1 billion kg in 1970. Department of
Agriculture data reveals that world grain production
has risen from 0.905 billion metric tonnes in 1965 to
Q.091 billion metric tonnes in 2007 (an increase of
131%) while the total area of farmed land increased
during the same period by only 4 .1% . Nitrogen ferti
liser is credited as the principle driver of this growth.
2008
World population stands at circa 6,770 million.
World consumption of oil per day stands at circa 80
million barrels.
180 million tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser are used
worldwide.
1 14
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
Amount of arable land needed to feed one person for
one year: circa 1.8 acres.
400 gallons of oil are required to feed each United
States citizen per year.
2% of the United States population lives on farms.
The manufacture of nitrogen fertiliser accounts for
37% of total energy use in agriculture.
405 dead zones have been found in lakes, seas and
oceans worldwide. The most notorious dead zone
remains the QQ,126 square kilometre (8,5 43 square
mile) area in the Gulf of Mexico. Other major oxy
gen-starved areas can be found in the Baltic Sea, the
Adriatic Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, the Yellow Sea,
and Chesapeake Bay. In addition, nitrate concentra
tions in rivers in the northeastern United States and
much of Europe have increased 10- to 15-fold in the
last 100 years.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
published online warned of 'mass extinction in the
oceans with unknown ecological and evolutionary
consequences' .
July 31, 2008
The Washington Post carries a report on so-called
'jubilees' taking place on the Gulf Coast of the United
States. Wayne Keller, director of the Grand Isle Port
Commission, Louisiana, says that in recent years peo
ple all along the coast have used nets and poles to catch
115
COLLAPSE VII
fish and shrimp which appear to 'rush' towards the
shoreline. Driven by vast walls of deoxygenated and
deathly water, there is nowhere else for the creatures to
go. Huge numbers of them are barbecued along the
coast amid scenes of celebration.
Corn Bomb: A Short History of Nitrogen 1660-2008
was first published in the catalogue John Gerrard: Animated
Scene, which accompanied a project efthe same name at the53rd
International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia in 2009.
Animated Scene was curated by Jasper Sharp and Patrick
Murphy, and presented by RHA, Dublin . .
http://www.johngerrard-venice.net
http://www.schlebruegge.com
REFERE N C E S AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
Engineering Contractors in the Chemical Industry,
'The Development of Ammonia Processes, 1910-1940', at
http://www.econ.upf.es/ebha2004/papers/6B3.doc
S. Fields, 'Global Nitrogen: Cycling out of Control', Environ
Health Perspect, 112(10), July 2004: As56-A563.
D. W. Barnum, 'Some History of Nitrates.'
Journal if Chemical Education. v. 80, 2004: 1393·
A. Mosier, J.K. Syers, ]. R. Freney, 'Agriculture and the
Nitrogen Cycle: Assessing the Impacts of Fertilizer Use
on Food Production and the Environment', International
Council for Science: Scientific
116
Gerrard & Morris - Corn Bomb
Committee on Problems of the Environment
(SCOPE) Series Vol. 65 (Island Press) .
A. Abram & D.L. Forster, 'A Primer on Ammonia, Nitrogen,
Fertilizers, and Natural Gas Markets', Department of AED
Economics, Ohio State University, at http://aede.osu.edu/
resources/docs/pdf/
KP90MS9C-3H54-C92]-73LB0HTNNCBAF66G.pdf.
D. Pimentel & M. Giampietro, 'Food, Land, Population,
and the U.S. Economy', at http://dieoff.org/page40.htm.
P. M. Vitousek et al, 'Human Alteration of the Global Nitro
gen Cycle: Causes and Consequences', Issues in Ecology,
i, i997, at http://www. esa.org/science_resources/issues/
FileEnglish/issue1. pdf.
FURTH ER READ I N G
D. Charles, Master mind: The Rise and Fall ofFritz Haber, the
Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age ofChemical Warfare (New
York: Ecco, 2005) .
D. Stoltzenberg, Fritz Haber: Chemist, Nobel Laureate,
German, Jew: A Biography (Chemical Heritage Foundation,
2005) .
Hager, The Alchemy ofAir: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed 1.Jcoon,
and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise
ofHitler (New York: Crown, 2008) .
117
PREPARATION OF WHEY FOR DIVERSE PURPOSES
Clarify whey and remove fines before routing fluid through
a pasteurizer and into 10,000-gallon storage tanks. Pass the
whey through an ultrafiltration system that boosts protein
to 35%. The resulting protein concentrate should undergo
chromatographic separation to extract and concentrate
lactoferrin. Pump the 35% WPC to a diafiltration system
to increase protein concentration to 80%. (The filtration
system's PLCs should feed data via an Ethernet connection
to the plant's control room. Clearly mark and code flow
meters on the shop floor, and label flow direction through
every pipe, to simplify maintenance and repair tasks.)
With protein content removed, move the remaining fluid to
a permeate pasteurizer before undergoing reverse osmosis
to remove two-thirds of the water. Bring the RO concentrate
to 60% total solids with a falling film TVR evaporator.
Next, pump the concentrate to one of five 6,ooo-gallon
glycol-jacketed crystallizers.
After crystallization, send the fluid to a multi-stage drying
system. Heat outside air with propane and mix it with
atomized permeate pumped under pressure of 5,000 to
6,ooo psi to the top of a 90-foot-tall drying chamber, after
which, pump the material pneumatically to the top of a
storage silo at at least 5,400 pounds an hour.
118
COLLAPSE VII
Whey To Go:
On The Hominid Appropriation
of the Pig-Fu nction1
Th e resourcefulness to tum byproducts into value-added
products ranks among thefood industry's most impressive
achievements.
'
'
THE VALUE- ADDED WHEY ,
FOOD ENGINEERING MAGAZINE 02/0 1/2 0 0 2
Whatever the cosmetic resemblances, the true secret
of the pig's close relationship with the human lies in the
fact that both species boast an augmented potentiality
with regard to feeding. Arguably the most important of
our many shared traits is our one-chambered stomach
and uncomplicated digestive tract, which grants us
both membership to that exclusive class, omnivores.
I.
2 . But whereas human omnivorousness is culturally
circumscribed, the pig exhibits an egregious want of
1. A version of this paper was first published in Antennae -Journal '!f"Nature
in Visual Culture, 2009.
119
COLLAPSE VII
critical faculties. Consequently, our feeling of prox
imity to the pig cannot but be accompanied by a
simultaneous revulsion.
This gustatory exaptation, which informs the deri
sory folk-image of the pig as an ignoble glutton ready to
devour any and all waste product, nourishes our sense
of its uncanny nature, as an animal at once disturb
ingly proximate to us yet falling drastically short of
human refinement. And yet ( excepting cultures where
it is anathematized as a two-faced - non-ruminant
but cloven-hoofed - deceiver) the pig is forgiven its
gluttony, as it alchemically transforms anything-edible
whatsoever into tasty nutrition for humans.
This furnishes the functional background for the
paradoxical status of the pig in folklore and religion,
as both venerated producer and feared devourer, and
completes the description of what will be discussed
below as 'the Pig Function' . Our thesis is that con
temporary developments can be read as destituting
the pig of this, its 'own' function, and incrementally
transferring it to the human.
3. An instructive index of the hominid appropriation
of the Pig Function is provided by the historical emer
gence and resolution of 'the whey problem' .
Capitalism, characterised by its ability t o trans
form problems into opportunities, has exploited the
uncanny relation between humans and pigs, employing
120
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
technological prostheses to adapt the porco-hominid
gastrointestinal convergence and bypass the critical
faculties of humans, thus transferring the Pig Func
tion to the human, and extracting a surplus value in
the process.
4. Contemporary with the dawn of civilisation, the
human consumption of animal milk can be dated to the
beginnings of animal husbandry in the Near East. Over
a lengthy period, early civilisations developed various
milk derivatives, the processing of which inevitably
led to byproducts.
5. Whey (a byproduct of cheesemaking, the colour
less liquid left after the curds have been extracted)
was long considered as waste. As long as the making
remained a small-scale domestic affair, this waste could
be disposed of inoffensively. Latterly, the domestica
tion of the pig set the seal on a 'virtuous circle' of
waste-disposal and meat production, with whey and
skim milk serving as swine feed (Fig. 1, Section 4) .
6. This solution barely survived the advent of industrial
farming, with large-scale production of milk deriva
tives taking place far from the dairy of origin. Its value
being too negligible for it to become a marketable
commodity, whey was sometimes distributed back to
farms as pig feed, but was more likely to be dumped
121
COLLAPSE VII
in vast amounts into rivers, sewer systems, or onto
roads or fields.
7. With ever-greater increases of scale, the 'whey prob
lem' became more pressing. At this point the dairy
industry began to seek a solution by way of extracting
various components from whey for use in value-added
synthetic products - 'leverag[ing] modern technol
ogy' to 'make the lemon of cheese production into
lemonade' . 2 Today, enterprising dairy producers have
developed multiple markets for whey, transforming the
erstwhile waste product into a valuable commodity.
Whey powder's lactose content, along with its texturis
ing, water-binding, stabilising and fat-mimetic proper
ties, makes it an important factor in many convenience
foods including infant formula milk, coffee whiteners,
salad dressings, cup-a-soups, cakes and pastries, candy,
mayonnaise and crisps (Fig. 1 , Section 5) .
8. One of the most lucrative markets for whey is the
production of whey protein isolate and concentrate
powders as food supplements for the bodybuilding
community, to whom its marketeers promise increased
muscle mass (more recently, the same products have
also been rebranded as pro-immune system, anti-aging
2. 'The Value-Added Whey', Food Engineering Magazine 02/01/2002, at
http://www. foodengineeringmag.com/Articles/Feature_Article/9cb66c903
42f8010VgnVCM 100000f932a8cO.
122
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
formulae) . Delivery of these supplements involves the
use of advanced technology to refine whey in order
to extract the highly bioactive peptide 'subfractions'
of whey such as lactoferrin, glycomacro peptide and
lactoperoxidase, which are found only in extremely
minute amounts in the original milk protein. To this
end, various processes such as 'Cross Flow Micro Fil
tration (CFMA®), ultra filtration (UF), micro filtration
(MF) , reverse osmosis (RO) , dynamic membrane fil
tration (DMF), ion exchange chromatography (IEC),
electro-ultrafiltration (EU), radial flow chromatogra
phy (RFC) and nano filtration (NF) '3 are employed.
9. In a paradoxical turn, with US exports of whey reach
ing £ 435 million in 2000, the market for whey-based
'designer protein' has become more valuable to manu
facturers than the staple dairy products themselves - as
reflected in the industrial cheesemaker's motto, 'cheese
to break even, whey for profit'. Concerns have even been
raised that the overpromotion of and increased demand
for whey may lead to overproduction of milk, and a
devaluation of traditional dairy products; although
industry-funded researchers find such concerns
weigh little against the economic benefits promised by
the continued expansion of whey markets. 4
3. W Brink, 'The Whey It is', at http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/willbrink3.htm.
4. http://vivo.cornell.edu/individual/vivo/individual20909.
123
COLLAPSE VII
10. The 'recipe' that prefaces this text describes the
stages of production in an innovative whey-processing
plant. It is notable that this process still excretes its
own waste products; namely the fluid from which all
the crystallized solids have been removed. However
in this case such waste is put to ingenious use:
By the end of the process, virtually all solids have
been removed, leaving only 155,000 gallons of water.
Some of that water is routed through a polisher, then
through a UV system before being chlorinated for
use in plant wash down 5
. . .
11. Thus, incremental industrialisation and redistri
bution of the means of production has seen humans
usurping the role of the pig in productively absorbing
whey. Sophisticated instruments of chemical analysis,
together with the development of new 'luxury' mar
kets, have allowed the Pig Function to be transferred to
humans via a highly complex technological apparatus.
A synergy between synthetic food-production proc
esses and culturally-augmented desires has rendered
whey palatable to the human, who is thus prepared
to inherit the Pig Function, enjoy it, and pay for it.
5 . 'The Value·Added Whey'.
124
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
12 . Such byzantine embellishments of the simple 'virtu
ous circle' of the whey-consuming farmyard pig bring
irresistibly to mind agrosophist6 Waylon Susskind's
definition of Extravagance:
By 'extravagant' we understand, from the Latin
extravagare, a 'wandering outside': The concept com
bines the notion of an expenditure lacking all restraint
(the solar economy as destiny of entropic abolition)
and an errancy (owing to the legacy of material accre
tions) whose product exhibits excessive elaboration,
even absurdity (from the point of view of the most
economical route to that destiny) .7
According to Extravagance Theory, in striving to dissi
pate the disequilibrium that results from energy being
trapped within the constraints of a legacy of material
accretions, energetic systems generate new, overcom
plex structures. Susskind, the pioneer of Extravagance
Theory, asked whether we could understand a psy
chic process such as Festinger's 'cognitive dissonance'
within such a perspective, with reference to Freud's
original thermodynamic model for psychoanalysis:
6. For historical background documents on agrosophy and neo-agrosophy,
see http://www. fieldclub.co. uk/.
7. Susskind, W. 'The Principle of Extravagance' (Newton Abbott: Maphusis
Press, 1968) , 1 33-4. See also Susskind, W. 'Capital, Extravagance, and
Excess', Neo-Agrosophical Transactions 1 :3, 1976.
125
COLLAPSE VII
If the mind is understood as an energetic/economic
system with tendencies toward concentration and dis
persion, and problems or 'complexes' in which psychic
energy becomes trapped or knotted, then its elaborate
symptoms would be the result of frustrated processes
of re-equilibriation. Festinger understands cognitive
dissonance as precisely a kind of tension (between two
or more cognitions) or intensity, demanding resolution
or dissipation. 8 The mind will find a way, no matter
how extravagant and circuitous, to discharge tension,
to relieve pressure, and Festinger's studies address
various otherwise inexplicable cognitive contortions
that can result from the adjustments through which
persons attempt to achieve the required dissipation.
For Susskind the crucial point is that these adjust
ments also tend to contort the surrounding milieu; so
that in attempting to solve the problem (dissipate the
intensity or dissonance) , one often changes the prob
lem, engendering new disequilibria, new dissonances.
The essentially entropic 'process of re/equilibriation',
seeking to discharge problems or differences, since it is
always already implicated in its own prior productions,
only frustrates itself, becoming the source of further,
ever more 'extravagant' novelty, difference, or intensity.
8. Festinger, L., A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1957).
126
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
13. Evidently, the attempts described above to 'solve'
the 'whey problem' ( itself only the product of a previ·
ous 'solution', etc. ) answer to such a description. We
would concur with Susskind's contention, for too
long dismissed in neo-agrosophist literature as a mere
aside, that 'the hominid appropriation efthe Pig Function
presents a striking index efanthropogenic Extravagance'. 9
In what follows, we shall explore in more depth the
context and history of this appropriation.
14. In the peak period of reliance on the pig as a semi
domesticated food source ( after the Roman period, up
to the eleventh century) pigs were taken to 'pannage'
by swineherds ( Fig. 1, Section 2) , to forage on acorns
in forests ( the Domesday Book measured woodland
in terms of how many pigs it could support) .
Pannage employed what were essentially domesti
cated wild boars to process beechmasts, acorns, and
fungi ( all foodstuffs relatively unpalatable to humans
and only eaten by them in times of severe crop failure) .
In a certain sense, then, the pig was already being
used to exploit by-products of the forest ecosystem
that would have 'gone to waste'.
1 5 . Nevertheless, the notion of pigs feeding on human
waste only emerged later ( Fig. 1, Section 3 ) , in part
9. Susskind, Extravagance, 212.
127
COLLAPSE VII
as a by-product of deforestation and the advent of
industrialisation. The gradual reduction of woodlands
after the Norman Conquest, and the restriction on
times of the year that pigs were allowed to roam free
in them, were major factors in the decline of pannage.
The erosion of the forests heralded a significant
intensification of the Pig Function, as pigs were
absorbed into household economies and became 'the
Husbandman's best Scavenger, and the Huswives
most wholsome sink; for his food and living is by
that which will else rot in the yard [ . . ]; for from the
Husbandman he taketh pulse, chaff, barn dust, man's
ordure, garbage, and the weeds of his yard: and from
the huswife her druff, swillings, whey, washing of tubs,
and such like, with which he will live and keep a good
state of body, very sufficiently . '.1 0
The Enclosures Acts, eliminating common land
and limiting access to the remaining woods, produced
a flow of deterritorialised labour power, with these
husbandmen compelled to become labourers first on
farms (as cottagers with a pig kept in the backyard)
and later in factories, leading to the mass exodus
from the countryside and the growth of the cities. In
many cases, in a last ditch attempt to hang on to the
autonomy to which they were accustomed, they took
.
.
.
10. G. Markham, Cheap and Good Husbandry (13th ed, 1 676) , 100; quoted
in R. Malcolmson & S. Mastoris, 1he English Pig: A History (London:
Hambledon Press, 1998), 36.
128
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
with them their pigs, which continued to perform their
function by eating the family's waste.
The value of this waste disposal only added to the
importance of an animal that yielded a range of appeal
ing foods, and was for most cottagers the principal
supply of animal fat that was 'relatively non-perishable
and affordable' .11 Every part of the pig was used:
While local custom and tradition affected the details
of dealing with the dead pig and disposing its various
parts, the general practice was certainly to use, in
some way or other, as the folk saying put it, "every
thing but the squeal".12
At this point in the process of deracination-by-capital,
for both country and city labourers the pig could
represent the difference between prosperity and abject
poverty.
16. The mid-nineteenth-century expansion of the cities
led to problems of sanitation and the outlawing of
the city pig (a scape-pig? But this question must be
reserved for another time . . . ) . In this period, with the
rise of commercial farming, pigs became an indispen
sable organic machine-part in breweries and distilleries
in London and in large-scale dairies in other areas:
1 1 . Malcolmson and Mastoris, 7he English Pig, 1 1 5 .
1 2 . Ibid., 109.
129
COLLAPSE VII
'[I]n Farms where there are large Dairies, 'tis neces
sary that to each Cow there should be an Hog, for the
Offals of the Dairy' ( Fig. I, Section 4) .13
More intensive methods of pig-husbandry there
fore developed in an unplanned synergy with other
concentrated food-production processes that provided
them with bulk foodstuffs such as whey. Only because
of the earlier developments discussed above did the
pig appear typecast as a natural candidate for this
waste-disposal role. And, as we have seen, its position
in this new techno-ecosystem - its status as sole rep
resentative of the Pig Function - was far from being
assured for perpetuity.
13. Bradley, Gentleman and Farmer's Guide (1 732) , 77; quoted in Malcolmson
& Mastoris, 7he English Pig, 37.
130
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
AVIAN I NTERLUDE
A third party bears witness to the co-implicated history
of pigs and human agriculture, and the transference
of the pig-function to Iiumans: The robin. It is in Eng
land's island ecosystem alone that robins became 'the
gardener's companion' - a tame garden bird fond of
accompanying humans in their horticultural pursuits.
When deforestation and the hunting to extinction of
wild boar stripped robins of their previous habit of
attending upon boars, waiting for their foraging to
turn up the earth and excavate worms and grubs,
their habitat shifted and they became companions to
humans instead - particularly in the garden, where
humans fulfilled the Pig Function, turning over the
earth to uncover their morsels.
Norse mythology already anticipates the porco
sapient affinity attested to by the robin, describing
how the peculiar rooting action of the boar's terminal
snout disk provided a model for the plough, and thus
initiated mankind into agriculture. With the introduc
tion of a ring in the snout to prevent the pig from
routing and destroying crops, did not early-modern
farming practice unknowingly terminate its own mythi
cal foundations in the name of efficiency, becoming a
simulacrum, a copy destitute of its original model ?14
. . .
14. Malcolmson & Mastoris, The English Pig, 76.
131
COLLAPSE VII
This assault on the mythic core of pigdom is not
only a striking vindication of our thesis, but also a
stark indicator as to the profoundly ominous nihilistic
undercurrents subtending the hominid appropriation.
132
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
17. We have seen that the radically omnivorous pig we
love to despise - the 'greedy pig' - is largely an artefact
of Extravagance, a cultural animal co-evolving with,
and catering for the appetites of, industrialised and
urbanised humans. Although it has ancient roots, the
Pig Function was fully developed only during early
capitalism, through an opportunistic harnessing of
the animal's latent potentialities.
The Pig Function, therefore, cannot be said to
'belong' to the pig at all. Actually-existing pigs, far
from being - as in the popular imagination - the very
model of an uncritically omnivorous creature enthusi
astic to hoover up every kind of trash, whether whey
powder or other animals' excrement - merely incarnate
a function nurtured by mankind. Mankind, however,
is destined to usurp the pig's role and incarnate this
function itself - because pigs have no spending power.
So long as pigs monopolise the function that bears their
name, they prevent it from becoming a locus for the
extraction of surplus value. In short, as fat as it may
be, the pig is an intolerable retard when it comes to
expansion. A hostile takeover is well overdue, in order
for the Pig Function to fulfil its true economic potential.
Far from being instinctively exaptive, the pig was a
reluctant domesticate, tempted out of the forest by the
waste spilling over the rim of human society. Consider,
nonetheless, the transformations that our interspecies
romance has brought about: From wild boar to pig,
133
COLLAPSE VII
with a concomitant change in the imaginary ( from
noble forest animal with more in common with wolves
than cows15 [Fig. I, Section I ] to derided farmyard
fatty) in parallel with the move from hunter-gatherer
to agriculture.16
Although the 'remarkable change in phenotype'
over the ten thousand year period since agricultural
domestication17 is irreversible, there can be no doubt
that when it becomes possible, our Extravagance will
see us eat our own shit - and pay for it - and the pig
will finally be decoupled from the function that has
temporarily borrowed its name, released from the
labyrinth of Extravagance to wander its own porcine
path once again. For capitalism, that great problem
solver and supreme engine of Extravagance, is more
omnivorous than the pig.
IRONIC POSTS C RI PT: T H E H U M BLE AC O RN
What of pannage? In its golden age, pannage had
formed part of a complex forest ecosystem. The rare
examples of such ecosystems that survive today supply
the top-end specialist luxury 'foodie' market. A website
15. Ibid., 5 .
16. Ibid., 2.
17. See L. Andersson, 'The Molecular Basis for Phenotypic Changes During
Pig Domestication', in U. Albarella, P. Rowley-Conwy, K. Dobney & A.
Ervynck ( eds ) Pigs and Humans:10, 000 Years ef Interaction ( Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007), 42.
134
FIELDCLUB - Whey to Go
marketingjam6n ibenco de belotta, an astronomically
expensive ham made from acorn-fed pigs who roam
the forests on the Spanish-Portugese border, gushes:
This brings us to the humble acorn, known as the
'bellota'. Many centuries ago, the rulers of western
Spain decreed that each town and village should cre
ate pastures studded with oak trees, called the Dehesa,
for the long term stability of the region. This forest/
pasture continues to serve many purposes. The Holm
and cork oaks provided firewood for the people,
shade for the plants and livestock, cork products,
and acorns (bellota) during fall and winter. During
the spring and summer cattle and sheep graze the
fields. During the fall and winter, when the acorns are
falling from the trees, the pigs are released to fatten
up. This ancient human-created ecosystem survives
intact to this day.1 8
The same site offers 'True Acorn-Fed lberico Cured
Shoulder' for sale online, for the princely sum of
$3 4 .50 for 4 ounces. Feeling extravagant?
18. http://www.jamon.com/iberico.html.
135
----'I
lt
Fig. I. Historical development of Extravagance in the Pig Function.
I. Forest porcosystem BP [Before Pannage]
2. Heyday of pannage
(Roman period nth century)
-
3. Decline of pannage
(Norman conquest - 16th century)
�---
4. Proto-Industrial Pig
(16th - mid-19th century)
5. Porcine Extravaganza:
Industrially-augmented function transferral period ( 20th century)
A TASTE O F H O M E :
T H E H O OAH ! C H O C O LATE C H I P ENERGY BAR
Has an optimal 4:1 carb-to-protein ration. Provides 17 vitamins
and minerals.
Corn syrup
soy protein isolate
fructose
maltodextrin
fractionated palm oil
unsweetened chocolate
rice flour
dextrose
glycerine
cocoa (processed with alkali)
whey protein concentrate
dates
raisins
barley malt extract
soy lecithin
natural flavor
rice bran
ascorbic acid
d-alpha·tocopherol acetate
niacinamide
zinc oxide
tocopherols added to protect flavor
pyridoxine hydrochloride
riboflavin
thiamine mononitrate
folic acid
vitamin B12
COLLAPSE VII
The N ew Al i mentary Conti n u u m
As you might have expected, I have a messagefor you
from control.
Z I L LATRO N LORD OF THE HAR VEST
AN E C O N OMY OF SPEED
On 25 October 1832, President Andrew Jackson signed
an order that was to replace the rations of rum, whis
key or brandy, as they had been given to his soldiers
before, with sugar and coffee (Army General Order
No.100) . Jackson's Executive Order was recognized
by Congress in July 1838. Since the 1820s, Secretary
of War John C. Calhoun had already warned against
the harmful effects of alcohol for field operations,
favouring coffee instead, yet the actual replacement
of alcohol with sugar and coffee, at the rate of four
pounds of coffee and eight pounds of sugar per 100
rations, cannot merely be seen as a negative response
to alcohol consumption. The change from alcohol to
caffeine was the first sign of a new economy of violence
147
COLLAPSE VII
which increasingly controls the world today. It is an
economy that is all about speeding up the strategies
and tactics of the now omnipresent battlefield.
It should be noted that neither sugar nor coffee
were products of mass consumption at that time.
By introducing them to the military diet, into solde,
President Jackson invented the first of a whole series
of revolutionary weapons through which (US) military
intelligence speeded up modern life. For although
designed for military use, these weapons all became
customary mass consumption products. It was World
War One, in particular, that introduced sugar and
coffee (and also chewing gum) , together with their
economy of speed, to every household around the
world. Turning every body into the body of a soldier,
the twentieth century thus became the time in which
all of these military, alimentary machines, that had
remained largely virtual for so long, turned viral.
Radically new undercurrents have spread throughout
the earth, breeding new life that today controls all
the mouths in the world, feeding them Martial Law,
creating a universality that is determined by notions of
warfare, subjectivity and territoriality. Virilio is right to
insist that in our days the fabric of war is everywhere.
It has sunk deep into the earth, into every object, into
all of us. But his 'Pure War'• is not just to be found
in and around technique.
1 . P. Virilio, Pure War (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e)/Foreign Agents, 1 983) .
148
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
Claude Levi-Strauss2 had already told us that nutri
tion and alimentation (and not copulation) conceptual
izes space (and not time) , making edibles (virtual as
they might be) the most elementary of all hyperob
jects, the primal strata, the first and foremost of the
'phenomena of thickening on the Body of the Earth' . 3
This new military regime too, starting by replacing
alcohol with caffeine, reaches well beyond proposing
us particular products to consume. Its desire to speed
up every body is also enacted by setting out new paths
of food preparation (the microwave oven and more
recently, flameless heating) and of ways to keep prod
ucts fresh at all times (canning, sterilization, and more
recently, zein packaging) . But these are only a few of
the formalizations and quantifications produced by
the machinery that today keeps everything in a perma
nent state of emergency, as Virilio would put it. It has
brought us wholly other physicochemical, organic and
anthropomorphic contours of the earth, opening up a
whole new and unforeseen arsenal by means of which
life on earth is controlled and will proceed.
Today, as part of the First Strike Rations, US
soldiers are offered large amounts of carbohydrate
( maltodextrin) and caffeine - presented to them, of
course, in a much more refined way than was the case
2. C. Levi-Strauss, The Origin oJTable Manners (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1978) , 190.
3. G. Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1987), 502.
149
COLLAPSE VII
two hundred years ago. Field marshals in our times
are given mocha energy bars fortified with 200 mg of
caffeine, or chewing gum with 100 mg of fast-absorbing
caffeine per piece, along with central nervous system
stimulating d-amphetamines ( commonly referred to
as 'speed' ) and Modafinil, a ( new) synthetic drug cur
rently being tested by the Defense Advance Research
Projects Agency ( DARPA) . In line with these new
rations, the discourse surrounding food additives has
of course taken a more 'scientific' ( read 'Taylorist' )
turn over the years. Tests with modafinil discuss the
increase of cognitive performance in sleep depriva
tion situations,4 its thermogenetic and aggression
increasing effects. Today, the US Army proudly informs
us about its improved caffeine additives,5 claiming
to have increased soldiers' 'usefulness' from 4 8 to 68
hours (when taking a piece of gum every two hours) .
Tue chewing gum is named 'Stay Alert', which nicely
summarizes what the large amounts of caffeine are
supposed to do: to maintain the troops in a perpetual
state of emergency. Stand up straight. The enemy is here.
4. See for instance JV. Baranski, R. Pigeau, P. Dinich, I. Jacobs, 'Effects
of Modafinil on Cognitive and Meta-Cognitive Performance' in Human
Psychopharmacology: Clinicaland Experimental, Volume 19, Issue 5, 2004: 323-32) .
5. Committee on Military Nutrition Research, Food and Nutrition
Board, Institute of Medicine, Caffeine for the Sustainment ef Mental Task
Performance: FormulationsfarMilitary0perations Nationa1 Academies Press, 2001).
(
150
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
FRAGM E NTS OF THE H I STORY OF THE
FUTURITY O F WAR
Although of vital strategic importance, alimentation
is still poorly developed in military theory. Famously,
Napoleon is supposed to have said that an army
marches on its stomach; but, at least in the occidental
tradition, military theorists prefer to pay homage to
the work of Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) , whose
strategies of the battlefield only mention the soldier's
body when it comes to the question of shelter. 6 His
famous adage 'war is the continuation of politics by
other means' is certainly still valuable for us; but in
approaching this notion of politics from the alimentary
point of view, we should not focus too much on the
Apollonian romanticism of Clausewitz and instead
(for a start) turn to his Dionysian predecessor, Fred
erick the Great of Prussia (1712-1786) . Frederick, an
artist, bon-vivant and very successful military leader,
was perhaps one of the first generals in the West to
emphasize that 'the first object in the establishment of
an army ought to be making provision for the belly,
that being the basis and foundation of all operations'. 7
This indeed is a very different point of departure to
that of the Clausewitzian tradition.
6. General Carl von Clauzewitz, On War ( Brooklyn, NY, Brownstone Books,
2009), 116.
7. See T. Foster. Military Instructionsfrom the Late King '!/Prussia to his Generals
( London: Cruttwell publishers, 1918), 7.
151
COLLAPSE VII
Our minor alimentary history of warfare then brings
us to William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) , the
famous general of the Union army in the American
Civil War, who, following the aforementioned Presi
dent Jackson, seems to develop Frederick's politics
further, stating that:
[ t ]he feeding of an army is a matter of the most vital
importance, and demands the earliest attention of
the general entrusted with a campaign. To be strong,
healthy, and capable of largest measure of physical
effort, the soldier needs about three pounds gross of
food per day, and the horse or mule about twenty
pounds . . . Probably no army ever had a more varied
experience in this regard than the one I commanded
in 1864-65.8
With Sherman, Frederick's emphasis on alimentation
was rewritten dramatically. Frederick considers the
food intake of soldiers 'the basis and foundation of
all operations', in other words as the most important
preparation for the battle to come (food) or celebra
tion after it is won (alcohol) . The Executive Order by
President Jackson, as echoed in Sherman's style of
warfare, however, has accelerated into a continuous
set of interventions, into continuously taking action via
8. In 0. Connelly, On War and Leadership: The Wordr '![Combat Commanders
from Frederick the Great to Norman Schwarzkopf (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2005), 24.
152
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
alimentation, thereby actually making alimentation a
central means of warfare ( deterritorializing dominant
ideas on logistics, strategy and tactics) . Sherman fully
included the body of the soldier as part of a total
machinery that no longer has time to prepare for a
battle to come or to celebrate when it is over. With
Sherman the soldier is always already actively interven
ing. Sherman gave us the soldier who has to keep on
drinking coffee and chewing gum.
Military historians had already noted Sherman's
ability to move deeply into enemy territory fast, which
again draws our attention to the new weaponry he
made use of, the new idea of the motor he applied. It
is remarkable that, in terms of the semiotics of warfare
that still dominates academic thought in this area,
Sherman appears only as the merciless general who so
successfully practiced a scorched earth policy against
the Confederate States ( during his March to the Sea,
for instance) . This was only his rewriting of Sun Tzu's
famous claim that 'each pound of food taken from the
enemy is equivalent to twenty pounds you provide by
yourself'. 9 Sherman understood the black earth, the
chemistry of distribution. He knew that to control
the alimentary continuum he had not only to feed his
soldiers continuously; he had also to starve the enemy
forces. To control alimentation is to control life.
9. Sun Tzu, Th e Art if War (Boston: Shambhala, 1988) , 28.
153
COLLAPSE VII
In Sherman's generalization of the alimentary prin
ciples we can spot fragments of a style of warfare that
emphasizes a control of life as a whole. Sherman's new
strategies prehended the new processes of subjectifica
tion that were to dominate the earth and to alter its
synthetic and chemical horizon accordingly. Of course
the promotion and development of performance
enhancing foodstuff comes with the activation and
addition of desirable enzymes and micro-organisms
as well as the inactivation and exclusion of unwanted
enzymes and micro-organisms from edibles and from
the earth. But this politics of speeding up is a human
endeavour, as it comes with a reterritorialization of
the entire earth (and all of its possible life) upon these
new (accelerated) processes of subjectification. Add
ing organic micronutrients such as Vitamin C might
accelerate the human being, it does not affect the
animal. Or even worse: adding Glyphosate (a systemic
herbicide) to our foodstuff (such as soy) kills compet
ing weeds, but is also toxic to aquatic organisms and
especially amphibians.
Sherman's military style in the end burns the earth
as it creates, feeds, breeds, enriches, grafts, as it acceler
ates a new earth to come. It once again shows us that a
military style has never been just a blackboard strategy
'designed in order to achieve some end', such as Wylie
and Caldwell Wylie consider to be a common ground
154
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
for military styles in literature.1 0 Rather we agree with
them when they conclude that '[w]hat is necessary
is that the whole of the thing, all of war, be studied.
The fragments of war, the minor parts of strategy, the
details of tactics, are quite literally infinite' .11 Military
styles are to be defined pragmatically or empirically as
a set of 'mechanism-independent, structure-building
singularities . . . capable of being incarnated in many dif
ferent physical mechanisms' .12 Sherman's first attempts
to control life as a whole are still very elementary
compared to how this is practiced by US military intel
ligence in the twenty-first century. They do however
announce this whole, total politics. His experiments
do not anticipate the contemporary scenario, but they
were the first attempts to grasp its motor.
Todays Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs) - the field
rations served by the US Army to its troops in combat
- and the machinery that surrounds them (crucial parts
of it developed by the Soldiers System Centre in Natick,
Massachusetts) perform the quantum leap that fully
achieves the economy of speed. The new alimentary
continuum has now installed itself, distributing a
chemical and synthactical whole that accelerates all.
It became fully operational in January Qoo3, when
10. Rhodes, James F. , History ef the United States (Vol. V. 1 864-1865, Ch.
XXIX) (1 904] (Port Washington, NY: 1967), 14.
1 1 . Ibid., 12.
12. M . DeLanda, War in the Age efIntelligent Machines (NY: Swerve Editions,
1991 ) , 18.
155
COLLAPSE VII
Donald Rumsfeld, the illustrious State Secretary of
Defense in the first George W. Bush administration,
concerning the torment of Mohammed al-Q.ahtani at
Guantanamo, approved of new 'interrogation meth
ods', many of them already described in the Army
Field Manual. Apart from putting them in isolation,
changing their sleep schedules, and making tempera
ture adjustments in order to disorient them, Rumsfeld
also denied them hot rations and limited their intake to
MRE products.13 The interrogation log of detainee 063
(al-Q.ahtani) from 23 November 2002 already shows
this new policy in action: '0755: The detainee ate the
entire MRE plus an extra cereal bar' .14
ALI M E NTARY REGI M E S
Agamben concludes that ' [w]hat is new about Presi
dent Bush's order is that it radically erases any legal
status of the individual, thus producing a legally
unnamable and unclassifiable being. Not only do the
Taliban captured in Afghanistan not enjoy the status
of POWs as defined by the Geneva Convention, they
do not even have the status of people charged with a
13. Stuart Taylor Jr. and Benjamin Wittes, 'Refining Immigration Law's
Role in Counterterrorism', in B. Witten (ed.) Legislating the War on Terror:
an Agendafor Reform (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2009) : 289345, 305 .
14. Interrogation log detainee 063. Viewed at: http://ccrjustice.org/files/
Publication_A!QahtaniLog.pdf (last visited 5th of May 201 1 ) .
156
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
crime according to American laws' .15 Rumsfeld's new
interrogation methods seem to practice this biopoli
tics; his take on the deregulation and acceleration of
the tormented body is indeed in no way obstructed
by civil rights. Furthermore, and this is perhaps of
even greater importance, here the prisoner and the
soldier are being controlled by the same weaponry (the
MRE) . It no longer matters whether the body in
question belongs to a US civilian or to someone else.
Rumsfeld's tactics of immanently speeding up (and
slowing down) the body through M REs reveal to
us the new ideas of territoriality that come with the
control of the biosphere, excluding or even removing
zoe. All must be controlled.
As the proper (Foucauldian) archaeologist knows,
digging further into the fertile soil will inevitably
recover the villain - the outsider that endangered clas
sical or feudal power - as well as the delinquent - the
insider that fell short and must be treated accordingly.
Just as there is more than one type of criminal to be
found in the earth, Deleuze and Guattari, following
Virilio, show us that all processes of grounding imply
the production of a certain type of soldier, a style of
hunting, a way of catching the prey. It all started with
the nomad-soldier, the hunter, who invented war.
War was accidently invented by animal-raising
nomads as a consequence of the machinery, the kinetic
15. G. Agamben, State efException (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 3.
157
COLLAPSE VII
energy of the hunted animal that was now being con
served. And it was this process ( this style of conser
vation) that was reinvented several times in history.
Most importantly this meant that the dominance of
the nomad-soldier was succeeded by the peasant
soldier and the citizen-soldier16 that are in one way or
another related to the aforementioned villain and delin
quent. The hunter comes into being at the moment he
' . . . captures the force of the hunted animal',17 intro
ducing us to an alimentary economy of violence that
has reinvented the earth ever since. Conserving the
kinetic energy of the hunted animal - or rather the
particular style ef conseroation - thus gave form to the
earth, installing the regime of the nomad-soldier that
was succeeded by the peasant-soldier and the citizen
soldier,18 introducing us respectively to the villain and
the delinquent.
The various types of soldiers Deleuze and Guattari
conceptualize can, then, be addressed as alimentary
figures that come with new styles of conservation, new
ways of catching prey. The initial force of the nomad
hunt is the pure, raw and untamed alimentary force.
The peasant soldier, inventing sedimentary continuity
( spatiotemporal fixation) introduces us already to a
very different regime of consumption, by means of
16. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 399.
17. Ibid., 396.
18. Ibid., 399.
158
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
which a territoriality is introduced that places war at
its margins (which thus have to be protected) . The
citizen soldier, by inventing the city and the countryside
(the capitalist opposition between consumption and
production) fights for surplus and needs land in order
to enlarge the hierarchy.
Yet, as history is neither universal nor finite, there
have always been a multitude of war machines crawling
around (in and out ot) the surface of the earth, some
more successful than others, some more resilient, more
powerful, more capable of acceleration. Deleuze and
Guattari already mapped many of them, some quite
far removed from the more conventional definitions
of war common in literature (which is why Paul Pat
ton proposed to reconceptualize their 'war machine'
as a 'machine of metamorphoses') .19 Think of the war
without battle lines, proper to the Chinese game of
Go, and compare this with Simoons analysis of the
dominancy of the Han-Chinese:
In their southward migration, the Chinese, a literate
people who had the only system of writing in East
Asia from the second half of the second millennium
BC until the second century AD, faced a similar
situation but acted very differently from the Anglo
Americans in their westward expansion across the
United States. Whereas the Anglo-Americans largely
19. Paul Patton, Delew:e and the Political (London, New York Routledge, 2000) .
159
COLLAPSE VII
eliminated or displaced the aboriginal inhabitants,
the Chinese commonly settled among, and ultimately
absorbed them. 20
This wholly other strategy, at work in the past as it is
today (with the emergence of Chinatowns, with the
current consumption by China of Africa) practices a
very different type of 'warfare'; or at least, it hunts
differently, works by means of a very different notion
of territoriality (and of alimentation, for that matter) .
But even if we 'limit' ourselves to studying warfare
(a small minor consequence of the war machine) , it is
not too difficult to see various new styles or chemis
tries appear. Especially in the last fifty years, in which
Occidental battle traditions have more and more been
challenged by other styles which had been successful
in warding off their hunting techniques with remark
able ease. First, the Vietnam war saw the French (and
the US Army) ' [c ]onfronted by an opponent who
offered neither a front not a solid rear to target . . . ' , 21
but instead invented jungle-space and expanded it
into many unknown dimensions - think of the Cu Chi
tunnel systems. How different this jungle notion of ter
ritoriality is from the way the civilian-soldier intends to
cultivate its own land: No two-dimensional Cartesian
20. E ]. Simoons, Food in China: a Cultural and Historical Inquiry (CRC Press,
1991), 1 .
2 1 . M .A. Hennessy, Strategy i n Vietnam: the Marines and Revolutionary Waifare
in I Corps, 1965-1 972 (Westport, London: Praeger Publishers 1997), 56.
160
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
grid here, that needs its lines to separate the inside
from the outside, the good guys from the bad guys
(consumption from production, city from countryside) .
The Cu Chi tunnel systems are nothing but a mirror of
the interlacing drainage and irrigation canal systems
that has traversed this part of the earth for ages. The
flows of water, of the undulating surfaces of the paddy
fields (song lua) follow this earth, its winds, its rocks,
its Mekong floods. The civilian-soldier turned war
increasingly into a capitalist demand for Lebensraum, a
desire for even more earth (square metres) , for spaces
of production. He had no understanding at all of the
wonnhole-soldier that, like a stream of water, continu
ously slips into another dimension. The wormhole
soldier comes close to what Deleuze and Guattari
call 'holey space' : it is connected to nomad space (the
nomad-soldier) whereas it conjugates with sedentary
space (the peasant-soldier) .22 Existing between the
two, the hunt of the wormhole-soldier remains unseen,
consequently its n-1 dimensionality constitutes a wholly
new (unforeseen) weapon system.
With the War on Terror, we are confronted with yet
another style, another chemistry of warfare that skirts
around the powers of the US Army with even greater
ease. In fact, it only needed a one-dollar razorblade
in order to defeat all of the billion-dollar defence
shields (SDl/SDIO/BMDO/MDA, better known as
22. Deleuze and Guattari, A 7housand Plateaus, 415.
161
COLLAPSE VII
'Star Wars') that US presidents since Ronald Rea
gan had launched in order to shield attacks from the
Other. And again, this chemistry is first of all a new
conceptualization of the earth: earth as xeromorphic
desert. Negarestani calls this the Assyrian doctrine of
War - 'not a geographical or even a political body,
but a sentient process of desertification which can be
grasped only by presupposing that war is an autono
mous entity free from its provocateurs' .23 As always,
the War starts with the undercurrents, the powers
of the Earth which we saw being opened up by the
foregoing styles discussed above.
Compared to the multidimensional and invisible
(alimentary) strategies of the Vietcong (hidden from
the logic of the eye) , the Assyrian style of hunting
is unvisible (in full conformity with the logic of the
eye) because of its clarity, or better even, because
of the transparency of oil (that which speeds it up) .
For art historians have long told us that it is oil that
enlightens everything, that oil equals pure enlighten
ment. Likewise in dietetics - in which oil, the fattiest
of fluids, virtually carries all flavours within it, in full
conformity with perception. Or in scientific terms,
where ' [f]at, it turns out, doesn't just have a flavour, it
has every flavour. Whereas a sugar solution stimulates
only five to ten percent of taste buds, fat stimulates
23. R. Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials
(Melbourne: Re. Press, 2008), 1 32.
1 62
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
ninety-five percent' . 24 When Negarestani then reminds
us that 'Islam does not perceive oil merely as a motor
grease - in the way Capitalism identifies it'25 he sug
gests to us the absolute claim to territoriality and to
unvisible presence that comes with this new style of
the desert-soldier who, living the Kingdom of God,
knows that ' . . . all elevations must be burned down' . 26
In his performance of seeming-being, the good
politician George W. Bush accused his 9/u enemies
of being 'faceless'. This - through Occidental eyes might seem to refer to a kind of cowardice, but actually
it perfectly captures the unvisible, oily, translucid
face of Islam that has been staring at him ever since
the devastation of Manhattan. Bush's 'analysts', as
DeLanda would call them, 'in search for the well
defined patterns of behaviour in their activities . . . ',
with their convictions that 'these organizations perform
their operations by the book', 2 7 obeyed the good old
mesophytic capitalist war rhetoric, demanding the
desert - the xerophytic (an)organism - to express
itself, which would then allow them to turn it into the
Other possible world to be conquered. Perhaps one
day 9/u (even more than 1989) will prove to have been
the point of inflexion at which a biopolitical world
24. B. Massumi, Parablesfor the Virtual ( Durham, London: Duke 2002) , 153.
25. Negarestani, Cyclonopedia, 20.
26. Ibid. 2 1 .
2 7 . D eLanda, War i n the Age efIntelligent Machines, 185.
163
COLLAPSE VII
order was cut loose from its capitalist calcomania. For
now however, it is heating the capitalist system to its
(topological) extreme.
IN FEAR OF THE TE RRO RI ST-SOLDIER
The invisible and the unvisible h( a)unting of capitalist
warfare through turbulence, friction (or frictional elec
tricity) , collision and attraction, actualized a 'schema
of concretization', as Simondon28 calls it, that is mak
ing our present day economy of speed fully operative.
For how different is the soldier of today from the
civilian-soldier that still pretends to roam the (Roman
tic) Occidental earth, so well situated in (for instance)
the minds of the occidental bankers. And yet everyone
knows that contemporary biopolitics has always already
given us a style of hunting that has sprung from a
very different earth, from a very different chemistry
of cooking. Contrary to the citizen-soldier, this new
regime no longer has any interest in the capitalist trick
of temporarily placing criminals (called delinquents)
outside of society; it also sees no reason to keep its
soldiers on the inside of the State. Similarly, a dualist
notion of territoriality (city and countryside, consump
tion and production) is of no importance anymore.
Again, this is what Donald Rumsfeld has taught us
with regard to the al-Qahtani case. For indeed, isn't
28. G. Simondon, 'Technical Mentality', Parrhesia 7, 2009: 17-29, 19.
164
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
the horrible conclusion we ought to draw from his new
policy, that there is no intrinsic difference anymore
between the insider (the civilian, the soldier) and the
outsider (the criminal, the terrorist) ? If there is one
lesson to be drawn from the War on Terror as it we
have watched it unfold for ten years now, it is that there
is only one terrorist-soldier. We are all terrorist-soldiers.
We all desire to eat/hunt this same earth with fear and
are thus formed ( subjectified) according to it.
In this new type of warfare, in which the delinquent
(the one different individual, that in the end is to be put
back into society) is replaced by the terrorist (absolute
destruction as at work in all of us) , it is not the police
(selected citizens) but the soldier that guards the camps
(Agamben's territory) . Yet he is also the only one who
inhabits it. Similarly it is not the judge (the elected
citizen) but the soldier that takes action against 'those
against us', as George W. Bush labelled the exception:
an exception which is at the same time the soldier.
And again, this new type of warfare brings with it a
particular cultivation of the land (as did nomadic,
sedentary and capitalist culture) .
In a way the terrorist soldier recalls the nomad
soldier, who, unlike the peasant-soldier and the civilian
soldier, knows no dualism, no division of labour. Yet
at the same time it has become even more sedentary
than the peasants and the civilians, who still needed
their distribution routes to keep going. The terrorist
165
COLLAPSE VII
soldier is everyman, is everywhere, includes everything.
Even the nomad, barely surviving the capitalist regime,
is included in this new continuum. The Israeli army
openly admitted that the Deleuzo-Guattarian nomadic
idea of 'smooth space' was used in their anti-Palestinian
urban guerrilla attacks. 'You are either with us or
against us'. All the different compartments familiar
to us have folded into one. The terrorist-soldier is, in
every sense, the critical threshold of contemporary
biopolitics.
Agamben had already concluded that the 'camp',
as he conceptualized it, is everywhere: ' ... the camp is
the very paradigm of political space at the point which
politics becomes biopolitics and homo sacer is virtually
confused with citizen' . 29 The camp is everywhere, the
State is everywhere and the warzone is everywhere and
thus includes all bodies, consumes them. 'While prison
law only constitutes a particular sphere of penal law
and is not outside the juridical order, the juridical
constellation that guides the camp is martial law and
the state of siege . . . As the absolute space of exception,
the camp is topologically different from a single space
of confinement' . 30 Agamben thus concludes that 'we
are all virtually homines sacri'.31
29. G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1 998) , 1 7 1 .
30. Ibid., 20.
31. Ibid., 1 1 5 .
166
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
The camp is everywhere, and it has been everywhere
for a long time. Agamben might prefer to analyse the
concentration camps of Nazi Germany, for here (as
well as the Soviet Union) the camp may have been
introduced as a crucial element of State terror. But
in the South African Boer War (1899-1902) and even
in the American Civil War, similar crude biopolitical
strategies were already in use. 32 Yes, in the American
Civil War, starring the above mentioned General Wil
liam Tecumseh Sherman, concentration camps played
a crucial role, for exactly those reasons that Agamben
conceptualizes in terms of a contemporary biopolitics:
to secure the State of Exception. On 10 August 186 4 ,
General Grant reported to Washington:
Every man we hold, when released on parole or
otherwise, becomes an active soldier against us at
once either directly or indirectly . . . If we hold those
caught they amount to no more than dead men.
At this particular time to release all rebel prisoners
North would insure Sherman's defeat and would
compromise our safety here. 33
32. See L.A. Horvitz and C. Catherwood (ed.), Concentration Camps. In:
Encyclopedia ef War Crimes and Genocide ( New York: Facts of File Library of
World History) , 97.
33. Rhodes, History efthe United States, 499-500.
167
COLLAPSE VII
Biopolitics turned the outside of the State into the
outside of the inside, the inside into the inside of
the outside. The same goes for all bodies, ergo for
all terrorist-soldiers. In the War on Terror, the Bush
administration, representing humanity (the initial
crime [9/11] as crime against humanity) , thus repeat
edly addressed all of us with those same words used
by General Grant: 'You are either with us or you are
against us'. In fear of the invisible and the unvisible,
General Bush, more than anyone else, knows that his
faceless enemy is everywhere and that the facialization
of the soldier is always already highest priority. Not
only in order to fortify the troops, but as an instant and
necessary continuation of the State. Using fractal logic
the State, or better state control, is by now essentially
a fractal continuity that needs to travel deeper and
deeper into spacetime. It controls by h(a)unting the
body perpetually.
THE S M ELL O F H O M E
Virilio is right that this chemistry of warfare includes
the clothing of the soldiers. They have become part of
the weaponry giving form to the body of the soldier,
today more than ever before: ' . . . the latest combat out
fit tends to be nothing other than a technological pros
thesis that represents an updating of the armour of the
chevalier, the most evident sign efthe resuscitated.fighting
168
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
body, it is the vehicle or the more precisely its speed. . . '. 34
But this is nothing compared to how this new form
of (biopolitical) warfare maintains itself through ali
mentation. Let us explore some of the novel chem
istries, the radical topological or mereotopological
re-creations of the earth, through which the terrorist
soldier comes into being, through which this total war
is effectuated.
Crucial is here the most volatile of the senses,
the most immediate, the least linguistic, the least
obstructed by in- or outside: smell. The Futurists (see
their Futurist Cookbook) were the first to understand
that the alimentary nature of warfare had little to do
with the need to fill the stomach, but more with under
standing the speed of smell. They knew that smell not
only dominates the culinary but also drives the hunt.
Or rather; the smell of death makes us hungry as it
makes us fear. It is then for good reason that orthonasal
stimulation, instantly reaching the olfactory bulb, is
now a key focus in research activities in US Army
laboratories and affiliated research institutes.
A company like ScentSational Technologies, cur
rently bidding for the Army's $85,000 food packaging
research contract, proposes the injection of scents into
the MRE plastic wrappings as they're being molded.
Stimulating the brain through the external nares of
34. P. Virilio, Negative Horizon: an Essay in Dromoscopy (New York:
Continuum, 2007) , 86.
169
COLLAPSE VII
nostrils (rather than through the retronasal stimulation
developed while eating) has been widely experimented
with by fast food and instant coffee companies and
has for some time also been very popular in the best
restaurants of the world (for instance through so-called
'molecular gastronomy') .
The economics of speed as practiced by the US
army today considers orthonasal stimulation a key
weapon in its topological definition of territoriality,
in its conceptualization of the terrorist-soldier. For far
more than the sights and sounds of war, it is the smell
of fear that obstructs the speeding up of the body of
the terrorist-soldier, which threatens the State from
happening. Thus, the smell of home is the most crucial
ingredient of MREs, of its packaging, and indeed of
everything that concerns the alimentary event so crucial
to (this particular style of) warfare.
Smell is the ultimate reterritorialization of ter
ritoriality in general. As Proust already taught us, it
is smells that are ' . . . more fragile but more enduring,
more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful,
remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering,
waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear
unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop
of their essence, the vast structure of recollection'. 35
Smell's 'pointless' interventions (pointless as in, not
35. M. Proust, Swann 's Way. Within a Budding Grove, trans. C. K. Scott
Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin ( London: Chatto & Windus Ltd, 1981 ), 5 1 .
1 70
Dolphijn - New Alimentary Continuum
making use of specific locations, specific identifiables)
have the power to accelerate. This is a topological effect
par excellence, as it proves that any particular point in
Cartesian space(/time) is always already infinitely close
to any other given point.
The imperial spatium defended by the peasant
soldier, and the capitalist extensio defended by the
citizen-soldier, are being overcoded by a new spatio
temporal numerology of the State that considers all
bodies multiplicities in which to operate. Its continual
interventions secure and control, paving the way for
future acceleration to happen. It calls out for it even,
naming its energy bars HOOAH ! or OO-RAH ! These
common battle cries (from the army and the navy
respectively) demand acceleration to take place every
where, to accelerate everybody. Bodily modification is
required as it is only there that the State occurs, that
the face of the soldier happens.
Being in a constant state of emergency, the body of
the terrorist-soldier (composed in our new earth) has to
stay alert for even more than sixty-eight hours. It must
always remain alert (fearful),just as it must always stay
hungry. Sherman, he who controlled America, can still
tell us how to conquer the world: only by intervening
through the feeding of all terrorist-soldiers. It is a
matter of the most vital importance, and demands the
earliest attention of the general entrusted with a cam
paign. Only thus can one prevent the terrorist-soldier
171
COLLAPSE VII
from becoming an active terrorist against us, either
directly or indirectly . . .
1 72
BHUT jOLOKIA ASAR1
250g Bhut chili peppers
1/2 tsp crnshed fenugreek seeds
3 tbsp yellow crushed mustard seeds
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tbsp crushed fennel seeds
1 tbsp salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
¥.! cup mustard oil
1 sterilized glass jar
Wipe the chilies with damp clean cloth and let them dry
completely;
Cut the chilies into 1 cm small pieces;
Mix all the spices and salt together;
Mix with the chilies;
Transfer into a clean and dry airtight glass container;
Add freshly squeezed lemon juice and oil;
Cover with the lid tightly;
Shake the bottle vigorously;
Keep in the sun, covered by a netted lid, for 7-8 days.
1. Recipe from 'AssamFoodie's Blog', at http://assamfoodie.wordpress.
com/some-like-it-hot/. Last accessed on April 10, 201 1 . Note: The word
'asar' is a cognate of the Bengali word 'aachar' and the Hindi-Devnagiri
word 'achar', which means 'pickle'. We will have occasion to review the
implications of the word 'pickle', beyond its mere culinary sense, below.
174
COLLAPSE VII
Vag ue Weaponizations or, the
Chemistry of Para-Tactical
Engagements2
'!here are laws ef warfare, and it qften happens thatfidelity
to an oath gi,ven to an enemy must be kept. . .[A} pirate
[howeverJ is not included in the number ef lawful enemies,
but is a common enemy ef all. With him there ought not to
be any pledged word, nor any oath mutually binding.
MARC US TULLIUS C I C E RO , D E O F F I C I I S ( O N DUTI E S ) 3
'!he legacy ef the Copernican Revolution - that is the
revolution by and according to the open universe - is
comprised efthree components: '!he speculative drive ef
'an extreme line ef thought', the revolutionary vocation ef
'disturbing the peace efthis world in still another way ' and
the true-to-the-universe logi,c ef delivering all expressions ef
isolation and discreteness 'remorselessly into the open '.
REZA N E GARE STAN I , G L O B E OF REVOLUT I O N 4
2. This essay could not have been written without the encouragement,
assistance, intervention and keen insight of Reza Negarestani. Thanks
are also due to Robin Mackay for proposing the subject of the essay, and
for inviting me to explore what, to me, are some rather frighteningly
disorienting lines of thought and experimentation.
3. Quoted in D. Heller-Roazen, The Enemy efAll: Piracy and the Law efNations,
(New York: Zone Books, 2009), 16.
4. R. Negarestani, 'Globe of Revolution: An Afterthought on Geophiloso
phical Realism' , in T. Huber (Ed.), Realismus ]etzt!, (Berlin: Merve Verlag,
forthcoming 201 1 ) . In order of the quotes: S. Freud, Beyond the Pleasure
1 75
COLLAPSE VII
I NTRODUCTION
It is commonly believed that actual combat - that is to
say, 'the firefight' - is one of the most stressful experi
ences that one can undergo (a perception that has been
somewhat excessively and unnecessarily valorized by
the likes of Ernst J unger and others) . 5 This is patently
false. What is stressful is the experience - however temporary
- of that sliver of spatio-temporality on and within which
combat is anticipated. Thus, for example, in accounts
too numerous to list, there are detailed descriptions
of how - in the early hours of June 21, 1941 - as the
assault formations of the Wehrmacht moved into their
jump-off positions along the German-Soviet border
on the eve of Operation Barbarossa - an event that
Hitler had predicted would arrest the breath and
attention of the whole world - even battle-hardened
veterans experienced a highly debilitating sense of
unease that seemed to emerge from the pits of their
stomachs, and which spread - like an uncontrollable
contagion - among their comrades-in-arms. For the
veterans, while this experience was not unexpected, it
was as unsettling as it was for their more inexperienced
comrades. The rough and ready solution to this state of
Principle (London: Norton, 1961 ), 3; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
(New York: Norton, 1977), 353; S. Ferenczi, Final Contributions to the Problems
and Methods ofPsychoanalysis (London: Karnac, 1994) , 93.
5. See, for example, E. Junger, Storm of Steel, (London: Penguin Classics,
2004) .
1 76
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
affairs was alcohol. As the luminous hands on the faces
of their already-synchronized wristwatches steadily
crawled towards H-Hour,6 bottles of brandy and rum
made their rounds, passing - regardless of rank - from
soldier to soldier who took long and deep swigs from
them. The fiery liquid scorched their throats, but it did
succeed in arresting - or so it seemed - this continually
growing and gnawing sense of unease which mani
fested itself in the form of irregular heartbeats, cold,
clammy and trembling hands, churning stomachs,
parched mouths, stammering speech, shiftiness of gaze
and, quite often, as a muttered prayer of desperation
which appealed to some higher authority - God or
Man - to, at best, pull back from the brink of combat
and, at the least, to spare the petitioner from that
most horrible of injuries - a bullet in the gut. 7 The
alcohol was the means by which the individual soldier
attempted to fortify his 'unity of being' . It was a means
of feeble defence against the terrifying assaults on the
somatic integrity of the individual soldier that had
already begun hours before the 'guns of June' began
their devilish discharges.
6. The term ' H-hour' is used to designate the exact hour on which a combat
attack or operation is to be initiated, the letter 'H' being derived from the
'hour' operations actually begin. See Combat Orders ( Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas: The General Service Schools Press, 1 922) .
7. P. Carel!, Hitler Moves East: 1941-43 ( New York: Ballantine Books, 1 997) .
177
COLLAPSE VII
In the context of Industrial Age wars, 8 protect
ing and/or guaranteeing the somatic integrity of the
individual soldier poses a different level of concern
to higher command authorities than it does in the
current and emergent times. 9 This is because, among
other things, when considered in operational terms,
the traditional objective of military strategies of the
Industrial Age has always been to degrade (either by
destroying them, or by making them irrelevant) the
critical centres of gravity of an enemy - in the first
instance, command and control nodes - with the
foreknowledge that such efforts, if successful, would
entail the inevitable disintegration of the enemy's
forces, thereby neutralizing its ability to wage war.
Prominent examples of such strategies include those
of the Soviet-designed 'deep-strike operations',1 0 the
German operational art of war, known as Aufiragstaktik11
8. Gen. G. R. Sullivan & Col.J. M . Dubik, Warin thelnformationAge (Strategic
Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlise Barracks, PA 1 701 3-5050) ,
6-9 (PDF version) . Available at http://www. strategicstudiesinstitute.army.
mil/pdffiles/pub243. pdf. Last accessed on April 01, 201 1 .
9. In all fairness, i t should b e mentioned that the concern with the
individual soldier has grown tremendously post the Second World War and,
most visibly, post the French and American experience in Indo-China and
Vietnam, and the Soviet experience in Afghanistan. Increasingly, 'the body
count' is being directly related to 'morale on the home front'.
10. Col. (Retd.) D. M . Glantz, Soviet Military-Operational Art: In Pursuit ef
Deep Battle (London: Frank Cass, 1991); R. W Harrison, The Russian Way ef
War: Operational Art 1904-1940 (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas,
2001 ); R. Simpkin, Deep Battle: The Brainchild ef Marshal Tukhachevskii
(London: Brassey's Defence, 1987).
11. D. M . Keithly and S. P. Ferris, 'Auftragstaktik, or Directive Control,
in Joint and Combined Operations', Parameters, US Army War College
Quarterly, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, Autumn 1 999.
1 78
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
and its expanded mechanized version popularly known
as Blitzkrieg,12 and most recently, the American strategy
of 'rapid ( full-spectrum) dominance' popularly known
as 'shock and awe'.13
But, as is being increasingly speculated, we seem
to be gradually transcending the battlespace of 'indus
trialized' warfare. It is being asserted that we are now
- responding to new and varied epistemological ( and,
as I will argue, ontological and pre-ontological ) chal
lenges - segueing not simply into what is popularly
known as the Age of Information, but also into a
state and condition of 'interactive emergency' .14 Along
with this transition, we are also finding ourselves con
fronting a 'new' adversary who exhibits three general
characteristics. In terms of form and structure, the
emergent adversary appears amorphous; in terms of
12. Note: German military theorists never actually referred to their
operational art of war as 'blitzkrieg' . That was how it was reported in the
Allied Press, particularly after the fall of France in 1940. See Frieser &
Greenwood, The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West (Annapolis:
Naval Institute Press, 2005); See also W. Fanning Jr. 'The Origin of the
term "Blitzkrieg" : Another View', Journal efMilitary History. Vol. 6, No. 2.,
April 1 997, 283-302. For a competent overview of the German operational
art of war, see M. Jonathan, Combined Arms Waifare in the Twentieth Century
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001 ) .
13. Ullman, Wade et al, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, Institute
for National Strategic Studies (Washington, DC: National Defense
University, 1996) .
14. See M. Guha, 'Behind the Network Paradise: Speculations on Armed
Conflict in an Age of Interactive Emergencies', The Centerfor Land Waifare
Studies (CLAWS) Journal, Summer 201 1 (New Delhi, India, Forthcoming
June 201 1 ) .
1 79
COLLAPSE VII
tactics, it displays a swarm-like dexterity;15 and in terms
of agency, it is, in Heller-Roazen's words, 'an enemy
of all' .16 Taken together, these characteristics of the
emergent adversary, which are inextricably complicit
in the creation of a condition of interactive emergency,
pose an unprecedented counter-strategic challenge
to the established order of things in the international
arena. The new enemy does this by renewing its assault
on the somatic integrity of the particular - the human
citizen, the soldier, the war machine, the State etc.
- along a vector that exposes it to ' . . . a groundless
geocosmic continuum built by a nested series of trau
mas that extend from the very conception of matter,
to the formation of the terrestrial field, to the psychic
architecture' .17 Thus, if, as Negarestani asserts in the
epigraph to this essay, the legacy of the Copernican
Revolution has three components, then this emergent
adversary and the condition of interactive emergencies
may be considered to be one of the starkest examples
of this legacy and, in this sense, presents us with an
opportunity to ( again) reproblematize war and its
conduct.
In December 1979, on the eve of Pakistan's involve
ment with a US-backed and Saudi-funded subversive
15. See, for example, Arquilla and Ronfeldt, Swanning and Future efCoriflict
(Santa Monica: RAND Corp., 2000) .
16. Heller-Roazen, The Enemy efAll, 9-16.
17. Negarestani, 'Globe of Revolution' .
180
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
war aimed at containing the Soviet Union's increased
involvement in Afghanistan, the then Pakistani mili
tary dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq was reported to have
instructed Lt. Gen. Akhtar Abdul Rehman Khan, the
Director-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence
Directorate (ISI) - Pakistan's premier external intelli
gence agency - that 'the water in Afghanistan must boil
at the right temperature.'18 Geo-strategically, this made
sense: Faced in the east by an economically-stable,
militarily-resilient, multi-ethnic, secular, and demo
cratic (and in this sense, hostile) India, distracted in
the north by a turbulent Afghanistan where a predatory
Soviet Union was on the prowl for a direct access-route
to a warm-water front relatively close to the critical
Persian Gulf, unable to resist the political pressures of
a highly concerned United States of America, Pakistan,
understandably, felt the depth of its 'strategic space'
fast eroding. Gen. Zia's assessment of this complex
politico-strategic situation and his strategy to address
it were not limited by the lure of short-term gains.
Instead, they were a grounded and realistic approach
to participate in - indeed, shape - one of the last
dramatic 'great games' of the Cold War. With an
eye on a post-Soviet geo-political future, Gen. Zia's
strategy to keep 'the water in Afghanistan [boiling]
18. P. Swami, ' Pakistan and Osama: How the West was Conned',
Today Online, May 04, 201 1 . Available at http://www.todayonline.com/
Commentary/E DC 1 1 0504-0001 31 OfPakistan-and-Osama--How-the-West
was-conned. Last accessed on May 04, 201 1 .
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COLLAPSE VII
at the right temperature' was designed keeping two
objectives in mind. The first and most obvious one
involved neutralizing the economic and, more impor
tantly, military superiority of India, while the second
was an ambitious - some may even say audacious
- gambit to enable Pakistan to play a leading role
in what Gen. Zia assumed (or imagined) would be a
resurgent Islamic bloc of geo-strategic influence in a
post-Soviet world. Whatever may be the merits, demer
its and consequences of an application of this strategy,
what is of interest to us is the way Gen. Zia phrased
his strategic objective. He specifically instructed his
ISi chief to raise and maintain the strategic-military
condition in Afghanistan at a 'boiling point' level.
The culinary reference, seemingly obtuse in this con
text, is nevertheless revealing. What it suggests is that
what are normatively construed as geo-political plans,
maps, and objectives are epi-phenomenal particulari
ties that undulate on and along a subterranean logic
of plasticity - one that also appears to underwrite
the concept of the culinary - that liquefies and fuses
the walls, boundaries, barriers, and fortifications of
the discrete, the particular and the specific, into gra
dients of regions, neighbourhoods and locales that
constitute an 'open' continuum. This, when pitted
against the 'strategic' logic that underwrites the rela
tions between discrete entities (Cicero alludes to this
when he speaks of 'the laws of warfare', 'the pledged
182
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
word', the 'mutually binding oath' that binds States,
institutions etc.) presents itself as a highly destabiliz
ing alternative that threatens to unravel the axiomatic
basis of its more conventional counterpart. In this
sense, this logic of plasticity may be considered to be
an aspect of the 'emergent adversary' whose increasing
prominence ungrounds the mechanics of the discrete
(battles pace) in favour of a visceral chemistry of the
continuum - a cosmic culinary exercise - where new
gradients (battlespaces) are, in a manner of speaking,
cooked up.
In what follows, I will explore how thinking about
this emergent adversary, the radically obtuse topology
of the battlespace, and the authentically monstrous
models of weaponization that it brings in its wake - cast
against a cosmic chemo-culinary backdrop - suggests
an extreme line of militant thought, and how this
line of thought threatens to disturb the peace of this
(normatively constructed) world (in yet another way)
by launching a corrosive assault against the 'fearful
symmetries' of the conceptual architectonic that under
writes the State-designed models of order, security, and
war. I will further argue that what is truly radical and
extreme about this line of thought is that it assaults
not simply the normative models of thought (on and
of war, security etc.) , but that it also targets, in Fern
ando Zalamea's words, 'the existence of [even those]
'monstrous' models [that] . . . arise with respect to g;iven
183
COLLAPSE VII
collections of axioms, that can only partially capture
the concepts behind the axioms.'19 I will conclude by
highlighting how this kind of - para-tactical - thinking
is a true-to-the-universe logjc ef delivering all expressions
ef isolation and discreteness 'remorselessly into the open ',
which has unexpected and unintended consequences
on how we think about, among other things, combat
and, ultimately, war.
FROM THE STATIST ' S COOKBOOK
If amorphous adversaries indeed compel us to opera
tionalize, in the first instance, radically extreme
thought-weapons, then it is only fitting that our explo
ration should begin with an account of a relatively
recent, and rather unusual, exercise in weaponiza
tion carried out by an arm of the Indian Defence
Research and Development Organization ( DRD0 ) .20
It is unusual because, as an exercise, it is - especially
coming from the stables of, as Deleuze and Guat
tari would put it, the State's 'royal sciences' - star
tlingly counter-strategic. I am, of course, referring
19. F. Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum: A Methodologi,cal and Mathematical
Approach, available at: http://files.acervopeirceano.webnode.es/20000006848c2649bc4/Zalamea-Peirces-Continuum. pdf, 5.
20. While the research and development was done by the Defence
Research & Development Establishment (DRDE) , Gwalior, India, which
is a subordinate laboratory under the DRDO, the production agencies
are M/S Premier Explosives Ltd Secunderabad, India and M/S Gulf Oil
Corporation Ltd, Hyderabad, India.
184
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
to the weaponization of BhutJolokia, commonly known
the world over as the 'ghost chili-pepper' .21
This chili-pepper - an interspecies hybrid of C. chin
ense with some C. frutescens genes - which grows wild
and which is cultivated in some of the north-eastern
states of lndia (Assam, Nagaland, Manipur etc. ) , and
in the Sylhet regions of Bangladesh, appeared in the
Guinness Book of World Records, in 2006, as being
one of the hottest peppers in the world, measuring
over a million Scoville Heat Units ( SHUs ) . 22
21. Note: While I am designating the weaponization of the Bhut Jolokia as
'unusual', this is certainly not the first time that such options have been
researched. There is, for example, the CJA's now widely-known experiments
using LSD and other mind-altering drugs. See 'Project MKULTRA, the CIA's
Program of Research into Behavioral Modification. Joint Hearing before
the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and
Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, United State
Senate, Ninety-Fifth Congress, First Session' (US Government Printing
Office, August 8, 1977), available at http://www. nytimes.com/packages/
pdf/national/13inmate_ProjectMKULTRA.pdf. Also see 'World's hottest
chilli to become India's secret weapon against terrorism', The Telegraph, UK
(http://www. telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopicsjhowaboutthat/750441 8/
Wor Ids-hottest-chilli-to-become-In dias-secret-weapon -against-terrorism.
html) ; 'New non-lethal weapon against terrorism: spicy pepper', Homeland
Security Newswire, (http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/new-non-lethal
weapon-against-terrorism-spicy-pepper) ; While colloquially known as the
'chilli bomb', the Indian defence research laboratory that designed (dare we
say, weaponized?) it refers to it as an 'Oleoresin-based grenade' . See http://
www. techport.gov. in/TechProvider/DRD O/DRD O_OleoResin .html.
All links last accessed on April 10, 201 1 .
22. Bhagovati & Changkija, 'Genetic Variability and Traditional Practices
in Naga King Chili Landraces of Nagaland' in Asian Agri-History, Vol. 13,
No. 3, 2009 : 1 71-180, 171-2. Note that this fruit also grows in Sri Lanka. It
is conjectured that the plant (which, interestingly, is of unknown ancestry)
that bears this fruit - among other variants of chili plants - was grown
by the Native Americans of the Peru-Bolivian region between 5400-3200
BC. It is claimed that this plant was brought to Asia, Africa and Europe by
Columbus, among others.
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COLLAPSE VII
The ripe peppers measure 60 to 85 mm (2.4 to 3.3
in) long and 25 to 30 mm (i.o to 1.2 in) wide with
an orange or red color. The unselected strain of Bhut
Jolokia from India is an extremely variable plant,
with a wide range in fruit sizes and amount of fruit
production per plant, and offers a huge potential for
developing much better strains through selection
in the future. Bhut Jolokia pods are unique among
peppers, with their characteristic shape, and their
unusual rough, dented and very thin skin. 23
There are, apparently, a number of ways to interact
with Bhut Jolokia. For the most part, it is either con
sumed raw (despite, or perhaps because of, the extreme
effects that it can induce) , but in very small quantities
- as a supplement to the main meal; and/or it is intro
duced - again, in very small portions - as a part of the
ensemble of spices that seem to invariably enmesh and
permeate (and that are perhaps even immanent in and
to) the Indian sub-continental culinary culture. It is
also to be noted that the local folk-medicinal traditions
attribute to the Bhut Jolokia medicinal properties that
are used to address problems relating to (paradoxi
cally! ) stomach disorders, asthma, etc.
It is claimed that the Bhut Jolokia possesses 'a
pleasant and palatable aroma, [but it is also cautioned
23. C. L. Barker, ' Hot Pod: World's Hottest' , National Geographic Magazine,
May 2007, 2 1 .
186
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
that] an average-sized fruit is more than sufficient
for two meals of the day for a 5-6-membered (sic)
family.'24 There are good reasons for this. For a fruit
that measures close to a 1.05 million-rating on the
Scoville scale (as a comparison, jalapeiio peppers are
rated at 2500-8000 SHU), directly consuming even
a miniscule portion of either the skin or its seed can
have highly unsettling effects on the human body.
Most commonly, these effects include extreme sensa
tions of burning in the mouth, throat, and stomach. It
also causes the human body to sweat excessively and,
interestingly, in the context of this essay, the ingestion
of the Bhut Jolokia (without taking any pre or post
ingestion cautionary measures) causes - in the most
extreme of cases, albeit temporarily - a partial loss of
bodily co-ordination. 25
While the Bhut]olokia came into the public eye only
after the results of the Scoville tests were submitted
to and verified by the Guinness Book of Records, it
is necessary to point out that in addition to it being
a consumable and a potential source of medicinal
benefits, it has always retained a latent potential for
24. Bhagovati and Changkija, 'Genetic Variability and Traditional Practices',
175. One assumes that each of the 5-6 members of this family will consume
portions of the pepper with each of their meals.
25. For those who are interested, you can actually see 'Jamie Kocher, CEO
of the Waimea Bay Chili Pepper Company, and www. BambooandTtlds.com,
eat[ing] the largest and most spiciest part of the Bhut (Naga/Ghost) Jolokia
Chili Pepper and this old man almost dies . . . ' See http://www.youtube.
com/watch ?v=l tRq8ExAHzk.
187
COLLAPSE VII
weaponization. Thus, long before the Indian defence
laboratories began work on formally weaponizing
it, the locals of the areas in which the Bhut Jolokia
plant grows natively used the fruit as a defensive
counter-measure against bands of wild and maraud
ing elephants. By smearing a paste made out of the
crushed fruit along the boundaries of their villages
and fields, the locals created a defensive perimeter that
was expected to effectively deter the wild elephants
and, possibly, other foraging animals. As the Bhut
Jolokia plant began to be increasingly researched,
a number of interesting facts about it were discov
ered. Thus, for example, it was found that the plant
could be grown in different regions with variations
of climatic conditions, which have a direct impact on
the degree/intensity of the pungency of the resultant
fruits. This indicated the potential for calibrating the
intensity of the pungency of the fruit naturally (i.e.,
using no artificial means involving intrusive manipu
lations at the genetic level etc.) .26 Most importantly,
research also indicated that the effects of Bhut Jolo
kia, while certainly painful in the extreme, are not
lethal. The symptoms, it is reported, generally subside
over time and there have been no publicly available
reports of fatalities caused by consuming the fruit.
26. Of course, this does not mean that cross-breeding techniques are not
employed to develop stronger ( or more variable) strains of the plant and
the fruit.
188
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
Soon enough, a Briefing Paper - issued by the
Indian defence research laboratory in question described the BhutJolokia in its weaponized form thus:
Oleoresin (or, a Chili extract) based grenades are
simple to operate, users' (sic) friendly and extremely
useful for flushing out terrorists from their hideout.
These grenades can be thrown by hand to the hide
outs/agitated mob (sic) and are easily dispersed as
smoke (aerosol) from pyrotechnic mixture . . . 27
The general specifications of the weapon-system were
laid out by the Briefing Paper in the following manner:
• Height
• Weight
• Initiation delay
• Range
• Coverage area
• Smoke duration
• Shelf Life
: 130 mm
: 390 ± 10 g
: 1-2 Sec
: 40 ± 10 m
: 2500 m2
> 30 s
: 5 Years2 8
The Briefing Paper then lists the salient features of the
weapon-system thus:
27. DRDE/DRDO Briefing Paper, 'Oeloresin·based Grenades'. DRDE·
DRDO, Gwalior, India, 2009(?) .
28. Ibid.
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COLLAPSE VII
Releases smoke from pyrotechnic mixture, causing
severe coughing, lacrymation, irritation of eyes &
nose and suffocation.
The body of the grenades, made of plastic, melt
immediately after burst, thus difficult to throw them
back.29
•
•
It is also clear from the Briefing Paper that the design
intent underwriting the weaponization of the Bhut
Jolokia is not thanatologically-driven, that is to say, it is
not lethal. On the contrary, it is a non-lethal attempt to
radicalize the operational environment within which a
target is located. While admittedly, this is only one of a
multitude of weaponry and technologies that the State
has its disposal, the case of the Bhut Jolokia weapon
(hereafter, the chili-weapon) is singular because it gives
us, among other things, a glimpse of the vector along
which the State and its machines of war are preparing
to do battle.
Nation-states - organized within the current regime
of the international state-system - traditionally main
tain their relations ( here paraphrasing Cicero) by bind
ing themselves first by norm, and then by international
law, to recognize and respect the essential symmetry of
the organizing concepts, structures, institutions that
they, among other things, share amongst themselves.
It is critically important for nation-states to maintain
29. Ibid.
190
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
this reciprocity of behaviour - even on the battlefield
because it is this that guarantees the structural integrity
of the nation-state system. In light of this, and as we will
explore in some detail below, the emergent adversary
that the Age of Interactive Emergencies is bringing to
the foreground threatens not only the structural integ
rity of the international state-system, but also poses an
existential threat to the nation-state. The near panic
of nation-states across the international state-system
upon the tragic and startlingly unsettling events that
marked September n, QOOI can be re-contextualized
in this light: The post-9/n actions of the United States
of America (supported, in some cases actively, in oth
ers passively, by the community of nation-states) are
illustrative of the panic-ridden flailing of the arms
of a nation-state when confronted by this new and
emergent adversary. As the events of the Iraq War of
Qoo3 and of its aftermath and the ongoing operations
in the Af-Pak regions show, smashing the organized
militaries of those geo-political entities accused of
harbouring the emergent adversary - who we may,
again echoing Heller-Roazen, refer to as the 'enemy of
all' and who the U.S. politico-military establishment
refers to as an 'unlawful combatant' - is not enough.
The enemy has proven - time and again - to be too
elusive for the U. S. led military forces - despite the
latter's, at times, terrifying technological asymmetric
191
COLLAPSE VII
advantages - to identify, isolate and defeat in detail. 30
Thus it was proved, again, that massed firepower and
a sustained 2 4/7 air campaign was of little use against
a virtually ungraspable adversary. This is a problem of
immense strategic proportions for the nation-state and
may be considered to be an impetus for the design of
alternative weapon-systems that directly address the
ephemeral nature of the emergent adversary.
What is interesting about the weaponization of the
chili-pepper is what it tells us about how and in what
ways the strategizing of combat and the focus of battle
is changing. Such instances of weaponization suggest
that our traditional (and one might add, historical)
experience of combat in terms of violent instances
of competition between conflicting interests within
a grand-strategic geo-political space, is expanding to
include irregularly-emergent violent emergencies that
manifest themselves - like a viscerally corrosive and
fast-spreading rash - in contexts of spatio-temporal
extensions formed by overlapping nests of regions,
localities, and micro-localities wherein - despite the
best of efforts - the traditional politics of war are,
more often than not, relegated to a backstage presence.
30. The recent action which resulted in the death of Osama bin-Laden does
not contradict this assertion. While the lethal termination of the hitherto
elusive figurehead of Al Qaida would most likely push the organization ( if
one can call it that) to the defensive, such an effect will at best be temporary.
It would not diminish the threat that Al Qaida poses. In other words, to kill
Osama bin-Laden is one thing, but to neutralize Al Qaida and other similar
entities is quite another matter.
192
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
In this sense, the chili-weapon may be considered to
be an emerging strategic response from the State in the
face of the imminent arrival of the emergent adversary.
In keeping with this, and as described in the Brief
ing Paper, the chili-weapon is slated for use in what
the Indian Armed Forces refer to as 'sub-conventional
warfare', encompassing counter-terror and counter
insurgency operations. The fundamental idea being
that the chili-weapon would be instrumental in flush
ing out violent agents who seek to embed themselves
within nooks and crannies (micro-local nests) of the
battlespace that are beyond the reach of the more
heavyweight, but essentially blunt, weapons of the
State's arsenal. It is interesting to note that while
the employment of the chili-weapon requires a nom
inal degree of accuracy in its delivery, it does not
demand the employment of delivery systems that
offer precision-engagement capabilities. This is reflec
tive of the gradual recognition that the prospect of
facing a conventionally-arrayed adversary, while not
impossible, is becoming increasingly remote. Thus,
the imperative to use weapon-systems and platforms
that can be guided to the precise location of their tar
gets (usually command and control and other similar
centres of gravity) - after wading through a whole
host of defensive counter-measures - is lesser than
before. Instead, going by the implicit design-intent
of the chili-weapon, it would appear that the State's
193
COLLAPSE VII
military machines have recognized (but perhaps not
fully assimilated) that the emergent adversary not
only deliberately avoids assembling en masse, but also
actively resists being rendered discrete enough to be
identified and hunted down in detail. 31 Whence the
subtle transformation in the State's strategic-military
objective, from hunting for discrete nodes of critical
importance to the enemy to controlling slices or slivers
of spatio-temporal locales where, it is conjectured, the
emergent adversary lurks.
Given what we know of the Bhut Jolokia, and of
the emergent operational context in which its weap
onized form is expected to be deployed, it would not
be too speculative on our part, therefore, to assume
that one of the principal objectives of the designers of
the weapon-system would have been to induce (and/
or introduce) a territopic (verging on the terrifying)
state, or condition, or climate - that is to say, to trigger
an extreme psycho-bio-chemical reaction - within the
battlespace of immediate interest. The intent being to
recreate, at very high levels of magnitude, a sense of
unease - a threat to the somatic integrity of the indi
vidual, similar to that experienced by the soldiers of
3 1 . In this connection, it is interesting to note that it took the U. S. ten years
and over US$ 1 Trillion to neutralize Osama bin-Laden. See 'It took US 10
yrs, $1 .3tn to kill Osama bin Laden and avenge 9/1 1 ' , Times eflndia, May
3, 201 1 , at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/usjlt-took-US-10-yrs1 3tn-to-kill-Osama-bin-Laden-and-avenge-9/1 1/articleshow/8147800.cms.
Last accessed on May 03, 201 1 .
194
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
the Wehrmacht on the eve of Operation Barbarossa.32
This threat to the somatic integrity of the Wehrmacht
and its constituent units - a threat accentuated by
the calibrated use of the chili-weapon - came from
'within', that is to say, from the innards of the strate
gic aggregation of man and machine. It was akin to
an intensive thermal eruption - a fireless heat - that
subversively assaulted, by progressively softening, the
rigid boundaries that define the individual ( soldier) .
This progressive liquefaction of the particular was
experienced as the stomach-churning 'sense of unease'
( also expressed as fear, terror, and pre-combat stress)
that spread like a contagion among the soldiers of the
Wehrmacht. It could be said that in the above sense,
they were being pre-cooked for battle and it was this
foreknowledge that prompted their futile attempt to
bolster their crumbling defences by consuming fiery
liquids. Of course, unknown to them, behind the haze
of the alcohol a micro-cosmic culinary exercise was
already underway that steadily eroded their individual
and collective somatic integrity.
Precisely how this occurs, we will have occasion to
revisit at a later point, but along a vector very different
32. Note that the inducing of this 'sense of unease' happens before the
exchange of fire between the State's military forces and the 'emergent
adversary'. In fact, it could be asserted that the use of the Bhut ]olokia to create the psycho-chemical reaction resulting in the sense of extreme
discomfort and consequent unease - is preemptive in nature. It is
preemptive because it precludes the ability of the 'emergent adversary' to
respond in any coherent manner against the State's forces.
195
COLLAPSE VII
from that which underwrites the State's model of weap
onization of the chili-pepper. For our present purposes,
it is important to note that the relative discreteness of
the battlespace ( the briefing paper suggests that the
'coverage area' of the weapon is limited to 2500 m2 )
allows the State-centric forces to distribute ( and cali
brate) the oleoresin - the essence of the Bhut Jolokia
- in a restrained manner within the battlespace. But
the paradox (which may well be what the designers
of the weapon-system wanted to exploit in the first
instance) lies in the fact that while the introduction
of the weapon-system to a particular battlespace is
indeed restrained, in the context of the local bat
tlespace in which a particular engagement takes place,
the effect of the weapon is virtually uncontrollable.
The ( ideal ) net result expected from such actions is,
of course, predictable: the temporary neutralization
of the target and the permanent neutralization of its
fighting abilities. From this we can infer that the State's
instruments who (prepare to ) wage war by deploying
weapon-systems such as these insist on making ( and
retaining) an ontological distinction between discrete
battlespaces and the larger, global battlespace that the
former are nested within. The distinguishing feature of
this imperial act of ontological differentiation on the
part of the State and its strategic-military instruments
is nothing less than the prevention of the 'leakage' of
local battlespaces into the global battlespace - which
196
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
is representative of a logic of strategy that is unable,
or unwilling, to think about war and combat across
the modal spectrum of the continuum.
From the point of view of the State's strategic
military instruments, and in the specific context of the
chili-weapon, this distinction is necessary because the
oleoresin - the key element that disturbs the equilib
rium of the battlespace - cannot distinguish between
friend and foe. In other words, the oleoresin does not
- indeed cannot - discriminate between ontologically
ordered or prioritized entities when and where the
distribution of its effects takes place. Consequently,
it makes irrelevant the organizing potential of such
privileges within the given battlespace. In this sense,
the oleoresin represents, or at the very least affords, a
material instantiation of the breakdown of the sanctity
of the Law of the Excluded Middle by being complicit
in opening the rigidly defined or discrete horizon/
battlespace onto the synthetic realm, or what may be
referred to as an intermezw qfposribilia where 'either/
or' rigidities are modally softened.'33 And, while the
33. Possibilia: 'Possibles' that may or may not be actual are known as
'possibilia' . There are two primary kinds of possibilia in the specific
context of modal logic: (1) Possible objects, such as the son of a young
couple that is childless by choice, and (2) Possible worlds, which consist of
possible objects that are capable of existing together. Note that the Law/
Principle of the Excluded Middle is one of the traditional three laws of
thought (along with the laws of identity and contradiction) , which holds
that 'Every proposition is either true or not true. [D(p v ,p)]' It should be
noted that this is weaker than the law of bivalence (every proposition is
true or false) , since if there is a third truth value, excluded middle can still
hold, though bivalence will fail. (However, bivalence is sometimes treated
as a version of excluded middle). See P.T. Geach and W F. Bednarowski,
197
COLLAPSE VII
State and its strategic-military instruments may not
appreciate the implications of the emergence or fore
grounding of this intermezzo, in purely operational
terms it poses a dilemma of almost strategic-existential
proportions to them.
In operational terms, traditionally, the State's mili
tary instruments prefer to maintain distinct (albeit,
at times, and in the context of manoeuvre warfare
doctrines, mobile or flexible) 'frontlines' (thus distin
guishing between 'friend' and 'enemy' etc.) during a
combative engagement. This allows them to establish
a baseline from which they can embark on their impe
rial forays.34 Given this, the blurring (or, becoming
'vague') of 'the forward edge of the battle area' and the
consequent fuzziness of the battle-lines proves inimical
to the strategic-military interests of the State and its
military instruments, because it denies them the fini
tude of a comprehensible and reproducible battles pace
within which a regime of 'total information awareness'
and 'global strike capabilities' can be established.35
'The Law of Excluded Middle' ( Symposium) , Proceedings efthe Aristotelian
Society, Supplementary Volume (1956). It should be further noted that the
law of the Excluded Middle is violated when the fusion of the 'either . . . or'
manifestations of rigidity and discreteness with modalities or possibilities
of the continuum takes place, which results in the synthetic blurring of all
boundaries and exact identities.
34. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
trans. B. Massumi ( London: Continuum, 2003), 424-7 .
3 5 . Norman Friedman, i n his shockingly short-sighted exegetical exercise
on Network-centric Warfare, refers to this as 'the picture'. See N. Friedman,
Network-Centric Waifare: How Navies Learnt to Fight Smarter through Three
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Guha - Vague Weaponizations
The emergence of this intermezzo - wherein the Law
of the Excluded Middle stands in positive danger of
being subverted and made irrelevant by the synthetic
modality of the continuum - undermines the impe
rial propensities of the State and its strategic-military
instruments. But the danger far exceeds the threat to
the State's imperial posture. Indeed, in the context of
the intermezzo or the synthetic realm of the continuum,
where defined hierarchies of order and organization
find themselves being leavened and liquefied, the
traditional ( realist-oriented) units of analysis of the
international order of things - comprising Man, the
(geo-territorial basis of the) State and War - find lit
tle traction; and in this sense, the intermezzo poses a
direct threat to the very integrity of the architectonic
that serves as a conceptual endo-skeleton that actual
izes the possibility of structures like the State and the
international state system. 36
Taking into account these operational and exis
tential caveats, the State and its instruments appear
to acknowledge ( as we have alluded to earlier) that
the emergent adversary - given its three principal
characteristics - has to be addressed globally within
discrete battlespaces, and it is believed that this can
be achieved by increasingly employing weapons like
(
World Wars Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2009).
36. The reference to 'traditional realism' and to 'Man, the State, and War'
is to Kenneth Waltz's seminal Man, the State, and War: A 'Iheoretical Ana(ysis
New York: Columbia University Press, 2001) .
(
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COLLAPSE VII
the chili-weapon. 37 To render the emergent adversary
impotent (albeit for a discrete amount of time) , the
State's machines of war opt to (re)organize the global
battlespace into discrete sections or sub-battlespaces
that retain, for the most part, the salient features of
what the State considers to be the global battlespace.
Following this rather crude apportioning of the glo
bal battlespace, the State's military instruments then
initialize combat operations that seek to individually
overwhelm each of the discrete sub-battlespaces by
using a weapon-system that aims to radically dis
turb the consistency and equilibrium of the target
battlespace by psycho-bio-chemical means, with the
not-unexpected ulterior objective of extracting the
emergent adversary from the terrain within which it
operates. The logic of operability that underwrites this
model of war( fare) may be represented as in Figure 1 .
The implicit assumption underlying this concept of
operations is that the space of battle is considered to
be comprehensively hostile, dictating that operations
within this space of battle are, or should be, unre
strained. It should be appreciated that while this may
be considered to be the concept of operations involv
ing such weapon-systems, in operational terms the
37. This is superficially similar to the argument that David Kilcullen makes
in his 1he Accidental Guerilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst ef a Big One
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) . Though it should be noted that
Kilcullen does not openly suggest or insinuate the use of psycho·bio·
chemical means to fight 'small wars' or even 'small-unit actions'.
200
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
An operative (but not general) concept of War
The Global Battlespace
Representations
Concepts of Operation
Discrete Battlespaces
Figure 1. Discrete Global Battlespace
State's combat operations involving weapon-systems
like these - for the reasons mentioned above - almost
always must exhibit a high level of restraint. Further,
aside from the existential imperatives that inhibit the
State's use of this unconventional weapon-system, there
is also its insistence on understanding the potency ( and
the potential ) of the chili-weapon in the context of
the offensive manoeuvres that hark back to models of
warfare appropriate for the Industrial Age. Despite the
rather subversive possibilities and potentials that the
201
COLLAPSE VII
chili-weapon offers - which we shall explore shortly
the objective of the State's military machines remains
wedded to the principle of launching a decapitating
strike against an adversary. The use of the chili-weapon
in the hands of the State and its military machines
serves precisely this end by threatening to disorient,
literally, the mind (i.e., the central nervous system)
of the adversary by compelling it to deal with highly
destabilizing - albeit localized and transient - condi
tions triggered by an overload of oleoresin. In the proc
ess, however, this admittedly extremist design-intent
(especially when considered from the perspective of
the State and its military instruments) clouds the truly
monstrous potential of the Bhut Jolokia as a weapon.
In light of this, it cannot be denied that, to all
intents and purposes, the chili-weapon is, by design,
a concept-weapon that aims to disturb the normalcy
of the world (i.e., the battlespace) occupied by a
target by compelling the latter - in transforming the
operative conditions within the world considered as
a sub-set of a 'global' world - to transition through
various traumatic phases leading up to, but not past,
a thanatologically-terminal condition, with the final
consequence of being extracted from the substrate on
and within which it thrives. 38 Considered operationally,
38. Note: Here 'trauma' is meant - given the State-centric context simply as an experience of an event or situation that causes great distress
and disruption. Contrast this with what Negarestani refers to as trauma.
Negarestani proposes that ' . . . trauma should be understood not as what
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Guha - Vague Weaponizations
it is indeed a highly unusual way for the State and its
instruments to seek to engage with, but not necessar
ily deter, the emergent adversary. By designing and
operationalizing the chili-weapon, the State, thus, is
not saying to the emergent adversary: 'If you attempt to
do x, then I will employ the chili-weapon against you'.
That would be a statement of deterrence. Instead, the
State is saying, 'I will pre-empt your threat-generative
capabilities by interdicting the functioning of your
neuro-cognitive mechanisms, thereby instantiating
a counter-strategic operation that will target your
somatic integrity'. Considered in this way, the signifi
cance of the strategic shift effected by the State - leav
ing aside its commitment to a concept of operations
from a past age of warfare - is considerable and is
reflected in its willingness to adopt what may be best
described as a psycho-bio-chemical counter-tactic to
create temporary conditions of extreme unease veering
close to 'terror' . 39
is experienced but as a form of cut made by the real or the absolute in
its own unified order; a cut that brings about the possibility of a localized
horizon and a singular but interconnected 'point of view'. In short trauma
as cut reinscribes the flow of the universal continuum or global continuity
within the discontinuous or discrete horizon' . See Negarestani, 'Globe of
Revolution'. The State does not recognize this Negarestanian notion of
trauma. It cannot afford to. Instead it limits its recognition ( and this is
reflected in the design-intent of its more unusual models of weaponizations
- as in the case of the Bhut Jolokia) of trauma to an experience (which it can
calibrate within a given and necessarily finite space) .
39. Of course, the State ignores the implications of this, which becomes
obvious when cast in the Negarestanian notion of 'trauma'.
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COLLAPSE VII
Against this backdrop, it could be said that when
compared to the meta-strategic and strategic-opera
tional models of Industrial Age Warfare, the emerging
model of warfare that the State is beginning to craft
appears to hold true to Zalamea's assertion about
those "'monstrous models" [that] . . . arise with respect
to �ven collections of axioms [but] which are never
really able to fully capture the concepts behind the
axioms'. In other words, though the chili-weapon
represents an unusual attempt - particularly given its
design-intent and material characteristics - by State
centric forces to engage with emergent battle condi
tions, the operational concept of operations involving
the use of such weapon-systems remains true to the
axiomatic principles around which the State and its
machines of war have traditionally organized them
selves and have waged war. But this does not detract
from the other-worldly, post-lethal monstrosity of the
model of weaponization that the chili-weapon, albeit
abstractly, invokes. In what follows, we will explore
such a model of weaponization. The monstrosity of
the model is evidenced by the foregrounding of the
full modal (understood in a chemo-cosmic sense)
spectrum of the continuum, which, interestingly,
underwrites an understanding of culinary processes
as a visceral interactivity involving the synthetic realm
of the continuum in which the discrete, the specific, the
particular (for example, the ingredients of a culinary
204
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
exercise) reinscribes the generic continuum, resulting
in the blurring of the boundaries of the particular into
'the open' .
VAGUE WEAPONIZAT I O N S
To all intents and purposes, the weaponization of
the Bhut Jolokia by the State and its instruments is
a patently counter-strategic act, which is why it is
fascinating. But, as we have seen, the State's fealty
to models of warfare that were designed in and for
the Industrial Age precludes its ability, if not to fully
comprehend the immense potential of the weapon
system, then at least to exploit it. Alternatively, as has
been suggested above, it could also be the case that
the State is perhaps actually able to recognize not only
the weapon-system's potential, but also the threat
potential that it presents to the State. In other words,
it could be the case that the State recognizes the not
necessarily terrifying, but certainly territopic40 effect
that the chili-weapon could have on its own prospects.
This could explain, we ventured to suggest, why the
State handles the chili-weapon with restraint. In this
section we will turn our attention to a more extreme
model of weaponization - free from the structural
40. Insofar as the axioms of the State ( discrete battlespaces, well-defined
entities and modal rigidities demarcated by 'either . . . or .. . ' ) are vitiated
by fusion and chemical reactions with synthetic modalities of the global
battlespace or the continuum.
205
COLLAPSE VII
imperatives that preclude its full optimization by the
State and its instruments - that we suggest underwrites
the design-intent of what we have come to know as
the chili-weapon.
To set the tone and the pace of the discussion to fol
low, and to highlight what appears to be an insidiously
subversive and extreme line of militant thought, one
should consult the recipe, printed facing the opening
page of this article, for Bhut]olokiaAsar, one of the more
interesting instances of how Bhut Jolokia is employed
within the culture of traditional Assamese cuisine.
An 'asar' (in Assamese) or 'achar' is a condiment,
that is to say, it is a 'pickle' .41 It is an external entity
generally consumed in small quantities - that while
retaining its independence, accompanies the main
course of a meal, providing, optimally, a camouflaged
edge to the latter. In the context of Indian culinary
traditions, a pickle is an aggregate of a number of
individual ingredients (generally, fruits and vegetables,
but also occasionally meats/seafoods, and the 'usual
spices') usually based within an oil/lemon juice/brine
suspension. This mixture is allowed to 'mature', that
is to say, to self-catalyze or cook itself, resulting in the
apparent blending of the sharp edges of the individual
or discrete ingredients (including the Bhut Jolokia in
the above recipe) into a continuum of culinary tastes
41. It is important not to confuse the 'Indian' pickle with the gherkin/
cucumber-based pickles that are commonly found in the West.
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Guha - Vague Weaponizations
and sensations. 42 This self-cooking of the pickle renders
the potencies and flavours of the individual elements of
an 'achar' into a state and condition of suspended ani
mation. In this state, an overlapping of their individual
or particular fields of tastes and sensations occurs,
resulting in the establishment of a more generalized
field of culinary sensations which, while retaining
muted shades and softened edges of the independent
potencies of the ingredients, is synthetically different
from each of them. In other words, it could be said
that the discrete becomes vague in the context of the
continuum by losing its rigidities, which arise from the
law of the excluded middle, thus fusing with other pos
sibilia or chemical modalities provided by the generic
base of the continuum. In this way, the continuum
infiltrates the discrete (qua the axiomatic) through
the vague, which is an emergent state or condition
where a chemically-driven softening of boundaries
takes place resulting in the sharing and overlapping
of the resultant locales ( diffused states and conditions
enveloping) of the discrete which, in turn, foregrounds
a cosmologically-expansive continuum.
As appetizing ( or not) as this recipe may appear to
be, in the context of this essay, it serves as an extrem
ist model of weaponization that not only wrecks the
42. Note: Even the act of 'setting the mixture in the sun' has a twist. If
the pickle is made only of vegetables, the 'sun' refers to the weaker 'winter
sun' . If other ingredients are used such as meats/marine products and only
certain kinds of vegetables/fruits, the 'sun' refers to the 'summer sun'.
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COLLAPSE VII
collection of axioms that underlie the design-intent
and subsequent weaponization of the State's version of
the chili-weapon, but also consumes the very concepts
that underwrite its alleged axiomatic premise. What
is extreme about this model of weaponization is that
it compels - through a chemistry of dissolution the renegotiation of the traditional transactional and
exchange-centric economy of relations that are said
to characterize the local/global and the particular/
generic.
Note the sequence in which the pickle is 'cooked'
i.e., softens into a generic base and fuses with synthetic
modalities of the continuum or possibilia associated
with neighbouring elements or ingredients in the
suspension. The process begins with the creation of a
(dry) mixture involving the aggregation of the spices
and the Bhut Jolokia. At this stage, it is presumed that
while there is already an economy of relations at play
between the ingredients (established as the essential
oils of the individual [dry] ingredients are brought
into close proximity with each other) it is not seam
less; rather, it is discrete. In other words, the spices
and the pepper - while establishing relationships
with each other - continue to retain their individual
identities. In this sense, it could be said that the Law of
the Excluded Middle and the Principle of Contradic
tion - at least in so far as they respectively pertain to
the emergent mixture and its individual ingredients
208
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
- remain undisturbed. The ingredients are ( individu
ally) what they are and cannot (yet) be anything other
than what they are. As such, they are not yet part of
a global ensemble where they can be both what they
are AND something that they are not at the same
time. But - and this is important to note - they do
retain their potential to associate with one another in
other, more intimate, ways which - as we shall see involve the dismantling of the restrictions posed by
the Law of the Excluded Middle ( on the level of the
generic mixture or the continuum) and the Principle
of Contradiction ( on the level of discrete or individual
ingredients ) . This happens during the second stage of
the pickle-making process.
The second stage begins with the suspension being
added and the resultant mixture being exposed to the
sun. At this point a qualitative change takes place in the
discrete relations that have thus far been established
between the constituents of the dry mixture. The intro
duction of the suspension, by generating heat, radical
izes the nature of the transactional relationship that
hitherto marked the dry mixture. What occurs is the
release - by purely chemical means - of the potential·
motility of the spices, the pepper, and the suspension
thereby breaking down the discrete singularities that
aggregate to form the essence of the dry-mixture.43
43. By 'the release of the potential-motility' of the ingredients, I simply
mean to suggest that the particularities of each of the ingredients open up
- as we shall see - to 'the open' or the full chemical and modal spectrum
209
COLLAPSE VII
The suspension, in this sense, plays a critical role not
simply by contributing its own potential-motility to
the dry-mixture, but also by serving as a partial trig
ger for a catalytic reaction or synthesis that leads to
the emergence of the pickle. Partial because - though
we will not address the issue in any detail here - the
role of the solar-energetic inputs in the context of the
pickling process should not be underestimated. 44 Thus,
with the introduction of the suspension to the mixture
of the spices and the peppers, the resultant, in many
ways augmented, mixture now becomes something
other than merely an aggregation of its individual
constituents. It is at this point that the Law of the
Excluded Middle begins to lose its relevance. The
actualization of the potential-motility of the spices,
the pepper, and the suspension involves nothing less
than an assault on their particularities ( individual
tastes and sensations ) that make up the dry-mixture
and the suspension. It is important to recognize that
this assault is more of an insurrection than an inva
sion by an external agency. Regardless, facing such
an intensive assault, these particularities ( of taste and
of the continuum. In other words, the activation of the potential-motility
does not imply a disintegration or a fragmentation. Nor does it imply the
heterogenization of a homogenous particularity. Indeed, as we will see, one
of the paradoxical consequences of the 'opening up' of the particular is the
establishment of a meta-homogeneity that is intimately connected to what
here we are referring to as 'the open' and which we will later refer to as the
'universal continuum'.
44. It could be said that the economic relations that stem from the solar
energetic inputs are consumed by the Asar.
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Guha - Vague Weaponizations
sensation) are compelled to become complicit in the
production ( or, more accurately, synthesis) of a generic
field ( of culinary taste and sensation) in which they
( the individual spice, pepper and suspension) remain
in a state of suspended animation or modal kineticism.
Now, Fernando Zalamea, in his analysis of Peirce's
continuum, has the following to say:
Peirce's continuum is formed by superposed 'real'
environments and neighbourhoods - modes of fusion
and connection of the possibilia. On that continuum
'ideal' points are marked - cuts and discontinuities
of the actual - only to construct contrasting scales
and to facilitate the 'calculus' . . . Indeed, the actual,
the given, the present, the instant, are no more than
ideal limits: limits of possibility neighbourhoods
which contain those actuality marks, those points
impossible to be drawn, those fleeting presents, those
impalpable instants.45
In our context, therefore, it could be said that the
generic field (what we have previously referred to as
an intermezzo) on which the culinary chemistry of the
BhutJolokia Asar takes place, and that is revealed as the
individual ingredients of the recipe catalyze, is akin
to Pierce's continuum. Following Zalamea's exegesis,
it foregrounds itself as the particularities of the tastes
45. Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum, 23.
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COLLAPSE VII
and sensations of the ingredients of the pickle fuse
with one another. This fusion - which, as we have
noted above, is the agitation of the potential-motility
of the individual ingredients including the suspension
- involves the erosion of the particularities and exact
identities (here understood in the Zalamean sense
of 'ideal points') of the individual constituents, and
their synthesis into a field of culinary sensations that,
while not bereft of the traces (which are 'impossible
to be drawn, those fleeting presents, those impalpable
instants')46 of the individual essences of the ingredi
ents, also produces (typically) a new culinary experi
ence that is locally vague. Characterized by modal
complexity and blurry boundaries which can only be
approached through synthetic neighbourhoods and
infinitesimal extension to the outside, vagueness is the
local projection of the general within the particular
field or the discrete ingredient.
The operative premise underlying this breaking
down and fusion of particularities and the production
of a vague (but also particular) experience is that the
continuum is 'the open'; it is the universal exteriority
that allows, in the first instance, for the possibility for
the nesting and overlapping of fields of particularities
or specificities ('ideal points') on and within itself.
The mandatory cautionary note here is to recognize
46. Thus, for example, how does one identify and articulate what the 'ideal'
taste of the individual spices or the chili-pepper might be?
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Guha - Vague Weaponizations
that this universal exteriority is not, and should not
be considered as, an ontological space - that is to
say, as being the raw material for the formation of
concepts; rather, if anything, it is pre-ontological.
It is the originary fundament upon which ontology
is possible. Its complicity in the production of the
ontological field is satisfied by its mere presence. In
this sense, it could be said that the continuum or
'the open' is the universally contingent condition of
possibility where the particular/specific/discrete are
instantiated as a scattering of 'cuts' and 'discontinui
ties'. The particular/the specific/the discrete are, in
this sense, these 'cuts' and 'discontinuities' which
mark the emergent of the actual from the possible
and the contingent. Given this, it could further be
said that the breakdown of the individual boundaries
of each discrete ingredient or softening of rigidities of
each particularity inevitably brings to the foreground
the generic continuum, albeit in local and particular
terms. In other words, the erosion of the particularities
exposes - through neighbourhoods and infinitesimal
gradients - the localized or monadic worlds of the
particularities to the continuum or 'the open'. At this
point, two questions demand our attention: ( 1 ) How
does the breakdown of the particular take place?;
and, in a related sense, (2) when the particular or dis
crete entity actualizes itself on and within the universal
exteriority, does this process of actualization result in
213
COLLAPSE VII
the total and complete exclusion of the exterior from
the monadic world of the discrete?
As a first step we should recognize that the par
ticular/specific/discrete is an apparent coagulation
of the continuum within a localized region or space,
given that the possibility of this occurring is always
in the context of the continuum or 'the open'. It is an
instance where the radical openness of the continuum
meta-stabilizes (or, 'cooks in and within itself') to
chemically and modally create a field of consistency.
But it should be noted that this particularized field of
consistency is not distinct from 'the open' or radical
exteriority. Rather, it is the transient isolation, localiza
tion, and regionalization of 'the open' within particular
or discrete spatio-temporally bound horizons, that
detracts from the ability 'to capture all the richness of
a general concept ([that is to say, of] the generic, modal
and indeterminate) ' . 47 Note that when Zalamea refers
to the 'general concept (generic, indeterminate) ', he is
gesturing toward what we have referred to as 'the open'
- both within and outside the context of the particular.
In this sense, 'the open' persists - within the monadic
world of the discrete or the particular - not as itself
in its originary sense, that is to say, as 'the open'; but
instead, as the 'vague' (i.e., indistinct) . As an aside,
note also that here the Law of the Excluded Middle
and the Principle of Contradiction stand violated.
47. Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum, 4.
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Guha - Vague Weaponizations
'The open' in the context of the particular is both 'the
open' or generic (in its own context) and 'the vague'
(in the context of the particular) . In other words, it
(the continuum/the open') is simply irreducible to
either . . or . possibilities indicated by the Law of the
Excluded Middle. And, continuing in the same vein,
the particular is both 'particular' (again, in its own
context) and 'vague' (in the context of 'the open').
Thus, for example, a particular element, signified by
an actual or discontinuous mark - such as a chili or a
citizen - can be both a chili and not a chili or a civilian
and a non-civilian at the same time. Here the vagueness
of the pickle (both chili and not chili) and the vague
adversary (both a citizen and non-citizen) violates the
Principle of Contradiction. It should also be noted that
this presence of 'the open' (in its necessarily 'vague'
form) within the discrete world of the particular is also
a latent source of extreme instability for the monadic
world in which it lurks. Why is this lurking presence a
source of radical and extreme instability? Because its
presence at the local level brings about the violation
of the Law of the Excluded Middle and the Principle
of Contradiction; which, in turn, brings into play new
modes of fusion, osmosis, and transversality across the
full spectrum of the continuum, modes that are inimical
to the structural integrity and form of the particular,
the discrete and the individual.
.
. .
215
COLLAPSE VII
Against this backdrop, it would not be too much
of a stretch to suggest that what we have thus far
been referring to as the breakdown, softening or the
dismantling of particularities is nothing less than the
radicalization of the 'vague' within the particular,
which we now know is a signature of the continuum
within that which is discrete. Thus, when the question
is posed as to whether the institution of the particular
or the discrete excludes 'the open', we are compelled
to respond in the negative. The discrete and the par
ticular is always infiltrated by 'the open' in the guise
of the 'vague' . And, how does this infiltration take
place? It is certainly not established by the instituting
of a transaction-based economy of relations. It is also
not simply a question of suggesting the addition of
'the open' to the locale of the particular. Rather, the
mode of infiltration of 'the open' into a discrete world
is in the form of a cleavage, or a cut - a trauma - that
slices - neither inwards, nor outwards - the particular.
The cut is not a simple splitting or division of the
particular into further discrete particularities. Rather,
it is, as Hermann Weyl suggested, 'a natural way to
take into account the nature of a continuum which,
following Anaxagoras, defies 'chopping off its parts
from one another, as it were, with a hatchet' . 48 In this
light, this slicing or cutting is nothing less than the
exposure of the horizon of interiority of the particular
48. H. Wey!, 'The Ghost of Modality' in Philosophical Essays in the Memory
q[Edmund Husserl (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940) , 294.
216
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
to 'the open'/the continuum. In our specific context,
we propose that this is a principal contributory cause
to the blurring of battlelines, and to the generation
of a climate of modal and chemical conditions that
obfuscates the local battlespace, with extreme spillover
effects into what the State and its military instruments
consider as being the global battlespace.
Considered in this way, the chili-weapon, which may
be considered to be akin to the Bhut Jolokia pickle, is, in the
first instance, indicative ef a model ef weaponization that
involves the catalysis ef individual potencies into, on, and
as 'the vague', which is chemically linked to the continuum.
Now, in normative terms, a weapon-system's effective
ness is generally assessed in terms of the potential
effects that its kinetic capabilities can deliver. These
are usually measured in terms of the number of rounds
that can be fired in a discrete amount of time; the
'weight' of the firepower that the weapon-system dis
charges; the mobility of the weapon-system; and its
ability to complement other weapon-systems that may
be fielded to create the global ensemble of weapons
deployed on the battlefield. It is also important to note
that the functionality of a weapon-system, usually,
remains discrete. Further, weapon-systems ( and this
includes the thermonuclear option) are constructed
as aggregate capabilities that combine their features
to produce a cumulative effect. It is important to
pay attention to the fact that each component of the
217
COLLAPSE VII
weapon-system retains its individual features, capa
bilities and characteristics, although they are also
instrumental in the forming of ensembles of weapon
systems.49 Ensembles of such weapon-systems have a
singular objective: termination of individual (that is
to say, particular and discrete) instances of threats.
This is done by attempting to interdict the critical
command and control nodes of the perceived threat.
In this connection, it is worth pointing out that while
such weapon-ensembles may appear to overwhelm a
specific battlespace with area-suppressing firepower,
the base object remains wedded to the principle of
neutralizing discrete points of resistance. In this sense,
the desired effects resulting from the employment of
such ensembles of weapon-systems are very local and
punctual. Only by a process of arithmetic aggrega
tion are we able to contextualize these local effects in
'strategic' terms. And, in this context, it is also worth
pointing out that most conventional weapon-systems
are essentially defensive in nature despite the normative
bias towards classifying ensembles of weapon-systems
as being 'offensive' or 'defensive' .
In contrast t o this, the extreme model of weaponi
zation that underwrites the chili-weapon is in a class
of its own. Like the Bhut Jolokia Asar in which the
-
49. This allows for quick repairs to be made under battle conditions.
Essentially, being an ensemble of multiple parts, the modular nature of the
weapon·system allows for the quick replacement of the less-than-optimal
functioning part.
218
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
chili-pepper is an active co-constituent - the chili
weapon is less an aggregation of disruptive sensory
triggers targeted towards an adversary, and more a
catalysis-engineer that exposes particular and discrete
entities to a sensorial continuum. What is singular
about this is that, contra the normative understanding
and design-intent of conventional weapon-systems,
the model of weaponization represented by the chili
weapon does not target particular and discrete entities.
Rather, it aims to ( re) introduce the continuum (or 'the
open' ) not simply within the space occupied by such
entities, but also within the entities themselves, by
facilitating a radical reflexivity between the continuum
and these entities which are in fact local manifesta
tions of the continuum itself, and could therefore
not exclude the open. As we have noted above, this
weaponization occurs not by means of an invasive cut,
in a bid to render the localized particular/region even
more discrete (which is what the State attempts ) , but
by exposing the particular ( here, the adversary) to
the generic in ways that destabilize the former, thus
blunting its local instances and intensities. The senso
rial disorientation that follows the employment of the
chili-weapon - characterized in the Briefing Paper in
terms of 'severe coughing, lacrymation, irritation of
eyes and nose and suffocation' - could be said to be
one example of the extreme physical perturbations
that afflict the particular/discrete when it is introduced
219
COLLAPSE VII
to an existential dilemma that follows its exposure
to the continuum, which involves the collapse of the
Principle of Contradiction.
Our brief review of the chili-weapon - given the
details provided by the Briefing Paper - suggests that
much of what is excessive in its underlying model
of weaponization is obscured by the structural and
existential imperatives of the State and of its military
instruments. The State's employment of this weapon
does not maximize this latent potential that the chili
weapon represents. Instead, as we have seen, the State's
design-intent is organized around the ability to deliver
a devastating attack on the central nervous system of
the 'unlawful combatants' within a battlespace, in
a bid to incapacitate them. This is understandable
because the State's primary objective is to extract these
'unlawful combatants' from the battlespace without
disturbing the latter's essential normalcy. In the proc
ess, however, there occurs an obfuscation of the truly
insidious character of the model of weaponization
that is at play. Additionally, we have seen how the
fealty of the State's military machines to what is fast
becoming an outmoded model of warfare limits how
this ostensibly radical and extreme weapon-system
can be used. While it is true that unrestrained use of
this weapon-system within the discrete confines of
local battlespaces succeeds in overwhelming the space
of battle, it does so, however, through an objective
220
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
re-ordering and assimilation of the local battlespace
within a much larger global ( and in that sense, discrete
and restricted) battlespace in which the State and its
instruments can freely use their precision-strike and
global-strike capabilities. In this context, it is important
to note that our reference to the global battlespace as
conceived ( indeed constructed) by the State and its
military machines does not refer to the generic bat
tlespace or to an understanding of the continuum as
a 'globally' generic battlespace. In the State's version
of what it refers to as 'the global battlespace', there
is no room - at least under ideal conditions - for
any kind of ambiguity or vagueness. 'To be generic'
within the State's version of the global battlespace, is
'to be categorical' . The 'generic' in the State's global
battlespace serves as a place-holder or a category
within which particularities can be organized or left
in suspended animation pending their eventual ( re)
organization. In this sense, the 'generic' is, for the
State, a specific category. Given this, it will be appreci
ated - as is also evident from the design intent of the
chili-weapon - that the use of such exotic ( and, in some
senses, extreme) weapon-systems is targeted towards
the category of what I refer to as 'specific generalities'
which, in the context of our current focus of interest,
can be isolated only within localized battlespaces.
The State's use of this weapon-system thus has very
little to do with anything other than interdicting 221
COLLAPSE VII
as we have previously stated - the ability of the adver
sary (within the context of the local battlespace) to
establish and operationalize an effective command and
control system. What this suggests is that the State
and its military instruments - despite having at their
disposal a weapon-system of truly radical proportions
- insist on reverting to the operational doctrines of
combat of the Industrial Age.
PARA-TACT I C S OF C O M BAT
Somewhere in the remoter areas efNaugaon, Assam, shelter
ing.from the hot tropical sun, afamily effour sat down to
have their midday meal, consisting efboiled rice and green
vegetables. Workingfrom dawn till noon, the family had
slaved at their smallpaddy plot - the output efwhich would
prove criticalfor their chances to avoid starvation during the
comingyear. The children - both underfifteen years efage had worked too. Thefamily 's meal which, by any standard,
was at best modest and at worst meagre, gave little culinary
pleasure save that which accompanies any meal when one
is wracked by intense hunger. Whatever small variation is
applied to this basicfare would be, as always, provided by a
couple effresh onions and a condiment - the Bhut Jolokia
Asar. As the wife ladled out thefood - reserving the small
est portionsfor herself and her very young daughter - the
husband reachedfor the earthen jar containing the Bhut
Jolokia Asar. From then on - as the meal progressed - the
222
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
BhutJolokia Asar would play a supplementary, but critical,
role in re-determining not only how the modest meal consist
ing efrice and vegetables tasted, but also the effects it would
have on the consumer. The inclusion ef the Asar introduces
a radical element into the meal. If the meal is considered
as being a particular battlespace, the Asar serves as an
engine ef catalysis (a model ef tacticity) that exposes - by
supplementary means and under camouflage - the radical
open-ness efthe continuum, not simply within the meal, but
also within the consumer.
In the previous section, it was suggested that the
catalysis that manifests itself in and as the Asar is an
instance of the emergence of the vague within the
horizon of interiority of the individual ingredients of
the pickle, including the suspension. This, we further
suggested, is indicative of an extreme model of weap
onization which, contra its traditional counterparts,
including the State's efforts to weaponize the Bhut
Jolokia as a chili-weapon, does not break down a
target - a particular and discrete entity - into smaller
discrete entities in a bid to overwhelm them individu
ally. Instead, as we have seen, the radical monstrosity
of the model of weaponization underwriting the chili
weapon - a model we derived from the Bhut Jolokia
Asar - evidences itself in the way in which it compels
the target - a particularity, discreteness, specificity - to
expose its interiority to what we have referred to as the
223
COLLAPSE VII
continuum or 'the open' . And while we have already
pointed out that this exposure takes the form of a 'cut'
or a 'slice', it is worth reiterating that this 'cutting' or
'slicing' does not involve any external agency. Rather,
it is an exposure of 'the open' which always-already
lurks within that which is particular, specific and
discrete. In what follows, we will now employ the
model of weaponization afforded by the Bhut Jolokia
Asar to explicate a vector of para-tactical militancy that
synthesizes the traditionally discrete relations between
'tactics', modes of tacticity, and objects of tactical inter
est and relevance, not to annihilate points of defence
or resistance (which are 'objects' of tactical interest
and relevance) , but to make such points complicit in
their own rendition into 'the open'.
Sandor Ferenczi, in his Final Contributions to the
Problems and Methods efPsycho-Analysis, notes:
[A] traumatic force catches up and, as it were, shakes
the ego down from the high tree or the tower. This is
described as a frightening whirlwind, ending in the
complete dissolution of connexions and a terrible
vertigo, until finally the ability, or even the attempt,
to resist the force is given up as hopeless, and the
function of self-preservation declares itself bankrupt.
This final result may be described or represented as
being partially dead. In one case such 'being dead'
was represented . . . as maximal pulverization, leading
224
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
to finally complete de-materialization. The demate
rialized . . . component has the tendency to drag the
not yet dead parts to itself into non-existence . . . 50
Our objective in quoting Ferenczi in this context is to
gesture to the vector along which our proposed model
of para-tactical militancy will foreground itself. The
generic objective of this model of tactical militancy
(which, as we will see, must necessarily be executed
at the level of the infinitesimal)51 is similar to what
Ferenczi refers to as conveying 'the hopelessness of
resistance', which is effected by the dissolution of the
intensive 'connexions' of a target-entity that lend to
the latter a consistency that underwrites its discrete
ness. But to derive such a model of tacticity, which is
operative at the infinitesimal level, will require us to
reconsider matters relating to, in the first instance, the
continuum ('the open') .
Fernando Zalamea, following the work of Charles
Sanders Peirce and Giuseppe Veronese, provides us
with a systematic study and account of the continuum,
or 'the open', that allows us to investigate the impli
cations of the latter for synthesis, the axiomatic and
the discrete (or the specific/particular) and to under
stand the continuum as a means of bridging between
50. Sandor Ferenczi, Final Contributions, 222·3.
51. An 'infinitesimal may be regarded as a continuum "viewed in the small" .'
J. L. Bell, 'Infinitesimals and the Continuum', The Mathematical Intelligencer,
Vol. 1 7 , #2 (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1 995) , 55.
225
COLLAPSE VII
mathematics, chemistry, cosmological processes and,
in our specific context, war and its conduct. The con
tinuum is, according to Zalamea, 'an 'absolutely gen
eral' concept which, in principle, 'does not have to
be completely objectified in just a formal context' . In
other words, 'every general concept is, in reference to its
individuals, strictly a continuum . . . Thus, the continuum,
as a lean, 'free' concept in the realm of the general and
the possible, cannot be bounded by a determinate
collection . . . '52 Beginning from this premise, it is then
possible to reconstruct a general concept of war (both
as a condition or state of affairs AND as the intensive
reflexivity that such states or conditions necessarily
involve) in the manner suggested in Figure 2 .
Figure 2 represents Zalamea's description o f the
'double sigma' (the continuum) , which has three uni
versal or global properties, each with its own implica
tions - plasticity (what we previously referred to as
the logic of plasticity), inextensibility and supermulti
tudeness. It is necessary to recognize that the intricate
interweaving of these three universal properties create
their local counterparts - generic relationality, the logic
of vagueness, neighbourhood and possibilia. In this
sense, as Zalamea asserts, 'the double sigma underlines
some fundamental threads between global and local
aspects of [the] continuum.'53 From the above, it will
52. Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum, 7 (italics in original) .
53. Ibid, 8·9. Italics in original.
226
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
GENERIC RELATIONALITY
GENERICITY
WAR
SUPERMULTITUDENESS
BATILESPACE
REFLEXIVITY
VAGUE
WEAPONIZATIONS
INEXTENSIBILITY
NEIGHBOURHOOD Lorne
MODALITY
PARA-TACTICAL
ENGAGEMENTS
PLASTICITY
Possrn1uA SURGERY
Figure 2. Weaponizing the Double Sigma
be evident that what we had previously referred to as
the State's perception of the ' global battlespace', which
is derived from a non-generic, that is to say, a specific
concept of war, and which is progressively filtered
through increasingly discrete modes of representa
tions, fails to address or account for the unbounded
genericity of the continuum - which we can under
the present circumstances provisionally label as the
general concept of war - and the supermultitudeness
of the battlespace that such a generic concept of war
invokes. Perhaps a fruitful way to explicate this would
be to refer to the continuum as being a self-churning that
erodes the discreteness of particularities. It is important
to note that this erosion of particularities only strips
away from them their 'particularizing attachments,
227
COLLAPSE VII
determinative, existential or actual',54 which results
in the particular progressively losing its consistency.
Another way of putting it would be to say that the
release of the particular from its particularity does not
obliterate the particular; rather, it 'frees' the particular
from that which axiomatically or modally particularizes
it in the first instance, thus diluting its discontinuous
or rigid modality into the synthetic modality of the
continuum, and thereby loosening the particular into
the open continuum.
Now, it is tempting to envision this as the act of an
external and operative agency, or to some corrosive
nature of the continuum. However, to sustain this
argument would involve invoking an originary distinc
tion between the continuum and the particular. Tue
counter-strategic perspective that we wish to highlight
here is that no such external agency orforce brings about
the de-particularization efthe particular. Instead, it is a
consequence of the operative reflexivity of the con
tinuum within the particular and, in this sense, the
distinction between the local/particular/discrete and
the continuum is always local and transient. 55 From this
we can infer that this reflexivity that is characteristic of
the continuum does not diminish - it is at play both
in and as the continuum, and remains at play within
54. Ibid, 10
55. 'The reflexive' is 'defined as something any part of which however small
itself has parts of the same kind' (C.S. Peirce). It preserves the germ of
the continuum under any condition and no matter what kind of cut or
discontinuity it undergoes.
228
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
the particular wherein the continuum lurks, like what
Ferenczi would refer to as 'an alien (trans)implant'.
In the context of the supplementing of the modest
meal of the Assamese farmer and his family with the
BhutJolokia Asar, we can therefore suggest, given that
we have presumed the Asar to be a model of radical
weaponization which involves the continuum, that
its supplementary role in the midday meal described
above serves to function as the traumatic force that
Ferenczi refers to. It is a vector along which the univer
sal continuum mobilizes itself (by being true to itself)
not simply within the particular meal, but also within
the individual that consumes it - directly or otherwise.
It is not the case that the Asar impinges on the meal;
rather, it chemically transforms the particularity of the
meal to accommodate the inassimilable open-ness of
the continuum. To the extent that the Asar mixes with
the meal (remember that the Asar involves a liquid
suspension) , being itself organized around a kernel
of depthless openness (this being contributed by the
chemistry of the oleo resin), it agitates the latent pres
ence of the continuum within the meal. And, further,
by the act of ingesting this meal - supplemented by the
Asar - the individual also interiorizes the continuum.
In this way, the continuum asserts its presence within
what is discrete and particular. This has effects both
on the particular and on the continuum - though in
229
COLLAPSE VII
the latter case it is less a matter of 'effect' and more an
expression of its peculiar open-ness.56
In the context of the particular, the self-churning
of the continuum is - as we have previously alluded
to - an originary reflexivity, which cleaves (inten
sively) the particular, thereby introducing a gradient
relationality within the particular. This is achieved
not by the particular being disintegrated into further
discrete elements, but by the unfolding of infinitesimal
or non-punctual and continuous segments. In the
context of the particular, the presence of infinitesimal
or non-punctual and continuous segments results in
the establishment of the vague, where the Principle of
Contradiction stands violated. This 'opening' of the
particular results in the latter's progressively dissolving/
loosening to create neighbourhoods to accommodate
vagueness, which overlap with other such unfold
ings or openings of particularities. Since the vague is
identified, in part, in terms of unfolded boundaries
and modal softness, it can effectively react and meld
with other entities across the continuum insofar as
its boundaries can be shared by other entities and its
modality can fuse with the contingency of the outside.
The vague, therefore, opens the exact and particular
56. Ferenczi describes the evolution of the human being in terms of 'alien
transplants' according to which the human is a polyvalent horizon of
nested chemistries and a series of alien transplants of the continuum: 'It is
possible that we harbour in our organism inorganic, vegetative, herbivorous
and carnivorous tendencies like chemical valences.' See Ferenzci, Final
Contributions, 227·30.
230
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
to the free osmotic flow of the continuum between
the global and the local. Alternatively, it could also
be said that this opening of the particular establishes
a continuity of the continuum within discrete locales
and regions ( extensions/expansions/stretchings of the
particular) . It will be appreciated that in our analysis
of the Bhut Jolokia Asar (as opposed, significantly, to
our analysis of the chili-weapon as fabricated and
employed by the State and its instruments) we saw
how the sharp edges of the individual ingredients of
the Asar catalyzed, resulting in the emergence of a
continuity of tastes and sensations which we related to
the local presence of the continuum in the form of 'the
vague' . From the point of view of the continuum, this
process does not involve the latter's being unfaithful
to its own nature; instead, it involves a 'transformation
of modality' that is reflected in the degeneration (the
operation of intensive reflexivity) of the particular into
the vague, and thence into and as the continuum. It is
this transformation of modality that Ferenczi refers to
as 'the traumatic force', which can be regarded as an
instance of a cosmo-chemical process that involves a
modal change that, in turn, entails a visceral encounter
with the full spectrum of the continuum.
Such a model of para-tactical engagement - unlike
traditional concepts of (strategic-military) operations
- works to institute a radical Logic of Relations (that
governs relations between particulars, individuals,
231
COLLAPSE VII
specificities) by invoking a pure synthesis of location
and direction. This synthesis wrecks the traditional
distinction between tactical models, objects of tactical
interest, and local-level tactical objectives by fusing
them on and along the exteriorized/interiorized con
tinuum. No tactical agency drives this process. Nor is
the presence of tactical objects of interest - points of
resistance or defence - considered a deterrent to this
model of engagement. At every turn, such a model of
tactical engagement generates what we have referred
to as an intermezzo, 'understood as a synthetical range
where whatever is possible should be able to glue
- which has to be a general place (logos) , extremely
flexible, plastic, homogeneous, without irregularities
. ' .57 Herein discrete points (networked or not - of
defence and resistance) are introduced to an interior
ized abysmal chasm that collapses them from within,
thereby conveying what Ferenczi refers to as 'the
hopelessness of resistance'. But then again, we need to
remain mindful of the fact that such a state of affairs
undermines our efforts to label this mode of tacticity as
a 'model'; it would perhaps be more fitting to refer to
this modality as being an exhibition of a 'pure tacticity'
that runs immanent to events, individuals, particulars
and other such instances of ontologically-privileged
discreteness.
• •
57. Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum, 15. Parenthesis and italics in original.
232
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
CONCLUS I O N
We began our exploratory exercise by considering an
unusual model of weaponization - in the form of the
chili-weapon - conducted by the State. While such a
model of weaponization, we noted, is radical in the
sense that it points to an ongoing reassessment of the
space of war and battle ( considered normatively) , it
fails to sufficiently interrogate the axioms that lend
it a logical and operational consistency. The fealty to
these axioms, we noted, is a contributory cause that
camouflages the sheer monstrosity that lurks behind
such models of weaponization.
Our interest in the State's weaponization of the Bhut
Jolokia lay in the latent potential of the chili-pepper
(co-constituted by the oleoresin) , which rates so high
on the Scoville scale, to materially disturb the somatic
integrity of those against which it is deployed. When
this aspect of the Bhut Jolokia is taken into account
we then confront what constitutes the radical alterity
of this model of weaponization - its propensity to
foreground the continuum. The cookery involved in
the Asar - as we have described it - thus represents,
micro-cosmically, the action that takes place on and
along the continuum as the unbound chemical spec
trum of modalities, global-local syntheses and universal
contingency. In this sense, the self-cooking of the con
tinuum ( represented by the 'maturing process' of the
233
COLLAPSE VII
Asar) becomes the generative condition which allows
not only for the possibility of points of resistance, but
also, paradoxically, for the tactical counter-measures
that strip away from such points their particulars. The
climate of operations, while remaining local is thus
infused by the continuum in the form of 'the vague',
which we confront in the emergent battlespaces in the
form of the 'vague civilian' ('the enemy of all') who
exhibits the pure tacticity of hypercamouflage. 58
It is at this point that our attempt at a 'vague
weaponization' differs from the model of weaponiza
tion that the State actualizes with the chili-weapon.
Whereas the latter attempts to create - by psycho-bio
chemical means - conditions of temporary disorienta
tion within discrete slices of spatio-temporality, which
is roughly analogous to the institution of 'the vague',
its efforts are also geared toward the containment of
such effects. As we have seen, this is because, in the
'global battlespace' constructed by the State and its
strategic-military instruments, the presence of 'the
vague' is inimical to the objective of asserting 'full
spectrum dominance' and of developing and retaining
'global strike capabilities' . Indeed, it could be asserted
that what we have thus far referred to as the emergent
adversary is 'the vague' (which, as we know, is the local
and synthetic presence of the continuum) . Conversely,
58. On 'hypercamouflage', see R. Negarestani, 'The Militarization of Peace:
Absence of Terror or Terror of Absence?', COLLAPSE I, 53-9 1 .
234
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
in our model of vague weaponization, the objective
is not to limit 'the vague' but to negatively generate the
particular by exposing it to the vague. In other words,
the local object of the model of 'vague weaponization'
is to proliferate possibilia, thereby establishing an inter
mediary logic of plasticity between the particular and
the continuum or 'the open', between the axiomatic
and the contingent.
Further, as we discovered, the extremeness that
spectrally haunts such models of weaponizations is
not terminally lethal. This is another point of similarity
between the State's model of weaponization of the Bhut
]olokia and our radical model of weaponization. The
apparent overlap lies in the fact that, superficially, both
models do not consider the annihilation of the target
as being an absolute and necessary end. The differ
ence, of course, lies in the fact that the State's models
attempt to preserve the particularity of those elements
that pose a threat to it within a discrete battlespace,
while our more radical model, on the other hand, does
something more excessive: It seeks to dissolve spatio
temporal instances and events by exposing them to
the logic of the continuum to the point of no return.
This dissolution is akin to an 'ubiquitous osmotic
process' - 'a natural way, the "transit" of modalities,
the "fusion" of individualities, the 'overlapping' of
neighbourhoods',59 which may be represented as in
Figure 3 (overleaf) .
59. Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum, 17.
235
COLLAPSE VII
In this way, the vector along which such weaponiza
tions and the para-tactical engagements that they bring
in their wake is '[cJorrespondingly, [representative of]
a line of thought [that is] set to irreparably deepen the
geophilosophical synthesis from the a priori terra verita
rooted in the somatic integrity of the earth, the state
and the human-citizen to the ever-self-renegotiating
verity of geocosmic continuum, and thus should be
identified as immanently territopic.'6 0
In closing, let us return to the 'state of unease' that
the soldiers of the Wehrmacht experienced on the eve
of Operation Barbarossa. Even before the 'guns of
June' rang out in anger, though rooted within dugouts
and trenches cut into the earth, the somatic integrity
of the individual soldiers (and, by extension, of the
war-machine of which they were constitutive units)
was already under threat. As they drank their spirits
to bolster their confidence (which Ferenczi would no
doubt identify as 'the ego'), they could not have been
unaware that, burrowed as they were into the damp but
comforting confines of their earthly defences, at some
level, they had already transited into that territopic
intermezzo where what confronted them were what
Pierce refers to as the supermultitudinousness of
possibilia61 'without beginning, middle, or end'.
-
60. Negarestani, Globe efRevolution, 2 .
6 1 . C. S . Peirce, 'Multitude and Continuity' [c.1897; N E 3.86-87] , quoted in
Zalamea, Peirce's Continuum, 12.
236
Guha - Vague Weaponizations
CONTINUUM
CONTINUUM
v
'V
(Universal Quantification)
(Universal Quantification)
Univenal Contingoocy
ff
�
Generic
Generic
Global
Global
Universal Contingency
The Base
The Base
3
j1' 'ixP
v
'ix�P
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9
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........-...-........... .... ......
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Global Battlespace
Global Battlespace
(The
(The general or global insurrectionary
1s general or global insurrectionary 1s
irreducible to either. or. possibilities)
irreducible to either. .. or. .. possibilities)
.. ..
1----'-�
-
(Bxisleolial Qwwwlificolio)
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non-civilian at die
time)
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'·
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�
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Figure 3 . Continuum and the Osmotic Circulation of Modalities
Thus, their muted prayer to some higher authority Man or God - to step back from the brink of war was
always-already too late. They were - as we are ( given
that despite its collective manifestation, the 'we' is indi
vidualistic, discrete, particular, and specific) - already
at war. They were, as we are, always-already committed
to being co-constituents of a cosmic culinary exercise
that serves 'the open'.
237
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I
COLLAPSE VII
FOOD and the City
In 1971 Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Gooddenfounded
FO OD. Part restaurant, part art project, and qffering
employment to artists, FO 0 D provided a spacefor social,
architectural and culinary experimentation and a meeting
placefor the artistic community.
The development ef the FOOD project can be seen in
the context ef Matta-Clark's earlier work, in which there
seem to be several levels to the link between architecture and
cooking: At points the artist seems to have understood cities
and urbanisation as a kind ef metabolisation or digestion
process (the movementfrom centre to periphery, gentrifica
tion, transformation efneighbourhoods). But we should also
consider Matta-Clark's long-standing interest in alchemy:
Throughout autumn and winter 1969, 'alchemical' appara
tuses were bubbling away in his New YOrk left, works such as
Photo-Fry employed processes ef transformation that were
explicitly 'culinary', and the remainder ef a series ef works
in which agar was used to grow various substances were
exhibited in the 1970 show Museum. At the time Matta-Clark
All Images: Succession de Gordon Matta-Clark en depot au Centre Canadien
d'Architecture, Montreal / Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark on deposit at the
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
239
COLLAPSE VII
related this work to 'those traditions that have always dealt
with the preparation and traniformation ifmaterials'. This
raises the question efhow this concern manifests itselfin his
more well-known architectural and spatial work. Might we
also understand the cuttingpieces (which developed during
the construction efFOOD) as belonging to an alchemical or
culinary order? Several efMatta-Clark's notes attest to such
a parallel between the (an)architectural and the culinary.
Cutting breaches the living-cells (cellsfor living in) efapart
ments, to allow a circulation between what is below and
what is above - visually, architecturally, and in terms efthe
habitation efthe space - in the same way that the process ef
heating/cooking breaks down cells and traniforms matter.
A later work Days End [ 1975], conceived as 'a pie-like
slice', sought to 'extend the building . . . below as much as
above, like an alchemical motif where there is that defi,nite
dichotomy - on balance - between the above and below . . .
Think about shelter as aform efbeing, which it is . . . '. Here
a building is between earth and air; and the alchemical
liberation efearth into air links architecturalpractice to the
sublime traniformations ef cooking.
COLLAPSE spoke to Carol Goodden about FOOD, about
Matta-Clark's relation to the city, and the extent to which
alchemical or culinarypractices irifuse his work. The accom
panying images, notes drawnfrom the Gordon Matta-Clark
Archive at the Canadian Centrefor Architecture, Montreal,
capture something ef the artist's mercurial imagination.
240
Goodden - FOOD and the City
COLLAPSE: What was Matta-Clark's relation to New
York City - to being in New York - how did the city
become a 'fuel' for his creativity and pose new ques
tions to him?
CAROL GooDDEN: Gordon was raised in NYC, after
his early years in Chile. I believe the energy of the
city was ingrained within him. He saw it as something
ever-changing and wished to 'save' the decrepit, the
wasted, the useless - transform it into something
visually appealing or useful. In this effort he would
collect trash from under the Brooklyn Bridge (one of
his favourite places) and combine his artifacts into
a 'piece.' He made a 'sandwich' of collected things,
closed them up in wire, plastered the wire so that his
oblong box looked like an over-large suitcase, and
stuck newspaper comic strips on the wet plaster to
'wallpaper' it. The Wallspaper piece [ 1973] installed in
112 Greene St. followed that. He photographed the
'common walls' of buildings where one building had
adjoined another but had been torn down, leaving
the scars of its earlier reality exposed - plumbing,
stairwells, wall adornments. Then he took all those
photographs, had them printed in colour on newsprint
in cascading sequence and used that to wallpaper a
ninety-foot length of wall, ceiling to floor. When that
piece was removed, he cut the newspaper printings
241
COLLAPSE VII
into booklet-sized swatches, bound them, and gave
the booklets away.
This constant migration in his mind, the evolution
of everything, fuelled his interest in saving pieces of
abandoned buildings, or buildings threatened with
demolition. Thus he cut one building in half, transform
ing it; he cut pieces out of floors of buildings; he cut
holes and slices through buildings, watching how the
light changed and tromp l'oeil effects were produced; he
decapitated a building in Italy and followed the light
trails across the walls with cuts; he cut a corkscrew
swatch through the old Beauborg, and so on.
Gordon's mind was extremely complex. He never saw
or thought about anything singly. For instance in this
note - 'Mange management' : it's a play on words,
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using the whole thought: Mange could have become
menage, or menage a trois, but he apparently was in
FOOD when he wrote this, or thinking of FOOD.
This constant combining of sights and thoughts, from
one subject to another, was replete in his speech as
well, making it quite impossible to understand what
he was talking about. Many times one sentence or
reference would appear in a speech today and a week
later another reference to that subject but within an
entirely different context, so that one could begin to
see that his mind worked in a circular pattern and
could almost only be followed by living constantly
with him. 'Life is a bowl of cherries or carrots . . . ' The
first is simply a trite phrase and then it is combined
with what he daily saw at FOOD.
243
C: It seems that these movements of circulation and
subtle transformation already describe an 'alchemical'
mind. But where did Matta-Clark's explicit interest in
alchemy originate? Was it something that was 'in the
air' at the time - Jung, and so on . . ?
CG: There was his connection with Suzanne Harris
who was very interested in alchemy. He and Suzanne
(who also died at a youngish age) were soulmates.
But he had started his agar pieces almost before he
met Suzy. The agar was simply about cooking, about
watching chemical change, and about preserving that
process m a piece.'
I can possibly, psychologically speaking, project
that some of Gordon's internal mentations might have
been caused by the car accident he had while in college
at Cornell doing his architectural studies. He 'passed
out' and in the process crashed the car which killed
one of the occupants in the car. Needless to say he felt
horrible about this and carried it as one of two major
guilt burdens. He was diagnosed with Addison's disease
(adrenal gland deficiency) and was put on heavy corti
zones (which is what eventually killed him) . But I have
to wonder if he was not thinking about the alchemy
in his own body, why and how things worked, what
would happen if he ate this or that, be it recognizable
food or food processed through the chemicals that he
used to make his agar pieces. He loved watching the
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.
Goodden - FOOD and the City
change from something recognizable into something
new, such as his fried photographs.
The alchemical experiments in Gordon's Chinatown
loft (just before I met him) were flat trays in which he
sprinkled agar and then tossed various found objects
- anything; metal, wood, half-eaten sandwich, dead
leaves. He was very interested in watching the mouldy
substance grow and change every day, every week. It
started out with adding water but then he would let
these large sheets dry out, stop growing. The pieces
were shown at the Holly Solomon Gallery - in their
trays, I believe; they were too fragile to just lay or
hang by themselves.
C: When they were exhibited, do you think they were,
for him, just the 'dead' remainder of the actual work
(the growth itself) - like the photographs of the archi
tectural works - records of something that no longer
existed?
CG: No, I believe he saw the agar pieces as trans
formed. They were just as alive to him as the actual
process of the growth of the agar. Just as the cuts were
'the piece' before a building was demolished. The
photographs were documentation, true, but he would
collage them into a piece of their own.
So the idea of throwing objects into a space and
watching it transform, as in the agar pieces, developed
245
COLLAPSE VII
into throwing objects into a contained space and then,
as I described, binding them up, first with wire lath,
then plaster, then papering the plaster with found
newspapers (comic pages for colour) .
The wire-plaster sandwiches that Gordon made
under the Brooklyn bridge were the impetus for cut
ting the 'sandwich' out of the wall during the FOOD
construction, and that started the whole idea of cutting
through layers of floors, walls, windows, stairs.
Then the cuts became an intellectual idea of trompe
l'oeil: When you looked at some of the cuts, it was
hard to know which cut was on which wall, which was
a stream of light. Especially in photographs, it was
visually confusing. There was the element of revealing,
in letting the light through. Or the element of what
one could see through the cut, such as in the circular
cuts. But the linear cuts, especially the one in the
decapitated house in Italy, seemed to me very much a
trick of the eye. And Gordon loved that complexity,
that it was not clear. Even in the Pier Piece [Day's End],
one wasn't sure, in stepping across the cut through
the pier floor, whether the rest of the building was
attached or not. Would you float off? Was the huge
half-moon cut in the side of the tin way up high a real
sky? A painting? Was the half moon on the floor the
moon or the light through the cut? One's imagination
could go quite fantastic.
246
Goodden
-
FOOD and the City
It started with the work at the Toselli Gallery where
he cut out the top of the little square building. Then
he saw what the light did inside. So he began making
cuts through the walls to see what the light would do.
Then he could see all kinds of possibilities of visual
trickery and imagination. So he would make build
ings out of buildings - He re-designed buildings.
In his mind, what he had created with the cuts was
architecturally just as interesting, if not more so, as a
place to be, live, squat, think, as the architecture that
he started with. He even saw the light designs on the
floor, which came through the cuts, as architecture
in itself. If people could have been transformed into
ethereal light images, they could have lived in the
'light' rooms created.
I think the Pier Piece truly was about cooking
shapes - a piece of pie, and the hole in the centre of the
pie, which tied into the transfer and re-creation of how
light entered, to form new architectural shapes. Then
he used the water as a reflector, both by seeing the river
through the holes and by cutting through the deck of
the pier to access the strip of water below. Who knows
what the beginnings of all these thoughts were . . .
watching his mother cook upside-down cake? Watch
ing mixtures thicken? He did not verbalize any of this.
C: Would you agree that there is a link between this
breaching of the 'cells' of a building, and allowing the
247
COLLAPSE VII
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elements to invade and mix inside, and the interest in
cooking - that both came from this abiding interest in
change and alteration, the relation between changing
something material, and the spiritual effect that this
has (whether letting sunlight into a building, or adding
heat to a postcard . ) ?
. .
CG: Yes, exactly.
C: So that cutting, removing ( subtraction) , would
be done in order to set in motion or in flow a visceral
communication ( architectural 'digestion' ) - to reveal
strata, all the way down to a substratum of continually
in-motion circulating matter, the constant terrestrial
248
Goodden - FOOD and the City
cookery of waste and regeneration. A kind of cutting of
spyholes into what lies beneath 'permanent' structure.
In a 1976 interview Matta-Clark says, enigmatically:
'A cut is very analytical. It's the probe, the essential
probe, the scaffold of sharp-eyed inspectors'.
We can see this aspect of uncovering the build
ing as a corporeal machine with inlets and outlets
[ 1971 's Pipes], and a limited lifespan, to be decomposed
and digested, either by ruin, or to be transformed
and reincorporated by the metabolism of urbanisa
tion itself. In taking over the building and making
FOOD, I guess you were partaking in that very process
yourselves - preparing FOOD for the city . . . Could
you say a little more about the process of renovation/
restructuring of the space that became FOOD, and the
moment when Matta-Clark first started making the
cuts and realizing that this was something significant?
CG: It actually started with the loft that we had been
forced to leave. I had built a sauna, a shower, and a
toilet compartment out of three public toilet areas
in an old loft. We were unjustly forced out when the
landlord changed. Gordon was angry and thought he
would take a part of what I had built, which he loved,
with him. So he made a horizontal slice through the
walls of the sauna/shower. That fuelled the slicing of
pieces out of FOOD.
249
COLLAPSE VII
In its former life FOOD was a Spanish-American
coffee shop, Comidas Criollas, that served early morn
ing workers in the light manufacturing district and
closed after lunch. It was on the corner of Prince and
Wooster, well-located. It had windows all around which
delighted both of us. We took the old Comidas Criollas,
gutted it, poured new floors, laid tiles, put the kitchen
out with the people so they could watch us cook, which
was my idea. Then we were able to pick up the build
ing adjacent to the north, so Gordon began cutting
through that wall to join the two spaces. He designed
the sandwich-making area and cut a horizontal 'win
dow' through that wall, of about the same size as the
sauna cut. The particular textures of wallpaper or wall
finishings, different on both sides, was what intrigued
him. That was what fuelled his searching through the
Brooklyn buildings looking at the floor surface and
the ceiling surface and realizing that if he cut through
the floor, his sandwich would be decorated differently
on each of its sides.
C: There is a very direct sense in which the 'broken'
state of New York at the time immediately enabled
Matta-Clark, and others with vision, to access these
derelict spaces which could be experimented with in
various ways.
But perhaps the parallel is stronger: that the condi
tion of the city was an open invitation to cut through,
250
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Goodden - FOOD and the City
to see differently, to recombine what was there to create
new possibilities. Can you tell us something about how
it was to be in New York at this time? One wonders
how far we are really able to understand, today, how
'open' a city could have been - we are used to urban
spaces being far more controlled, everything being
clearly owned, and there being little opportunity to
use and experiment.
CG: SoHo, in particular, was in great flux. It had
come out of an era of light manufacturing which was
no longer economically feasible in multi-story build
ings. Businesses were moving to New Jersey. This left
vacant buildings. Artists snuck into these buildings
251
COLLAPSE VII
(with the landlords' awareness) and fixed them up
with plumbing and heating. SoHo was a twenty-nine
block area, so there were quite a few opportunities
there, for those who could do their own work, who
were willing to take the chance of being chucked out,
and who could use huge space. And this changed the
type of art being made: Rosenquist started making
very large paintings, for example.
There are always places in the city where restructur
ing is going on - the rich move out, the poor move in.
Or vice-versa. As artists, we had to 'hide', to not put
our plants out on the fire escapes, to put black curtains
over the windows at night. We knew we were not legal.
The Broome Street Expressway was scheduled to come
through from New Jersey to Brooklyn, wiping out all
those buildings, so our time was limited. ButJulieJudd
single-handedly fought the city and convinced them
that So Ho was now an art centre and important to New
York. So the Expressway was cancelled and suddenly
we (artists) were 'legal.' Prices of the buildings, which
the artists had fixed up into glorious, original places,
skyrocketed. The buildings were clearly owned, in
SoHo, all over, but they were 'in rem' - meaning they
couldn't pay their taxes and were therefore in danger of
being repossessed by the city. This is why the owners
let artists live and work there, so that they could be
receiving some kind of rent, illegal or not.
252
Goodden - FOOD and the City
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C: Yves-Alain Bois has said that Matta-Clark's critical
project was to understand the status of architecture
as 'waste-in-waiting' - emphasising a perspective
of ephemeral process on architecture and building.
Matta-Clark himself also speaks at one point, in 1971,
of a 'primeval cannibal chaos', the 'alien subjugated
life' that might break out and destroy civilisation.
There are other mentions of cannibalism, leading us
to wonder about its significance.
CG: Tue 'waste-in-waiting' idea is exactly how Gordon
saw every dilapidation. As to cannibalism, Gordon's
written conversation with Lee Jaffe, suggesting that
he donate his body to FOOD ['just imagine what a
253
COLLAPSE VII
fabulous treat you would make . . . '] and that cannibal
ism was the ultimate experience, in my opinion was a
mental way of getting close to the idea of body contact
in an extreme way. Gordon was not gay in any sense
of the word, but he was languished over by gays, now
and then, specifically Rauschenberg and Jeffrey Lew.
Gordon catered to this in a very mild sense - mild
flirtation, I would say. Gordon was the most male of
males and never followed through on any latent teasing
homosexual interest. He had an avid interest in sex and
was loyal to the core. However, in the seventies (being
the tail-end of the flower-child period, where free love
was rampant and nude body demonstration abounded
- and, in my belief, any artistic soul is interested in
all bodies, regardless of gender), thoughts of body
contact with same sex were not prohibited in thought.
In dance, particularly Steve Paxton's contact dances,
there was a lot of body contact between all males and
females, disregarding all ancient prohibitions.
C: But this notion of the consumption of the body
is also symbolically about ephemerality and proc
ess: the 'primeval cannibal chaos', or the repressed,
continuous nature of reality, is itself 'homosexual', it
is a homogeneity that continually decomposes and
conjoins with itself . . .
254
Goodden - FOOD and the City
CG: I agree. Many of Gordon's ideas were plays on
words and meanings, rather than actuality. It was
rather difficult to understand Gordon in conversation,
frequently, as he spoke in circles - his mind was racing
faster than he could verbalize and so he would pick
up a portion of this idea and speak it, while that idea
fed into the next idea and he would pick up a portion
of that idea. So that as these circles of ideas spiralled
through his brain, the listener was getting only bits of
each circle of verbalizations. But if one listened long
enough, all the circles would finally interconnect and
one's own brain could sort through and make sense
of the connections . . . rather like the experience of
speed reading.
C: In the early medieval philosophy of property and
ownership, a dispute arose over whether Franciscan
monks betrayed their renunciation of property by
eating food provided by the order: the question being
whether, and at what point, ingestion implies owner
ship. We know that the question of ownership is at
stake in Fake Estates . . .
CG: Yes, I do think the legal aspect o f ownership, and
the questions that ultimately arise from it, was a part
of the fascination. I remember his excitement about
finding out that these survey errors existed and that
he could 'have' them.
255
COLLAPSE VII
C: . . . But using food in creative practice can also be a
way to highlight not only process or transformation,
but also the consumption of artwork, and its incorpora
tion. With FOOD, was there an agenda of making and
living art that, in being geared toward consumption
( ie being food, and therefore consumable) ironically
couldn't be commercially consumed? In the sense that
one could maintain an artistic practice that was con
tinually lived, consumed and incorporated in a social
context, and was not accessible to the art market, at
the time beginning to commercially burgeon?
CG: Yes, I think that must have been so, though
subliminally. After all, Gordon did try to sell his art
piece, FOOD, to Castelli, and Castelli actually did
take a look. What I remember of the seventies was
a move towards Conceptualism. One artist had his
opening piece at the Whitney and it was a block of
ice covered by dry maple leaves. Every day the block
melted a little more, making a different pattern of
water as it melted. Its own shape also changed with
the melting, and the placement of the leaves changed.
It was not exactly a piece that one could 'buy', but
nonetheless, very interesting. This makes me think
of dance . . . especially Trisha Brown. Her pieces, her
choreography, was a lot about intellectual thought.
She was very sculptural, very spatial, in her pieces.
256
Goodden - FOOD and the City
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could only be (excitedly) thought about.
C: What was cooked at FOOD?
CG: Lunches and dinners. Soups, sandwiches, salads,
stews for lunches, and anything from Cajun cooking
to Castillian cooking to vegetarian, Japanese, French
- whatever any of us felt like - for dinners. We usually
had about three choices for a dinner plate. We baked
our own bread and had a dessert chef - Joanne Akalitis
of the Mabou Mines theatre group was one. Robert
Prado, of the Philip Glass Ensemble, a saxophonist,
was our main lunch chef. One day we got in a bunch
257
COLLAPSE VII
of soft-shelled crabs from Maryland. We covered the
ash tables with newspapers and dumped the cooked
crabs onto each table. If Robert could see that people
didn't quite know how to attack their crabs, he would
sit down with them, sporting a giant white chef's hat,
and show them how to crack and suck on their crabs.
As a cook in real life, Gordon was very experimental.
At FOOD we served halved, hard-boiled eggs, with
yolks removed and broth in the cavity, into which we
squirted, via syringe, a few live brine shrimp. This was
Gordon's idea. We also served quail egg salads - he
loved the pickled quail eggs. The 'famous' Bone Din
ner, served at FOOD, was Gordon's idea.
258
Goodden - FOOD and the City
C: In what spirit was the Bone Dinner served - could
you describe something of the preparations, the atmos
phere, how people responded? Who was 'invited' ?
CG: Everyone was invited - I t was a public restaurant,
so whoever came, came. The Bone Dinner was part
of the Guest Chef programme. They were held on
Sundays. Gordon was the Guest Chef for the Bone
Dinner. He wanted to serve a 'sculptural' meal. We
went early morning to the meat market and loaded
the pickup truck with huge leg bones and joints which
had been sawed into manageable sizes. We also picked
up frogs legs and chicken drumsticks. We bought
unsweetened gelatin (ground bone) and made an aspic
salad. We got oxtail bones from another meat market
and made oxtail soup. Tue main plate was the array
of different sized bones. The big bones, cut into rings,
were stuffed with wild rice, wild mushrooms and more
. . . After the dinner, the plates were taken back to the
musician, Richard Peck, who scrubbed the bones up
and handed them to Hisachika Takahashi, a sculp
tor/painter/jeweller. Hisachika drilled holes through
the bones and they were strung on a hemp rope as a
necklace so that the customer could wear his dinner
home. People loved it. We had very little anti-reaction.
There were some who wondered what on earth we were
doing, but by now, people who came to Guest Chef
days were pretty accustomed to whatever surprise we
were about to serve up.
259
COLLAPSE VII
C: Ultimately, what kind of enterprise was FOOD? a restaurant, a piece of living art, a support network
for the artists who could work there, a place to hang
out - which of these aspects came first, and how much
planning and conceptualizing was involved, or was it
just another adventure . . . ?
CG: Certainly it was another adventure, but I wouldn't
say 'just' another adventure . . . To me FOOD was a
restaurant, a social place, a place to serve fun food to
friends, and hopefully pay for itself - but I did have
a main social interest which was to provide financial
support for the artists. To Gordon it was an art piece
- a grinding, revolving, changing, regurgitating, con
suming thing, like his agar pieces. People came in thin
and went out fat. People came in poor and earned
enough to continue to make their art. Food came in
as slabs of meat and fish and became roasts, stuffed
stomachs, stews. Flour barrels became bread. The
germs of ideas of choreography began over lunches.
A pick-up full of bones became a tasty dinner became
a necklace around the neck.
260
COLLAPSE VII
Where's the Edge of the Pot?
I n terview with AO&
Since 2008, Vienna-based 'semi-nomadic organization '
AO& have developed and refi,ned a unique practice which
sees them bringi,ng their knowledge ofproduce and culi
nary skills to bear in extensive tours of the landscape and
intensive occupations of buildings which become spaces
for the serving of their strikingly minimalist, concentrated
multi-course meals. COLLAPSE met the members ofAO&
(Philipp Furtenbach, Philipp Riccabona, Thomas A. Wisser,
Rainer Fehlinger) during their Fall 2011 residency, in a
derelict shop.front on the Lower East Side ofNew York, billed
as '240 hours nonstop ambulatory on ground aggregation,
accommodation, eating and drinking plants and animals
of the season, aliments of disclosed NY origi,n, multiple
differentiated courses'.
263
COLLAPSE VII
AO&'s policy ofpersonally sourcing every one of their
ingredients contributes to an intimatefamiliarity with every
aspect of their meals' preparation . .if in effect their work
entails a rigorous insistence on thefull inhabitation of the
problem offood in contemporary society, it certainly goes
beyond the moralism of the various environmentalistfood
lobbies. As they describe, their 'perverse' practice ofcookery
extends our understanding of Jood preparation ' beyond
the confines of the kitchen, exposing social, ecologjcal and
architectural dimensions ofthe culinary.
COLLAPSE: You are about to open for the first night of
your residency here in New York. But you haven't just
arrived. How has the preparation process worked in
this case - did you have an idea of the ingredients you
want, or do you just go out and see what is available?
AO&: We arrived twelve days ago and had to prepare
the location as well - clearing the space, putting the
cooking equipment together, the dining table, the
lighting, etc. All we brought from Austria was salt and
wine, so we also had to source all other ingredients
during that time.
We do have an idea of what we are looking for, in
general categories - you need animals, produce, grain,
fats and oils, and so on. To create a twelve-course
menu, it takes a certain variety of ingredients. We were
looking for farms online and talked to people, found
264
AO& - Where's the Edge of the Pot?
out about farmers' markets in Manhattan, checked out
their products and then drove around to visit the farms.
C: If you're arriving with a set of requirements, does
that mean the menu itself doesn't respond to the site?
AO& : We don't ever work with ingredient lists or
anything like that; we go to a place and search for
fields of ingredients, so to speak, and then work with
whatever we manage to put together. So the menu
does respond to the site, because you have to work
with what the people here produce. If there are no
lemons to be found, you have to use vinegar or the
juice of unripe fruits . . .
C : So, you find produce and follow the commercial
chain back to the producer?
AO&: Yes, in this case, that's what we did. Once you
start somewhere, you get recommendations as well,
and we also found this rooftop farm, for example. So
you could say it starts as a collection of places, of sites.
You go there and you actually take a look at the land,
and at the farm, and you talk to the proprietors, and it
becomes very clear whether this is someone you want
to work with, or not.
C: Does it happen often that you decide not?
265
COLLAPSE VII
AO&: It can happen, sometimes you follow a wrong
lead; but seldom. Now we've got a good sense for it.
C: New York is not the first place one would think to
look for people growing food. So, what sort of things
did you find in your travels?
AO&: Tue average product is pretty bad, but as with
anywhere else, there are some extraordinary ingredi
ents to be found. In our research we discovered there
is quite a culture of inner-city farming, and we had to
include this. We found a one and a half acre rooftop
farm on top of an industrial building in Queens, they
grow there all summer; this is our most local producer.
Tue special ingredients like oil, vinegar, sugar, were
quite hard to find in New York, especially since the
production of vinegar seems to be tightly restricted.
You need a special license, you're not allowed to make
vinegar, because all fermentation processes are strictly
regulated in New York State. And it was only after
days of research that I found one producer of apple
cider vinegar . . .
So, ultimately, with these goods, we end up in a
situation in the kitchen where, in the best scenario,
with every ingredient you use, you've immediately got
images of the place where it came from.
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C: So your experience in the kitchen is changed a lot
by that sourcing process.
AO&: Yes. It is a kind of luxury to have this maximum
transparency: knowing the people personally, knowing
what they are like, knowing the products, and what
they put into the products.
C: But you aim for the same close relation to the space
you're cooking in too. How important is the site to
your work, and how much work was necessary on this
space in New York?
AO& : That goes hand in hand, yes. Cooking isn't our
exclusive focus; it's more of a tool for us, a powerful
instrument to gather people together. A lot of our
work is about creating temporary settings, working
with different sites, to enable unconventional forms
of communication. We often turn a place that at first
sight may not look very hospitable into something
that is. In this case, in New York, it was a lot of work
from the moment we arrived up until now, to change
this place from what it was to what it is now. We have
created areas for cooking and dining that are high
lighted, very clean and well-maintained. When we first
walked into this space, you couldn't really imagine hav
ing any kind of social communication situation here
with food involved. We had to clean everything out,
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brush everything, hose everything down; we brought
the kitchen equipment together bit by bit; and then
brought in the theatrical lighting, to establish a situ
ation for eating. To make it somewhere where people,
even if they first think 'what is this place?', eventually
feel comfortable and get to talk to each other because
they feel at ease in it, they don't feel the urge to leave.
This meticulous preparation plays a significant
role in a lot of projects we do. It's the kind of work
you probably wouldn't normally want to do; but by
doing this, spending days on our knees scrubbing, in
cleaning a space we also conquer the site. That's really
important for us, in order to get the confidence as to
how we can act after that in here.
C: To make the space into your own environment . . .
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AO& : Yes, we justify our presence through the effort
we put into this work; also, it's a kind of devotion or
humility, doing something that normally would be
done faster and cheaper, using machines or cheap
labour.
C: So that work of preparing the building becomes a
part of the food preparation?
AO& : Totally, yes. You could even include this in the
set of orthodox rules according to which our ingredi
ents are brought together. If you touch every single
corner of the place and prepare everything, you put a
lot of hard work into the place, and you feel more at
home because you know every part of it.
Like our project in the mountains [Leben und Sterben
in den Bergen, Qoo8], where we dug a massive hole and
created a whole environment in there. It's the same
thing with the space and with the food - standing in
the kitchen while you prepare things, it's just different
to cook with things where you associate every single
ingredient with a certain person or place or story. You
could ask, where's the edge of the pot? - the whole
space and context is important. Also in terms of taste,
I think eating the same things in different situations
changes the experience. And to have these rules is
also a limitation. It makes it more interesting for us
if we don't just come here and go to a shop and buy
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anonymous products to cook with. In following our
rules, we really try to establish a connection to the
landscape here, to the culture, to the environment.
C: So part of the work is to do with creating a convivial
situation around food, and that involves co-ordinating
yourselves with all the materials - from the building
to the ingredients. But where does the rigorous nature
of the culinary practice originate? And are the rules
very rigid, or do they change for different projects?
AO&: As far as the ingredients are concerned, it has
been the same in every project for the last five years:
We only use products where we know the source, where
we have a personal relationship - meaning that one of
us has been at the site where the product comes from.
There are some exceptions - for instance, if we know
someone really well and we trust him or her, and they
come with something they brought, let's say, from
Madagascar, and they spent some time with the farmer
at the farmer's site, and took a photo of themselves,
and tell us a story about this, we also discuss whether
we can use it. So sometimes we take these decisions,
and sometimes the story isn't good enough ! We have
to feel related to it.
In this case, as we discussed, we went to markets,
we did online research, we found rooftop farms; these
are places we have been to ourselves. We always try for
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as many of us as possible to go visit the places; but in
this case, for pragmatic reasons - we didn't have that
much time: twelve days preparation, twelve days for
the show - Rainer did a lot of the travelling while we
were preparing the space itself. We put together a tour
from what we had seen at Union Square market and
similar places, of things we thought were well-produced
and interesting for our cooking. Rainer went to upstate
New York and New Jersey, and actually visited the
places we thought were relevant or interesting to us.
And he established the connection to the farmers,
and then showed us the pictures, told us the stories
related to that.
In Austria we have a very elaborate network already
of people who make all kinds of extraordinary things they have very small fishponds, for example, or breed
old strains of produce, and have those very distinctive
things in their market stands. But here we had to build
it up from scratch, just like the whole setting we've
constructed.
C: You have already said that you don't use recipes as
such. But there is a certain style of cooking, and certain
procedures you use, that seem to involve a distillation
and concentration of flavours; and the sequence of the
menu here in New York seemed to be very systematic.
How would you describe that aspect of what you
do - what is aimed at in the experience of the meal?
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AO&: Since we can't rely on a constant supply of ingre
dients, and we don't know beforehand what our stock
will look like, we never work with recipes. But there
are certain techniques we use a lot, often involving
long-running processes such as concentrations, reduc
tions or fermentations. And since we have a strong
relation to our products, we try to highlight their
quality through a certain minimalism and dramaturgy.
It's also related to the way of thinking I [Philipp
F.] learnt fifteen years ago from studying architecture.
I was really interested in urbanism and urban struc
tures, how they try to work; and I also developed an
interest in working with sites, and the relationships
which are important: social, historical, infrastructural,
or, say, psychogeographical - I learnt to consider all
those different aspects at the same time, which is still
important for me. This is a way of thinking you can
also use to think about creating a menu or a dish:
You have different textures, different tastes, different
colours, different meanings and associations of each
ingredient - like a tag-cloud, you might say. And that's
what happens in discussions that we have before we
start with the preparation, or while we prepare. So you
have this context around each ingredient, which has
certain qualities, and around that, and in combina
tion with more ingredients, you create one dish. And
then there's also a context around this single plate,
in relation to what came before, and what will come
afterwards.
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The sequence of courses is directly related to each
event's dramaturgy. There is a formal logic, an arc.
We usually start with an empty table, and at first, no
drinks will be served. The first course of a prologue
of liquids would be a glass of tap water, followed by
a saltless, basic root vegetable broth and some more
intense stocks. Then the diners get the first glass of
wine, as a course on its own, and the food will subse
quently become more solid, travelling through plants
and animals of the season.
C: If the necessity to feel 'related' to each ingredient
can be interpreted as some kind of ethical interven
tion or idea of how our relationship to food 'should'
be, isn't it one that's idealistic, in the sense that no
urban population could sustain these kinds of direct
relationships? Do you see it as a model in that way?
AO&: No, not at all; it's a perversion, a luxury. We
started to work like this in order to define a new kind
of luxury. It's not political, it's not the same as slow
food, the organic movement, and so on. It wouldn't
make sense to propagate this in other societies that are
not like ours, you know. You can interpret it as a politi
cal thing - a lot of people do - but it didn't originate
like that. Food and its quality is very standardized
nowadays, even in gourmet restaurants.
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C: Like an 'international style' of cookery.
AO& : They mostly buy the same stuff from their own
suppliers, they have these big refrigerated trucks that
come with peaches from France, foie gras . . . from one
high-ranking restaurant to the next, they deliver to all
of them. Whereas you could say that even if what we
do is very elaborate, with multi-course menus, and
with a certain technique applied to it, most of the
people on this planet don't even have the choice to
say, on purpose, "I'm only going to use ingredients
where I know where they come from" - because they
don't know anything else. This is how most people on
the planet cook, out of necessity. To do what we're
doing on purpose is a phenomenon of wealth, of
being disconnected. This is why we call it a perver
sion, and we are well aware of that. The only thing
that justifies our method is the society we use it in. It
wouldn't make sense to take this to a so-called third
world country, because this is just what they do: they
cook very simply, most of the time using very good
products, better ones than we have.
We often try to strip away everything manicured
or unnecessary and present the ingredients as they are
because this is already very valuable, especially if you
assemble them in the way we do; and we try to have
excellent stock from small producers.
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C: It is certainly noticeable that in each dish one can
taste every ingredient. Last night, you presented New
York tap water as the first course, and in the very
delicately-flavoured soup for the second course one
could still taste the water as one of the ingredients.
AO&: It is interesting for us to start from the water
and build up really slowly; you become much more
sensitive about textures and tastes by starting like
this. And what we also like about this is that it irritates
people. They think they're going to get a nice menu,
and then all they get at first is tap water. Maybe they
think it's funny; then they get this subtle, saltless soup
and some of them are getting worried - what is this
that we're gonna be eating tonight? ! And sometimes
when we have a series of nights, and people pay, you
have a situation where people are thinking, OK, they
start with water, no bread on the table, and they start
to get angry. After a few courses, you can see how they
feel more and more at ease and happy.
C: Going back to Philipp's architectural background,
one could say that in your projects the importance of
food is in the way it acts as an architectural element,
in that it affects the circulation of people and com
munication. And that this menu sequence is a kind of
carefully constrained demonstration of the power of
food to affect the social situation.
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AO& : We are interested in this question of sites and
the communication which takes place on a site or in a
village or in a part of the city; and to make an interven
tion in that situation. And the food plays some role
because it makes people stay in one place at the same
time. You can make them feel comfortable, and they
open up because they lose their barriers. That's why we
use food. Food serves as a vehicle to reassure people, to
enhance communication. And in regard to my [Philipp
F.] architecture and urbanism background, I consider
this to be the same thing, it's a kind of soft urbanism,
rather than the normal declaration, "I have decided
how we can develop this part of the city, and here is
the master plan". You can feel the power of food to
act in this communicational way very strongly if you
work like this.
In the project Studies on Hospitality [Aug-Sept QOIO ],
we travelled through a valley in the Austrian mountains
with bandwagons for thirty-five days: We bought four
bandwagons, two for equipment and food (of course,
local foods; mostly donations from private gardens)
and the others for our personal belongings and what
we need to stay overnight, so that we could stay any
where. So we started this journey, not knowing where
we would sleep; we went to every village, to several
houses and tried to convince people to spontaneously
let us change their homes into semi-public spaces, to
convert them into a guesthouse, you could say. We saw
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ourselves as some kind of task force, ringing doorbells
and trying to figure out social relationships - who is
important, who is well-connected, who is lonely . . . Then
we invited people over to the temporary host's place,
and they were allowed to invite some neighbours as
well. We walked all the way with our handwagons and
visited every single village there. It took five weeks,
that was the minimum time period it made sense to
do it in. And it was really successful in every village.
What helped with this, again, was this element of
humility or submissive behaviour: in this case, in the
pushing of the handwagons. If you'd have done this by
car, pulled up and said, "Hi, we're here, in the back of
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our car we have all we need to cook for you", it wouldn't
be half as successful. Arriving with the handwagons
has this submissive aspect again: When we started the
project, we looked at ourselves and said, "Hey, you
guys look so stupid with those handwagons . . . " - it
really felt strange. Beautifully styled, with nothing but
waterproof black bags, on purpose. Our appearance
was really strict, only grey and black, the wagons
were black - the aesthetics are really important here,
to ensure it's open to more people. We were aware of
the strange and, at first sight, maybe even intimidating
impression we made, that's why we wanted to make
sure that everything looked 'proper' .
So, we went to people's houses and convinced them,
sometimes within ten or fifteen minutes. We entered
their houses; and within hours they had four guys in
their kitchen, pulling open every drawer and starting
to prepare food. It's very intimate; there's a lot of trust
involved, if you let someone in your kitchen - this is
probably the most intimate place you can work in a
private home. During the period of this journey we
cooked dinners in twelve private homes and fed about
five hundred people, with all ingredients foraged
locally. For one weekend, we reopened an old hotel/
restaurant that had been closed for almost thirty years,
and another time we served deer stew at the local gas
station . . .
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Incidentally, we got funding from regional develop
ment because we declared it as 'performative regional
development' . And they like our approach, because
what usually happens in 'regional development' is that
there's a pot of money, it's given to the communities,
and they do some project directed from a desk. We don't
just come up with a concept, we apply our methods
and try to really get deep into the social situation.
C: From the many elements you describe that create
that ability to enter into a new situation, it sounds like
you were putting yourself at their mercy, rather than
arriving and saying 'we've got something to offer you'
- this submissive position is very different from the
idea that you are there to benefit 'the people' with art
practice; perhaps a counter to the notion that art can
provide a social glue to bring people back together.
Often in regional development projects it's a question
of people airdropping art onto a community.
AO& : And in fact of bringing artists together - it's
self-referential art world stuff.
Another project in the same valley two years before
involved digging a hole by hand, one hundred and sixty
cubic metres. It took us ten days. So, farmers would
come and say to us, "I can come with the machine and
do it for you in a day". And we said, you know, that
then the whole place would look messed-up. And also
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again, because people are still kind of conservative in
the mountains, we knew that otherwise these people
were going to think that we were just some freaks from
far away - which we are, basically ! But by doing that,
by being there digging with our hands, old people
were walking by, saying "what are they doing?" And
then people started to talk in the village, you know:
"It's nice to see young people work so hard ! " So they
had respect for what we were doing, and that really
opened up a relationship.
C: And why were you digging this hole?
AO&: Digging the hole was part of the preparations
for Leben und Sterben in den Bergen ('Life and Death in
the Mountains') [Aug - Sept 08], one of our biggest
and most important works. We spent nine weeks in
a remote alpine area (Grofles Walsertal) , and the first
half was dedicated to creating the site for the actual
project to happen. We dug that hole in a circle of trees,
filled it up with gravel from the bottom of the valley
to have an even surface, installed an 800 kg oven and
an additional smaller one for cooking, built a huge
tent to make the site rainproof; we had solar panels
for lighting and a sound system, we spent all day and
night there.
The actual project involved all kinds of meetings
and events, from avant-garde electronic concerts and
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DJs to lectures on terminal care and legal issues, or
pagan burial rites in the alpine area, the first grand
public council of the valley, etc.
C: Thinking about it in an art context, a lot of recent
work with food and conviviality has tended to recuper
ate for a gallery setting (albeit 'relational') something
that, with Matta-Clark's FOOD in the seventies,1 was
1. See C. Goodden, 'FOOD and the City' , present volume.
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a genuine experiment, along the lines you have been
describing - food and the ritual of eating as a social
agent. It seems like you are inhabiting the social space
in a far more interesting way, a way that can't necessar
ily be recaptured into the 'contemporary art' system.
AO&: The art field is interesting for us primarily as a
way to be able to work on a larger scale, more interna
tionally, and to be able to finance the work as well. Also
it's a kind of cover you need for legal reasons, because
if you work in this cooking context, you always have
to make sure that everything is declared properly, and
that you have all the legal issues cleared. And what
we do here is not legal at all - we work with propane
indoors, we serve alcohol, we don't have a license for
anything, we aren't even officially allowed to work in
this place . . .
Since we only ever work in a project-oriented way,
it would be very difficult to get all the permissions
for every single project, you would wait for weeks
and weeks. And if people ask what we are doing, if
they ask me what my profession is, to say 'artist' is the
easiest thing. Of course it's perceived as art by certain
people, what we're doing.
C: But you're not concerned about locating yourself
in that context?
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AO&: It comes in handy sometimes, but this was never
the main point of interest. Our group basically started
with a restaurant in Vienna, Saint Charles Alimentary,
that was working in collaboration with a pharmacy,
and was trying to think the concepts of medicine and
nutrition more holistically. But we have never really
tried to put a label on what we do. There are differ
ent ways to navigate through situations - with some
people it's helpful to present yourself as a chef who is
running a gourmet kitchen; with other people it might
be helpful to say you're doing a sociological project;
and with some people you just say you're an artist. In
fact, I think the work speaks for itself, and you can
decide what you want to call what we do.
During the early years it was more difficult to make
out what we're doing; but as the body of work is grow
ing, it's easier to get a sense of what our interests are.
C: So Saint Charles was the first time you worked
together in a food-related context?
AO&: After this schooling in architecture, I [Philipp F.]
went to Berlin and worked in a restaurant, because I
needed a job for two days a week to pay the bills, and
I was interested in cooking. I started as a dishwasher
in a really good restaurant. So that was the beginning
of taking the cookery thing more seriously. And then I
got a chance to work full-time as a sous-chef, so I did
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that for two years. During this time, the chef [Claudio
AndreattaJ was a really good master for me. And one
day he told me I could choose what I wanted to do,
a project within this restaurant. Now this was at the
time that I was just about to start working with meat.
So I said that before I start to work with meat, I want
to kill an animal myself. I made this short film God is
a Rabbit, it was about a rabbit dying and being eaten,
diametrically filmed, just with orthogonal views.
When I came back to Vienna and happened to find
a big loft apartment to live, I opened a temporary,
illegal restaurant. The brother of an old friend of mine
[Philipp R.] came to help me and got really interested.
So together we were investigating new things. I didn't
want to work with this gourmet stuff anymore. We
started to choose living animals, for the next two
months, to be ready to be cooked; and we started to
look at each vegetable, thinking that there must be a
wild form of it; we started to buy books and read up
about this. For the first two years, both of us spent four
months a year outdoors, just learning about all these
things. And also, for instance, there was a project where
we chose a new-born pig; people could buy shares of
this pig, and they got sent bulletins every month about
how the pig was growing up, and so they built up this
personal relationship and learnt what it means to eat
meat that you know.
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C: So you were already concerned with fully inhabiting
the question of where food comes from?
AO&: Yes, but it was also this ritualistic viewpoint, in a
very neutral sense - just to be aware of every procedure
that is going on, to really question every procedure.
And then these pharmacy guys found us, and they
asked us if we could develop a concept of bringing back
nature to pharmacy. This concept included a restaurant
which became really successful, and we had a lot of
press, even international. Knowing that we were now
going public with our work, that was the crucial point
where we said, if we're going to do something public,
there has to be some specific characteristic about it,
so that's how it started.
The restaurant was a very small, narrow place seat
ing no more than fourteen people. And even then,
our work had this performative side to it; we didn't
have a menu or anything, people couldn't just order
food, we took care of them. It was a place where all
kinds of people would walk in and out all day, and
the 'backstage' area was bigger, and maybe even more
important, than the actual dining area . . . We played
old Sun Ra tapes all the time, and concerts took place.
It was an open kitchen, and on weekends, we prepared
about a dozen courses; that was when we started to
cook in a more precise and differentiated way.
COLLAPSE VII
C: What are the background of the others in the group,
and how did they become involved?
AO&: [Thomas W.] I have studied linguistics and
philosophy - my masters' thesis is about theories of
metaphor. I'm a musician and writer, I released some
records, and I also work as a DJ. My work with Philipp
and Philipp started in 2007.
[Philipp R. ] I have many different interests, I
worked as a carpenter, I had a strong connection
with farming, and worked in Vienna as a salesman for
farmers as well. Before I started to work with Philipp
I studied medicine for two years. But at that time I
didn't want to go a classical way, I wanted to start with
something totally independent for myself. Right from
the beginning I was sure all my disparate interests
found a good playground in this work.
[Rainer F.] Concluding Studies in Music and Media
technology, I joined the group in 2010 after several
years of involvement, assisting in various projects.
Apart from AO& I live and work in Linz and Vienna
as a recording artist. I also hold a truck licence, so I'm
the driver of our hearse.
C: Where did the hearse come from?
AO&: The hearse is a private donation from a friend,
a Mercedes 709 , 4 . 6 metric tons, dark grey colour.
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We had it refurbished in the Czech Republic. It was
not a ceremonial vehicle - it used to hold up to ten
coffins and was built for big cities and catastrophes.
We are running it in association with SOS, the State
of Sabotage. 2
C: You visited several Alpine resorts in the hearse [Feed
the Rich, February 2010] to serve soup to the people
there - you called this an 'non-oppositional contribu
tion to the so-called critique of capitalism' .
2. See http://www. sabotage.at.
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AO& : Criticism of our economic system is mostly
oppositional and short-sighted at the same time. We
are aware of our social background and its benefits and
wanted to reverse the idea of charity, as an embracing
gesture and to raise questions.
C: Is it possible that the group could evolve practices
completely outside the culinary context?
AO& : We have already been working without any
food or cooking involved - our walks, the hearse tours
Visitation and Memento Mori. . . - and we see food as a
tool, serving many other purposes than just nutrition.
C: If not food is therefore not the main concern, what
would be the central characteristic of the group?
AO& : We are interested in creating situations and
experimenting with settings that strengthen commu
nicational processes.
C: Experimenting with the in-between social spaces
that enable other processes to carry on, as when people
'do lunch', for instance?
AO&: Right, and we found out that food is a powerful
instrument to do so. It's a fundamental necessity to
eat, and it makes people spend time with each other a unifying experience that is life-supporting, but also
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involves trust. Anything you ingest could be poisonous
or even deadly.
C: Where did the name AO& come from?
AO&: In the Austrian countryside they had these tiny
grocery stores called A&O, it's an old grocery chain in
Austria. One day we found an abandoned old A&O.
They had just started to renovate this building and
pulled down the sign. So we took the sign and just
swapped the letters.
The direct meaning would be 'from the beginning
to the end, and beyond that' . Another interpretation
is this: The topic of death often plays a certain role in
our projects - the first big project was called Leben und
Sterben in den Bergen; then with John [Gerrard] we did
Brot und Tod ('Bread and Death') [Nov 2008] - in a
shut-down bread factory in Vienna.
No matter what belief or religion one has, it doesn't
matter - as an atheistic, intellectual or a religious per
son, death plays a role for everyone, a smallest common
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denominator, you could say. And if you're interested
in living systems, it's important also to deal with that.
C: This New York residency is taking place concur
rently with the exhibition ofJohn Gerrard's new work
Cuban School at Simon Preston Gallery. How did you
meet John Gerrard?
AO&: We met John in Q008
he discovered our work
in this little restaurant we had and saw some relation to
his art. He came to us, asked us a lot of questions and
-
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told us about his work. We started to collaborate and
became friends, we also came to realize some of our
projects through people we met via John. In his Vienna
art and production space he built an open kitchen
according to our needs for us to create portraits of
every season of the year in a series of multi-course
dinners . . .
There's a thematic connection between our approach
and John's works, like his Grow Finish Unit or the oil
derricks3 - it's about greater correlations of civilization,
and maybe its impending end.
C: This also seems to be one theme of Memento Mori
Tour [June 2010 ], where you visited 'places of execution'.
AO& : The Memento Mori tour was a portrait of a
certain area in Eastern Austria and parts of the Czech
Republic, with a focus on sites related to matters of life
and death, such as the nuclear power plant Temelin,
the oldest existing Neanderthal caves, a military train
ing ground, and the historical place of execution you
mentioned. We also visited the grounds of a seed bank,
and many other places. All those places create certain
associations; we foraged stinging nettles at every site
to brew liquid manure as a symbolic summary. In the
end, we threw it away.
3. See ], Gerrard and M . A. Morris, 'Corn Bomb', present volume.
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Photographs:p268, rasminaHaddad;p271,MarcLins;p272,Rainer
Fehlinger; p281,Philipp Furtenbach; p291, Markus Gohm
Sketches: Philipp Furtenbachfor AO&.
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KO M B U C HA
Kombucha is a fermented tea made with a symbiotic culture of
bacteria and yeast sometimes referred to as a SCOBY (acronym of
the above description) or a mushroom.
You will need a SCOBY. Ask someone who brews for a 'baby'
SCOBY or fish one out of a store bought bottle. (Every bottle
of kombucha brewed creates a new SCOBY within it - a small
mushroom-like disc that is the by-product of the larger batch of
kombucha and the surroundings of it being bottled.)
Next brew about two gallons of tea - I prefer a green tea - add
sugar 'to taste' (you need some sugar for the fermentation to occur),
let cool, and pour into a large glass container.
Then float a SCOBY in it for about two weeks (cover with a towel
so the mixture can breathe while protecting it from fruit flies) .
After two weeks you have a fermented tea and a baby SCOBY in
addition to the mother you originally floated.
Separate the baby from the mother and set the SCOBYs aside to
use again.
Now you bottle your tea in air tight jars, I use old wine bottles with
air tight stoppers.
Then let bottles sit in a dry airy cool place for two more weeks.
Refrigerate and drink when cool.
What you have is a carbonated tea that is full of 'good', pro-biotic
bacteria similar to yogurt.
The secret to success is finding the right spot as the SCOBY collects
and grows not only from the bacteria of the tea but also from its/
your surrounding environment, feeding back into an ecosystem in
a micro-form of permaculture.
COLLAPSE VII
Object Oriented Cookery
Graham Harman's claim that praxis distorts 'ontology'
as much as theory does,1 is an insight that has long
been missing in cookery praxis and theory. Ontol
ogy, for Harman, refers to a description of the basic
structural features shared by all entities.2 Cookery,
for our purposes, will be considered to refer to all
forms of cooking, including what happens in our
home kitchens. Many times cookery praxis is some
thing we take part in by consuming the practice of
professionals. But whether we cook or not, from the
gathering of ingredients to the eating of meals to the
metabolic emergence of nutrients in our bodies, the
feedback systems used to engage in complex analyses
of factors in human life such as hunger, nutrition and
environment are likely to be lost in the immediate
experience of food or the larger narratives in which
food participates. More often than not, the praxis of
1 . G. Harman, 'Intentional Objects for Non-Humans', PDF, at http://www.
europhilosophie.eu/recherche/IMG/pdf/intentional-objects.pdf, 4.
2. ' Henceforth, let "ontology" refer to a description of the basic structural
features shared by all objects, and let "metaphysics" signify the discussion
of the fundamental traits of specific types of entities.' G. Harman, 'On
Vicarious Causation', COLLAPSE II, 1 7 1 -205: 204.
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cookery distorts its 'being' to the extent that the pause
required to consider why, how, when, where and what
we eat, and how we participate by proxy in cookery,
is non-existent. So that we may, indeed must, ask the
question: In what sort of open or closed system does
cookery praxis take place?
Developed through his use of Heidegger's tool
analysis and Husserl's intentionality (extrapolated in
his essay 'Vicarious Causation'), Harman's 'Object
Oriented Ontology' [0 00] claims that the refusal to
recognize non-human objects and interactions reduces
all human praxis to anthropocentric proclivities that
fail to acknowledge other entities besides the human.
I want to consider this claim through Levi Bryant's
reading of 000, considering whether contemporary
cookery praxis can join with 000 in advancing the
critique of what Quentin Meillasoux has called 'Cor
relationism', defined as 'the idea according to which
we only ever have access to the correlation between
thinking and being, and never to either term considered
apart from the other' .3 What sort of extra-correlational
beings are required for cookery praxis in general?
And how might an ontological commitment to objects
inform cookery praxis? Given such a commitment,
cookery would have not only to acknowledge a real
outside of human experience, but also a real outside
3. Q Meillassoux, After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity ef Contingency,
trans. R. Brassier (London/NY: Continuum, 2008), 5.
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the immediate and actual human sensations of eating.
What is important is that, in considering a food as an
'object' independent of humans, an analysis becomes
possible in which we get a picture of how it behaves in
collectives of human and non-human actants.
As blasphemous as this may sound to a 'foodie' someone who 'has to know what they like, why they
like it, recognize why some foods are better than others
and want to have good tasting food all or certainly
most of the time'4 - cookery requires a concept of food
in which food is not only an object 'for us' - whether
inflated into higher ideals or considered in terms of
immediate sense perceptions - but also an object in
itselfwith capacities and tendencies undiscovered.
Cookery, by the very nature of its processes, must
allow for a concept of food that recognizes at the
very least object-to-object interaction. That is to say
that food has capacities in excess of human intention
and interaction, and we must recognize that food has
encounters outside of its relation to humans.
However, this is not to reduce food to a merely
empirical status, or to claim an absolutely independ
ent objectivity for it; for cookery also ought to avoid
superficial technical approaches that reduce food
to primordial units of an underlying actuality upon
which cookery can only operate. Although science can
4. N. Weston, 'Foodie: What is That, Anyway?', at http://www.slashfood.
com/2006/02/10/what·is·a·foodie·anyway/ixzzOp4mnMsLZ.
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certainly provide many productive analyses of what
food can do, there is more to food than is revealed
by science.
O BJECTS AND O M E LETTES
In 'Philosophical Ontology,' Roy Bhaskar asks, 'What
must our world be like for science to be possible?'s
To which Levi Bryant has added: what must our world
be like for science and our daily practices to be possible?6
Cookery, the object of our analysis here, is just such
a 'daily practice' .
From the fact that actual science experiments are
conducted under intentionally closed conditions,
Bhaskar concludes that the world in which science is
possible must be open. In other words, because the
world is an open system, scientists must work to close
systems in order to conduct experiments. Bhaskar's
insight is that objects, and therefore events, are 'out of
phase' in an open system; science works hard to close
that system. In order to experiment, science spends
most of its time eliminating chance, putting objects
into 'phase' or into place, in order to experiment.
The objects of science are transitive. Bryant extends
this analysis to our daily practices, concluding that
5. R. Bhaskar, A Realist Theory efScience (London: Verso, 2008) , 36.
6. L. Bryant, 'Roy Bhaskar: Transcendental Realism and the Transitive and
the Intransitive', at http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2009/02/02/roy
bhaskar-transcendental-realism-and-the-transitive-and-the-intransitive/.
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Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
intransitive objects have 'powers that operate without
producing a particular effect' .7 Objects have a real
endo-relational structure, a 'phase space' that exceeds
actualism, that is more than the local (transitive)
manifestation of an object. In other words, 'we do not
know what an object can do' .
I would like t o propose a parallel between Chefs
and Philosophers; it consists in examining what sort of
ontological commitments lead to what sorts of praxis.
To rephrase Bryant and Bhaskar's question: What must
our world be like in orderfor cookery to be possi,ble? If we
address cookery as a question of 'philosophical ontol
ogy', then this question also involves looking at how
the praxis of cookery distorts the image of this world.
Any amateur cook who has attempted to make an
omelette is aware not only of the many things that can
go wrong - that is to say, how hard one must work
to close a system in order to make the egg not stick,
brown, or dry out - but also of the powerful distor
tion that accompanies the exciting prospect of 'the
perfect omelette' - a distortion that consists in the
reduction of the egg to the mere ontological possibil
ity or potentiality of its' 'being' 'the perfect omelette' .
Th e professional, o n the other hand, can make sixty
omelettes in an hour, two at a time, and does so by
eliminating chance as much as possible.
The professional therefore operates the ultimate
ontological distortion, the most complete closing of
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the system. Professional objects have as their credo
'give (sell) a man a fish, and he can eat for a day',
rather than 'teach a man to fish, and he can eat for a
lifetime' . The 'professional' distortion masks where
food comes from, how it arrives at the table and what
potential it has with regard to other entities, disavows
chance and shapes ontology into a series of targets that
must be hit in order to maintain the normative goals
of the field in which the professional participates. A
flat ontology might act as a corrective to this distorted
field, which has a certain affinity with the primacy of
economics and markets - it is important to note that
the objects produced in this way by the professional
are designed to eliminate the amateur and produce
instead a consumer. A realist, flat ontology where 'all
things equally exist, yet they do not exist equally',
offers cookery the means to assert that food operates in
an open system. A flat ontology for cookery would be
capable of resisting the prism through which cookery
praxis re-presents the world, while at the same time
maintaining an awareness of the necessity of cookery
- and of its concomitant distortions - for humans.
Harman and Bryant affirm that 'objects are always
in excess of their relations' . 7 Two points follow from
this thesis: Firstly, qualities are not something an object
possesses or is, but rather something an object does.
7. L. Bryant, 'The Mug Blues', at http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.
com/2010/04/30/the-mug-blues/.
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Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
Secondly, to know an object is not to possess the skill
of recalling a set of essential qualities or properties
belonging to an object, but rather to know the powers
or capacities of an object.
As we shall see, in the absence of this ontological
commitment to open systems and a nonhuman real,
food emerges either - in an empirical realist approach
- as mere substance and the event of sensations, or - in
a transcendental idealist approach - as food (solely)
for thought. Either way, in an anti-realist gesture, food
is reduced to the traditional dyad substance/idea. To
see examples of both approaches in action, it will be
instructive to examine two popular movements or con
temporary practices of cookery in which debates sur
rounding cuisine take place: Molecular Gastronomy
(MG) and Slow Food (SF) . It will be seen how both
demonstrate a normative lack of ontological commit
ment, and pose barriers to an object-oriented cookery.
M O LECULAR GASTRO N O MY
In Spain in QOIO, what some have called 'the world's
greatest restaurant' shut its doors due to financial
losses. El Bulli, with the development and expansion of
haute cuisine as its charge, plans to reopen as a culinary
academy in 201 4 . Since 1987, El Bulli had developed
the 'science' and technologies of food production
and presentation, and pushed dining to the edge, by
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COLLAPSE VII
exploring how all senses ( sight, sound, texture, smell
as well as taste) can be engaged while eating. El Bulli
was thus at the forefront of what has been labelled
'Molecular Gastronomy' . Although El Bulli's chef
Ferran Adria resists the tag, MG has become a con
venient way of referring to technologically-advanced
practice that resists the traditional myths of cookery
while employing texture, sounds, smells and visuals
to create an 'extreme dining experience' . Adria's self
identification as 'deconstructivist', along with French
Chef Thierry Marx's claim of practicing 'techno-Emo
tional' cookery, prompts us to question what sort of
ontological commitments are present in the practices
of these two chefs in particular and in the movement of
MG more generally. Mostly concerned with shocking
diners by presenting unusual or unexpected sensual
encounters, MG, like most human praxis that refuses
to engage with the problematic of a real beyond human
mediation, more often than not finds only and exactly
what it seeks.
That this movement represents or identifies itself
as a science efthe senses is made clear by a recent report
entitled Molecular Gastronomy: A New Emergj,ng Scientific
Discipline. The report, mostly celebratory of MG as
a scientific discipline, dedicates its first section to a
study of the senses:
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Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
Before we begin to look in any detail at the chemistry
of food production and preparation, we should take
in a brief overview of the way in which we actually
sense the food we eat. Questions such as what makes
us enjoy (or not) any particular food and what it
is that makes one meal better than another are of
course largely subjective. Nonetheless, we all share
the same, largely chemical based, set of senses with
which to interpret the taste, aroma, flavor, and texture
of the food. In this section we will explore these
senses and note how they detect the various food
molecules before, during, and even after we have
consumed them. 8
Much like ancient Epicureans, Molecular Gastrono
mists' ontological commitments are to the senses as
heralds of truth. Much like ancient Epicureans, they
regard objects as reducible to primordial units such
as atoms or molecules. And much like contempo
rary Epicureans (but unlike ancient Epicureans) this
approach implicates pleasure as immediate, unbound
and limitless. Ultimately, in MG, food - the ultimate
non-human actant intertwined within human collec
tives - is 'undermined' and seen only as a means to
immediate aesthetic experience. Despite its ostensibly
8. P. Barham, L.H. Skibsted, W.L.P. Bredie, M.B. Fnist, P. M011er, J. Risbo,
P. Snitkj�r, L.M. Mortensen, 'Molecular Gastronomy: A New Emerging
Scientific Discipline', Chemical Reviews 1 1 0 (4) , 2010: 231 3-65, at http://
pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/cr900105w.
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radical and scientific credentials, in MG food is not
considered in itself, but only as a means to the end of
human pleasure or (more rarely) sustenance.
In some ways Molecular Gastronomic praxis is no
different to most other culinary praxes: Through the
study of time, temperatures, chemical reactions, and
cooking materials, food is prepared for consumption.
However, by carrying out this practice in radically
closed environments, these (mostly European) chefs
tend to finish up producing 'advanced' versions of
practices first developed by industrial food scientists
in the United States. The supposedly 'artisanal' MG
as contemporary haute cuisine, and industrial food
science as the basis for fast food, have at least three
things in common: 1 ) the methods and techniques
practiced; 2) distinctive ingredients such as additives,
traditionally rejected by haute cuisine; and 3) actual
fast or junk food products such as Fishermen's Friends,
Altoids, Corn Nuts and Pop Rocks, that float between
the two practices - produced by industrial food sci
ence, traditionally sold as junk food, and now used
as an ingredient by MG.
Haute cuisine's genesis is usually traced baked
to Fran�ois Pierre La Varenne and his codifying of
French cuisine. His book Le Cuisinier Franfois was
written in the Middle Ages and marks the transition
of French cookery into the modern age. One of the
revolutionary aspects of La Varenne's approach was
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Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
the abandonment of heavy exotic spices in favour of
regional herbs and local vegetables.9 La Varenne's
concepts of freshness and of food's ability to stand on
its own without much adulteration still stand today
in much of haute cuisine. However, if one were to
conclude that a defining characteristic of haute cuisine
consists in its logical extrapolation of a region's food,
then MG can only be seen as a logical extrapolation of
industrial science practiced as globalized food. And in
employing the products and methods of food science,
MG seeks to manifest the most exciting immediate
'experience' possible.
If they were to take into account a mind-inde
pendent and human-independent reality, Molecular
Gastronomists would have to consider food to be more
than aesthetic experience for us. A Molecular Gas
tronomist could gather organic ingredients, ingredients
chosen with concern not only for ecosystems humans
participate in and affect but also for food-to-food
interactions. This hypothetical chef could consider
not only an object's effect on systems but also that
of its absence from systems. She could then tinker
with objects, allowing for manifestations independent
of intentions, acknowledging that an 'object does',
allowing epistemology to flow from an open ontology
that admits that we do not know what an object can do.
9. See V. Leschinzer & A. Dakin, 'Theorizing Cuisine from Medieval to
Modern Times ', present volume.
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COLLAPSE VII
Techniques she could consider are fermentation and
developing probiotics, which stand in contrast to the
highly closed practice of MG. Kombucha, the ancient
art of brewing fermented tea, is a process of using
imperceptible bacteria that is specific to its brewing
facility. All kombucha is different and is celebrated
because it picks up bacteria from the environment
where it is brewed, independent of human manipula
tion - resulting in healthful 'good' bacteria. Such
experiments are taking place for many reasons other
than the tantalising of human senses: alternative
sources of protein, ecology, ethics and probiotics.
Foods will either invite you to eat them, or not,
for many reasons, of which human sensation is only
one. Therefore if cookery involves an object-oriented
understanding of food, it cannot be limited to a study
of immediate sensations involved in dining. Food
entices through basic Darwinian concepts: adaptation,
abundance, repetition and proximity. But it thereby
sets itself up to become ensnared in social convention
and markets that develop certain habits and play into
other human machinations. If MG does approach a
form of realism, object-to-object interaction and flat
ontology, it squanders its insights by making aesthetic
immediacy the only goal - a problem rooted in a lack
of interrogation of ontological commitments, which
leaves it open to being easily co-opted by neoliberal
capitalism. Tantalizing the senses above all leaves MG
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open to the charge of contributing to a spectatorship
culture: What is the role of the practitioner or artist
here? Is the goal to create food as a magician-genius
professional in order to 'blow people away', or is the
goal to create an engagement with food that empowers
others to enter the kitchen, whether professional or
not? MG's approach values professional closure at the
expense of opening up food to the amateur - a high
price to pay.
Here it is important to keep in mind the totemic
hero of MG: Roald Dahl's Willie Wonka. Wonka's
approach is best exemplified in his interaction with
Violet Beauregard. The chapter entitled Good-by Violet
begins with Wonka exclaiming:
When I start selling this gum in shops it will change
everything! It will be the end of all kitchens and all
cooking! There will be no more marketing to do ! No
more buying of meat and groceries ! There'll be no
knifes and forks at mealtimes ! No plates ! No wash
ing up ! No garbage ! No mess ! Just a little strip of
Wonka's Magic Chewing Gum and that's all you'll
need at breakfast, lunch and supper! This piece of
gum I just made happens to be tomato soup, roast
beef and blueberry pie, but you can have almost
anything you want.
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Of course Violet Beauregard - a child and a world
record gum-chewer - cannot resist, and reaches out
and snatches a piece. After chewing the gum she bal
loons up to twice her size and shows every sign of
turning into a blueberry. Here we see in no uncertain
terms what 'food' can 'do' . However, Dahl's Willie
Wonka is as much a social scientist as a food scien
tist. His goal goes beyond sensation; it is to 'change
everything' not by revolutionizing, but by eliminating
home amateur culinary praxis. Through Wonka, Dahl
explores immediate gratification even in the face of
an abject poverty where humans are reduced to bare
necessity. Candy is but a means for Willie Wonka in
his quest for total market domination - as can be
seen in his obsession with secrecy, his exploitation of
Oompa-Loompahs, and his creation of a fake rival in
Old Fickelgruber.
But what in Dahl's tale is a dramatization of the dark
side of desire, avarice and human society, set in dark
economic times resembling early twentieth-century
capitalism, has been misconstrued by MG as offering
a joyful playground for mad scientists, obsessed with
their own 'genius' and unaware or unwilling to admit
that they are manipulating more than just the senses.
The aforementioned self-descriptions of Ferran Adria
as 'Deconstructivist' and Thierry Marx as 'Techno
Emotional', are rather apt: deconstruction considers
above all the text (the meal) , and 'Techno-Emotional'
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describes a seamless stimulation by the author of
his passive eater, by means of secondary qualities or
'bundles of sensations'.
If we fail to acknowledge that we do not know what
an object can do, and approach and figure sensation as
an end point for cookery, the latter becomes a radically
closed system that terminates upon human swallowing.
We neglect the fact that food is a non-human actant
involved in human and non-human collectives. Food as
an object continues to translate you, and you continue
to translate food, even after swallowing; appearance
and taste are only a subset of a food's manifestation.
For example, someone who has a thyroid problem has
to regulate his or her metabolism. Through trial and
error and the introducing of minimal foods at certain
times, such a person is able to monitor the effects of
certain foods on their bodies during certain parts
of the day. This person would also have to monitor
the food-to-food interaction within their bodies. In
modulating such a diet we must consider food as
a non-human actant necessary in order for a whole
(person) to act. Tue elegant balance of, for example,
grapes and salmon has to be considered in terms
of the food-to-food interactions it might set off. All
the while a person's aesthetic proclivities cannot be
ignored. Such a condition perfectly illustrates how
praxis distorts, for it is only when we need to externally
regulate our metabolism that we recognize how much
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goes into the elegant system of processing food for
humans. Considering food as a non-human actant
not only offers us a path to avoid reducing cookery
to primordial units, thus destroying a proper object
analysis; it also avoids treating food solely in terms of
immediate sensations, ideological struggles or market
ing schemes. 0 0 0 rejects universal approaches that
homogenize the needs of individuals and hierarchize
humans above all others.
Where MG understands the proper being of an
object to be manifested in a phenomenal actualization,
object-oriented cookery would see the proper being
of an object as consisting in its virtual endo-relational
structure, which only ever expresses a part of its pow
ers in any manifestation or actualization. An apple
should never be reduced to 'sweet' or 'red' - that
would be only an apple for us. An apple apples even
after it enters into a set of exo-relations through which
objects translate each other.
These ontological commitments are important for
cookery for two reasons: 1) They are necessary in order
to recognize unintended consequences and therefore
to allow for a constant openness and a resistance to
monolithic approaches; 2) They establish an awareness
of praxis - which is to say that entering into exo
relations with objects as attractors, although maybe
constant, necessarily sets up a disposition to interaction
as 'wonder' . The disposition of wonder being: we are
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never totally sure of what an object can do, as when it
becomes entangled with other objects, it only presents
certain expressions owing to its exo-qualities. Without
the constant disposition of wonder we fall into the
trap of the professional - an instrumental being in the
service of nothing but markets, delivering all creative
breakthroughs into the hands of neoliberalism and
encouraging a spectator mentality on the receiving
side - the professional chef creating the professional
eater. The point is not just that we should be open to
unexpected things in cookery, but that if our disposi
tion of wonder, a form of affirmation, is restricted by
a concentration on the human senses, then an arcane,
highly laboratorial practice such as MG will create
nothing more than interesting meals for professional
spectators. MG begins with material forces (chemical
reactions . . . ) but ultimately turns those forces, the
'primordial units' of its cuisine, into nothing more
than sensation, without considering social material
consequences. Disciplines that base their practice on
aesthetic outcomes only further alienate food from
its source, process and eater. MG engineers consent
to alienate.
An apple manifesting in a pie is only expressing
certain powers as it enters into a set of exo-relations.
Once the apple has been translated into pie, a new
object is present, with apple as a part of its whole. But
the pie as an endo-relational structure can express itself
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in a myriad of ways: It can become a doorstop, fall off
the windowsill and feed animals, be used in a comic
gag to hit someone in the face, entice someone off a
diet, move through a human providing nourishment . . .
Th e apple present in that pie a s a part still has an
endo-relational structure and further powers of mani
festation - for example, providing fibre or vitamin C
to humans, being processed through fermentation, or
housing ants. MG presents us with a prime example
of an actualism that refuses the sort of open system
that could accommodate these powers, and aligns the
objective-subjective distinction with that of primary
and secondary qualities.
All chefs must consider which objects they wish to
exclude and which to include; and this (along with
the use of cling film) is how we know cookery praxis
as closed. However, in another sense, chefs have an
opportunity to experiment with open-ended processes.
A recent example of object-oriented cookery is a five
course Mexican feast concocted to bring the wonders
of edible insects to New York. 10 Serving larvae and
live insects, Phil Ross created one dish of squirming
wax moth larvae. Popping a live bug in one's mouth,
if taken seriously, would have to open a diner's eyes
to a multitude of alternative sources of protein. Ross's
invitation to experience live food explicitly acknowl
edges that we do not know exactly what an object will
10. http://www. nytimes.com/2010/09/22/dining/22bug.html.
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do - for this chef in some sense has no control over
what these bugs will do. A bug bugs.
MG's ontological commitments are to an actualism
informed by relationism. That is to say, MG, even with
all its chemical reactions and experimenting with food,
by taking human sense as its end goal is ultimately a
praxis that takes the basic structural feature of entities
to be expressed in immediate eventsfor us ( actualism) .
Global relations inform this event (relationism) : MG
is a logical extrapolation of globalized cuisine praxis
(fast food, junk food) or food science praxis located
in globalized corporate food companies. A praxis that
is then interjected into haute cuisine and returned to
globalized cuisine with enhanced credentials.
SLOW FOOD
On the other hand, the 'basic structural feature of all
entities', as far as Slow Food is concerned, is deter
mined by a relationism informed by actualism. SF can
be seen as a logical extrapolation of ChefJose Andres'
words: 'McDonald's as genius of organization, devel
opment, and marketing.'11 That is to say, paradoxically,
that the ideology that McDonald's promotes is the
same as Slow Food's: food is more than cooking and eat
ing. An ideology interjected into localities, singular
1 1 . http://living.glam.com/articles/latest_stories/excl usive_interview_
with_chef_jose_andres/.
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villages, towns, food markets and bazaars and then
returned to globalized cuisine circuits with cogent
arguments for food to be seen as more than a material
substance involving real makings and doings. SF's
denial of foods as individual objects and actants that
move through human and non-human collectives
leaves issues of nutrition, local organization and devel
opment aside in order to promote counter-progressive
causes such as the preservation of what SF's ( mostly
European and White American) leadership perceive
as valued traditions of cookery and food production.
SF's inability to recognize different speeds, to see that
many places in the world don't suffer the same affects
and effects as 'fast' paced technologically-advanced
cultures, puts into question SF's very framing of the
solutions and problems. As Louise Fresco states:
Now it is not surprising that with this massifica
tion and large-scale production, there is a counter
movement that emerged - very much also here in
California. The counter-movement says, Let's go back
to this, Let's go back to traditional farming. Let's
go back to small-scale, to farmers' markets, small
bakeries and all that. Wonderful. Don't we all agree?
I certainly agree. I would love to go back to Tuscany
to this kind of traditional setting, gastronomy, good
food. But this is afallacy. And thefallacy comesfrom ideal
izing a past that we haveforgotten about. If we do this, if
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we want to stay with traditional small-scale farming
we are going, actually, to relegate these poor farmers
and their husbands - among whom I have lived for
many years, working without electricity and water,
to try to improve their food production - to relegate
them to poverty. What they want are implements to
increase their production - something to fertilize the
soil, something to protect their crop and to bring it to
a market. We cannot just think that small-scale is the
solution to the world food problem. It's a luxury solu
tion for us who can afford it, if you want to afford it.
In fact we do not want this poor woman to work the
land like this. If we say just small-scale production, as
is the tendency here, to go back to local food means
that a poor man like Hans Rosling cannot even eat
oranges anymore because in Scandinavia we don't
have oranges. So local food production is out. But
also we do not want to relegate to poverty in the
rural areas. And we do not want to relegate the urban
poor to starvation. So we must find other solutions.12
SF has taken on as its goal the task of preserving
ingredients and food production methods from col
lectives, populations and communities that may be
disappearing from cookery praxis due to global eco
nomic pressures. For example, posted on a calendar
12. http://www.ted.com/talks/louise_fresco_on_feeding_the_whole_
world.html.
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COLLAPSE VII
of events on Slow Foods San Francisco's website was
this announcement for the film Mr. Bene goes to Italy:
One of SF founder Carlo Petrini's favorite films was
screened at the Delancey Street Theater on April 4th.
Benedito Batista da Silva, 60 years old, is considered
a reference when it comes to manioc flour production
in the Brazilian Para State, deep within the Amazon.
This documentary shows his trip from Braganca to
Turin and back home. The encounter of different
cultures, of small-scale farmers from all over the
world and the enchantment of coming into contact
with European culture blends with the profound
affective bond Mr. Bene forges with his Italian host
family. The film is about breaking barriers, whether
cultural, economical or even physical, in this amazing
anthropologi,cal adventure whose premise is that hope
still exists for small Brazilian farmers.13
A small village in Brazil produces manioc flour deep
in the Amazon. In order for the art of manioc flour
production not to be lost and the practice maintained
for centuries to come, SF invites artisans to a world
conference where chefs and other small farmers inter
act on a global stage to figure out how to preserve 'best
practices' - authentic practices. Professional chefs are
13. http://www.slowfoodsanfrancisco.com/cgi-bin/slowfood/sf_events.html?
evcode=00023;id=TYTwX5Zx (emphasis mine) .
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Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
put into contact with a product that may be useful to
them, thereby opening up a global market for what
was once food for a single village and was in danger
of becoming 'lost'.
Obviously SF elevates food to a representation of
human experience, a symbol of human cultural unique
ness. Where MG can be criticized for reducing food
too much, SF can be faulted for attributing too much
to food. Where MG reduces food simultaneously to
primordial units and bundles of qualities, SF elevates
foods to a status beyond autonomous entities, refusing
a flat ontology.
For SF not only are objects, such as food, reduced to
relations; human collectives as autonomous objects are
identified and ignored in order to develop seamless glo
bal patterns and connections of 'more than cooking and
eating'. SF's ontological commitments or lack thereof
raise questions of how to recognize actual collectives
and cultural distinctions. Globalized cuisine's quest to
discover the food products of underprivileged or devel
opmentally marginalized peoples of 'cultural value'
and open them up to new markets, emulates the emerg
ing markets approach promulgated by World Bank
neoliberalism and the 'Washington Consensus' . The
goal of such structural and developmental reforms is to
reduce objects to relations in order to place these prod
ucts and collectives within a globalized food system.
For SF, value lies not so much in financial economics
321
COLLAPSE VII
(although that plays a large part) as in an economy
of authenticity and in the ability of specific objects to
seamlessly move into other economies. Contempo
rary inclinations, technological innovations or caloric
intake, are not considered in deciding how useful the
preservation of a certain product could be within a
specific collective. In other words, what a food does
is not as important as how it is perceived by Western
diners.
What is clear is that SF's ontological commitments
are deceptive. On the one hand, SF presents an out
dated mode of anthropology in which foods are ideal
ized and cultural artifacts are preserved for the sake
of preservation. On the other hand, it heralds the
possibility of a radically connected network of relations
where an emerging market approach can take hold. On
one hand, SF values a food on the basis of its origin,
taking into account its participation in collectives, but
only on its own selective terms. On the other hand,
SF posits a background of potential relations in which
we should view food, and that frame does not allow
a jood or a collective autonomy, does not allow for
food as a non-human actant with an endo-relational
structure. A food's potential outside of human inten
tion, outside of a perceived market, is what is at stake
for an object-oriented approach. SF mobilizes food
in an idolized or idealized fashion. Authentic culture
and roots supersede all other concerns, in order to
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Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
introduce relation-fetishism as ingress for leftists to
neoliberalism.
An object-oriented analysis of what food does would
be useful for a political global food movement such
as Slow Food. Such an approach could demonstrate
how food organizes human and non-human chains;
how food translates us and other objects individually
and collectively in ways that resist reified generalities.
In SF's case, relationism (in this case, the notion that
'food is the sum of its relations') informed by actualism
(authentic immediate collectives to be subsumed) ulti
mately amounts to little more than a human-thought
being correlation. A correlation that neo-liberalism
depends on, given that it is the 'seamlessly global'
nature of the market that allows SF to believe that
shopping at Whole Foods and eating at fine dining
establishments are radical political acts.
Ultimately, either SF is redundant (because the
people practicing SF do not need instructions - spe
cific cultures in specific locations are and have been
practicing SF production and preparation for a long
time); or SF is dogmatic in its approach as well as its
practice because it charges itselfwith the measurement
of authentic virtue without allowing that metric to be
determined in an open system that critically addresses
the food it proposes to 'save'. The breaking down of
cultural, economical or even physical barriers by a neo
liberalism dissimulated by outmoded 'anthropology'
323
COLLAPSE VII
or self-righteous 'conservation' is yet another form
of praxis being trapped within a correlation of being
and thought. Without ontological commitments to a
'real' independent of humans, SF is simply subsumed
into economics.
FLAT C O O KERY
In view of what has been said above, MG might be seen
as object-oriented in its first stage, in that it acknowl
edges food as an object. Experimentation, albeit ulti
mately geared towards the senses, does foreground
what an object can do. And SF's object-oriented inclina
tions lie in its recognizing of collectives, towns and
regions and even farmers as objects in Bryant's sense.
What MG does well is break us out of the traditional
myths that have dominated cookery praxis - myths
such as the searing of meat in order to encapsulate
juices are debunked in favour of some progressive
praxis. What SF does well is to observe the wider
implications of a fast-paced technologically-advanced
approach, identifying problems such as monoculture
and the shortcomings of industrially-produced food.
If we return to Harman's claim that praxis distorts,
we notice that 000 at the level of praxis offers nothing
new. In other words, 000 is not offering a new distor
tion, only a levelling of ontological distortion. What
is revealed in this levelling are intricate webs in which
324
Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
no thing (language, power, ideology, religion, food or
knowledge) dominates or provides the exclusive condi
tions of possibility. This is not a form of materialism,
but rather a realism that allows the independence or
autonomy of non-material objects - any 'thing' that
makes a difference.
At the level of object-oriented praxis and epistemol
ogy, Bryant is clear:
I think it is the hypothesis that objects act or are
encountered in their doing. In other words, knowing,
not passively mirroring, knowledge is a product of
doing and is a discovery of doings. We know things,
we discover them, through their acts, and if we wish
to discover the powers of objects we have to act on
these objects to see what they do in these conditions.
It is through provoking objects to discover what
properties flash forth that we discover their powers
. . . to find out what objects are capable of doing. ·14
Therefore, cookery becomes an elegant configuration
of entities in a feed-forward-feed-back clumsily-woven
web of objects interacting on equal footing. If we do
not know what a specific food can do, and this food is
interacting with all sorts of other objects at a specific
instant, then even in a radically closed environment,
14. L. Bryant, 'Object-Oriented Empiricism', at http://larvalsubjects.
wordpress.com/2010/03/26/object-oriented-empiricism/.
325
COLLAPSE VII
cookery becomes a lot like surfing. It consists of a
series of tiny adjustments, prompted by anticipations
and responses from an openness to utterances from all
human and non-human actants entangled. Of course,
in order to prevent short circuits, a chef must allow
herself to be translated by other objects. In feeling
her way through, aesthetics forms a new epistemology
where the abundance of local manifestations forms
a meal. Keeping in mind that the entanglement that
constitutes this meal does not begin or end with this
specific event of eating - objects stretch out through
other objects. Anticipating objects' behaviours and
responding to both expected and unexpected acts,
even the most experienced chef benefits by adopting
the disposition of an amateur home cook. A disposi
tion which is simply a commitment to objects being
out of phase.
Other than money and love, the conventional
distinction between professional cookery and ama teur home cookery is primarily one of epistemology
and praxis. Epistemology, because the professional
possesses extreme forms of the type of 'knowledge'
that contributes toward an instrumental distortion
of being. Knowledge built on error, keeping cookery
on track. Praxis, because the professional possesses
a skillset that dictates a specific set of actions. The
professional's mode is one of eliminating chance,
restricting the 'phase space' of objects. It is clear that
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Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
there is a financial interest in maintaining this distinc
tion between professional and home amateur - as seen
in the fact that 'home amateur' status is coveted by a
local bistro offering homemade bread in the attempt to
sell us something back that has been all but eliminated
from actual homes; but equally in the disparaging
distinction made by chain restaurants encouraging
us to 'eat out' because 'we deserve a break' from the
chores of cookery. On one hand amateur cookery is
praised as a delicious enticement only available at local
restaurants, on the other hand disparaged as a mere
menial task to be avoided. The uncritical adulation
of Willie Wonka, whose genius leads him to wish to
do away with amateur home cookery, illustrates this
drive of professional cookery to dominate and destroy
home amateur cookery.
Flat Cookery praxis levels the distinction between
professional and home amateur. Flat Cookery's onto
logical commitments to objects and a real outside of
the correlation between thinking and being are evident
in I ) the entwining of epistemology and praxis, allow
ing food the ability to speak back or objects to act;
and 2) the amateur's indirect disposition, allowing
for a wandering off the exclusive tracks of thinking
and being as they pertain to cookery. Which is to say
that the inclination of an object-oriented approach to
cookery is that of a particular know-how that flows
from acting - from doing. Flat Cookery operates out of
327
COLLAPSE VII
the acts of feeding people. Acts that have been passed
down from generation to generation on one hand
and yet refuse the myths, nostalgia and romance that
accompany professional disciplines. The professional
invents objects with minimal phase space in order to
dominate amateur home cooking - objects such as
frozen dinners and washed mesclun mix that pacify
the non-professional. But the amateur is free of the
restraints of 'knowledge and skill' to experience the
'phase space' of objects. This is not to say an amateur is
ignorant, that he lacks knowledge. No, the amateur acts
out of affirmation. Here affirmation is instinct, experi
ence and the acknowledgement of webs of objects that
act autonomously and in aggregate. The professional,
on the other hand, not only operates in alienation but
also alienates. The professional motivated by the repre
sentation, the symbolism and the distortion of markets
dismisses the amateur's clumsily-woven affirmation.
The amateur is an object in this ontology. An object
does feed one's family or does socialize with others or
does regulate one's metabolism or does counteract one's
diabetes or does volunteer at a soup kitchen or does
enjoy a fine repast. Of course the question of what an
object does motivates the amateur, for as a tree trees and
an apple apples, the amateur amateurs, and in doing
so avoids the excesses of distortion. Object Oriented
Cookery amounts to a commitment to autonomous
328
Cochran - Object Oriented Cookery
entities, but also to an openness to food as an actant
independent of human intention.
329
To Roaat Eel • ·
Make a puncture in the large end of th e egg,
then pour water over it, and cover i t i n hot ashes
in front of the fire, from whence you may easily
take it when done.
Mary Mason, The Young Howewife's Counsellor and Friend: Containing
Directions in Every Department ef Howekeeping, including the Duties ef Wife an
Mother (NY: Protestant Episcopal Church Book Society) , 1875.
COLLAPSE VII
Reason i n the Roasti ng of Eggs
In the eighteenth century egg-roasting was a suffi
ciently puzzling activity that it inspired a familiar
saying, 'There is reason in the roasting of eggs' . The
aphorism was intended to justify the most arcane of
pursuits, but actually the reason for roasting eggs
has been unknown until recently. There is indeed a
good nutritional explanation for this now-vanished
culinary tradition, as there is for cooking any other
food: cooked food gives us more energy than we
would get by eating the same food raw. Furthermore,
our consumption of cooked food makes possible not
just our high energy budgets, but also the extreme
size of our brains. Accordingly the notion of 'reason
in the roasting of eggs' includes a second meaning
beyond the assertion of mere utility. It encapsulates
my claim that the evolution of human mental powers
has depended on our ancestors' food being cooked.
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COLLAPSE VII
No such thought was in Edmund Burke's mind in
1773 when a dinner party conversation prompted him to
reflect on the significance of cooking. He was respond
ing to the idea that human beings can be defined as
the species that cooks. James Boswell, diarist and
amanuensis of lexicographer Samuel Johnson, made
the proposal and recorded the conversation.
Boswell began by rejecting previous definitions of
humanity. ''An ancient philosopher said," he declared,
"[that] Man was 'a two-legged animal without feath
ers,' upon which his rival Sage had a Cock plucked
bare, and set him down in the school before all the
disciples, as a 'Philosophick Man.' Dr. Franklin said,
Man was 'a tool-making animal,' which is very well;
for no animal makes a thing, by means of which he
can make another thing. But this applies to very few
of the [human] species."
He continued with his own proposal. "My defini
tion of Man is, a 'Cooking Animal' . The beasts have
memory, judgement, and all the faculties and passions
of our mind, in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook .
. . . Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man
whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he
himself eats." Burke approved Boswell's idea. "Your
definition is quite good," he said, "and I now see the
full force of the common proverb, 'There is reason in
the roasting of eggs."'
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Wrangham - Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
Burke may have thought he saw the full force of
the proverb, but what he meant when he quoted it
can only have been the idea that humans cook for
a reason. As to what the reason was, Burke surely
did not know; because until the last two decades no
one had systematically investigated why we cook.
Conventional wisdom acknowledged that cooking
could remove poisons, kill bacteria and enormously
improve the taste and texture of an evening meal, but
there was no consensus as to whether cooking was
necessary or what its most important function was.
As late as the 1960s, when the anthropologist Claude
Levi-Strauss proposed that people cook merely to
symbolize their distinction from animals, no one is
recorded as objecting to his stated assumption that
cooking was an arbitrary choice. To Levi-Strauss and
most anthropologists, humans were no different from
other animals, equally capable of a successful lifestyle
whether or not our food was cooked.
Fortunately 'raw-foodism' has become popular
recently, and this habit of restricting diet to raw foods
has created new opportunities for investigation. Results
are consistent: On the one hand, people can eat 100% of
their food raw and be healthy enough for an active life.
Indeed, many raw-foodists keep to their diets because
they feel very good on them. Yet unlike non-humans,
human raw-foodists are so relatively short of energy
that not only do they lose weight on average, but
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COLLAPSE VII
their bodily functions are also liable to be impaired.
In the only research on the reproductive performance
of women, conducted by a survey of several hundred
Germans, the average woman on a 100% raw diet had
too few spare calories to be able to menstruate. The
study indicated that, whether or not their diets included
meat, and even when eating domesticated foods taken
from the global food resource ( and therefore free of
a seasonal drop in food quality) , women could not
reproduce effectively when eating raw. Domesticated
foods are much more effective sources of energy than
wild foods, and our ancestors expended much more
energy as hunter-gatherers than raw-foodists do in
urban environments. So while a raw diet of domesti
cated foods can sustain people in the West today, a
long-term raw diet of wild foods, of the type that our
ancestors ate before 10,000 years ago, would be impos
sible. In short, although humans are animals, we are
different from other animals. Without domesticated
foods and an urban lifestyle, we need cooked food.1
A close look at our intestinal systems shows one
of the reasons. Our intestines are small compared to
those of other primates. An excellent advantage of guts
being small is that they cost less to run than the more
elaborate digestive structures of our raw-food-eating
ancestors. However, a species can afford for their guts
1. See R. Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (NY: Basic
Books, 2009).
334
Wrangham - Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
to be small only if they can predictably obtain a diet
that is easily digested. In the case of human ances
tors, cooked food explains our diminutive digestive
adaptations, from our small mouth and teeth to our
absent caecum and greatly reduced colon. We can get
away with the reduced size of these structures because
cooked food is easier to digest than raw food. Thus, in
line with other comparisons between cooked and raw
foods, a baked potato takes a shorter time to digest
than a raw potato. It demands less muscular churning,
acid secretion, enzyme production and other biological
investment. Furthermore, a baked potato also provides
us with more of its digestible energy than a raw potato.
The fact that cooked food provides more energy
than raw food is the main reason our lineage can
afford to forego efficient digestion of raw food. The
fundamental logic for the extra energy is that cook
ing involves heat. Because hotter molecules move
faster, their structure changes. They tend to open up
in ways that allow component chains to be more easily
attacked by enzymes. Starches gelatinize, changing a
previously semi-crystalline structure into a solution
of glucose-rich strings. Proteins denature, exposing
otherwise hidden threads of amino-acids. Fats melt,
releasing lipids from inert solidity. Animal species
do not need special adaptations to take advantage
of these benefits from cooking. Most animals prefer
cooked food, and they fare so well on a cooked diet
335
COLLAPSE VII
that many of our pets now have an obesity problem.
But human ancestors were the only species that made
the breakthrough to preparing cooked food on a daily
basis, which allowed them to follow the unique path of
becoming committed to eating it. The skill of cooking
thus gave us more calories per gram of food, not to
mention a wider range of foods that we could exploit.
The enhanced energy we obtain by using external fuel
to improve our food is one of the main reasons why
we are now the dominant species on earth.
Life is in many ways a search for energy, so a species
that achieves a new level of energy acquisition faces
expanded biological opportunities. Perhaps none was
more important than the chance to invest in the brain.
Human brains have two very odd features. They
are relatively enormous, and they have been increasing
in size rather steadily for a long time ( more than two
million years ) . Their structure and neurophysiology,
by comparison, are less obviously odd. Indeed, to
a large extent the size of brain regions is predicted
by the size of the whole brain. This does not mean
that we have the same brain proportions as smaller
brained species. For example the percentage of our
brain volume that is devoted to neocortex is higher
than in smaller-brained species. However the extent
of this disproportion is itself predicted by our brain
volume, because among other primates, those with
larger brains likewise devote a higher proportion to
336
Wrangham - Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
neocortex than those with smaller brains. Within a
group of closely related animals such as humans and
great apes, overall brain volume is thus an excellent
predictor of brain structure.
Brain size is also a good predictor of intelligence.
Species of primates can be ranked according to their
general cognitive ability by assessing their perform
ances on a range of cognitive tests. Across species this
general cognitive ability is well correlated with total
brain size - the correlation is stronger, for example,
than it is with measures of relative brain size, such as
those that control for differences in body size. 2 Such
studies use average brain volumes for the species,
measured in dead animals. Non-invasive measuring
techniques also allow investigators to measure brain
volumes in living individuals. They show that within
species too, variation in brain size is related to intel
ligence. Rats with bigger brains solve cognitive tasks
better. Humans with bigger brains have higher 'g'
(general intelligence) , more fluid ability and greater
memory, though not greater crystallized ability. Cor
relations between brain size and cognitive ability in
these studies of rats and humans are in the range of
0.3 to 0.5. 3
2. R.O. Deaner, K. Isler, ]. Burkart, C.P. van Schaik, 'Overall brain size,
and not encephalization quotient, best predicts cognitive ability across non
human primates', Brain, Behavior and Evolution 70, 2007: 1 1 5-24.
3. J.C. Wickett, P.A. Vernon, D. H. Lee, 'Relationships between factors of
intelligence and brain volume', Personality and Individual Differences 29, 2000:
1095-1 122.
337
COLLAPSE VII
A good starting-point for explaining the evolution
of uniquely human intelligence, therefore, is to account
for the large size of our brains. The difficulty in doing
so is that brains are exceptionally expensive. Their
energetic running costs average some 8-10 times higher
than those of skeletal muscle, and unlike a computer,
brains can never be turned off. The more that brains
are used, the more energy they consume. For exam
ple when subjects are asked to exert self-control in
thinking, their body glucose levels measurably drop.4
Overall human brains consume more than 20% of the
energy used by the body at rest, far more than their
weight would suggest. So the problem of explaining
the evolution of human brain size becomes a problem
of understanding how brains are powered. Where do
we get the extra energy needed to fuel our big brains?
In theory, a species like humans that has a hungry
brain and access to sufficient food might be able to
increase its resting metabolic rate (the number of
calories used per unit time to power the body when
at rest) so as to divert extra calories to the brain.
In actuality, however, this solution does not occur.
Metabolic rate has been well measured in humans
and related primates. Remarkably, in relation to body
weight the resting human metabolic rate is exactly as
4. M. T. Gailliot, R.F. Baumeister, C.N. DeWall, J.K. Maner, E .A. Plant,
D.M. Tice et al, ' Self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source:
willpower is more than a metaphor', Journal ef Personality and Social
Psychology 92(2) , 2007: 325-36.
338
Wrangham - Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
expected for a typical primate. The discovery that we
do not simply run our metabolism at a high overall
rate is highly enlightening. It means that the only way
for humans to devote disproportionate amounts of
glucose to fuelling our large brain is to give relatively
less energy to some other parts of the body.
Leslie Aiello and Peter Wheeler were the first to
realize the significance of the unchanged human meta
bolic rate. They showed that most of the energy-hungry
organs, such as liver, kidney and heart, have the same
relative size and energy needs in the human body as in
non-human primates. The only organ system that stood
out by being relatively variable in size across species
was the gut. Aiello and Wheeler found the human gut
to be relatively small, including stomach, small intes
tine, caecum and colon. As a result Aiello and Wheeler
concluded that the human gut uses relatively little
energy. Their finding suggested that variation among
species in the size of the gut might offer opportunities
for the evolution of large brains. 5
In line with their hypothesis, primate species with
smaller guts indeed tend to have bigger brains. The obvi
ous explanation for their small guts is that they have an
especially high-quality diet, affording them the luxury
of a reduced digested capacity. This proves correct.
5. L. Aiello, P. Wheeler, 'The expensive-tissue hypothesis: the brain and the
digestive system in human and primate evolution', Current Anthropology 36,
1 995: 199-22 1 .
339
COLLAPSE VII
Primates that eat more animal matter and calorie-dense
plants in the wild have especially high quality diets, and
are found to have bigger brains than other primates. 6
Aiello and Wheeler also calculated the energetic savings
for humans of having smaller guts than expected. The
savings neatly match the extra energy needed because
our brains are large.
These results combine into a simple and striking
formula: Cooking is responsible for our small guts;
and the small size of our guts allows us to power an
increasingly large brain. So cooking gave us a bigger
brain and higher intelligence than we could otherwise
have managed.
The fact that the quality of the human diet is
uniquely high fits satisfactorily with the human brain
being uniquely large; but a diet of cooked food is not
the only potential solution to the energy puzzle. Aiello
and Wheeler themselves gave as much attention to
meat as to cooking. When the brains of our presumed
ancestors started growing beyond the ape size, between
two and three million years ago, their possessors were
beginning to cut meat from the bones of prey animals
but they had certainly not become committed to cook
ing. So Aiello and Wheeler suggested that meat-eating
was likely responsible for the initial rise in brain size,
on the basis that meat-eating carnivores such as cats
6. W.R. Leonard, M.L. Robertson, ].]. Snodgrass, CW. Kuzawa, 'Metabolic
correlates of hominid brain evolution', Comp. Biochem. Physiol. Part A, 135,
2003: 5-15.
340
Wrangham - Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
and dogs tend to have small guts. Their suggestion
about cooking was that it could account for a later rise
in brain size, around half a million years ago, when
the evolution of Homo erectus into Homo heidelbergensis
was marked by a notable increase in cranial capac
ity (from around 1000 to 1200 cubic centimetres) .
My own interpretation of the evidence is that Homo
erectus was already adapted to cooked food by about
1.9 million years ago, because only cooking provides a
ready explanation for the characteristically small guts
and teeth found in Homo erectus. Furthermore there is
no later time in human evolution when any subsequent
reduction of the gut is recorded. My attribution of
cooking as early as 1.9 million years ago is controversial
however, because although it fits with the biological
inference, direct archaeological evidence of the use
of fire is inconsistent earlier than 400,000 years ago.
So the conservative conclusion is that cooking began
its contribution to the steady rise in human brain size
sometime between 1.9 million and 4 00,000 years ago.
Whenever cooking was developed, however, its
impact on reducing the costs of digestion surely had
a substantial effect on brain enlargement. The larg
est known brain of any ape or fossil pre-human that
was definitely confined to raw food (Australopithecus/
Homo habilis) was a mere half of the volume of our
more than 1 400 cubic centimetres. If humans became
adapted to cooked food as improbably late as 400,000
341
COLLAPSE VII
years ago, the result was to add only 200 cc of brain
volume. More likely, on the assumption that cooking
began with Homo erectus, brains roughly doubled in
size under the influence of cooked food.
The impact of cooking did not have to stop there.
While the first oddity of the human brain is its relatively
large size, the second is the way it achieved this outlier
status. Our ancestors have exhibited a near-continuous
rise in brain size for more than two million years, even
tually leading to a trebling of volume. During the same
period other animals, by comparison, had no change in
brain volume, or a much more modest increase. Since
the benefits of elevated intelligence must have been
particularly high in increasingly complex social groups,
some have argued for a positive feedback loop: large
brains enabled larger groups, which then intensified
the advantages of being more intelligent. But while
that kind of idea might explain the advantages of
increasing cognitive ability, it misses the critical point
that however strong the selection pressure in favour of
large brains, and whatever benefit intelligence gave,
the problem of the energetic constraint must also be
solved. Unless our ancestors had higher metabolic rates
than we do, which no evidence suggests, they had to
fuel their brains from somewhere within their bodies.
In this context cooking offers interesting possi
bilities for the long-continued rise in brain size. The
techniques of the first cooks were doubtless limited to
342
Wrangham - Reason in the Roasting of Eggs
placing roots, seeds or meat by a fire so as to roast them.
Recent hunter-gatherers were still practicing those
simple techniques in the last two centuries, but they
also employed a variety of more complex skills. The
earth oven was a technique that kept cooked food moist
and even hinted of cuisine, because it allowed herbs
to be added to the food. Earth ovens are evidenced
from at least 200,000 years ago, and were probably
worldwide. Varieties of sausage were made in several
places. Pots and containers could be fashioned from
plants such as bamboo, or from inverted turtle shells.
Accumulated advances in cooking skill would have
made food not only more palatable but also easier to
digest. A more easily digested meal, in turn, would
demand less energy from the gut, and spare more for
other organs such as the brain.
There are other factors that may have contributed
to solving the brain-energy crisis too. Species of birds
with smaller breast muscles have bigger brains, indicat
ing that energetically efficient locomotion can spare
energy for the brain. 7 Travel is energetically cheaper
in humans than in chimpanzees, and likely became so
when our ancestors stopped regularly climbing trees
almost two million years ago. Terrestrial adaptations
of the human body might thus have saved further
energy that could be diverted to the brain.
7. K. Isler, C.P. van Schaik, 'Costs of encephalization: the energy trade-off
hypothesis tested on birds', Journal efHuman Evolution 5 1 (3), 2006: 228·43.
343
COLLAPSE VII
So cooking was not necessarily the only route to a
larger brain, but its impact was very large. The adop
tion of cooked food as a staple part of the diet gave
our ancestors increased energy, enabled them to reduce
the size of important components of their guts, and
therefore most likely enabled those with bigger brains
to survive and flourish.
Nowadays hunter-gatherers who collect eggs return
to camp with them when possible, and roast them by
burying them in hot ashes. The practice is one of many
with a deep history that revolutionized our ancestors'
energy metabolism and paved the way for a larger
brain and higher intelligence. When Edmund Burke
quipped that there was reason in the roasting of eggs,
he spoke a truer word than he could have imagined.
We can rewrite Descartes: Coquo, ergo cof!:i,to I cook,
therefore I think.
-
344
TOURT O F VEAL1
Take a peece of Veal, blanch it, and mince it with
twice as much of beefe suet, after it is well seasoned,
make a sheet of fine paste, put your meat on it, in
the middle of which you shall put what you have,
as beatills, &c. Sugar it if you will, and when it is
baked, serve.
l. P. La Varenne, The French Cook, Trans. l . D.G (London: Charles Adams,
1654), 57.
COLLAPSE VII
Theorizing Cu isine from Medieval to
Modern Ti mes : Cog n itive Structu res,
the Biology of Taste, and Culinary
Conventions
I NTRODUCTION
How do we come to think that certain flavour com
binations are good and that some tastes are to be
kept separate, or that one food is to be eaten prior to
another? To be sure, individuals have idiosyncratic
preferences, and experience strong likes and dislikes
for different foods. Yet many of the deeply-held beliefs
about food that guide individuals in their cooking and
eating are socially-shared ideas about what is right and
what is wrong that vary from one historical period and
social context to another.
347
COLLAPSE VII
In the contemporary Western world, a basic prin
ciple that organizes the way food is cooked, served
and eaten requires that sweet-tasting foods are kept
separate from the other basic tastes. 2 Thus, there is a
course that is preeminently sweet, dessert, which is
only served after the consumption of courses that are
preeminently non-sweet. This way of cooking and eat
ing, however natural it may seem to a contemporary
diner, has a relatively short history. As recently as the
seventeenth century, a diner would have not only not
had dessert at the end of a meal, but she would have
had a large number of dishes that combined sweet and
non-sweet tastes throughout a meal, served in what
would to us appear to be no particular order.
Thus, even as the basic factors in cuisine - the
foods, their chemical makeup, and our physiological
responses to those chemicals - remain constant, our
perception and theorization of food - the reasoning
behind our methods for the selection, preparation,
2. Although human taste receptors respond to a broad assortment of
chemicals, it is generally accepted that, qualitatively, this range evokes few
distinct sensations; the standard basic taste model differentiates between
sweet, bitter, sour, salty and savoury (or umami) tastes 0. Chandrashekar,
M .A. Hoon, N.J.P. Ryba & C.S. Zuker, 'The receptors and cells for
mammalian taste.' Nature, 444 , 2006: 288-94, 288). It remains unclear how
far along the gustatory sensory pathway cellular specialization is necessary
to enable independent encoding of the distinct tastes (Ibid.; R.P. Erickson,
'A study in the science of taste: On the origins and influence of the core
ideas.' Behavioral and Bmin Sciences, 31, 2008: 59-105) . While some criticize
the basic taste model (Ibid.), it is, relative to alternative models proposing
a continuum of tastes, more closely related to (and indeed reinforced by)
modern culinary theory.
348
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
service and consumption of food - have undergone
major transformations throughout history. In this
article, we examine what is likely the most radical
change in cuisine in the Western world during the
Christian Era: the development of what is now known
as modern French cuisine.3
As we explain below, early modernity witnessed
a major transformation in the theorization of cuisine
and the rules for cooking and eating. Prescriptions
and proscriptions about food grew in their autonomy
from other disciplines, particularly medicine, allowing
ideas about the experience of taste, rather than the
supposed therapeutic properties of foods, to ascend
as the guiding principles in the theorization of cuisine.
Aided by a general epistemic shift in the way phenom
ena were classified, as well as by changing economic
and institutional conditions, the autonomization of
cuisine gave rise to a new conceptual organization
of the basic tastes. Whereas in medieval cookery, all
tastes were blended together in all manner of dishes,
the sweet began to be dissociated from the non-sweet
3. We focus on France as a historical influence, given that this country is
generally credited as the source of the modem culinary traditions of the
Western world ( P.P. Ferguson, 'A cultural field in the making: Gastronomy
in nineteenth century France', American ]oumal efSociology, 104, 1998: 597641 , 599; P.P. Ferguson, Accountingjor Taste: 'Ihe Triumph ef French Cuisine
( Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004) : 12, 30; P.P. Ferguson,
S. Zukin, 'The careers of chefs', in R. Scapp & B. Seitz ( Eds. ) , Eating
Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1 998), 92; A. Trubek,
Haute Cuisine. How the French Invented the Culinary Prefession ( Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000) , 3.
349
COLLAPSE VII
tastes in the seventeenth century. This dissociation
marked the transition from medieval to modern French
cuisine, as it constituted the conceptual foundation of
the new culinary style.
In this article, we first review the nature of medi
eval cookery, specifically its foundation in scholastic
medicine and the implications of this relationship for
the rules for cooking and eating. 4 Next, we examine
the liberation of cookery from medical concerns and
the codification of what is now known as modern
French cuisine. We suggest a number of factors that
contributed to the development of the modern percep
tion and theorization of foods, including epistemic,
economic, and institutional conditions occurring in
early modernity, the chemical properties of certain
foods, and biological attributes of the basic tastes.
To conclude, we consider certain contemporary culi
nary trends that challenge, yet also hinge upon, the
dissociation between the sweet and non-sweet tastes,
to reflect upon the implications of these practices for
the maintenance or transformation of this cognitive
structure that, as we posit, underlies the institution
of modern cuisine.
4. We focus on the recorded rules for cooking and eating, and not actual
practice, as there is little historical data on actual practices from the late
middle ages to early modernity. Insofar as extant sources consist of original
books on cookery and dietetics, we can examine only prescriptions and
proscriptions. Without a doubt, a gap between the information presented
in books and what individuals actually did is possible.
350
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
OLD DI ETETI C S , C O O KERY AND THE PROLIFIC
USE O F SWE ET I NGREDIENTS
Prior to early modernity, cookery possessed far less
autonomy as an area of activity than it does today. The
aesthetic appreciation of food that provides the basis
for modern cuisine was not yet the chief concern in
formulating rules for the selection, preparation, and
consumption of food. Instead, cookery in the Western
world was governed by a system now known as the
Old Dietetics, an understanding of health based on
the theories of early natural philosophers.
The Old Dietetics was primarily premised on
the theory of humours, inherited from the ancient
Hippocratic School of medicine. The theory of
humours held that every organism possessed a bal
ance of two qualities, either hot or cold, and either
moist or dry. The humoural qualities of an organism
were largely (though by no means only) determined
by the composition of its habitat. At the time, the
natural world was understood in terms of the Great
Chain of Being, a vertical linear taxonomy of life
spanning from the earth to the heavens (see Figure
I ) . 5 The structure of this model reflected the belief in
5. The figure depicted here is adapted from V. Leschziner 'Epistemic
foundations of cuisine. A socio·cognitive study of the configuration of
cuisine in historical perspective', Theory & Society 35, 2006: 421 -43, 426,
originally based on A. Grieco, 'Food and social classes in late medieval and
renaissance Italy.', in J-L. Flandrin & M. Montanari (Eds.), Food: A Culinary
History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) , 308.
35 1
COLLAPSE VII
an ordered series of resemblances running through
all living things. 6 This continuum spanned the four
regions of the natural world corresponding with the
classical elements fire, air, water, and earth, each of
which was characterized by one of the four possible
combinations of humoural qualities. It followed that
organisms generally acquired the humoural qualities
of the region in which they resided - for example,
because water is cold and moist, fish tend to be cold
and moist. 7 Each of the four possible combinations
of the qualities was thought to be responsible for the
production of a different dominant humour, or inter
nal bodily fluid, which in turn dictated an organism's
temperament, or predisposition to particular emotions,
behaviours, and illnesses.
The health of human beings, it was believed at
the time, depended on the maintenance of the ideal
humoural balance particular to the species - a com
bination of hot and moist qualities. One's faulty life
style was thought to be the main cause of humoural
6. A. Lovejoy, The Great Chain ofBeing: A Study ofthe History ofan Idea [1936)
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press: 1 970) . See N. Cusanus,
De docta ignorantia [1440) (Lipsiae: In Aedibus Felicis Meiner, 1932) for a
renowned example of medieval thought, and in particular an elaboration of
the philosophical principles underpinning the Great Chain of Being.
7. One could not assume, however, that all organisms residing in the same
elemental region possessed the same humoural balance, for qualitative
variance exists within a given elemental region (i.e. some bodies of water are
colder than others, just as some sections of the same water body are colder
than others), and other factors including age, sex, and form could affect the
humoural qualities of an organism.
352
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
Hot + Dry
Yellow Bile
Choleric
Warm + Moist
Bl0°d
Sanguine
1
1
GOD
Fire
Salamander
Phoenix
Mythological animals living in fire
Air
Eagles, falc�ns, and high-flying birds
Small songbtrds
Capons, roosters, chickens
Ducks, geese, and other waterfowl
- - - - -- -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Cold + Moist
Phlegm
Phlegmatic
Dry + Cold
Black Bile
Melancholic
1
1
Dolphins
-(
Veal ,
Mutton
Pork ../
Whales
Water
Fish
Shrimp, crabs, etc.
Mussels, oysters, etc.
Sponges
Trees (fruit trees)
Earth
Shrubs (producing fruit)
Herbaceous plants (spinach, cabbage, etc.)
Roots (carrots, turnips, etc.)
Bulbs (onions, garlic, shallots, etc.)
INANIMATE OBJECTS
Figure 1. The table of humours and The Great Chain of Being.
imbalance, which in turn led to illness.8 The regula
tion of diet, being a fundamental part of an indi
vidual's lifestyle, was therefore regarded as the primary
8. R. Porter, Disease, Medicine and Society in England, 1550-1860 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993) .
353
COLLAPSE VII
means of preventative and curative medical treatment. 9
Medieval cookery was principally structured around
this Old Dietetic premise, that food had a therapeutic
function through its effect on the diner's bodily humours.
Initially, a logic of equivalence dictated the ideal
diet for the healthy, while a logic of opposition was
used to prescribe foods for the sick. Thus, healthy
people, those with the ideal balance of hot and moist
qualities, were to eat food of their like. In contrast,
the unhealthy, or those with extreme temperaments,
were to compensate for their humoural imbalance someone driven to excessive dryness was thought to
benefit from eating moist foods, for example. In the
sixteenth century, the logic of opposition became the
one and only dietetic rule, as the notion that opposed
qualities contributed to equilibrium in the body took
hold.1 0
More generally, the nutritional value of food was
governed by a logic of similitude, much like that which
served as the foundation of the Great Chain of Being.
By virtue of their hot and moist humoural qualities,
organisms located in close proximity to the human
9. B . Laurioux, Les livres de cuisine medilfvaux. Fascicule 77. (Turnhout,
Belgium: Brepols, 1997); T. Scully, 'Mixing it Up in the Medieval Kitchen',
in M.-J. Arn (Ed.), Medieval Food and Drink. Acta efthe Centerfor Medieval and
Early Renaissance Studies XXI (Binghamton, New York: Center for Medieval
and Early Renaissance Studies, 1 995) .
10. K. Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002) ; Porter, Disease, Medicine and Society; B. Turner,
Regulating Bodies: Essays in Medical Sociology (London: Routledge, 1 992) .
35 4
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
body in the Great Chain of Being were thought to
possess enhanced nutritional value as foods, relative
to those with more dissimilar qualities. Thus, animals
were generally more nutritious than plants, mammals
more so than fowl, and these more than fish. Another
core property of foods, however, was their digestibility,
understood as the capacity of organisms to transform
environmental humours into easily digestible material.
Based on the principle that the similar attract, while the
dissimilar repel, 11 organisms living in the air were also
thought to be the least strenuous on the body to digest,
as air imparted to them its hot and moist qualities.
This category included not only airborne animals, but
also earthbound animals living at relatively elevated
altitudes,12 as well as plant matter growing on trees,
for it 'rests on air,' as opposed to those growing on or
in the earth.13 Digestibility being the most important
quality of foods, these plants and animals were held
in the highest regard.14
But even nobility could not dine exclusively on
the noblest of plants and animals, so the recipes of
1 1 . Albala, Eating Right, 7 1 .
1 2 . B . Platina, Platina. On Right Pleasure and Good Health [1475]: A Critical
Edition and Tmnslatiun ef De honesta voluptate et valetudine, trans. M. E.
Milham (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998), 229.
13. J·L. Flandrin, 'From Dietetics to Gastronomy: The Liberation of the
Gourmet', In Flandrin & Montanari (Eds.), Food: A Culinary History.
14. As these foods tended to have a high economic as well as symbolic value,
access to them was essentially exclusive to the social elites 0-·L. Flandrin,
'Seasoning, Cooking and Dietetics in the Late Middle Ages' in Flandrin &
Montanari (Eds.), Food: A Culinary History) .
355
COLLAPSE VII
medieval and early modern cookbooks commonly
instructed on the Old Dietetic practice of compen
sating for the use of less favourable foods by adding
ingredients with beneficial humoural qualities, so
as to improve the overall therapeutic value of the
dish.15 It is for this reason that medieval cookery was
characterized by an abundant use of spices, espe
cially cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and saffron,
for these spices were deemed to be hot and dry.16
Even more than these ingredients, medieval cookery
was especially marked by a widespread and prolific use
of sugar, then considered a spice. Sugar being the only
spice with hot and moist qualities, the ideal qualities
15. See L. de Casteau, Ouverture de cuisine (Liege: Leonard Streel Imprimeur
iure, 1 604) ; F. P. de La Varenne, Le Cuisinier .franr;ois [1651] (Paris: Chez
Pierre David, 1 654) ; Platina, On Right Pleasure.
16. There is no historical evidence or logical support for the common
contemporary assumption that spices were primarily used to mask the
flavour of spoiled food (e.g. S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of
Sugar in Modern History [New York: Viking, 1 985]) . Medieval cookbooks
do not support the theory, as their contents do not suggest that cooks were
commonly beset by the problem of having to make use of spoiled food,
nor are spices cited for this purpose (T. Peterson, 'The Arab Influence on
Western European Cooking', Journal ef Medieval History 6, 1980: 31 7-40,
320) . Moreover, given that spices were extraordinarily expensive by
contemporary standards, it seems unreasonable that those wealthy enough
to afford the large quantities of spices reportedly used would have not been
able to also procure fresh food (Peterson, 320; W. Schivelbusch, Tastes ef
Paradise: A Social History ef Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants [New York:
Vintage, 1 993] , 6). Lastly, just like the consumption of noble plants and
animals, any abundant use of spices would also have inevitably served a
symbolic purpose as a means of social distinction (Albala, Eating Right;
Flandrin, 'Seasoning, Cooking and Dietetics') .
356
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
of the healthy human body,17 it was more widely and
abundantly used than any other spice.18
THE SEPARATION OF T H E SWEET FROM THE
NON-SWEET TASTES
The rules for cooking and eating, however, began to
undergo significant transformation in early modernity.
Corresponding with the gradual erosion of belief in
traditional scholastic medicine, the content of cook
books published in France in the late seventeenth
century demonstrates the declining influence of the
Old Dietetics over the practice of cookery.19 These new
books still had references to the Old Dietetics, but
they were now accompanied by new ideas, 20 the most
significant of which was that taste, not just humoural
balance, was a legitimate factor in choosing one's food,
17. See Platina, On Right Pleasure. Platina, among other authors, called
'warm' what are otherwise referred to as 'hot' qualities.
18. B. Laurioux, B, Les livres de cuisine mtfditfvaux. Fascicule 77 (Turnhout,
Belgium: Brepols, 1 997) . For recipes, see M. Black, 7he Medieval Cookbook
(London: British Museum Press, 1992), Platina, On Right Pleasure; D.E.
Scully & T. Scully, Early French Cookery: Sources, History, Original Recipes and
Modern Adaptations (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002),
B. Wheaton, Savoring the Past. 7he French Kitchen and Table.from 1300 to 1 789
(Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press,1983) .
19. Cookbooks published in France are representative of a much broader
phenomenon taking place in Europe. This is to a large extent because, prior
to modernity, distinctions in cuisine were based primarily on conditions of
socio-economic and regional availability, rather than national tradition.
20. J-L. Flandrin, L 'Ordre des mets (Paris: Editions Odile Jacob, 2002) ; P.
Hyman & M . Hyman, 'Printing the Kitchen: French Cookbooks, 14801800' in Flandrin & Montanari (Eds.), Food: A Culinary History.
357
COLLAPSE VII
and that taste, just like humoural balance, varies from
individual to individual.21 Related to these notions of
taste and individual variability, books of this period
also reveal a diversity of opinions on health issues,
certainly absent during the dominance of scholastic
medicine, and an increased attention to regional varia
tion as local habits gained relevance in the theorization
of rules for cooking. In accordance with these changes,
spices, particularly sugar, became much less widely
used at the time. 22
The liberation of the perceptual and theoretical
understanding of food from medical concerns was
a gradual process, but by the end of the seventeenth
century, cookbooks rarely referenced the humoural
notions of the Old Dietetics, instead instructing the
selection and combination of ingredients on the basis of
their tastes. The practice of cookery began to be framed
as an art,23 and the consumption of foods as governed
by personal preference rather than medicinal function.
Thus, a new perceptual and theoretical understanding
of food developed which, in aggregate, was eventu
ally codified as modern French cuisine. This culinary
system moved away from the abundant use of spices
and preeminence of the sweet taste that characterized
2 1 . L.S.R., L 'art de bien traiter [1674] (Paris: Editions Payot & Rivages, 1995) .
22. Albala, Eating Right.
23. See Massialot, Le cuisinier rolal et bourgeois [1691] (Paris: Chez Charles de
Serey, 1 698) , 6 in Preface.
358
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
medieval cooking, to incorporate ingredients that were
not commonly used in the middle ages ( including white
meats, fruits, and vegetables ) , novel basic preparations
with butter and cream, and a variety of new techniques
and rules. 24 By the eighteenth century, at a time when a
whole range of scientific and artistic disciplines gained
autonomy and became self-standing areas of activity,25
cookery had ceased to be a dietetic subcategory of
medicine, instead constituting a category of its own
within the arts. 26
Yet, the declining influence of the theory of humours
corresponding with the autonomization of cuisine
from medicine can only serve to explain why spices
and sweet ingredients were used more sparingly, but
not why the sweet came to be perceived as dissociated
from the non-sweet tastes such that the two categories
constituted a fundamental dichotomy around which
the emergent culinary system was structured.27 Indeed,
a more general and profound epistemic shift in the
24. Albala, Eating Right, 1 1 1 ; J-R. Pitte. French Gastronomy: The History and
Geography ofa Passion (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
25. A. Abbott. The System ofPrefessions: An Essay on the Division efExpert Labor
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1 988) .
26. Prior to the eighteenth century, cookbooks were catalogued together
with dietetic treatises under the category of medicine. In 1 764, in the Traittf
des livres rares ('Treatise of rare books') , cooking was classified as art for the
first time (Flandrin, 'From Dietetics to Gastronomy', 431 ) .
2 7 . V. Leschziner, 'Epistemic Foundations of Cuisine. A Socio-Cognitive
Study of the Configuration of Cuisine in Historical Perspective', Theory &
Society 35, 2006: 421-43.
359
COLLAPSE VII
way phenomena were apprehended28 was required to
make the very construction of a dichotomy of tastes
conceptually possible. Thus, a confluence of factors,
ranging from the biological attributes of tastes and
taste receptors, to economic, institutional, and epis
temic changes, must be called on to explain why a
dichotomy of tastes was constructed in early modernity,
why the sweet and non-sweet categories served this
purpose, and why this dichotomy became so central
in structuring the understanding of food, the creation
of dishes, and the organization of the meal.
Recalling the two models that we described earlier,
the Great Chain of Being and the theory of humours,
is instrumental here to grasp the epistemic structure
within which medieval cookery existed. The Great
Chain of Being ( see Figure 1 ) represents two attributes
that characterize pre-modem thought: the view of the
universe as a continuum, and the interest in vague
relations of similitude between things, constructed
on the basis of resemblance of form. 29 The theory of
humours, however, as well as the classical notion of
the four elements ( see Figure 1 ) , symbolizes the very
28. M. Foucault f1 970], 'lhe Order qf Things: An Archaeology qf the Human
Sciences New York : Vintage Books, 1973) .
29. Foucault, The Order qf Things; C. Uvi·Strauss [1962] , The Savage Mind
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966); G. Lloyd, Polarity and
Analogy: Two 'Ijpes qf Argumentation in Early Greek Thought Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1 966) .
(
(
(
360
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
different cognitive tendency to code phenomena into
binary sets.3 0
Though the tendency to construct binary sets may
seem inconsistent with the claim that medieval thought
was characterized by an attention to relations of resem
blance and a view of the cosmos as a continuum,
dichotomies were ultimately subsumed to the principle
of equivalence and the view of the natural world as
a continuous whole.31 Furthermore, one must bear in
mind that, prior to the seventeenth century, relations
of identity, similitude, opposition and difference were
rather vaguely understood, and little attempt was
made to distinguish the nature of one type of rela
tion from another beyond a matter of grading of the
degree of closeness between objects denoted by each
type of relation. 32 The seventeenth century witnessed
an epistemic shift that entailed a move away from the
organization of phenomena by means of vague rela
tions of resemblance of form towards the ordering
of phenomena through the ascertainable presence or
30. M . Douglas, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse
University Press, 1 986) ; Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind; Lloyd, Polarity and
Analogy; M. Sahlins, Culture and Practical Reason (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press,1976), Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure
in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1981), Islands of History (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1 985) , Culture in Practice: Selected Essays (New York: Zone
Books, 2000) .
3 1 . Foucault, The Order oJ Things; Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy; Levi-Strauss,
The Savage Mind.
32. Douglas, How Institutions Think; Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy.
361
COLLAPSE VII
absence of physical properties to establish relations
of difference,33 a requisite for the principled construc
tion of dichotomies. Whereas prior to modernity, the
ordering of natural phenomena ultimately entailed
matters of grading, this epistemic shift represented
the emergence of a very different cognitive style of
establishing boundaries between phenomena. 34
While this change in the nature of classification was
required for the construction of principled dichotomies,
another condition was necessary to establish a dichot
omy of tastes: a higher regard for sensorial experience.
Being subject to bodily needs and temperaments, and
affected by the environment, the senses had been con
sidered too variable a means for acquiring knowledge
during medieval times. 35 By the seventeenth century,
the sense of taste, along with that of smell, was still
not deemed a sufficiently reliable tool to be employed
scientifically. As recognition of the validity leant by
33. This shift occurred with the development of experimental sciences,
associated with which was a new interest in the study of the constitutive
properties of phenomena (rather than their form), and the pursuit of
analytic explanations (Foucault, 7he Order of 7hings) . In short, scientific
endeavours moved away from the construction of taxonomies toward the
explanation of phenomena, and therefore from the exhaustive classification
of objects on the basis of resemblances to the search for causes and reliance
on judgment in selecting and synthesizing relevant properties (Ibid., 162) .
34. See Douglas, How Institutions 7hink. L. Fleck (Genesis and Development ef
a Scientific Fact [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979]) characterizes
the emergence of a new form of classifying and understanding phenomena
as the emergence of a new thought style.
35. See Foucault, 7he Order ef7hings; A. Hauser, 7he Sociology efArt (Chicago:
Chicago University Press. 1 982) ; C. Korsmeyer, Making Sense of Taste: Food
and Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1 999) .
362
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
rigorous empiricism grew in early modernity, however,
the senses were gradually accepted as a dependable
means for acquiring knowledge, thereby allowing a
dichotomy of taste categories to exist as a possible
template for the perception and theorization of food.
To understand why the dichotomy was constituted by
the sweet and non-sweet tastes in particular, a dissocia
tion that was absent in medieval cookery, one must
examine the socio-historical, chemical, and biological
significance of these categories.
A transformation in the institutional position of
sweets within cuisine occurred in early modernity
that is significant in explaining the dissociation of the
sweet from the non-sweet tastes. In the middle ages,
sweets were classified as preserves in a category that
encompassed all sorts of non-perishable items, from
fruits cooked with honey or sugar, to pickles made with
vinegar, mustards, spiced wines, soaps and perfumes.
Preserves were a category separate from the rest of
foods because they were deemed therapeutic more
so than nourishing, and used to improve the over
all humoural qualities of dishes. 36 The distinction of
preserves from the rest of foods had a solid institutional
basis, as preserves were not made by cooks, but by
a specialist, the efficier de bouche, and they were not
36. M. Hyman, 'Les "menues choses qui ne sont de neccessite": Les confitures
et la tab) e' in C. Lambert ( Ed. ) , Du Manuscrit a la table. Essais sur la cuisine au
Moyen Age et repertoire des manuscrits medievaux contenant des recettes culinaires
( Montreal: Les Presses de l'U niversite de Montreal, 1 992) , 282.
363
COLLAPSE VII
featured in cookbooks but in their own specialized
books. 37 Though the sweet taste was not yet conceptu
ally distinguished from the other basic tastes within
the category of preserves, this specialization represents
the origin of the institutional separation of the sweet
from the non-sweet, a separation that continues to this
day, with distinct careers for chefs and pastry chefs, 38
and distinct recipe books.
Certain economic conditions in early modernity
also contributed to the gradual dissociation of the
sweet from the other basic tastes. With the new Euro
pean colonies in tropical countries, sugar turned
from a luxury good into an inexpensive and readily
available commodity. 39 This new level of abundance,
together with the greater chemical combinatorial
flexibility of sugar relative to the common sweet
eners of the medieval period, particularly honey,40
encouraged experimentation with sweets. During this
period, sweet-tasting dishes therefore moved slowly
from their ubiquitous presence throughout the meal
towards a more restricted place at the end of the meal,
37. Flandrin, L 'ordre des mets, 133; Hyman, 'Les "menues"', 282; Hyman &
Hyman, Printing the Kitchen, 395.
38. See P.P Ferguson & S. Zukin, 'The Careers of Chefs' in R. Scapp & B.
Seitz (Eds.), Eating Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1998), 98.
39. Mintz, Sweetness and Power.
40. Honey had been widely used in the middle ages because it was what
sugar became in modernity: inexpensive and readily available.
364
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
circumscribed to entremets and desserts by the eight
eenth century41 and solely desserts later on.
This transformation in the rules for serving food
whereby sweet-tasting dishes became institutionally
separated from the others in early modernity reinforced
the conceptual dissociation of this taste from the non
sweet tastes. In the middle ages, table service had been
structured in a varying number of sequential services,
each of which consisted of multiple sorts of dishes that
blended all basic tastes and were served at the table at
the same time, including hors d'oeuvres, appetizers,
soups, roasts, sweets.42 This was the so-called service a
la.franyaise, generally associated with the French court
and its ostentatious customs, wherein a diner's place
at the banquet table governed the dishes the diner
was to consume. This serving style was replaced in the
mid-nineteenth century by the service a la russe,43 still
in place today, wherein the meal is structured around
courses, each of which consists of one dish, served in a
sequence from appetizer, to entree, and dessert.
41 . Flandrin, L 'Ordre des mets, 139.
42. Flandrin, ' Structure des menus', 191; L 'Ordre des mets, 13-15.
43. The service a la russe acquired this name due to its introduction in France
by the Russian Ambassador to Paris under the First Empire (P.P. Ferguson,
Accountingfor Taste: 7he Triumph qfFrench Cuisine [Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 2004], 89) . It was also institutionalized in Russia under
Peter the Great (D. Goldstein, 'Gastronomic Reforms under Peter the
Great: Toward a Cultural History of Russian food', ]ahrbilcherfar Geschichte
Osteuropas 48, 2000: 481-510, 506).
365
COLLAPSE VII
Scholars generally account for the shift to the
Russian serving style by the socio-political changes
brought about by the French revolution.44 The more
egalitarian and simpler table service of the Russian
style was better suited to a bourgeois society, and to the
preparation, service, and consumption of food in
the restaurant, the emergent social space devoted to
fine dining.45 While these factors influenced the demise
of the seroice a lafranfaise, they do not explain why the
serving style that replaced it sought to separate sweet
from non-sweet tastes across a sequence of individual
dishes.46
One must recall the changing epistemic configura
tion in early modernity to understand the motivation
for this characteristic of the seroice a la russe. With no
dissociation between the sweet and the other basic
tastes either within a dish, within a seroice, or across
the meal, the seroice a la franfaise had corresponded
with the principles reigning over medieval cookery.
It was especially well suited to the Old Dietetic con
cern for maintaining an ideal humoural balance, in
44. ].· P. Aron, The Art efEating in France: Manners and Menus in the Nineteenth
Century (London: Peter Owen, 1975); N. Elias, The Civilizing Process:
Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Oxford, Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2000) ; S. Mennell, All Manners efFood: Eating and Taste in England and France
from the Middle Ages to the Present (Urbana, Chicago: University of Illinois
Press, 1996) .
45. R. Spang, The Invention qf the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic
Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000) .
46. V. Leschziner, 'Epistemic Foundations of Cuisine' : 421-43.
366
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
that serving multiple dishes at the same time allowed
for each diner to select the food that was prescribed
for their humoural idiosyncrasies.47 However, this
serving style became unwarranted and even impracti
cal in early modernity, as the goal of cuisine was no
longer associated with medical concerns but with the
experience of taste. The seroice a la russe facilitated this
growing aesthetic appreciation of food because, by
bringing dishes from the kitchen to be eaten promptly,
rather than having them all sit at the table for hours
throughout the meal, it prevented food from losing
its temperature and flavour before being consumed. 48
Moreover, the series of courses in the seroice a la
russe offered perceptible temporal and spatial dimen
sions along which to anchor the emergent conceptual
dissociation of taste categories. The sweet taste became
temporally separated from the others in that it was
consigned to the end of the meal, subsequent to the
appetizer and entree, courses that became predomi
nantly non-sweet-tasting. It was spatially separated
from these courses in that the table was cleared before
the dessert was served. Indeed, the word 'dessert' has
its etymological origin in the traditional practice of
desseroir la table ( to remove the dishes ) , to let diners
stand up from the table, converse or dance, to come
47. Flandrin, ' From Dietetics to Gastronomy', 420; Leschziner, 'Epistemic
Foundations of Cuisine', 437 .
48. Flandrin, L 'Ordre des mets, 148.
367
COLLAPSE VII
back to have sweet dishes on a newly set table. This
institutionally imposed spatial and temporal separation
of the sweet-tasting course from the rest of the meal
therefore reinforced the conceptualization of the sweet
as dissociated from the non-sweet tastes.
The conceptual dissociation between the sweet and
non-sweet tastes engendered by the courses of the serv
ice a la russe highlights the fact that there is not only a
dichotomous relation between the sweet and non-sweet
tastes, but that there is also a relation of markedness,
wherein the sweet is the marked term and the non
sweet the unmarked. 49 In a relation of markedness, the
marked term is defined with a high level of specificity
and therefore occurs in delimited circumstances, while
the unmarked term is defined more vaguely, and may
even be a residual category, and is therefore something
that appears more frequently. 5 0 In the cognitive struc
ture of modern French cuisine, whereas the sweet is
defined with precision ( the presence of sugars) and is
circumscribed to desserts, the non-sweet is indeed a
residual category whose appearance is less restricted.
This relation of markedness is relevant in considering
49. L. Waugh, 'Marked and Unmarked: A Choice Between Unequals in
Semiotic Structure', Semiotica 38, 1982: 299-318, 301 . The notion of markedness
originates in the structural linguistics of Trubetzkoy (Principles ef Phonology
[ 1949] Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969]) and Jakobson
(Selecte Writing;, Vol. I. Phonological Studies [The Hague: Mouton, 1971 ]).
50. As Waugh explains ('Marked and Unmarked' , 307), the relation
of markedness is not a matter of absolutes, but rather something that is
constantly subject to redefinition. Marked terms acquire their meaning as
they relate to unmarked terms and to the context more generally.
J
368
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
some of the biological factors that may have contrib
uted to a conceptual dissociation between these two
taste categories, rather than others.
First, while it is not unique in this regard, the sweet
does hold a special status as one of the basic tastes that
is intrinsically perceived as pleasant. 51 Whereas the
unpleasant tastes52 are generally indicators of toxicity
or potentially harmful acidity, and therefore serve
to moderate or deter the consumption of substances
which exhibit them, the pleasant tastes can be used
to infer the macronutritional content ( in terms of fats,
proteins, and carbohydrates ) of substances which
exhibit them, and facilitate the development of dietary
preferences for these substances as foods. 53 In short,
the hedonic properties of the basic tastes serve adaptive
physiological functions with behavioural consequences
that inevitably contribute to the perception and theo
rization of foods. In particular, the positive hedonic
value connected to the sweet taste serves to promote
the detection and consumption of sugars, the most
basic and fundamental sources of metabolic energy. 54
5 1 . Umami and saltiness are similarly classified as pleasant tastes (J.
Chandrashekar, M. Hoon, N.J.P. Ryba, C.S. Zuker, 'The receptors and
cells for mammalian taste', Nature 444, 2006:288-94, 289; A. Carleton, R.
Accolla & S.A. Simon, ' Coding in the mammalian gustatory system', Trends
in Neurosciences 33, 2010: 326-34, 331 .
52. Bitterness and sourness are classified as unpleasant tastes (Carleton et al) .
53. Chandrashekar et al.
54. Ibid., 289.
369
COLLAPSE VII
Even bereft of their sensorial effects, the nutritional
significance of sugars independently contributes to a
preference for sweet-tasting foods, establishing them
as the most favourable dietary material. Recently
published laboratory research shows that rodents
prefer sweet relative to other pleasant-tasting ( i.e.
nutritious ) foods even when they cannot perceive the
tastes. 55 The findings suggest that the regulation of
glucose metabolism resulting from the ingestion of
sugars is sufficient to stimulate brain dopamine centres,
thereby developing and reinforcing a behavioural pref
erence for sugars over other available macronutrients. 56
In effect, when sensorial differences are removed, the
physiological consequences of consumption alone are
sufficient to establish a preference for sweet relative
even to other pleasant-tasting foods. Thus, the sweet
taste is indeed marked relative to the non-sweet tastes,
in that the nutritional significance of sweet-tasting
foods, combined with their intrinsic pleasantness, is
sufficiently strong to elevate the behavioural preference
for these foods more than for foods of any other taste,
facilitating a conceptual dissociation of the sweet from
the non-sweet tastes. The institutional separation of
sweet-tasting foods from the rest of dishes in a meal
55. X. Ren, J.G. Ferreira, L. Zhuo, S.J. Shammah-Lagnado, C. Yeckel & I . E .
d e Aruajo, 'Nutrient selection i n the absence of taste receptor signaling', The
Journal ofNeuroscience 30, 2010: 8012-23.
56. Ibid.
370
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
in modern French cuisine may be associated with this
natural coveting of dietary sugars.
Another property of the sweet taste renders it a
particularly likely candidate for dissociation from the
other basic tastes in modern French cuisine: the sweet is
both the least suppressed and the strongest suppressor
of other basic tastes when they appear in combina
tion. 57 Indeed, when individuals are made to sample
all possible binary, ternary and quaternary mixtures
of sweet with sour, salty, and bitter tastes, and asked
to attribute individual intensity ratings to each of the
basic tastes appearing in each sample, they invariably
perceive sweetness as the dominant taste.58 Notably,
the perceptual bias for the experience of sweetness
occurs at the expense of perceiving tastes that indicate
potentially harmful qualities of a food,59 suggesting
that the detection and consumption of macronutrients,
particularly of dietary sugars, supersedes the detection
and avoidance of toxins as the primary function of the
gustatory system.6 0 Moreover, the finding indicates a
possible perceptual motivation for the dissociation
of the sweet from the non-sweet tastes, as it implies
57. B.G. Green, J. Lim, F. Osterhoff, K. Blacher & D. & Nachtigal, 'Taste
mixture interactions: Suppression, additivity, and the predominance of
sweetness', Physiology & Behaviour 101, 2010: 731-37.
58. Ibid.
59. High levels of salt consumption heighten the risk of hypertension, and
as we mentioned previously, bitter and sour tastes are indicators of potential
toxicity (Chandrashekar et al.; Green et al. ) .
6 0 . See Chandrashekar e t al.
371
COLLAPSE VII
that this dissociation, more than any other between
a singular marked taste and residual group of tastes,
better enables the perception of all tastes. Insofar as
taste was gaining appreciation as a standard of judg
ment during the transition to modern French cuisine,
the dissociation of the sweet from the non-sweet tastes
was an ideal fit, and itself functioned to reinforce this
conceptual organization of the basic tastes.
A number of factors therefore influenced the
dissociation of the sweet from the non-sweet tastes,
including the socio-historical, chemical, and biological
significance of these categories. As we argue below, this
dichotomy remains a pervasive cognitive structure in
many contemporary high cuisines influenced by the
French style, even as a trend is burgeoning among
innovative chefs in high-end restaurants to experiment
with non-sweet ingredients in desserts.
THE SWEET VE RSUS NON-SWEET TASTES IN
C O NTEMPORARY H I GH C U I S I N E
In the previous section, we examined a transformation
in the rules for the selection, preparation, service, and
consumption of food, which led to a perceptual and
theoretical dissociation of the sweet from the non
sweet tastes. We suggested that the autonomization of
culinary practices, particularly from medical concerns,
allowed for taste to gain appreciation as an organizing
372
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
principle in cuisine. A general epistemic shift in the
way phenomena were classified, specific economic
and institutional conditions, the chemical properties
of certain foods, and certain biological attributes of
the basic tastes, we argued, were all important factors
in the perceptual and theoretical dissociation of the
sweet from the non-sweet tastes. Sweet-tasting foods
were thus separated from those with non-sweet tastes,
and were consigned to the end of the meal, thereby
reinforcing the institutionalization of the marked rela
tionship between the sweet and non-sweet tastes. This
relationship between the two categories had a central
role in structuring the culinary system that was eventu
ally codified as modern French cuisine, a system that
still informs prescriptions and proscriptions across
many contemporary Western culinary styles.
Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that the disso
ciation of the sweet from non-sweet tastes continues
to structure Western cuisines in the organization of
contemporary cookbooks and restaurant menus, where
dishes that are preeminently sweet are essentially con
signed to their own separate section, desserts. To be
sure, sweet ingredients do appear in dishes outside of
the realm of desserts, such as in cold appetizers or with
braised meats, but many of these dishes can be traced
back to medieval cookery ( melon and prosciutto or
duck a l'orange are good examples ) , and so are holdovers
from older times rather than products created within
373
COLLAPSE VII
the modern culinary structure. Regardless of whether
the dishes that combine sweet and non-sweet tastes
originate in medieval cookery or not, such dishes are
arguably exceptions in a cuisine that is structured
around the dissociation of the sweet from the other
basic tastes, wherein foods are essentially perceived to
be of either sweet or non-sweet character. 61
There is a trend, however, developed in contempo
rary high-end restaurants in the past few years, that
combines sweet and non-sweet ingredients in a way
that is entirely novel. In contrast to the incorporation
of sweet ingredients into the realm of the non-sweet,
the practice that is to be traced back to medieval
custom ( and beyond) , the new trend sees the non
sweet encroaching upon the sweet. A few years ago,
contemporary elite chefs working within Western
cuisines began to create innovative desserts through
the combination of non-sweet ingredients, not typically
used in desserts, with more standard sweet compo
nents. These chefs incorporate herbs such as thyme
or rosemary, or spices such as pepper or cumin; they
6 1 . In contrast to medieval cookbooks, contemporary books provide
evidence of the role of the dichotomy between sweet and non·sweet tastes
as an organizing logic of cuisine. Not only are books structured around this
dichotomy, but also if there are recipes that combine sweet ingredients with
non-sweet ingredients, authors generally preface them with a comment that
denotes the extra-ordinary nature of the recipe. In addition, interviews with
elite chefs conducted by one of the authors (see V. Leschziner, 'Kitchen
Stories: Patterns of Recognition in Contemporary High Cuisine', Sociological
Forum 22, 2007 : 77·101) also provide evidence that combining sweet with
non-sweet ingredients is a practice that, even if growing in popularity, is
perceived as out of the ordinary.
374
Leschziner & Dakin - Theorizing Cuisine
substitute fruits in traditional recipes with ingredients
like parsnips or tomatoes, or replace cream or ricotta
with strong-tasting cheeses such as a Roquefort or
aged Cheddar. A widely popular ingredient in elite
restaurants in the past few years, bacon has now made
appearances in cakes, cookies and ice cream.
Besides the culinary novelty of these creations, the
practice of making desserts with non-sweet ingredients
typically consigned to non-sweet courses represents
an innovative pattern of cognition with regard to the
relations between taste categories. In contrast to the
medieval custom of adding sweet ingredients in all
sorts of dishes, in the contemporary combination of
the sweet and non-sweet, it is the unmarked category
(the non-sweet) that moves into the marked one (the
sweet) . Since membership in the residual category
easily outstrips membership in the precisely marked
category, a vast number of combinatorial possibilities
exist for this innovative practice in contemporary
Western cuisines.
However, that the practice of using non-sweet
ingredients in desserts innovates on convention, both
culinary and cognitive, and that there is great potential
for this practice, is not to be taken as an indicator of a
radical change in the underlying cognitive structure of
modern cuisine. This is not only because using non
sweet ingredients in desserts is, for the moment, only
a trend in elite restaurants - for it may, in time, trickle
down and become socially widespread, just as the
375
COLLAPSE VII
custom of eating a sweet course at the end of the meal
did in early modernity. Rather, if this trend is unlikely
to change the structure of cuisine as it was formed in
early modernity, it is because of the biological, socio
cognitive, and institutional attributes of the sweet taste.
Insofar as sweetness is the strongest suppressor and
least suppressed of the basic tastes when appearing in
combination, using non-sweet ingredients in a dessert
will be largely ineffective in changing the ultimately
sweet character of the dish. As it follows, the addition
of non-sweet ingredients into desserts is not likely to
alter the marked character of sweetness, and therefore
the cognitive and institutional separation of this basic
taste from the others.
Examining this recent trend in contemporary cui
sine sheds light on two important arguments put forth
in this article. First, in purposefully challenging the
dissociation between the sweet and non-sweet tastes,
the current trend of using non-sweet ingredients in
desserts actually demonstrates the extent to which this
dissociation has a central role in structuring the selec
tion, preparation, service and consumption of food in
modern cuisine. Second, that this trend is unlikely to
change the structure of cuisine as it was formed in early
modernity, indicates the significance of analyzing cog
nitive structures, along other more commonly studied
factors, to understand how and why systems of rules
that govern areas of social activity develop, endure,
and change.
376
LIGHT CYAN B LUE
Breast of chicken, one per serving
Vanilla ice cream (high quality real vanilla, not cheap artificial stuff)
Vanilla extract or, preferably, beans
Frozen orange juice concentrate
Brown sugar
Corn starch
Tue breast of chicken can be with or without bone, or may be half
of a split chicken, including a leg, etc. - it really doesn't matter.
What is important is that the skin and fat remain.
For the orange sauce, in a small pot, on low heat, warm up half a
can of the orange juice concentrate, mixing in a teaspoon or two
of brown sugar. Tue sauce should be sour, not sweetened with the
brown sugar; the sugar is only there to add a touch of flavour,
not sweetness. Add com starch to the sauce to thicken it until the
viscosity is similar to thick molasses. Maintain on a very low heat
or otherwise keep warm until serving.
Grill the chicken to preference. However, the skin should be crispy
and the meat should remain very fatty; retain the fat, rather than
draining, as needed.
Tue vanilla ice cream should be very cold and hard, such that it
scoops into balls and will take longer to melt.
Tue chicken should be served hot (but not excessively so), right
off the grill (with a little pouring of fat over it, if desired), topped
immediately with one or two scoops of ice cream sprinkled with
just a bit of vanilla, this all topped with enough orange sauce to
cover part of the chicken and ice cream but not to drown it. Speed
is of the essence here, as the idea is for the diner to be able to
experience the contrasting heat of the chicken and the coldness of
the ice cream for as long as possible before temperatures equalize.
Serve with a glass of light (wheat) beer flavoured with lemon, and
a glass of red wine.
COLLAPSE VII
The H u m an Sensoria and a
Synaesthetic Approach to Cooking
Sean A Day,
with contri butions cou rtesy
Wan nerton
{I]hat perceptions are not absolutely determinate and sin
gular is obvi.ousjrom thefact that each sense is an abstract
ing mechanism. Sight by itselfinforms us only ofcolors
andforms. No one can pretend that the images ofsight are
determinate in reference to taste. They are, therefore, sofar
general that they are neither sweet nor non-sweet, bitter
nor non-bitter, having savor nor insipid.
C HA R L E S S A N D E R S P E I R C E , 1 8 6 8
THE SENSES, C O O KING, FOOD, AND EATING
Which sensory modalities are involved in 'eating' ?
'Flavour' involves far more than just the sense of
taste, or even the combination of taste with smell;
we might also consider at least the components of
temperature (which divides into at least two separate
senses), vision (which itself is comprised of at least four
379
COLLAPSE VII
components) ,1 hearing (which, in humans, separates
speech sounds, musical sounds, and 'other' sounds) ,
touch, pain, and kinetics.
This opens up the question of how many 'senses'
there are as per the medical sciences. But, equally and
perhaps more importantly, it raises the question of
how many senses a given particular culture counts,
how those senses are integrated, and, for that group of
people, what the hierarchy of the senses is. The Aristo
telian paradigm, for instance, which still infuses much
of our thinking, holds that there are five senses, ranked
from most to least important as follows: sight; hearing;
smell; taste; and touch. However, it should also be
noted that in De Anima 'taste' and 'seeing' are defined
as forms of 'touch' . 2 This model was later reaffirmed
by Descartes. Thomas Aquinas, however, did argue
for 'taste' to be placed higher than 'smell' (along with
'touch' ranking at the top, within certain structures) ,
and Isidor of Seville attempted to (re-)assert the con
nection of sapor ('taste') with sapere ('knowledge') and
sapienta ('wisdom') .3 Various Christian, Muslim and
Jewish theologians equated touch with the body, and
thus consequentially sex and lust; touch thus became
deemed the most sinful or shameful of the senses.
1. See, e.g., S. Zeki, A Vision ef the Brain (Oxford: Blackwell Scientific
Publications, 1 993) .
2. See S. Stewart, 'Remembering the Senses', in D. Howes (ed.) Empire ifthe
Senses (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005) , 59-69.
3. See R. Jutte, A History efthe Senses (Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2005).
380
Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
Since taste, unlike sight, hearing and smell, is also
obtained via touching items, and thus also in direct
contact with the world, taste also became sinful.
Yet, it is not too difficult for us to find other con
structs of 'the senses' . The Desana (Wira) , a Tukano
people living in Columbia, for example, are extremely
careful to discern between their five different senses
of vision ( or sight) , smell, taste, hearing, and touch.
However, for the Desana, what is essential to all of this
is how the senses integrate in concordance with their
cosmology, with a main focus being on colours.4 As
in many cultures throughout the world, Desana life
is infused with a learned system of colour symbolism
that operates synaesthetically. Thus, for example, con
ceptually, combining a certain colour with a certain
temperature will result in producing a specific odour;
that is, 'odour' is comprised of colour and temperature.
Or, the sound of a small bone flute is perceived as red,
hot, and having a male odour; these concepts combine
such that a tune played on the flute evokes youth
ful happiness and the taste of a fleshy fruit, deemed
very erotic by young women. 5 Flavour is thought to
derive from odour, but is deemed less important;
4. See C. Classen, 'McLuhan in the Rainforest', in Howes, Empire qf the
Senses, 147-63.
5 . See, G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious
Symbolism qfthe Tukano Indians Chicago: University Press, 1971; G. Reichel
Dolmatoff, 'Cosmology as Ecological Analysis: A View from the Rain
Forest', Man 2, 1 976: 307-18; G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Beyond the Milky Way:
Hallucinatory Imagery qf the Tukano Indians (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin
American Center Publications, 1978) .
381
COLLAPSE VII
still, kin groups are differentiated by flavours. 6 All of
this integrates with the Desana's use of Banisteriopsis
caapi, known as ayahuasca or yage, which contains
harmine, harmaline, tetrahydroharmine, and the pri
mary psychoactive component, dimethyltryptamine
(with the addition of Psychotria viridis) , combining to
form a strong hallucinogen which frequently produces
synaesthesia and sensory heightening.
Cooking is also conceived of as a colour process.
Smoking meat is believed to transform the potentially
dangerous yellow component of the meat into a safe
red. After the meat is smoked it is cooked in a pot to
render it an edible brown. The tripod structure used
for smoking meat symbolizes this colour transforma
tion: the lower part is said to be yellow, the grid in
the centre is said to be red, and the upper part, from
which the processed food is removed, is brown, the
colour of edible food. Fire itself is said to contain the
yellow of the sun and the red of the earth in its flames,
and the blue of the Milky Way in its smoke, making
it a symbol of cosmic energy. 7
There have been numerous experiments which
have shown quite conclusively that the perception of
a flavour can be enhanced by the intensity of a colour,
even when the colour is not of a typical natural or
6. G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, 'Desana Animal Categories, Food Restrictions,
and the Concept of Colour Energies', Journal qf Latin American Lore, 4, no.
2, 1978: 243-91 .
7. Classen, 'McLuhan i n the Rainforest', 157-8.
382
Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
culture-based association with the flavour; given three
beakers of solutions with equal amounts of strawberry
flavouring, one coloured dark blue will be perceived
as 'stronger' than one coloured faint blue, which in
turn will be considered 'stronger' than a clear liquid.8
Likewise, you can trick someone into perceiving the
flavour of a white wine as being that of a red wine just
by dying it red.
However, while the focus on colour's relationship to
flavour is fairly common, other aspects of vision often
get overlooked. For example, current research at the
University of Edinburgh's Department of Psychology
suggests that humans have an innate or early-learned
tendency to associate round or spherical obj ects
with sweet and square, cubic objects with sour. This
extended to experiments in which equally sweetened
candies were considered to be sourer if shaped as cubes
rather than spheres.9 We could extrapolate from this
and, for example, consider the effects on the flavours of
desserts served on round, triangular, or square plates.
Texture can also play a significant role: crunchy
potato chips are different in flavour than soggy ones;
there are reasons why certain pastas are served al dente
or not; likewise for escargot and scallops. We could also
8. See, e.g., the episode 'De smaak van moeders stem', from the Dutch
television series Noorderlich, for Donderdag 27 juni, 2002.
9. Simner et al. (forthcoming); preliminary findings from this research were
presented by Julia Simner at the 8'• Meeting of the American Synesthesia
Association, Nashville, TN, Oct. 1 - 3, 2010.
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look to the amount of masochistic pleasure induced
by various chilies.
I present these issues so as to pose the following
questions: What about when we create recipes where
the edible creation is a spandrel1 0 or secondary out
come of the process? What if the recipe does not focus
primarily on 'taste' or 'smell'?
The purpose might, for example, be tactile, and
in the preparation, not in the actual eating: Consider
making mud pies. If you are quite involved in play
ing, there will often be a specific recipe, which needs
to be followed rigidly in certain aspects, but that can
be modified in others ( e.g., four different varieties of
'spices', and three of 'toppings' ) . The main attraction
of making mud pies might be squishing the mud, or
feeling the little chunks of twigs, stones, bugs, and
other items integrated in them; or the movements
involved in rolling out the pie 'dough' and then shap
ing it into form. One can then also play at eating the
mud pies, but that is often secondary to the play of
preparation - you play at 'cooking' more than 'eating'.
We can extrapolate from this to consider that almost
all human cultures have foods meant to be eaten by
hand - from Huli in the Southern Highlands of Papua
New Guinea eating sweet potatoes, to Hoosiers in the
Midwest US eating cheeseburgers and fries - where
10. See S. Gould, 'The Exaptive Excellence of Spandrels as a Term and
Prototype', PNAS 94, Sept. 1 997: 10750-55.
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
providing the proper tactile experience is an essential
part of the preparation, or 'cooking', process.
Let's next take a quick look at the attraction of the
kinetic: In the United States, where I currently reside,
there are few foods deliberately eaten live. There are,
of course, various bacteria cultures, such as those in
yogurt and cheeses, and there are also oysters. But bac
teria and oysters don't wriggle. Elsewhere in the world,
eating live things is far more common. In Germany,
for example, we find Wiirchwitzer Milbenkase, with live
mites, 'I.Jroglyphus casei, which are consumed; these live
mites, but usually in smaller quantities, may also be
found in other cheeses, such as Spanish Cabrales cheese
and French Mimolette. However, again, one usually
cannot feel the mites moving around on one's tongue
while eating these cheeses. But then there is Italian
casu marzu, cheese, which comes with Piophila casei
maggots; these may be large enough to feel wriggling
on your lips and tongue, especially as the maggots are
also known to leap distances up to i5cm.
With Korean sannalgi, you can readily see and feel
the chopped octopus wriggling in your mouth; the
small octopuses may instead be served whole, so that
you initiate the killing of the octopuses with your teeth,
which is far wiser than swallowing them whole live.
Similarly, there are Japanese odori ebi, 'dancing shrimp',
Pandalus borealis; and Chinese 'drunken shrimp'; but,
although they are live, they are often served stunned
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COLLAPSE VII
and non-moving. We could also mention Japanese
ikizukuri and Taiwanese 1Zng Yang fish.
But these are all 'fancy restaurant' things, quite a
bit different than the general hunter-and-gatherer's
grabbing up some termites and popping them into
her mouth, or finding a good-sized spider or beetle
and chomping into it. For about eighty percent of
the world, insects and arachnids are still a part of
'common-folk' cuisine; for example, ants in traditional
mole sauces, termites in the African Kalahari area, or
locusts in Arabia. Yet insects or arachnids still haven't
appeared as the 'secret ingredient' on Iron Chef, or as a
challenge item on Top Chef. As Tom Turpin, of Purdue
University's Entomology department points out, 11
shrimp, lobsters, and crabs, like insects and arachnids,
are also crustaceans; these items turn up frequently on
such shows. Turpin laments that the gourmet attitude
seems to be 'that if the creature lives in the sea it is
edible, but if it lives on the land it is not' .
Tangentially, regarding the question of why we eat
certain things, this also brings up the matter of eating
things - such as worms, bugs, or spiders - for fun or
on a dare. This also relates to such things as the Purdue
Bug Bowl's Cricket Spitting Contest, 12 at which many
1 1 . http://www.agriculture.purdue.edu/agcomm/newscolumns/archives/
OSL/1994/January/0 1 13940SL.html.
12. http://extension.entm.purdue.edu/bugbowljevents.html.
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
(non-live, freeze-dried) crickets are unintentionally - or
intentionally - consumed.
And, of course, from here we can consider the
whole realm of aphrodisiacs, from absinthe to species
of Zygophyllum and beyond. 13 In terms of what we are
looking at here, aphrodisiacs are an interesting group
of items: With some, the intent is to provide pleasure
via the flavour, which is then expected to be extended
into erotic pleasure. With others, such as certain chilies,
the intent is oral pain, or pain to the genitals or other
body parts. Yet for others, the focus is mainly visual
and tactile play, via the item's similarity to a penis,
vulva, breast ( s ) , or other body part ( s ) . While there
are very specific recipes for the precise preparation of
many aphrodisiacs, the resulting flavour of the product
might be insipid, horrendous, or nauseating - but
that's not the point.
FLAVO UR-RELATED SYNAESTH E S IAE
Synaesthesia14 is the general name for two sets ( or
'complexes' ) of over sixty related cognitive traits. In
the first set, 'sensorial synaesthesiae', stimuli to one
13. See, e.g., R. Stark, '!he Book efAphrodisiacs (New York: Stein and Day, 1980) .
14. The word 'synaesthesia' comes directly from the Greek cruv· (syn·)
'union', and �ricn� (aisthesis) 'sensation', thus meaning something akin
to 'a union of the senses'. ' Synaesthesia' is the British English spelling of the
word; in American English, it is often spelled 'synesthesia', without the first
'a'. Both the American and British plural forms end with an 'e'.
387
COLLAPSE VII
sense, such as smell, are involuntarily simultaneously
perceived as if by one or more other senses, such as
sight and/or hearing. For example, the sounds of musi
cal instruments might make one see certain colours,
each colour specific and consistent with the particular
instrument playing. Or the taste of espresso coffee
could make one see a pool of dark green oily fluid
about four feet away. One highly documented case of
synaesthesia involved Michael Watson, 'the man who
tasted shapes' ,15 who synaesthetically felt at or within
his right hand shapes and textures corresponding
to different flavours - the flavour of spearmint, for
example, felt like cool smooth glass columns.
With the second group of synaesthesiae, which
some call 'ordinal sequence' and 'spatial sequence'
synaesthesiae, certain sets of things which individual
cultures teach us to put together and categorize (and
also usually serialize) in some specific way - like let
ters, numbers, or people's names - also evoke some
kind of sensory addition, such as a smell, colour or
flavour. The most common forms of ordinal sequence
synaesthesiae involve such things as coloured written
letter characters (graphemes ), numbers, time units, and
musical notes or keys. For example, the synaesthete
might see, about a foot or two before her, different
colours for different spoken vowel and consonant
sounds, or perceive numbers and letters, whether
15. See R. Cytowic, 7he Man who Tasted Shapes (New York: Putnam, 1993) .
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
conceptualized or before her in print, as coloured. A
friend of mine always perceives the letter 'A' as pink,
'B' as blue, and 'C' as green, no matter what colour
ink they are printed with.16
Richard Cytowic posited diagnostic features of
neurological synaesthesia; 17 synaesthesia is: involuntary
and must be elicited; durable; and generic regarding
its perceptions. The majority (somewhere around 80%
-85%) of synaesthetes who 'see things' do so 'inside the
head', as if the image is projected onto a screen or just
'in the mind's eye'. The 'screen' is usually located 'on
the inside of the forehead' or 'in the eyes', although
for some synaesthetes it may be at the top of the head
or even in the back, at the base of the skull. Or, for
those in this group, there is instead a 'feeling of the
colour'; that is, for example, the sound of middle C
on a piano 'feels' red.18
For those who do see things 'out there', the images
may range from a half metre or less away to fifty metres
or more, although most are around the one-half to three
16. For more regarding the different types of synaesthesia, see S. Day, ' Some
Demographic and Socio-cultural Aspects of Synesthesia', in L. Robertson,
N. Sagiv, eds, Synesthesia: Perspectives.from Cognitive Neuroscience (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005) , 1 1 -33; also http://home.comcast.net/�sean.
day/html/types.html.
17. See R. Cytowic, Synesthesia: A Union ef the Senses (New York: Springer
Verlag, 1989); see also the second edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: M IT
Press, 2002) , 67-70.
18. See M . Dixon, et al. , 'Not All Synaesthetes are Created Equal: Projector
versus Associator Synaesthetes', Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience
4, no. 3, 2004: 335-43.
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COLLAPSE VII
metre range. Members of this latter group of synaes
thetes are currently commonly called 'projectors' .19
It is possible for a multiple synaesthete to be both a
projector of one or more types and a non-projector
of other types, or even for a synaesthete to be both in
regards to one type, varying between projecting and
non-projecting with situations.
' Durable' here means that the associations and
relationships stay the same; this is also known as
'consistency'. For example, if the sound of a piano is
sky-blue, it always has been and always will be that
synaesthetic colour. 'Generic' primarily pertains to
synaesthetically perceived visual shapes. The shapes
are basic geometrics, like circles, triangles, curves,
spirals, clouds, or blobs, rather than complex structures
such as, say, Winston Churchill's face, the Notre Dame
cathedral of Paris, or the Chicago skyline.
Currently, there are two main theories as to the
cause of congenital synaesthesia: the cross-activation
theory and disinhibited feedback theory. The cross
activation theory, previously often called the 'adja
cency' theory, proposes that congenital synaesthesia
emerges from cross-activation of adjacent regions of
the brain. For example, a region of the brain involved
in identifying graphemes lies adjacent to region V4
of the visual cortex, which handles colour process
ing; cross-activation might result in 'coloured letter'
19. Ibid.
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
synaesthesia. 20 The cross-activation might be occurring
due to atypical pruning of connections during infancy;
that is, synaesthesia might be the result of neotenic
retention21 of neuronal connections. The disinhibited
feedback theory, on the other hand, proposes that
synaesthesia results from a reduction in the amount
of inhibition along neural pathways. 22 The rate of
feedback from association areas (e.g., the parietal lobe
and limbic system) to primary sensory areas of the
brain is usually regulated by a set balance of excitation
and inhibition. However, if this rate were atypical due
to developmental aberrance (genetic or epigenetic
causes) or disrupted via drugs such as LSD or mesca
line, synaesthesia might result. (I will note, though,
regarding drug-induced synaesthesia, that while there
are indeed cases both of flavour as the inducer [trig
gering sensation] for synaesthesia, and flavour as the
concurrent [resulting synaesthetic perception], such
occurrences are extremely rare, even in terms of the
rarity of synaesthesia itself.) We need to keep in mind
20. See e.g. V. Ramachandran, E. Hubbard, 'Synaesthesia: A Window
into Perception, Thought and Language', Journal ef Consciousness Studies
8, no. 12, 200 1 : 3-34; R. Cytowic, D. Eagleman, Wednesday is Indigo Blue
( Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2009) .
2 1 . See S. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny ( Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard, 1977).
22. See P. Grossenbacher, C. Lovelace, 'Mechanisms of Synaesthesia:
Cognitive and Physiological Constraints', Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5, no.
1, 2001: 36-41.
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COLLAPSE VII
that the cross-activation and the disinhibited feedback
theories are not mutually exclusive.
It should be pointed out that congenital synaes
thetes do not get to choose their associations between
things, and which things get associated with which
has nothing to do with likes or dislikes, 'good' or
'bad' or any other emotional aspects. For example, I
like the sound of French horns, but dislike the school
bus yellow colour they synaesthetically evoke. I also
like the sound of saxophones, and love the electric
neon purple shapes they evoke. I dislike the flavour
of certain colas, along with the synaesthetic colours
produced. That is, likes may go with dislikes, or vice
versa, or likes may go with other likes, etc. And this
holds throughout the synaesthete's entire life.
One of the classic scenes of synaesthesia research
occurred on IO February 1980, as neurologist Richard
E. Cytowic accompanied artist Michael Watson while
the latter finished preparing dinner for a party. 23 Tast
ing a sauce for a roasted chicken, Watson suddenly
declared, "Oh, dear [ . . ] there aren't enough points on
the chicken."2 4 With some persuading, he went on to
explain to Cytowic: "I know it sounds crazy, but I have
this thing, see, where I taste by shape. [ . . . ] Flavors
have shape, [ . . ] I wanted the taste of this chicken to
be a pointed shape, but it came out all round. [ . . . ]
.
.
23. See R. Cytowic, Synesthesia.
24. Ibid., 3.
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
Well, I mean it's nearly spherical, [ . . . ] I can't serve this
if it doesn't have points." Watson went on to state that
he mainly felt things synaesthetically rubbing against
his face or sitting in his hands. "When I taste something
with an intense flavor [ . . . ] the feeling sweeps down
my arm into my fingertips. I feel it - its weight, its
texture. Whether it's warm or cold, everything. I feel
it like I'm actually grasping something."2s
Regarding 'flavour to touch' synaesthesia, the pri
mary gustatory cortex, which is the first cortical area
to be involved in taste, lies directly posterior to the
somatosensory cortex (Sl) . If we consider the adja
cency theory of synaesthesia causation, this could be
a factor in why 'the man who tasted shapes' had such
synaesthetic perceptions. This area also lies directly
above the insular cortex, another area of multimodal
convergence.
I myself have 'flavour to visual/spatial' synaesthe
sia; rather than being 'in the mind's eye', I 'project'
my synaesthetic perceptions as coloured, textured
geometrical forms to precise locations in front of
me. 26 Other types of gustation-related synaesthesiae
also exist, although they are extremely rare. One of
these other types is 'musical sounds to flavour'. Sound
is processed in the upper portion of the temporal
25. Ibid., 4.
26. A very preliminary 'work-in-progress' attempt to depict some of my
synaesthetic perceptions for various flavours and smells may be seen at:
http://home.comcast.net/�sean.day/sean-foods.htm.
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lobe, taste in the lower portion; again, for the 'sound
to flavour' synaesthete, there could be connections
between these regions. The character Des Esseintes,
in Huysmans's A Rebours ( 'Against Nature' ) , built
a type of 'musical timbres to ( liquor) flavours' key
board, with which, for example, the sound of a clarinet
was equated with the 'sour' and 'velvety' taste of dry
cura<;ao, the flute with mint and anisette. However, as
stated in the story, this was not a display of any type
of actual synaesthesia on the part of Des Esseintes
but rather an attempt at synthesizing a new form of
artistic expression.
A subscriber to the Synesthesia List27 wrote to tell me:
I've always had a connection between music and
taste. I associate certain tastes in my mouth associ
ated with particular instruments and notes. It is
strongest when I listen to individual instruments and
the clearer and less 'muddy' the pitch, the stronger
the taste. Some examples: Violins taste like lemons.
Cellos can be orange, or cherry if they play very low.
Bass is cherry. Woodwinds tend to be 'herbal' - like
mint or some kind of herbal tea.
27. The Synesthesia List is an international e-mail forum I have operated
for the past eighteen years. Currently, it has over 660 members, from over
46 countries around the world. More than half of these are synaesthetes, of
many different types. Other members include neurologists, psychologists,
medical doctors, linguists, musicians, and people from many other academic
disciplines. The main language of the group is English, but other languages
do appear from time to time.
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
An e-mail from a 'touch to taste' synaesthete reported:
Peaches, when I touch them, taste nothing like
peaches. There are many foods I don't eat with my
fingers because the synaesthetic taste produced by the
texture of the object clashes so badly with the taste
of the food itself. I also have the smoothest eating
utensils I could buy so they don't affect the taste of
the food as much. Conversely, there are some foods
(seasoned octopus salad, for instance) which I prefer
to eat with my fingers because the synaesthetic taste
enhances the taste of the food. Truth is, most things
don't 'match' .
However, it is not just a matter of the feel of food
items. Cameron La Follete wrote the following to me:
I'm picky about which cats I pet, because, depending
on the coarseness of their fur, I taste different things.
The softest fur tastes of rich butterscotch pudding. A
coarser fur tastes of sweetened oatmeal. My own cat
is pretty good; he tastes of butterscotch, not so very
rich, and mixed with some tapioca. [She added:] I've
always liked flannel and silks best because of their
tastes [ . . . ] The flannel skirt I'm wearing tastes of a
rich pumpkin/squash soup. I hate washing flannel for
the first time, because it causes the fabric to become
less soft and the taste changes. I wear wool sweaters
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COLLAPSE VII
next to the skin, but they taste of meat and potato
stew - heavy and filling and rather coarse, so I tend
not to be very hungry when I am wearing them.
PHONEME TO FLAVO UR
A very interesting type of synaesthesia involves speech
sounds or whole words evoking synaesthetic flavours. 28
Speech sounds for a given language are called the
'phonemes' of that language, so this type of synaes
thesia is called 'phoneme to flavour' synaesthesia. If
the word, as a whole unit, evokes the flavour, that's
called 'lexeme to flavour'.29 Now, here, we are not just
talking about something like the word 'coffee' mak
ing you think of the flavour of coffee. We're talking
about someone actually tasting the flavour, in their
mouth, in high detail. (Keep in mind that, just as it is
the brain that sees, and not the eyes, likewise it is the
brain that constructs 'flavour', and not the tongue,
nose, throat, and such.) But, furthermore, we're also
talking about a word like 'confess' having the flavour
of coffee, or the word 'microscope' evoking the flavour
of carrots. Lexeme-to-flavour synaesthesia may be due
28. One of the earliest - and perhaps the first - recorded case of such
synaesthesia may be found in G. Ferrari, 'Una varieta nuova di sinestesia',
Rivista di Psicologia 3, 1 907: 297-317; see also G. Ferrari, 'Una nuovo caso
di sinestesia uditivo-gustativa', Rivista di Psicologia Applicata 6, 1910: 101-4.
29. See J. Ward, et al. , 'A Comparison of Lexical-Gustatory and Grapheme
Colour Synaesthesia', Cognitive Neuropsychology 22, no. 1, 2005: 28-41.
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
to cross-activation or increased connectivity between
an area in the anterior insula (lying below Broca's
area) involved in speech perception and production
and the adjacent primary gustatory area of the brain. 30
A friend of mine living in England, James Wanner
ton, has this type of synaesthesia. For Jam es, certain
specific speech sounds produce corresponding flavours
in his mouth. The hard /g/ sound in the words 'argue'
and 'begin', for example, produces the flavour of
yoghurt; the combination of the /s/ and /p/ sounds
in the words 'super' or 'peace' results in James tasting
tomato soup. This happens to James whether he speaks
the word, hears the word, reads it, or just thinks it.
This synaesthesia emerged in James when he was
young, and was fully established and set before his
mid-teens. Because of this, the flavours that he tastes
for words are all from foods he ate as a young child;
not flavour experiences he had later on as an adult.
So, for example, he experiences synaesthetic flavours
of candies he has not actually consumed since he was a
teenager. This is an excellent example of how cultural
factors may overlay the neurological underpinnings
of synaesthesiae and shape their products.
The names of food items themselves will tend to
taste like the food being named. Thus, for example,
the word 'sausage' will taste like sausage. Then certain
phonemes of that word will be taken, and those sounds
30. Ibid.
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will extend into other words. So, for example, the 'J'
- /d/ - sound in 'sausage' also appears in the word
'college', making it also taste like sausage.
I decided to ask James what flavours the phrase
'Culinary Institute of Charleston ' evoke. He replied:
A thick slice of cucumber, a dash of semolina mixed
with a thin type of bland flavoured meat of some
description. The strongest flavour though is one I
can only describe as sweaty, cheesy feet. Not the sort
of thing I'd like to hear before breakfast !
So, what about the phrase 'Trident Technical College'?
James replied:
This is okay. Semi-soggy Sugar Puffs, a metallic paint
type of flavour, an odd, watery taste very much like
the left-over vinegar you'd find in a pickled onion jar.
Then the deal-breaker - a lovely, lingering flavour of
a slightly cold sausage sandwich. [He added:] The
way it 'works' for me is that I get taste after taste
constantly. Some are weak, some strong. It's the
strong ones that cause problems for me as they tend
to linger - a little like the afterglow when a halogen
bulb is switched off. These lingering flavours mix
with new ones. This sometimes tastes horrible !
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
'Phoneme to flavour' synaesthetes often also report
aspects of texture and temperature as part of their
synaesthetic experiences; that is, for example, the word
'rake' not only tastes like fried bacon, but it is crisp,
oily and rather cold.31 These sensations are felt on the
tongue and in the mouth.
Unlike 'grapheme to colour' synaesthesia, in which,
for example, the word 'red' might induce a synaes
thetic perception of green - a phenomenon known
as the 'alien colour effect'32 - 'phoneme to flavour'
synaesthesia apparently displays no such effects for
the names of foods, such as the word 'bacon' tasting
of spinach. 33 However, note that, contrariwise, with my
own 'flavour to visual/spatial' synaesthesia, I cannot
think of a particular instance which does not display
the alien colour effect, even when the name of the food,
in English, is a colour word. For example, 'oranges'
and 'limes' produce synaesthetic shades of blue; turnip
and salad 'greens' create shades of purple; 'white' and
'red' wines both make shades of blue; 'white sauce' and
'brown sauce' both produce shades of greyish puce and
lavender; and egg 'whites' do not produce any colour.
I do note that bleu cheese is a purplish-blue colour;
however, that is because cheeses, and dairy products
31. See ibid.
32. J. Gray et al. , 'Implications of Synaesthesia for Functionalism', Journal
efConsciousness Studies 9 (2002): 5-31 .
33. See Ward et al, 'A Comparison of Lexical-Gustatory and Grapheme
Colour Synaesthesia'.
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in general, are usually blue. The particular flavourings
of bleu cheese push my resulting synaesthetic colour
towards purple.
James Wannerton wrote to members of the Syn
esthesia List:
I [also] experience colour to taste synaesthesia. Red:
liquid jam; the stuff you find at the top of jam jars
that have been sitting for a while. Orange: oranges.
Yellow: Opal Fruits (Starbursts) . Green: wine gums.
Blue: thick ink. Indigo: a taste of rubber mixed in
with the kind of meat you find in meatloaf. Violet:
powdery, slightly inky. I get tastes for most col
ours, although, unlike my word/taste synaesthesia,
it doesn't seem to me to be as specific. For example,
all shades of red give me the same taste, the strength
altering depending on how 'primary' or bright the
colour is. [ . . . ] Most of my colour tastes appear to
be sweet or tarty, and texture plays a very important
part in the process.
Wannerton also wrote the following to me in a personal
message:
Creating a virtual meal using just words is something
I automatically do whenever I write or say anything.
Every word has to pass through my own personal
'synthesaurus' before I commit it for posterity. It
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Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
gives writing an extra dimension for me although it
does lengthen the creative process somewhat. Writing
is the only occasion whereby I have some modicum
of control over what I synaesthetically taste. While
working as a freelance journalist back in i998, I was
asked to produce a full page feature on the possible
cultural impact of changing from pounds sterling to
the euro. I wrote the article as if it were a banquet:
The intro consisted of hors d'oeuvres tasting words, the
article body was the main course (I even managed
to squeeze a sorbet in there as well) and the closing
paragraphs were made up of sweet, dessert tasting
words. This took me the best part of all night but
I was immensely pleased with the final article. The
thing that really appealed was the fact that no one
else had any idea whatsoever!
The word 'dinner' itself actually has the taste and
texture of the traditional English Sunday Roast but
all mashed up together into a smooth puree kind
of dish. 'Lunch' tastes of very thin ham slices and
'breakfast' tastes of crunchy bacon - the thin kind
that you have all the time in the States. When people
ask me about the 'worst' tasting word I've ever heard,
I always default to 'cook', or even worse, 'cooking'.
I'd never ever use those words unless forced to as I
am now! Very, very strong - taste and texture of the
horrible black, crunchy burnt bits you get around
the top of pans. Yuk !
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FLAVO UR TO COLOUR
As to causations for the specific correlations between
foods and colours in my own synaesthesia, unfortu
nately I have not yet discovered much. I have con
ducted many experiments upon myself, but almost all
would probably not pass current standards of scientific
rigour; as to experiments conducted by others, I have
only participated as a subject in about seven. About
the only things found so far are good reasons to specu
late that it is citric acid which produces the sky blue
colour I see in all citric fruits I have tried so far; here,
I have been tested, and citric acid alone in water will
produce the same synaesthetic colour, the intensity of
the perceived colour correlating with the intensity of
the solution. Less certain is what might be producing
the shades of blue I see for dairy products; it may be
lactic acid, but this has not yet been adequately tested.
Likewise, there is the frequent orange colour seen
for fish and some other seafoods, and the shades of
purple seen for many green, leafy vegetables; I have
no clue yet regarding these, although, for the seafood,
there might be early childhood cultural experiences
involved. On the other hand, I now have reason to
think that the shades of pink and purple I see for
cucurbits might tie to one or more chemicals found
in most, rather than to a cultural connection with the
pink flesh of watermelons.
402
Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
But, again, we need to keep in mind that we can
not always just look towards a reductionistic neuro
chemical answer to this question. Keep in mind, for
example, that James Wannerton's synaesthetic flavours
for phonemes are culture-based: they are only food
flavours from his childhood, and for example, the
flavour of bacon turns up not only in the word 'bacon'
but also specifically in certain other words with the
same /k/ sound in a similar phonetic environment.
However, also note that Wannerton's synaesthesia
operates here a bit differently to my own: For Wan
nerton, with his 'phoneme to flavour' synaesthesia, all
of the correspondences were shaped during childhood.
While new words might be encountered, the underlying
phonemes remain the same, and connect to the same
flavours established during his teen years. For me,
on the other hand, with my 'flavour to visual/spatial'
synaesthesia, even now at the age of forty-eight I can
still encounter new flavours, and, with them, new,
unique synaesthetic colour combinations.
My 'flavour to visual/spatial' synaesthesia does
have a little bit of influence on my behaviour when
shopping for food items. For example, dairy products
produce shades of blue for me. The grocery stores here
sell different types of milk in containers with different
coloured labels and caps. I tend to most commonly
buy '2%' milk. At one store I shop at, this comes in
blue-labeled cartons; at another, 2% has a green label,
403
COLLAPSE VII
and it is 'skim' milk which has the blue label. So, at
the second store, I frequently find myself grabbing
the blue carton, only to have to put it back and take a
green one instead. I've examined my line of thinking,
asking myself if it is just the case that I'm used to the
blue label, so that is why I go after it. But no; that's
not how it works. What goes through my head is not
initially a matter of the label at all. Rather, it is 'milk is
blue', so I am looking for blue milk. Thus, likewise, I
will tend to focus on and often at least consider grab
bing containers of sour cream, any type of cheese, or
ice cream in blue containers, regardless of the brand
or whether it is a flavour I really care for. I am more
likely to focus on coffee if it is in dark green packaging;
more likely to grab beef if it is in dark blue packaging,
chicken if it is in sky blue, spinach if it is in purple.
However, I do note that I don't look for beer or wines,
nor for orange juice, with blue labels or packaging.
C O N C LUDING STATEM ENTS
The culinary arts are rapidly expanding as they increas
ingly turn to incorporate the latest cutting edge sci
ence and technology. This can readily be seen with
the current draw of new techniques emerging via
chemistry and physics into Molecular Gastronomy. 34
34. See, e.g., H. This, Molecular Gastronomy (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2002/2006) .
404
Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
It is my sincere hope, however, that, in addition to this
(emphatically as an addition; not as a replacement) ,
attention may also be turned to the latest cutting
edge findings from the neurosciences, including psy
chopharmacology. Consider, for example, that, from
research on macaques, there is implication that the
posterior area of the orbitofrontal cortex is one of
many places in the brain of humans and allo-primates
which apparently acts to converge gustatory, olfactory
and visual sensory data. 35 Not only are there neurons
in this region found to respond to stimulation in each
of the three modes but also ( at least) bimodal neurons
which respond to both taste and olfaction, or to taste
and visual stimuli. I am looking to prominent figures
in the culinary arts to be on the forefront of leading
what I hope will be a revolution resulting in a drastic
paradigm shift of our model of the human sensoria,
bringing in new, experimentally-supported concepts of
the integration and interactions of sensory modalities,
and incorporating the current 'embodiment' approach
that 'the mind' - and thus 'the senses' - have com
ponents in interplay throughout the entire body, and
not just within the skull.
Investigations into the effects of LSD, ayahuasca,
and other drugs have given us indications that the
disinhibited feedback theory of synaesthesia causation
35. E. Rolls, L. Baylis, 'Gustatory, Olfactory, and Visual Convergence within
the Primate Orbitofrontal Cortex' , Journal efNeuroscience 14, no. 9, Sept.
1994: 5437-52.
405
COLLAPSE VII
has merit; this is further supported by research on
synaesthetes involving amyl nitrite, 36 hormones such as
melatonin and effects on serotonin receptors37 (which
has expanded to also looking at SSRis such as Prozac),
but also on such 'basics' as alcohol, aspirin, caffeine,
and codeine. Added to this, studies on altered states
of consciousness (ASCs) indicate that virtually all
people - congenital synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes
alike - experience synaesthesia at least four or five times
per year, while entering into, within, or emerging from
an ASC; most frequently, this is during hypnagogic
stages. The implication here is that virtually all peo
ple - congenital synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes
alike - can and do experience synaesthesia from time
to time; and thus 'food' -induced synaesthesia; and,
from time to time, perhaps synaesthetic flavours. And
this doesn't have to be via, say, the addition of harmine
to your beef stock. Instead, it could result from the
proper mixture of chilies, fruits and roasted ants in a
mole sauce. Or even just getting the right wine and
cheese combination.
36. See R. Cytowic, Synesthesia; Eagleman, Wednesday is Indigo Blue.
37. See D. Brang, V. Ramachandran, 'Psychopharmacology of Synesthesia;
The Role of Serotonin S2a Receptor Activation', Medical Hypotheses 70, no.4,
2008: 903-4.
406
Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
SYNAE STHETES ' C O O K B O O K
I gained a certain notoriety in the Netherlands38 for my
synaesthesia-based recipe for grilled chicken topped
with ice cream and orange sauce, which prefaces
this text.
This recipe, which I have prepared many times
for myself and at least three times for others, is an
exercise in subtlety and extreme precision for me.
Every ingredient except the brown sugar synaestheti
cally produces a shade of light cyan blue39 for me; but
each shade just so slightly different ! There are also
differences in the appearance of texture or viscosity
for what I synaesthetically see for these flavours: for
the chicken, the texture is like ceramic tiling with a
slightly oily sheen (the skin and fat of the chicken are
essential here) ; ice cream produces a texture of thick
latex paint; vanilla, of a thin oil-based paint, such as
used for painting plastic model airplanes; oranges and
lemons, the inside white flakey part of a lemon peel;
beer, watery milk; red wine, whipping cream. Note
again that all of these are of almost -but not exactly
- the same shade of sky blue. The brown sugar adds
just the faintest trace of faint light grey with a lavender
tinge. I could use pumpkin (pie) flavoured ice cream
38. See Red Mondays and Gemstone Jalapenos, directed by J. Fowler, for the
Research Channel, http://www.y outube.com/watch ?v=6vs-ez62DVc.
39. Around RGB 1 80, 255, 255.
407
COLLAPSE VII
instead of vanilla, and this would add a light lavender
instead of the sky blue of vanilla. Putting together this
recipe is like composing a Maxfield Parrish painting,
with one shade and texture of blue carefully and exactly
blending into the next.
So, here, a recipe is totally personal, verging on the
creation of visual art; the resulting flavour combination
is a spandrel - quite secondary. However, I do actually
enjoy the flavour very much. This recipe was recently
revived as a classroom discussion topic by Dr. Romke
Rouw, of the University of Amsterdam's Department
of Psychology.
Finally, James Wannerton proposes the following
set of 'phoneme to flavour' recipes:
"Bicycle parts are usually small." This sentence con
tains words that create a lovely taste of breakfast. Rice
Krispies, covered in sugar and doused in milk, not
cold milk but not warm either. Crunchy in part but
on the whole, slightly soggy in texture.
Asking someone called Debbie (doughy bread) if she's
noticed (salad leaves and sticks) that Thomas (tomato
slices) is a popular name for boys this year, would
summon up the perfect hors d'oeuvres salad dish.
My companions for the main course would ideally
have the names Ian (lamb), Colin (cauliflower), Hilary
(sliced potatoes) and Stephanie (sage & onion balls).
With someone called Stockard pouring the gravy.
408
Day - Synaesthetic Cooking
Pudding could be: Simon ( sliced apple ) , query ( sin
gle cream) with a dollop of Block ( ice cream) and a
France ( thin wafers) or two. The cheese and biscuits
would be best served by a waiter call Richard.
Coffee would be coffee !
409
COLLAPSE VII
Black Cake (A Reci pe from Em i ly
Dickinson, for Em i ly Dickinson)
Jeremy M i l lar
Recipe taken.from a letter to Mrs. ]. Howard Sweetser.from
Emily Dickinson, summer i883.
Card with embossed text, 1oomm x 17omm,
Edition of 1000.
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COLLAPSE VII
Ec [h] ology of the Desetre
Though the logos is common to all, the many live as ifthey
had a wisdom oftheir own.
H E RA C L I TU S
under suchflattering colour and repainting, the terrible
orig;inal text homo natura must aga,in be recognized
NIETZSCHE
The following is a work of geo-philosophy beyond the
bounds of Friedrich Nietzsche ( its 'founder' accord
ing to Deleuze and Guattari) 1 yet very much in the
spirit of his Zarathustra: 'true to the earth' 2 and its
'terrible text'. 3 What is terrible about the terrible text
that is true to the earth is that, with and in it, there
1. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Qu 'est-ce que la philosophic? (Paris: Editions de
Minuit, 1991 ) , 82.
2. F. Nietzsche, "Ihus Spoke Zarathustra: A Bookfor All and None, Prologue §3:
'I implore you, my brothers, remain true to the earth'.
3. E Nietzsche, Beyand Good and EuiJ: Prelude to a Philosophy efthe Future, §230.
413
COLLAPSE VII
is no hors-texte4 - there is but one context to consider
and to consume. With and in the context of planetary
ecology, of a planet-wide ecosystem, everything is
ecological - there is but one logos, one logjc, one world:
the geo-logical one. This accords with the statement of
Nietzsche's great precursor, Heraclitus the Ephesian,
that there is but one logos, hence no dia-logoi. 5• Having
no other context to consider or consume, no 'other' or
'outside' ( or 'inside' ) as such, the planet turns upon
and feasts upon itself, its own text, like the alchemi
cal ourobouros or self-devouring serpent. 6 To envision
ecology in this way is terrible indeed, for one cannot
engage it dialectically, one cannot have a dialogue
with it. It has only one language, one logos: that of the
ouroboros, this worm, serpent or dragon ( old English
4. ]. Derrida, De la grammatologie (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1 967), 227.
'There is nothing outside of the text'/ 'there is no outside-text' (trans.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1976) , 158.
5. Herakleitos ho Ephesios, via Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos § 7
§§132-3.
6. Al khem, the black or fertile earth, that compost which the Greeks
called chthonos and the Romans humus (root of all things human) , is the
etymological origin of alchemy and current-day chemistry. The Greek
ouroboros, the self-consuming serpent (ovpa-p6poq, 'tail-devourer') , is an
emblem of alchemical transmutation and of transmutation's mysterious
reticulation (mysterium coniunctionir) as Carl Jung states in his Mysterium
Coniunctionir, �513: 'within the age -old image of the ouroboros lies the
thought of devouring oneself and turning oneself into a circulatory process';
the ouroboros symbolizes the 'feedback process' in which the supposed
'clash of opposites' turns out - or turns in to be naught but the knot of
'the One' primal logos, the alchemical matrix, its transductive prima materia
(Princeton: Princeton UP, 1 970) , 365.
-
414
Mellamphy - Ec[hJology
wyrm) . 7 Just as the worm translates all things back into
black earth (al khem) , Nietzsche suggests that to be
true to the earth is to be retranslated and to retranslate
things back into the 'terrible ground-text of homo
natura', their vermicular black-earth b[l]ackground. 8
The melanosis (Latin nig;redo) of a dark night's 'pitch
black', the leukosis (Latin·albedo) of a white cloud's 'silver
sheen' and the erythrosis (Latin rubedo) of the fiery sun's
'golden blaze' are the classical stages of the alchemical
/metamorphic / morphogenic process. Like Mandel
brot's fractals, each of these 'stages' is in addition a
recursion of the entire process - the melanotic, leukotic
and erythrotic stages each in turn unfolding their respec
tive melanotic, leukotic and erythrotic phases (these, of
course, in turn recursing - i.e. being further recursions
again) . The process infolds and enfolds itself, subsumes
and consumes its unfolding. Hence, indeed, what could
be called the heraldric hieroglyph of 'the great work'
as such: namely the drakon ouroboros, the ouroboric
drakontos. This cosmic and chaotic dragon, like the
fiery phoenix, suspires and expires in an autotelic
ekpyrosis: its consuming conflagration ultimately
eclipses and envelops its own ipseity.
Literally an unending, undulating, serpentine
'devourer', the Alchemists' ouroboros, the all-devouring
7. http://www.etymonline.com/index. php ?term=worm
8. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §230: 'under such flattering colour and
repainting, the terrible original text homo natura must again be recognized'.
415
COLLAPSE VII
dragon, embodies the entelechy of alchemy, the
golden goal of which points back to black - back to
the beginning and foundation (the b[l]ackground)
of all things. The beginning and foundation (the
b[l]ackground) is in this sense not the past; it presents
itself (paradoxically perhaps) as that which isforthcom
ing- that which is always coming.forth - and yet, strange
as it may seem, as that which 'comes forth' backward.
The all-consuming, hence self-consuming, cycle
or 'vicious circle' of ourobouros is moreover the feed
back loop or cybernetic circuit of every existing thing
('good' or 'bad') , of 'existence' as such. From this
alchemi-cybernetic perspective each and every existent
thing turns out to be a coil or short-circuit (measurable
in time and in space, hence chronotopological) in and
of this ontological ouroboros (the latter chronotopologi
cally immeasurable by dint of its 'deviations', although
accorded the immeasure of an aion: the range of an
' epoch' , ' era ' or ' age ') . The on to1 og1ca
. 1 d ragon, or
drakontos as such, is in this respect what Nietzsche
called the Wille zur Macht: the will to power which
infuses and suffuses existent things. Every thing is,
from this perspective, an agent and agencement (i.e. an
arrangement) of this more monstrous 'will', whether
aware of it or not.
This is a hideous gnosis. The hisda here is in point of
fact a horror vacui, a fear of the void and of being voided,
of being devoid of self-will and of one's self as such.
416
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
So what could a ma thesis of this horrific gnosis consist
in? The void inscribed in the ouroboros-loop, the great
zero-summa of the alchemists, is the very void that
Giovanni Malfatti di Montereggio discerned in the
first part of his Studien iiber Anarchie und Hierarchie. 9
Malfatti argued that 'numerical characters' - and
indeed all characters - are 'nothing but [ . . . ] modifica
tions of the elliptical zero qua hieroglyph of man and
world'1 0 and that this 'hieroglyph' (like the so-called
alchemical or homeopathic 'signature' - the trace left
behind after a substance has been diluted beyond any
trace of itself11 and thus the presence of an absence) is
by nature obscure, occluded, occult.12
Malfatti expressed the matter via the decade which
the Pythagoreans understood in terms of a tetract
(since I + 2 +3 + 4 IO )13 and figured in the form of a
=
9. See COLLAPSE III.
1 0. Giovanni Malfatti di Montereggio G ean Malfatti de Montereggio) ,
,
Etudes
sur la Mathese, ou Anarchie et Hierq rchie de la Science ( trans. Christien
Ostrowski, intro. Gilles Deleuze, Paris: Editions du Griffon d'Or, 1946) , 1 1 .
1 1 . The Paracelsian physician Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann
suggested in his 1 796 Versuch ilber einNeues Prinzip zurAu.Jfindungder Heilkriifte
der Arzneisubstanzen, Nebst Einigen Blicken aufdie Bisherigen ( his Essay on a New
Principlefor Ascertaining the Curative Powers qfDrugs) that active, activated, or
'succussed' dilutions exponentially increase the homeopathic ( i.e. curative)
'force' of subtances, and that the greatest homeopathic force is reached
precisely at the point when the succussed dilution no longer contains any
trace of the diluted matter; this is the point of both greatest or maximal
dilution and force. At the point of total dilution all that remains of a
subtsance is its force or energy 'signature'.
12. Phusis kruptesthai philiei: 'nature loves to hide', wrote Heraclitus
( Fragment 123).
13. Pythagoreans claimed that all numbers and thus everything that counts
41 7
COLLAPSE VII
tightly-knit triangle (its most compact arrangement) .14
Malfatti suggested in his study that the tetractys (i.e. the
mathesis universalis) should be taken, like the drakon
ouroboros, to be coiled rather than angled, thus more
circular than angular, with curves instead of edges:
hence in the end, from the very beginning, ovoid, ellip
soid.15 Everything that counts and can be accounted,
every individual existent as such, has as pre-individual
quantum this mystical matrix symbolically expressed
as an ovoid (that is, a triangle the angles of which are
oblique) . As mathesis universalis, this ovoid tetractys
has a universality that, for all of its computational
complicity, must nevertheless be distinguished from
its various versions or actual aspects as an existence
(and/or can be accounted for) exist[ s] within the parameters of the founding
and grounding decade (the tetractys of 1 +2+3+4 or 10) since every number
after 10 is but a repetition of this first and fundamental set ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,
7, 8, 9, 10 followed as they are by [1]1, [1]2, [1]3, [1]4, [1]5, [1]6, [1]7, [1]8,
[1]9 and so on) . See the following footnote.
14. 'The kernel of Pythagorean wisdom is the tetractys or 'four-group' made
up of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, which add up to 10. They are represented in a
pebble figure, in the form of the "perfect triangle",
1
2
3
4
7
4
2
8
1
5
3
9
6
10 ,
and the available sources, from Posidonius on, show how these four numbers
contain not only the basic intervals - fourth, fifth, octave, and double octave
- but also, according to the Platonic pattern: point, line, plane, and solid,'
explains Walter Burkert in Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans.
Edwin Minar (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1 972) , 72.
l,S. Giovanni Malfatti di Montereggio Gean Malfatti de Montereggio) ,
Etudes sur la Mathese, o u Anarchie et Hiera_rchie de la Science (trans. Christien
Ostrowski, intro. Gilles Deleuze, Paris: Editions du Griffon d'Or, 1 946) , 7.
See COLLAPSE III.
418
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
prior to, subtly sustaining, and eventually consuming
its various existents, its distinctive numbers, figures
andforms.
The ouroboric zero described by Malfatti seems
utterly empty, devoid of content. 'The metaphysico
mathematical zero seems to us to be null, to be noth
ing, whereas, on the contrary, it is everything' :16 the
metaphysico-mathematical void, far from simply being
devoid, is the very mater and pater panton,17 the very
engine of ontogenesis. This ontogenetic and autocon
sumptive kybernetes qua cybernetic feedback-loop finds
its echo, after Malfatti, in the Deleuzo-Guattarian corps
sans organes18 and Simondonian centre actif initiaP9 the latter also called !'unite magjque primitive,20 ontos
of the universal cybernetic (Simondon's cybernetique
universe/le) . 21 I ts circuit is a circuit always in formation,
a dromolog;y the logos of which is (like the logos of Hera
clitus and the Pythagorean tetractys) both pagan aenaou
and panta chorei, ever-flowing and always-in-motion
16. Malfatti, Etudes sur la Mathese, 1 1 .
1 7 . Polemos pater panton: 'War [is the] father [of) all' wrote Heraclitus
(Fragment 53).
18. The now-all-too-[in )famous concept first formulated in the late 1940s
by Antonin Artaud and later developed in 1 969, 1 974 and 1 980 by Felix
Guattari and Gilles Deleuze.
19. G. Simondon, Du Mode d'Existence des Objets Techniques (Paris: Editions
Aubier, 1958), 1 59-160.
20. Ibid.
21. G. Simondon, L 'Individuation a la Lumiere des Notions de Forme et
d'IrifiJrmation (Grenoble: Editions Jerome Millon, 2005) , 561.
419
COLLAPSE VII
( dromological) . 22 It 'consists, abstractly but really, in
relations of speed and slowness between unformed
elements,' explained Deleuze and Guattari in A
Thousand Plateaus; 2 3 it is a void ovoid in and through
which events, happenings, haecceities, differentiate
themselves schizologically (that is, via schizo genesis,
Simondonian didoublement) .
At this level - degree zero or zero intensity24 - 'we
discover nothing more than spatio-temporal dyna
misms, that is to say agitations of space, holes of
time, pure syntheses of space, direction and rhythm,' as
Deleuze explains. 'The most general characteristics
of branching, order and class, right on up to generic
specifications, already depend on such dynamisms',
he continues; for example, 'beneath the partition
ing phenomena of cellular division we again find
instances of [this] dynamism: cellular migrations, fold
ings, invaginations, stretchings' - 'these constitute,'
he argues, something along the lines of 'a "dynamics
22. Legei pou Herakleitos hoti 'panta chorei kai ouden menei', kai potamou rhoei
apeikazon ta onta legei hos 'dis es ton auton potamon ouk an embaies': ' Heraclitus
is supposed to say that 'all things are in motion and nothing at rest', and
he compares them (i.e. 'all things'] to the stream of a river, and says that
you cannot go into the same water twice' (Plato, Cratylus 402a) . 'It is
frequently mentioned that the Pythagoreans, in their oath by the tetractys,
called it the 'fount and root of ever-flowing nature': pagan aenaou phuseos
rhizoma t'ekhousan' (Hippolytus Romanus, Philosophumena I,§2:555, quoted
in Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. Edwin
Minar, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972, 72) .
23. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. B. Massumi
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987) , 507.
24. Ibid., 164.
420
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
of the egg",' and 'in this sense the whole world is an
egg'25 precisely in the sense the Dogons (here Drag
ons) held.26 But the Dragon itself is this Dogon egg,
this ovum - for the drakon ouroboros is the oosphere
or field of operation defined by Deleuze and Guat
tari as that 'milieu of pure intensity' which could be
called the veritable ground zero and b[l]ackground
(al khem) of all production. 27 What is important is to
understand that this drakontos, tetractys, or alchemical
kybernetes 'is not regressive': that 'on the contrary, it is
perfectly contemporary', since it is the field of every
operation. All that can and does take place does so
as metastatic calcinations, metastable calculations,
toxic contractions from the occluded tetract (i.e. the
occulted drakontos, tetractys, kybernetes) . Every existent
or potentially existent thing can and does exist, in this
respect, as a recoiling or contracting from the coils of
the drakontological tetractys qua ouroboric matrix, as
if recoiling and contracting-in-fear from the terrifying
plenitude of the void.
In Book One of Dune, a Hippasus-figure from the
'Bene Gesserit' society of sorceress-pharmatechnicians
becomes what she is by becoming poison, by ingesting
the matter that is precisely what's the matter with her.
25. G. Deleuze, Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974, ed. David Lapoujade,
trans. M. Toarmina (New York: Semiotexte, 2004), 96.
26. Hence the diagram of 'The Dogon Egg and the Distribution of
Intensities' that illustrates the relevant section of A Thousand Plateaus.
27. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 164.
421
COLLAPSE VII
"This is a drug," she said to herself upon ingesting the
poison, but a drug 'unlike any other drug of her expe
rience, and Bene Gesserit training included the taste
of many drugs.'28 Ingesting the drug, she experienced
what William Burroughs famously called (via a concise
Kerouacian gloss) the event of a 'naked lunch' : that
frozen moment when one sees what is there at either
end of one's fork ('a psycho-kinesthetic extension of
herself') : 'all this was happening in a frozen instant
of time', she noted; a frozen instant when she 'con
fronted [ . . . ] a pit of blackness' and 'whirling silence' at
her 'core' .29 'That is the place where we cannot look,'
she thought - the placeless, ever-displaced 'place' that
is always out of time, hence timeless.3 0 Placeless, this
place was neither (strictly speaking) within her nor
without her, or at once (intimately and timelessly)
within and without her: a 'danger boiling around her',
'within' her (as and at the 'cellular core': that 'pit of
blackness from which she recoiled') . 31
This impersonal and/or prepersonal 'pit' of auto
chthonic, alchemical 'blackness' whirled in melanotic
motion as the engine of her actual individuation, and
28. F. Herbert, Dune I: Dune (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1965), 283.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid. , 283. It is 'always out of time, hence timeless' perhaps because it
the very becoming of time - the maha ktila of Vedic philosophy. The Sanskrit
ktila also designates darkness: the darkness of the aforementioned pitch·
black pit, above.
31. Ibid., 283.
422
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
in her individual recoil from it she initially mistook
it - this pit of blackness, this melanosis, this whirl
ing void - for the poison. 'I could change it,' she
thought; 'I could take away the drug-action and make
it harmless.'32 But in the midst of melanosis, in the midst
of this self-overcoming, 'she sensed this would be an
error': she intuited in this instance (if only vaguely,
ill-seen and ill-said) that she herself, as an individu
ated existent, might be the poison, rather than it, this
pit, this melanotic motor, this ever-whirling engi,ne
or dromological dragon of ongoing individuation.
Her action, her 'being' , is itself 'the drug action' :
existent being, being at odds with the pre-individu
alized hence non-existent existence (understood as
cosmogenic 'chaos', or in the words of Deleuze and
Guattari via Finnegans Wake, a veritable 'chaosmos',
chaosmogenesis) , makes the entire ouroboros or chaosmos
heave, expulsing it as indigestible.
What the desert ecologist Liet Kynes described as
'ecological literacy' in Dune33 and what Leto Atreides
described as 'the eco-language of Dune'34 is what
Nietzsche in his Prelude to a Philosophy qf the Future
described as an ecological or physiological translation
(a translation back into phusis or nature) . 'To translate
man back into nature,' back into 'that eternal basic
32. Ibid., 286.
33. Ibid., 218.
34. F. Herbert, Dune III: Children efDune (New York: Ace Books, 1976), 267.
423
COLLAPSE VII
text of homo natura,' is 'a strange and insane task, but
it is a task [nonetheless] ' :35 the task of the one who
is attuned to, and indeed an echo of, the earth. It is
the ec[h Jo logical work. 'I beseech you, my brothers,
remain faithful to the earth,' pleads Zarathustra. 36
The logic or logos of the ecologist is not that of the
egological operative: its vernacular is instead vermicu
lar, an unspoken and unspeakable wormtongue, the
logos alogos of earthworms, which drags us back to the
serpentine dragon. It is the language of egos drawn
back into the dust, mixed into the mud, sunk into the
sand from which they had distinguished themselves as
environmentally indigestible existents. 'To exist is to
stand out, away from the background [ . . . ] existence, '37
Atreides preaches; hence the background existence
or milieu as such is affirmed when the foregrounded
existent is translated, ingested and amalgamated into
its alchemical context, its drakontos. Existents, for the
ecologist and/or Nietzschean-Atreidian physiologist,
are read in the context of their ultimate collapse, their
eternal return to the earth (al khem) ; the ecophysiologist
thus calls-forth the chthonic dragon, the serpentine
destroyer and phoenix-like renewer.
35. E Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §230.
36. F. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Bookfor All and None, 'Prologue' §3
37. F. Herbert, Dune Ill: Children efDune (New York: Ace Books, 1976), 226-7.
424
Mellamphy - Ec(h]ology
From this ecophysiological perspective, beings are
the pasigraphs of what 'must come to pass':38 elements
in a greater ouroboric hieroglyph. These elements are
essential because they are ecologically instrumental in
the face of the overwhelming ouroboros (i.e. drakontos) :
they are particular masks through which the otherwise
inexpressible (i.e. that which otherwise would utterly
overwhelm) is partially, pasigraphically, expressed.
The particular is formed as a problem to be resolved:
it is a problematic point or a crisis-point in ongoing
ouroboric ontogenesis, hence the signature as such
of a poison. To stare at the serpent ouroboros is an
endeavour that ends in blindness; blindness can be
avoided and yet insight gained through techniques of
ec[h]ology which read existent entities environmentally
and their restricted economies within the purview of
greater generality.
Such ec[h]ology is admittedly homeopathological:
it re-inserts or re-inscribes particular poisons into the
poisoned system from which they were concocted and
thereafter decocted, decanted or recanted. Each poison
is existentially expulsed in and as a crisis: expulsed
until its signature, i.e. the structure of its poison, has
been resolved. The ec[h]ologist assists in and attends
to such a resolution so that the poison may be realized
as such and re-integrated (i.e. re-ingested) into the
38. Ibid., 281.
425
COLLAPSE VII
general, overarching or underlying ouroboric system.
Step one, then: recognize that existent things are poi
sons 'held in cellular bondage'. 39 Step two: rather than
deny or work against such poisons, accept the poisons
for what they are. Step three: assist in its formation,
formulation, realization, so that the existent poison
can become precisely what it is - namely, the signature
of an environmental symptom (which 'stand[ s] out,
away from the background [ . . . ] existence,'4 0 'spinning
in relative stability') .41 Step four: have this signature
resign-and-thus-resolve-itself within its greater context
('mingle the waters' homeopathically, as the Bene Ges
serit Jessica says) . 42 'This will permit you to harness
any relative stability' or existent being as such43 as an
ec[h ]ological instrument. 'Anything can be a tool,'
the practitioner of taqiyya44 and Bene Tleilax 'Bijaz'
explained in the second book of Dune - anything that
exists, including individual people, individualphenomena,
39. Ibid., 32.
40. Ibid., 226-7.
41 . Ibid., 25 1 .
42. Herbert, Dune I : Dune, 286; her son Paul would later likewise mingle
time and space ouroborically and thereby also 'overrun himself as well
as 'los[e] his position in time' - or more precisely loosen (rather than
lose) himself into it 'so that past and future and present mingled without
distinction' (Ibid, 305).
43. Herbert, Dune III: Children efDune, 251 .
44. See R . Negarestani, 'The Militarization o f Peace: Absence o f Terror or
the Terror of Absence', Collapse I, 53-9 1 .
426
Mellamphy - Ec[hJology
even poverty and war;45 and as Liet Kynes stated in
the first book, 'to the working planetologist the most
important tool is human beings . . . Men and their works
have been a disease on the surface of their planets'
and 'nature tends to compensate for [such] diseases,
to remove or encapsulate them, [then] to incorporate
them into the system in her own way.' 46 The 'way' of
the planet or of the ecological system is the 'way' of
its echo the ecologist. The wordless language of the
world, its logos alogos, is the language of alchemy, al
khern: that of the earth. To speak this language is to
break with words and with the world of words in order
to engage that of its 'maker', the wor[l]dmaking worm,
the open-mouthed ontological ouroboros. Words and
worlds are 'worked out' from the belly of this beast:
the great drakontos.
This beast, in some sense, is all belly: the ouroboros
is the sovereign stomachos, the Greek stoma and its Wille
zur Macht. Stoma, in Greek, designates any orifice, any
opening, any aperture - most commonly a mouth.47
The worm ( or wyrm: 'serpent, dragon' ) 48 is one great
mouth, one great stomach, one long oesophagos or
cyclonic aperture. According to Georges Bataille, we
approximate the worm, or become a kind of dragon,
45. Herbert, Dune II: Dune Messiah, 210.
46. Herbert, Dune I: Dune, 218, 220.
47. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=stoma
48. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=worm
427
COLLAPSE VII
whenever we are overwhelmed and, open-mouthed,
throw back our heads in horror and/or laughter and/or
anguish and/or ecstasy: 'The overwhelmed individual
throws back his head, frenetically stretching his neck
in such a way that the mouth becomes, as much as
possible, an extension of the spinal column, [ . . . ] as if
explosive impulses had to spurt directly out of the body
through the mouth in the form of screams'.49 In the
midst of being overwhelmed, a human is thus somehow
sub- or super-human, hence a veritable iiber- and/
or unter-menschliche Wurm, if only for a monstrous
moment - one wherein the individual human is no
longer demonstrable. In this condition, a condition
at once pre- and post-human, the inhuman logos alogos
that arises from within the depths of human being
(as if inhumed, entombed or encapsulated5 0 therein)
attests to the beckoning- and ultimate becoming-wonn/
stomachos/Shai-Hulud of man. According to Frank
Herbert, Wormsign is a sign of overcoming (i.e. an
Uberwindung) , a sign of the coming ecophysiologi
cal 'overhuman' or 'overman' (i.e. the Obennensch),
in Dune.
Bataille and Herbert lead us into the stomachos
or 'pit of blackness'51 (i.e. the maw, the mouth, the
49. G. Bataille, 'Mouth' in Visions ef Excess, trans. A. Stoekl (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1 985), 59.
50. Herbert, Dune I : Dune, 220.
51. Herbert, Dune I: Dune, 283.
428
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
yawning chasm) of a pitched battle which could indeed
be called a veritable estomachia: a stoma-centric, orf:fi
cian and ultimately orphic (nocturnal, pitch-black)52
war. The second Leto Atreides, like the sequestered
Hamid Parsani in Negarestani's Cyclonopedia, teaches
his people 'how to turn the Earth into the coiling
body of Tzamat,'53 the colossal Shai-Hulud; this is
his mathesis. The task is one of monstrous melanosis:
al deshret as al kemi s primary principle, desert-like
'wasting away' as the first phase of regeneration,
recultivation. Tue seed planted in the black soil must
decompose like one in the desert: the desert (al deshret)
is in league, ec[h]ologically, with its oft-opposed fertile
black soil, albeit only in the context of that 'chemistry
of openness'54 which acephalously opens onto55 and is
in this way radically open to both ends and both begj,n
nings, enantiodromically - i.e. only in the space-time of
the nemathetic earthworm, the ouroboric serpent, the
all-consuming dragon, qua sovereign stomachos . The
stomach is the kitchen - the crucible, curcurbit and
'
52. Orphism, from the Greek orph[nje and orph[njos, designates that which
operates under cover of night ( i.e. in the dark, the pitch-black) ; see the
entry from Henry Liddell and Robert Scott's Greek-English Lexicon available
online via the Perseus Project on the Tufts University website: http://www.
perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=o%29%2Frfn-h&la=greek
53. R. Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials
( Melbourne: Re.press, 2008 ) , 50.
54. R. Negarestani, 'A Good Meal', http://www.cold·me.net/textjmeal.html.
55. R. Negarestani, 'Acephalous Mouth' , in Channel 93: The Journal qf
Wounding and Wounds, http://www.channel83.co.uk/articles/acephalous·
mouth.php.
429
COLLAPSE VII
cavity of culinary matters - through which transduc
tion and transductive transmutation passes.
This is the 'hypothesis [that] must be hazarded'56
according to Nietzsche: to perceive through the world's
representation[ s ]57 (beyond 'the Berkeleyan and Schop
enhauerian' senses)58 the vast, intertwined, primitive
and formative ('pre-form')59 belly of a manifold beast, 60
to see in the interplay of moralizing subjects and mech
anized objects the mathetic melanosis of an overarching
or underlying Wille zur Macht. Understanding will to
power in this way enables the inspired perception of
existents as products of drakontological [in ]diges
tion, of an ontogenic and ouroboric metabolism 'in
which all organic functions, including self-regulation,
assimilation, nutrition, secretion, and change of mat
ter' form power constellations [Machtkonstellationen]
which even in the face of their existent individualities
are nevertheless 'contained in a mighty unity' ;61 this
is why Nietzsche states altogether ec[h]ologically that
'the world seen from within, the world defined and
56. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §36.
57. i.e. through 'the great third eye which looks out into the world through
the other two' as Nietzsche states in Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prqudices ef
Morality, §509.
58. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §36.
59. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §36.
60. 'the spirit most resembles a stomach,' the belly of a beast, states Nietzsche
in Beyond Good and Evil, §230.
61. 'Everything still lies contained in a powerful unity' states Nietzsche in
Beyond Good and Evil, §36.
430
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
designated according to its 'intelligible character',
would simply be will to power, and nothing else'. 62 This
inspired vision discerns the desetre within and without
every etre from the peculiar perspective of the so-called
'third eye'63 or volcanic 'pineal eye'. 64 The open 'third
eye' bears witness to the burning vision of 'the time of
the stomach'65 that churns and burns all it consumes in
accordance with 'the eternal law of transformation.'66
The desetre as such is drakontological, homologous
with the drakontos; the drakon ouroboros is its basic
context, the 'eternal basic text' of its nature ( orphusis)
and 'the fundamental will of its spirit' (or stoma) , as
Nietzsche suggests in his 'Prelude to a Philosophy of
the Future' .67
Standing out as individual existent from this
basic context, one who would be drakontological
(i.e. its homo logos) , one who would open this eye, is
with respect to its ec[h]ology a pharmakon: an actual
existent poison. The pharmakon is expelled (as the
indigestible or the non-metabolizeable) from that
62. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §36.
63. F. Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Pndudices efMomlity, §509.
64. G. Bataille, Visions efExcess, 77-98.
65. Frank Herbert, Dune IV: God Emperor ef Dune (New York: Ace Books,
1984) , 237.
66. F. Nietzsche, The Pre-Platonic Philosophers (trans. G. Whitlock, Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2001), 62-3.
67. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §230.
431
COLLAPSE VII
ecophysiological drakontos which as sovereign stomachos
consumes everything, hence it is expelled only to be
re-ingested, expelled so that it can be decrypted and
then re-absorbed, re-encrypted. Thus becoming-desetre
is an ec[hJological endeavour, assisting in this decryp
tion through the self-realization, self-description,
and pharmacological re-translation of the existent
pharmakon as such. And this act of re-translation or
gradual re-ingestion, propelled by pharmacological
self-realization, itself in fact propels the ecophysiologi
cal engine: the indigestible is the impetus, the inciter,
of ongoing ouroboric progression. Each indigestible
concrescence is in other words the basis for further
propulsion (and for phusis as such) in so far and in
as much as it 'figures itself out' and thereby resolves
its pharmaco-ecophysiological equation. This strange
or rather uncanny mathesis underpins the one Palim
basha presents in the third book of Dune, where the
worm-work of Dune's Ubermensch is described as a
thoroughgoing mathesis universalis. 68 In Simondonian
terms this would be a veritable kybernetes universalis69 the
guiding or governing principle of which could be called
the permutational individuation of the metaphysico
mathematical zero.70
68. Herbert, Dune III: Children ifDune, 234.
69. G. Simondon, L 'Individuation, 561.
70. Malfatti, Eludes sur la Mathese, 8.
432
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
Ec[h]ological literacy or attunement to 'eco-lan
guage'71 in this context means becoming the consum
mate nihilist, ec[h]ological work being a nihilistic
unworking pursued to its furthest extremes. This is
the work of Nietzsche's 'great' rather than 'petty'
politics72 and 'great' rather than 'particular' health73
- these designating nothing other than the grand opera
tion by which man overcomes nihilism through the
affirmation of its most extreme and radical form (viz.
eternal recurrence) . The 'great politics' of total affirma
tion proceeds by way of an ongoing double-crossing
and betrayal of existents. The twist, of course (or the
cyclonic twist-within-the-twist) , is that the trajectory
of negativity and negation ('the most world-denying
of all possible ways of thinking'74) leads ec[h]ologi
cally to the affirmation of the eternity of all existence75
which is nothing more and nothing less than the death
of negativity - Nietzsche's post-nihilistic insight. The
consummate nihilist annihilates to the point at which
nihilism consumes itself, to the point of nihilism's
7 1 . Herbert, Dune III: Children efDune, 267.
72. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil §208 .
73. F. Nietzsche, 'Ihe Gay Science §382, 346- 7.
74. F. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil §56.
75. This is what Nietzsche calls 'the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive and
world-affirming' in Beyond Good and Evil §56, and what Levinas instead calls
an absolute 'horror' in his early essay 'II y a' (Deucalion 1, 1946, 141-154,
in Time and the Other, trans. R. Cohen [Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, 1987], and in his Existence and Existients, trans. A. Lingis [The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1978, republished in Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, 2001 ]).
433
COLLAPSE VII
annihilation, its ultimate ungrounding in and as the
zero-ouroboros .
Alchemical (hence ec[h ]ological) melanosis is
destruction-as-transduction: it is a destruction that
transduces ec[h ] ological existence. But it also (as
an echo) hastens the ec[h]ophysiological genesis of
an entirely new constellation of forces. It is by way
of its 'metaphysico-mathematical' unity76 that utter
destruction can in its transduction reticulate the very
void it destructively engineers and engenders, thereby
inaugurating another era, age, aion or yuga. Georges
Bataille would call this a destruction of restricted
economies that opens onto the general - in this case
drakontological or ecophysiological - economy. The
restricted opens onto the general, the individual onto
the transidividual and transductive77 or ultimately
overhuman/iibermenschlich economy. Great politics and
great health are the transductive effects of drakonto
logical digestion - the effects, in other words, of Wille
zur Macht understood as an ouroboric and vermicular
Will-to-power. Rather than egocentric and egological,
their operative principle or kymatik kybernetes is instead
ecolo�cal and alchemical: a politics of putrefaction, to
paraphrase Negarestani78 - a 'mathesis and politics of
76. Malfatti, Etudes sur la Mathese, 1 1 .
7 7 . G. Simondon, D u Mode d'Existence des Objets Techniques (Paris: Editions
Aubier, 1958) , 248.
78. R. Negarestani, ' Undercover Softness: An Introduction to the
Architecture and Politics of Decay', COLLAPSE VI, 379-430.
434
Mellamphy - Ec[h]ology
decay.'79 Will to power is therefore far from psychological
in nature; it is in principle and process a psychophag;y
as opposed to a psychology, a 'force of violent destruc
tion'8 0 that ingests the individual - all individuals - and
alchemically digests it or digests them. It is a process
of desetrement the 'desetre' of which is the uber- and/or
unter-menschliche Wurm that is the very hieroglyph of
Nietzsche's Ubermensch and the vehicle as such of a
volonti d'estomac (hia ) .
79. Ibid., 381 .
80. Nietzsche, 'Ihe Will to Power, §23.
435
COLLAPSE VII
Spiritual Meat : Resu rrection and
Rel ig ious Horror in Batai l l e
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
1
CORINTHIANS
Each efus does nothing but carry a corpse about.
P H I LO
Let me be thefood efwild beasts through whom it is
possible to attain God.
I G NAT I U S OF ANTI O C H
RESURRECTI ON; O R, CAN N I BALI S M
In his treatise The Resurrection of the Dead, Athenago
ras of Athens, the second-century Christian apolo
gist, notes a number of perplexing problems in the
Christian idea of resurrection. Like many Christian
thinkers of the period, Athenagoras conceives of resur
rection in material terms; resurrection for him implies
437
COLLAPSE VII
the resurrection of the body, with all its parts intact.
But this idea poses some basic questions. Knowing
that bodies decompose and decay, how is it possible
to 'raise up' a body at all, let alone a body that is
'incorruptible'? In response to the criticism that the
resurrection of the dead is impossible, Athenagoras
makes reference to the.fiat of divine intervention. As he
notes, 'that same power can reunite what is dissolved,
and raise up what is prostrate, and restore the dead
to life again, and put the corruptible into a state of
incorruption' .1 Furthermore, to this divine being will
belong the capacity 'to separate this, I say, and unite it
again with the proper members and parts of members,
whether it has passed into some one of those animals,
or into many, or thence into others, or, after being dis
solved along with these, has been carried back again
to the original elements . . . ' . 2
But here Athenagoras runs into a problem. It is
not only that the dead are dead, and cannot be made
living again; it is that in resurrecting the body one is
necessarily resurrecting the corpse, a corpse that could
be in an advanced stage of decomposition, or worse,
could have become food for beasts. Athenagoras sum
marizes the logic of his critics:
l . The Treatise qJ Athenagoras on Resurrection of the Dead, trans. M . Dods,
G. Reith, and B . P. Pratten, in The Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. II: The
Writings ofJustin Martyr and Athenagoras (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1867),
III, 427 .
2. Ibid.
438
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
Since, then, bodies are thus consumed, and the mem
bers and parts composing them are broken up and
distributed among a great multitude of animals, and
by means of nutrition become incorporated with
the bodies of those that are nourished by them, - in
the first place, they say, their separation from these
is impossible; and besides this, in the second place,
they adduce another circumstance more difficult still.
When animals of the kind suitable for human food,
which have fed on the bodies of men, pass through
their stomach, and become incorporated with the
bodies of those who have partaken of them, it is
an absolute necessity, they say, that the parts of the
bodies of men which have served as nourishment to
the animals which have partaken of them should pass
into other bodies of men, since the animals which
meanwhile have been nourished by them convey the
nutriment derived from those by whom they were
nourished into those men of whom they become
the nutriment. 3
Athenagoras must acknowledge that the resurrection
of the body brings with it a number of paradoxes.
First, while the body is subject to the temporal proc
esses of aging, illness, and decay, the resurrected body
is supposedly free from all these, and yet is still a
body. Second, the doctrine of the resurrection of
3. Ibid., IV, 427-8.
439
COLLAPSE VII
the dead says little about what kind of body is resur
rected - in particular, how the resurrected body is
related to the earthly, living, un-resurrected body. Is
the resurrected body exactly identical to our own liv
ing bodies, and if so, at which point in our lives does
our living body provide the avatar, as it were, for the
resurrected body? Finally, Athenagoras notes several
seemingly minor, though peculiar, objections raised
against the resurrection doctrine, one of which deals
with eating, metabolism, and excrement. Supposing
that the earthly body of a dead person is allowed to
decompose, its parts returning to the earth and the
worms, and supposing that the earth then serves as soil
for the growth of plants, and supposing that human
beings then eat those plants, are we to assume that
cannibalism - albeit an indirect cannibalism - has
taken place? And if so, how can the resurrection of the
body occur when the dead body has disintegrated so
far as to be nearly impossible to re-assemble?
While he does not definitely answer all these objec
tions, Athenagoras' problems remain more interesting
than his solutions. In his discussion of resurrection,
Athenagoras articulates two different processes: the
process through which the matter of the corpse is
broken down, transformed, and incorporated within
non-living matter (including that of other living
beings) , and the process through which the dead are
re-animated and re-assembled in a superlative, almost
440
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
speculative afterlife. In this vertical, double articula
tion - the body rising up, the body sinking below Athenagoras' treatise also traces a lateral articulation,
one that describes the incessant and non-teleological
transformation of matter, to the point where matter
simply becomes identical with this incessant and non
teleological transformation. In short, Athenagoras'
treatise happens upon a culinary transformation of
matter that goes beyond the literal acts of eating,
digestion, and metabolism, and tends to become a
generalized principle of the world itself.
But in Athenagoras' treatise, this lateral articulation
stands in a conflicted relationship to the vertical one.
When the body becomes the decaying corpse, life is
always in excess of itself - especially after life, where
the processes of decay and disintegration carry on
another type of life, whose endpoint, in so far as there
can be said to be an endpoint, is the excess of matter
as fertilization or as excrement. Put crudely, in such
metabolic and metamorphic processes, life is shit. We
die, and our decomposing bodies become prepared as
food for worms, returning to their inorganic origins for
which the boundary separating living and non-living
no longer holds. Our bodies are broken down, bit by
bit, where another, unhuman life carries on in excess
of our bodies.
In the process of re-animation and re-assembling,
life is not just death, but death manifest as the corpse,
441
COLLAPSE VII
the living body become a cold, dead thing broken
down into its material constituents. While it reaches
ever greater heights as a perfected, spiritual life after
life, it resists its own immateriality, remaining embod
ied, living, and even anatomized; and yet this same
body is also reassembled from the basic elements of
the earth, with which it has merged. In resurrection,
life is dirt. We die, and our bodies are either buried or
burned, in either case undergoing a reduction to an
elemental materiality in which the boundary separat
ing the organic from the inorganic no longer holds.
Bodies become ash and dirt, we become atmospheric
smoke and elementary particles.
Everything that happens in the life of resurrec
tion happens outside of life - that is, after death. The
living body must first become a corpse, so that it can
enter the continuity of material transformations of
decomposition and regeneration; likewise, the corpse
must be disseminated into innumerable elementary
particles, so that it can be re-embodied in the logical
conundrum that is the resurrected life. What both
of these processes have in common is a kind of life
that bears little relation to any vitalist, organismic,
or biocentrist concept of life. In both processes, the
dead are transformed into the living, but a kind of
living that requires the negation of life by life. In both
processes, what is produced is not simply a renewed
life, but a qualitatively different situation that can only
442
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
be described in the language of paradox: the life that
never changes, grows, or decays; the life that is always
negating itself, always undergoing transformations.
As Athenagoras acknowledges, the critics of the
resurrection doctrine have a hard time reconciling these
two forms of life. It would seem that the life of the
corpse would decompose the corpse to such an extent
that it could no longer exist, or that it would become
identical with the earth. In fact, the life of the corpse
seems to be a direct threat to the life of resurrection;
the more the life of the corpse breaks down the body
into its constituent elements, the more implausible it
seems that the body's parts can be re-assembled at the
moment of resurrection.
Athenagoras' defence of resurrection rests, perhaps
unsurprisingly, on a political theology of the miracle.
Just as the Creation is an exceptional, miraculous act of
the divine, so is resurrection a miraculous act, despite
its apparent implausibility. In other words, Athenago
ras' concern is to separate these two forms of life. The
life of resurrection counteracts the life of the corpse,
in spite of all that the life of the corpse does to render
the corpse identical with all that is non-corpse (soil,
roots, worms, etc.) . That said, the life of resurrection
nevertheless remains resolutely corporeal, rather than
leading towards an ethereal, disembodied, spirituality.
At the extreme point of Athenagoras' problem
is the life that is so perfect it is, in fact, death (the
443
COLLAPSE VII
eternal life of resurrection) , and the death that is so
metamorphic that it is in excess of life, culminating
in the pure excess of decomposition, fertilization, and
regeneration. These two forms of life come together in
a concept of material transformation that is 'culinary':
The decaying corpse and the re-animated soul are two
aspects of a more generalized culinary process through
which the very materiality of the world is continually
'cooked' ( and eaten) .
THREE VARIATIONS O N THE C ULI NARY
Here it is necessary to make a few distinctions regard
ing this idea of the culinary. At one level, there is the
culinary considered as cooking, where cooking entails
a whole set of activities that have come to anthropo
logically define the human: the preparation of food;
the techniques of transforming non-food materials into
food for consumption; the human cultural practices of
eating, be they social, religious, or leisure-based. Here
cooking is nourishment, at all levels, from the biological
to the cultural. Cooking-as-nourishment is regarded as
an activity specific to humanity, a form of technics that
separates the human from the animal, a cultural form
that includes the aesthetics of taste, the expression of
cultural difference, and the intertwining of culture and
economy in global food production and consumption.
In this register, cooking is indelibly - and exclusively a human endeavour, a 'restricted' form of the culinary.
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Cooking is, anthropologically speaking, the root of
culture and the mirror of the human.
What would it mean to consider an unhuman
cooking? Here we venture into a consideration of
the culinary, not in a restricted, anthropic sense, but
in a generalized sense. A generic cooking, a 'general'
culinarism. Here cooking is not restricted within the
ambit of human culture - but neither is it naively
democratized by bestowing it on higher animals, primi
tive humans, or even aliens. 4 Instead, we can ask: What
would it mean to consider cooking as an anonymous
process of the world as such? Cooking would have to
be considered as non-teleological, benefitting neither
biological health, nor cultural representation, nor
economic imperative. More importantly, this gen
eralized cooking would bypass the well-worn meta
physical boundaries that define cooking in a restricted,
anthropic sense: living/non-living, organic/inorganic,
natural/artificial, human/animal, and so on. Perhaps
this generalized cooking would be a way of thinking the
world as a continual morphology of matter and energy,
but indifferently to the instrumental wants and desires
of 'cooking' in the restricted sense. This would be a
generalized cooking as traniformation. Cooking in this
general sense is the horizon of political economy. The
world is continually cooked, and this generic cooking
4. That said, the 1962 Twilight Zone episode 'To Serve Man' ( based on
a Damon Knight short story) remains one the most acute critiques of
anthropic notions of culinarism.
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COLLAPSE VII
comes to overlap nearly perfectly with a concept of
impersonal, anonymous transformation.
But even this notion, removed as it is from the
anthropocentrism of cooking-as-nourishment, must
still presume a basic dichotomy between stasis and
change, between resource and product, between
that-which-changes and that-which-is-changed. Thus
cooking-as-transformation appears indebted to a meta
physics of generosity, of a flux and flow of matter and
energy, of a dynamic continuum of transformation.
But the question we pose here is whether there is a
third sense of 'culinarism,' one that is critical of the
notion of cooking-as-nourishment ( and its anthropic
conceits) , but which also departs from the notion of
cooking-as-transformation (with its over-reliance on
the presentism of generosity) .
What would an unhuman, anonymous cooking be
like that is also non-teleological and non-generous?
Athenagoras (and later, Bataille) already gives us a hint
of this type of cooking in his two forms oflife-negation:
the gradient stretching from the decomposing corpse
to the emptied soul, figures oflife that must necessarily
negate themselves, without simply destroying them
selves. If this is a continual transformation, perhaps it is
an indelibly tragic one, ultimately failing to hold all the
particles together, ultimately flailing in the attempt to
re-assemble them. Here cooking is nether nourishment
nor transformation, but really cooking as desolation.
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A desolate cooking involves processes of evacuation,
elimination, emptying. Tue aim is neither to re-instate
nourishment and the human imperative to recuperate
and recycle, nor to rush headlong into a naturalized
glorification of the flux and flow of the phenomenal
world. In its desolate mode, a generalized culinarism
would entail a shift from a philosophy of cooking
(the hermeneutics of human taste and culture; what
cooking means or signifies in its restricted register) ,
to a cooking of philosophy - cooking-as-desolation
understood as a movement towards the indistinction
of everything that cooking-as-nourishment and even
cooking-as-transformation would lay as the foundation
for philosophy's hermeneutic imperative.
Resurrection brings together the strange materiality
ef the corpse with the equally strange, equally anonymous
process ef eating - in fact, resurrection is, in a sense,
the point where they perfectly overlap. Whether it
is in the bowels of the earth or in the specular forge
of the heavens, there is, for Athenagoras, a life that
continues after life. The question that he does not ask,
or cannot ask, is whether these two types of life - the
life of resurrection and the life of the corpse - are
not so much in opposition to each other, as mutu
ally convertible into one another. This is, however, a
question that Georges Bataille does ask, and, to jump
ahead a little, his response is that only a concept of
life that is rooted in negation - that is always being
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'cooked' - can reveal the ways in which resurrection
is also decomposition, the way in which the corpse is
also this anonymous, unhuman 'cooking.'
EATEN AND/O R DEAD
Resurrection entails all the promises of the perfected,
yet still corporeal, life after life, but is undermined
by the problems concerning the disintegration of the
corpse and its integration with the earth. Here Ath
enagoras isolates a problem that is worth examining
in greater detail: how can life be thought in such a
way that it is not simply negated by death? Or, more
simply: what is the life that is not negated in death?
Addressing this question means addressing the
tendency in Western thought to regard the question
of life as philosophically tethered to the question of
being. This implies a positivity to the concept of life,
either as a subset of being (life is that which presumes
a minimal concept of being) , or as superfluous to
being ( life as the becoming of being) . This is one of
the central questions in Bataille's work, particularly
in his posthumously published text Theory <ifReligion.
Bataille returns again and again to this idea of a nega
tive concept oflife - especially when life itself becomes
indissociable from a certain degree zero of material
transformations. And while Bataille was certainly no
Christian apologist, works such as Theory <![Religion do
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take up many of the issues raised by Patristic thinkers
such as Athenagoras. The difference, however, is that
for Bataille theology is really atheology, or theology
without a head, mysticism without God, the divine
without the spiritual. Bataille's question is, then, a
variant of Athenagoras' : what is the life that is not negated
in death, but that is itselfnegation!
But what would it mean to think of life in terms
of negation? It would have to be something different
than the negation of life - as in, for example, the
individuated death or perishing of the living being.
Here life is simply a positive for death as a negative,
the latter having no other value than as that which
is the negation of life. But it would also have to be
something different than life itself negating some
thing else (whether for survival or preservation) . In
this quasi-Darwinian notion, life is only negative by
virtue of its propensity for growth and consumption;
one form of life negates other forms of life through
its overcoming of life in general.
Bataille does sometimes think of life as being
negated - his recurrent example of ritual sacrifice has
at its core the negation of life, though for Bataille this
act oflife-negation takes place within a larger economy
of forces, a solar economy based on prodigality. And
Bataille does often speak of life in terms of excess in fact, one of Bataille's ontological principles is that
of excess, and in particular the excess of vital energy
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COLLAPSE VII
that, Bataille insists, governs the play of anonymous
forces of the planet. Life is excess, but for Bataille
life is only excess in so far as it is useless; it obtains
what Bataille once called a 'unemployed negativity'
at its core, an excess that can only be expended. The
negativity of life is, for Bataille, not the negation of life
(as death or perishing) , and neither is it the growth,
or prodigality, or agglomeration of life ( in cycles of
growth, decay, and growth) .
To understand what life-negation is for Bataille,
we have to look more closely at the arguments made
in Theory ofReligj,on. One of Bataille's insights here is
that, metaphysically speaking, it is in religion that
the highest and the lowest orders come into intimate
contact with each other. This contact Bataille often calls
'continuity' ( other terms he uses include 'intimacy'
and 'immanence' ) .5 In continuity all distinctions are
blurred, and individuation and differentiation give way
before a vast, unhuman abyss Bataille calls 'immensity'.
5. Bataille's fairly consistent use of the term 'continuity' invites a closer
examination of the relation between Bataillean 'continuity' and the
mathematical 'continuum' . Bataille appears to favor a dynamic and
excessive flux as per his metaphor of animals existing "like water in water"
that would seem roughly analogous to the non-empty, connected continuum
in mathematical topology - though perhaps Bataille may have trouble with
the mathematical apriori of geometric space over time which his concept of
'expenditure' seems designed to overturn . Similarly, the continuum thesis
in Cantorian set theory presents a rigorous and formalized description
of mathematical infinity. We can imagine that Bataille may agree with its
impetus - the articulation of an excess a numerical excess that cannot
be counted - though one wonders if Bataille would have trouble with the
notion that such un-countable excess can ever be fully circumscribed within
the ambit of mathematical thought.
(
)
)
(
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But we as human beings, living in a human world,
rely on individuation and differentiation; we live, in
Bataille's terms, in a world of discontinuity. Though
rare and exceptional, there are practices or exercises
by which we as human subjects are divested of our
subjectivity and the self-world relation, and Bataille
returns again and again to examples of this divestiture:
in ritual sacrifice, in eroticism, in mystical ecstasy, in
meditation or prayer, even in our interaction with
useless objects, such as jewellery, bodily fluids, or
poetry. As human subjects, however, we must always
return to the discontinuous world, in which subject is
distinguished from object, self from world, one person
from another.
A central tenet in Bataille's philosophy of religion
is that religion constitutes the search, within disconti
nuity, for an absent continuity. For Bataille, any com
prehension of the significance of the religious impulse
in human beings must necessarily begin at the level
of the animal. Animals, for Bataille, exist already in a
state of continuity. With the animal, there is no subject
and object, or self and world. Unburdened with the
Kantian apparatus of consciousness, '[t]he animal is
in the world like water in water.'6 How exactly is the
animal's continuity manifest? As Bataille notes, '[t]he
immanence of the animal with respect to its milieu
is given in a precise situation . . . the situation is gi,ven
6. 1heory q/Religion, trans. R. Hurley ( New York: Zone, 1 989) , 23.
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COLLAPSE VII
when one animal eats another.'7 Attempting to adopt a
non-anthropomorphic position, Bataille notes that,
while we as human beings may attribute qualitative
differences to animals ( from the scientific study of
predator-prey relations to poetic evocations of the
'king of the beasts' ) , for animals themselves all differ
ences are only quantitative. 8 Animality is continuity
because it is fundamentally the lateral distribution and
re-distribution of matter - and eating is the primary
testament to this animal materiality. 'What is given
when one animal eats another is always the fellow
creature of the one that eats. It is in this sense that I
speak of immanence.'9
But the world as continuity continues to haunt the
discontinuous world of humanity. Bataille remains
committed to the notion that there is some part of the
continuous world embedded in humanity, some part it
cannot be rid of, but that cannot be totally sublimated.
Continuity, for Bataille, can be accessed but is not
intelligible; for this access has as its precondition the
negation of accessibility.1 0 Again, there is something
7. Ibid., 17.
8. By 'quantitative' Bataille does not mean 'mathematical' in a strict sense,
but a differential in the power relation between one animal and another,
between eater and eaten. This takes Bataille into a Nietzschean and
perhaps, even, Spinozist reading of culinarism, in which the so·called
quantitative difference of eater and eaten 'like water in water' can only
ever be thought outside that immanent relation.
9. 1heory ofReligion, 17.
10. This idea is explored in my essay 'Mediation and Antimediation', in E.
)
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of the tragic in Bataille's notion of continuity, for it is
not ever fully realized or achieved.
But its failure can happen in several ways. For
Bataille, traditional religion - his main target is Chris
tianity - has failed in that it has attempted to trans
form continuity itself into a thing, condensed into the
anthropomorphic, personal, temperamental God. For
Bataille, the concept of the divine comes to describe
this haunting:
If we now picture men conceiving the world in the
light of an existence that is continuous . . . we must
also perceive the need for them to attribute to it the
virtues of a thing 'capable of acting, thinking, and
speaking' O ust as men do) . . . So the positing, in the
world, of a 'supreme being', distinct and limited like
a thing, is first of all an impoverishment.11
It seems, then, that even the theological notion of God
is implanted within the discontinuous world of things,
one being among other beings. But if this is the case,
then at what moment does the living being enter into
continuity? Bataille gives two instances, instances
which remarkably mirror Athenagoras' discussion on
resurrection: The first instance has to do with eating.
Hori (Ed.) 1he Technological Condition/Die Technologische
Bedingung (Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag, 201 1 ) .
1 1 . Ibid., 33-4.
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COLLAPSE VII
Bataille has already mentioned the role that eating
plays in animality - it is the expression of continuous
being. Human beings do eat, of course, but not in this
sense. As Bataille notes, 'man does not eat anything
before he has made it into an object . . . man is an ani
mal that does not have a part in that which he eats.'12
Bataille's other instance in which the living being
opens onto continuity has to do with the corpse. This
is also related to eating. For human beings, 'the eaten
animal can be posited as an object only provided it is
eaten dead.'13 The transformation of the living body
into a corpse is the necessary human prerequisite for
the corpse to be transformed into food. But we never
refer to our food as a corpse. The corpse is not only
a dead thing, but a qualified dead thing. It is a dead
thing with a kind of shadowy excess hovering around
it, seeping from its pores. The corpse is simply that
which remains, the remainder that does not go away,
that persists in its thick, weighty, thingness, but which
is never reducible to that thingness. Bataille discusses
Western culture's ambivalence towards the corpse:
' . . . the spirit is so closely linked to the body as a thing
that the body never ceases to be haunted, is never a
thing except virtually, so much so that if death reduces
it to the condition of a thing, the spirit is more present
than ever: the body that has betrayed it reveals it more
12. Ibid., 39.
13. Ibid.
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clearly than when it served it.'14 The corpse reveals
life in a direct, dichotomous sense, as the thing that
formerly contained life, as a thing that was formerly
inseparable from life. The separation of life and body
results in the dead facticity of the corpse. As Bataille
notes, 'In a sense the corpse is the most complete
affirmation of the spirit.'15
With this in mind, we can extract from Bataille's
Theory ofReligfon a sort of abbreviated typology, one in
which a material concept of life is thought of in terms
of negation: There is, first, the dead life. The dead life
is the twofold life of the corpse, at once the paradoxi
cal affirmation of a life that no longer exists, and a
continuation of the life of decay, decomposition, and
disintegration. In its first aspect, the dead life affirms
the basic split between the living and non-living, the
living body and the body reduced to a thing. But in its
second aspect, the dead life frustrates this boundary,
as the decomposition of the corpse into its elements
cuts across the boundary of the living and non-living.16
14. Ibid. , 40.
1 5 . Ibid.
16. My treatment of the decay, decomposition, and disintegration of the
corpse shares some affinities with Reza Negarestani's essay 'Undercover
Softness: An Introduction to the Architecture and Politics of Decay',
(COLI.APSE VI ) . While I share with Negarestani the notion of decay as
infinite negation ( perhaps, as negativity that is not negative) , I am placing
the decay of the corpse within the context of an unhuman, anonymous
'eating' ( really, a metabolic general economy) , such that the eaten and
the dead come to overlap. My reading of Bataille suggests that, in short, a
certain type of mysticism comes to encompass this overlapping.
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COLLAPSE VII
Secondly, there is the eaten life. The eaten life is
also twofold: the discontinuity of eating in humanity,
and the continuity of eating in animality. In its first
aspect, the eaten life is predicated on a basic distinction
between human and animal, with the resultant hierar
chies and taboos that follow from that distinction. In
its second aspect, the eaten life does not acknowledge,
or is indifferent to, the human-animal distinction, exist
ing only as the material transformation of elementary
particles, 'like water in water.'
For Bataille, both the animal and the corpse partici
pate in divine immanence, which we as human beings
cleave away into a naturalized transcendence, either
through the conceptual dyad of human/animal and
food, or through the affiliation of the corpse with the
thing and the dyad of living/non-living.
Bataille sees in these two enigmatic states a kind of
negative immanence that he aligns with the experiences
of mysticism. Both the eaten and the dead, those things
we name as things, are for Bataille simply names that
really designate an unassignable, unhuman state - the
state of absolute dissolution that is also continuity,
and which, for Bataille, is simply another name for
the divine.
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CANNI BAL C O RPSE
For Bataille, divinity is indelibly material. But this
materiality is not one of a naturalized generativity
or prodigality, and neither is it that of an infinitely
calculable mechanism. It is materiality with a certain
black gravity, a materiality with an emptiness at its
core, a thickness of negation that does not abstract or
elevate, but that saturates, that obfuscates, that renders
desolate. This is Bataille's own brand of apophatic
culinarism, an unhuman and anonymous cooking that
corresponds to the indistinct and indifferent sphere
he calls continuity. Continuity is this gradient along
which everything that is, becomes indistinct and yet
not immaterial.
But these passages between the divine and the
material are not exclusive to Bataille's work; as we
have suggested, Bataille borrows them from a long
standing discussion in Patristic theology concerning
resurrection, the body, and the flesh. These debates
have been unearthed and enlivened in Caroline Walker
Bynum's study The Resurrection ef the Body in Western
Christianity. As Bynum notes at the outset, 'the resur
rection of the body is always tied to divine power.'17
Resurrection is tied to sovereign power, either in its
ability to intervene in the natural order of things
17. The Resurrection ef the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1 995), 2.
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COLLAPSE VII
(e.g. the miracle of the resurrected body) , or as an
assertion of dominion over the workings of nature
(e.g. the governance of the resurrected in eschatology) .
At the same time, resurrection is often described by
theologians in terms of naturalistic or proto-biological
tropes (e.g. the seed metaphor in Paul, processes of
growth and hypergrowth in Origen) . These character
istics come together in what Bynum identifies as the
central philosophical problematic of resurrection in
Christianity: the problem of continuity.
In Bynum's study, while the religious subject of
early Christianity is markedly different from the mod
ern subject, the notion of personhood is nevertheless
an important element in the doctrine of resurrection.
In Bynum's study, the body is central to Christian
theology's notion of selfhood or personhood. Thus,
formal and material continuity in the body is necessary
for the survival of the person in resurrection. In short,
if the survival of the body is necessary for the survival
of the person, then it follows that the resurrection of
the body is necessary for the resurrection of the person.
Without personhood, there is no immortality, and in
this way personhood (and by extension corporeality)
is necessary for immortality and the eternity of the
afterlife.
But ifthe body is necessary for resurrection, what kind
of body is it that is resurrected? If the resurrected body
is decaying or in parts, then will the resurrected person
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also be a fragmented or decaying person? We see here
a variant of Athenagoras' problem with which we
began. How can the doctrine of resurrection ensure
that the resurrected person will also be a resurrected
body (since body is required for personhood) , and
how can it ensure that the resurrected body will be a
unified, consistent, and whole body?
Bynum goes on to identify two aspects of the prob
lem of continuity in the Patristics. The first is what
she calls the problem of 'material continuity' . The
problem of material continuity is, simply put, the
problem of maintaining a stable and coherent person
hood across successive transformations, including
growth, old age, death, and resurrection. How can
one be sure that the resurrected body is the same
resurrected person as when that person was alive?
Further, finer-grained questions follow from this: if
there is an identity between the once-living body
and the resurrected body, to what point during one's
earthly life does the resurrected body correspond? Is
it a teenage body, an adult body, a middle-aged body,
an elderly body? Material continuity, with its melange
of Aristotle filtered through Neoplatonism, is forced
to deal with the metaphysics of the stasis of change.
At the centre of the material continuity problem is a
modal disjunction between the living, earthly body and
the afterlife of the resurrected body. While the former
is subject to and defined by temporality, process, and
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COLLAPSE VII
change, the latter is - so the argument goes - 'living'
in a sense outside of time. The ontological de-coupling
of earthly life and afterlife is necessary to establish the
qualitative difference between the earthly and divine,
but in so doing it leaves in its wake an irrevocable gulf
between the temporal and the eternal.
Coupled with the problem of material continuity
is a second problem, what Bynum refers to as the
problem of 'chain consumption'. Like the material
continuity problem, the problem of chain consumption
deals with how to maintain the identity of personhood
through successive changes.18 But whereas material
continuity deals with the changes to the body (and
person) during life, chain consumption deals with the
changes to the body (or corpse) after life. As we have
seen in the case of Athenagoras, resurrection was not
only a corporeal affair, it was thought of in roughly
atomistic terms. If the body is composed of parts, then
resurrection is equal to re-assembly. But the mysteri
ous and gothic processes of decay and decomposition
threaten to break the body down into so many parts
that re-assembly becomes impossible. In addition, the
corpse is not only decomposed, but it is also eaten.
The corpse is eaten by a whole bestiary, from brooding
18. We should also note the significant contribution of structuralist
anthropology to the idea of culinary transformation, in which the culinary
is not only material, but semiotic and semantic as well. In a sense, Levi·
Strauss' analysis in The Raw and the Cooked extends Bynum's analysis to
include the culinary transformation of both signs and souls.
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vultures hovering in the sky to the patient feasting of
worms in the earth. And this is where the theological
problematic enters the scene. If we as human beings
eat the flesh of an animal, and that animal has just
eaten the corpse of a fellow human being, how has that
once-human corpse not been forever lost in the endless
chain of eater and eaten? As we've seen, apologists such
as Athenagoras were unwavering in the face of such
questions. Bynum notes that 'Athenagoras assumes
that even the eaten dead must rise.' If cannibalism is
a threat to the identity of the resurrected body, then
the stomach is the grave.
These two problems of material continuity and
chain consumption invite us to think about resurrec
tion in Bataillian terms. The continuity that the doc
trine of resurrection attempts to preserve is precisely
that which is negated in Bataille's notion of continuity
(which he also calls 'radical immanence' or the 'inti
macy of the outside') . From Bataille's perspective,
the twin problems of material continuity and chain
consumption provide glimpses into a continuity that
not only negates the preservation of the body, but
also the person. They are problems for precisely this
reason, just as, for Bataille, the eaten life (the eating of
animality) and the dead life (the decomposing corpse)
provide us with ephemeral glimpses into continuity.
Both problems dovetail on what comes to be an una
voidable topic of Patristic discussions on resurrection
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COLLAPSE VII
- that of cannibalism. In cannibalism meat and corpse
are brought together - the corpse as food, and food
as the corpse - culminating in a series of material
dissolutions whose serial negativity opens onto what
Bataille calls continuity. As Bynum notes, Christian
ity 'retained the notion that the person in some sense
survives in hard, material particles, no matter how
finely ground or how widely scattered. The grave will
not consume us' .19 But whereas for Bataille continuity
signified a radical immanence or indistinction, apart
from the discontinuous world of subject and object,
for the Patristics continuity is the continuity of identity
across successive transformations - it is, in short, the
continuity ef discontinuity.
Such ideas emerge over a long period in which the
ritual apparatus of Christianity takes shape: 'Christians
first opposed then adopted the Roman funerary meal.
By the fourth century, the Eucharist was celebrated in
graveyards . . . ' 20 Eventually eating and burying begin
to overlap and move towards the taboo region of the
eating of the dead: ' . . . cannibalism - the consumption
in which survival of body is most deeply threatened
- was a charge pagans levelled against Christians
and Christians against pagans. Polemicists for both
positions assumed that cannibalism is the ultimate
19. The Resurrection efthe Body in Western Christianity, 55.
20. Ibid.
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barbarism, ihe ultimate horror.'21 At the limit of this
convergence is a strange point at which the Eucharist
comes to overlap almost perfectly with the doctrine
of resurrection. Bynum paraphrases the defence of
thinkers such as Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Athenagoras:
'To eat ( if it were really possible) would be to destroy
- and to take over - the power of the consumed . . .
[ E ] ven if executioners feed our bodies to the beasts
and then serve those beasts up on banquet tables, we
are not truly eaten. To rise with all our organs and
pieces intact is a victory over digestion - not only the
digestion threatened by torturers and cannibals but
most of all that proffered by natural process itself.' 22
In the political theology of resurrection, the res
urrection of the body is not only a victory over the
restricted economy of eating ( culinarism-as-cooking) ,
but it is also a victory over the more generalized econ
omy of material continuity itself ( culinarism-as-trans
formation) . And this latter claim, so strongly asserted
in the Patristics, is precisely what Bataille contests with
his generalized culinarism and the concept of conti
nuity. So, while Bataille appears to borrow the terms
of the Patristics in his discussion of religion, he also
stands apart from them in his emphasis on continuity
as at once inaccessible and a zone of indistinction or
indifference ( culinarism-as-desolation) .
21 . Ibid.
22. Ibid., 55-6.
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We can extend our abbreviated typology here,
keeping in mind the theological and historical perspec
tive provided by Bynum's study on resurrection. With
Bataille, we had the dead life, the life of that which
remained after death. We can extend this to talk simply
about the dead life as the corpse. The corpse is at once
that which decays and decomposes, and that which
stubbornly remains in its thick facticity. The corpse
is the materiality of the material continuity problem.
With Bataille we also had the eaten life, the life
of the eater and eaten, be it in animal continuity or
human discontinuity. This can likewise be extended to
talk about the eaten life simply as meat. If the corpse
is decay and decomposition, then meat is metabolism,
digestion, and fertilization. Meat is the materiality of
the chain consumption problem.
In these pairings - the dead life and the eaten life,
the corpse and meat - we have a passage from one
form oflife determined within the human metaphysical
framework (living/non-living, human/animal, etc.), to
another, anonymous form of life whose precise func
tion is to dissolve, transmute, and render indistinct
this same anthropic metaphysics; and it is this latter
process that points to a generalized culinarism, cooking
as an anonymous property of the world.
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Thacker - Spiritual Meat
EATEN ALIVE AND/O R BURIED ALIVE
In an early written fragment, Bataille wonders whether
there is, in the Hegelian concept of negation, an 'unem
ployed negativity' that remains inaccessible - or in
excess of - the dialectic and its seemingly infinite
capacity for sublimating the negative. This inclina
tion is explored in Theory ef Religion, where Bataille
discusses the relationship between animal continuity
(in the act of eating) and the life of the corpse (in the
act of becoming food for worms) - again, 'meat' and
'corpse'. Just as the corpse becomes food for worms, so
does meat emerge from the dead corporeality of the liv
ing being. But these are simply so many instances of a
more generalized culinarism, of which the indistinction
between eater and eaten, and the eaten and the dead,
are the exemplars. This insight reveals an indelibly
material aspect to what are ostensibly religious con
cerns, resulting in what Bataille calls an 'ambiguous
horror.' Generalized culinarism is therefore tied, for
Bataille, to the ambiguous horror of the eaten and the
dead, meat and corpse.
But this ambiguous horror Bataille mentions is
not simply the emotion of fear, the stimulus/response
of fright, or even the existential dread of death - all
of these imply an object of experience that threatens
the subject, all the while maintaining a separation
between subject and object. The ambiguous horror,
in these senses of the term, is not only inescapably
465
COLLAPSE VII
anthropocentric, but it is also invariably dialectical.
For Bataille, however, horror is necessarily something
unhuman. If it can be described in affective or even
emotional terms, that is because it is, at its core, a fun
damentally non-anthropomorphic affect - the affect of
the unhuman. It is, really, a religious horror. Religious
horror arises, for Bataille, from the 'impoverishment'
of religious anthropomorphism we cited earlier, encap
sulated in what Bataille calls the desire for a 'supreme
being'. The supreme being - Bataille's target here are
the monotheistic religions, though his claim applies
to pagan gods as well - is continuity recuperated into
discontinuity, the God made thing. On the one hand
the supreme being allows for the Kantian concepts of
causality, relation and modality to be applied even to
the supernatural domain, such that the supreme being
has both 'isolated individuality' and 'creative power' .
In this attempt at having one's (theological) cake and
( eucharistically) eating it too, there is the attempt to
preserve the element of the divine as 'indistinct' and
'immanent existence'.
The problem, for Bataille, is that in introducing the
concept of the supreme being, one also attempts to
comprehend continuity through the lens of discontinu
ity, in effect making the supreme being a being like
other beings, along a sliding hierarchy of greater or
lesser beings. 'The objective personality of the supreme
being situates it in the world next to other personal
466
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
beings of the same nature . . . Men, animals, plants,
heavenly bodies, meteors . . . '23 The kind of equivalency
that results is a relative equivalency between discrete,
individuated things, greater or lesser, supreme or sub
ordinate. But this generalized equivalency is not the
same as the continuity (or intimacy, or immanence) of
which Bataille speaks. For even though the concept of
the supreme being is, for Bataille, universal, at the same
time 'the operation seems to have failed everywhere' . At
best the supreme being becomes a symbol, an icon, an
image that, when examined directly, necessarily gives
way to negative concepts (as in Anselm's famous defi
nition of God, as that beyond which nothing greater
can be conceived) .
In a sense, then, religious horror is the implausibil
ity or the impoverishment of the supreme being, at the
same time that there remains something profoundly
negative in the absence of the supreme being. Religious
horror is the horror of religion - of its failure despite its
success, of its all-too-humanity, of its claims for conti
nuity in the language of discontinuity, of its confused
confirmation and refusal of the Kantian antinomy.
Religfous hoTTOr is the generalized 'cooking' qf the divine.
If for Bataille the 'horror' that he discusses is
really religious horror, what is it that makes this
religious horror different from other kinds of hor
ror (fear, fright, Angst) ? One difference is that these
23. 'Iheory ofReligion, 34.
467
COLLAPSE VII
existential-phenomenological definitions of horror rely
on a basic metaphysical dichotomy of life and death,
and the horror elicited in the passage between them.
But there is a transformation that is neither that of life
into death nor death into life, but a kind of hypostasis
of persisting, subsisting, and abiding - the religious
horror of passing time.
We can describe Bataille's onto-theological prob
lematic as the following: on the one hand, an immanent
immersion in divine continuity, and on the other hand,
a transcendental split between subject and object that
guarantees the intelligibility of divine continuity. The
former (divine continuity) can only be thought via the
latter (subject-object split), but the latter by definition
negates the former (the material dissolution of the
subject-object split opening onto the material continu
ity of divinity) . For Bataille, the only way out of this
double-bind is by going headlong into it, and we can
suggest that, for Bataille, this means understanding
religion in terms of horror. In this sense religious horror
is a non-philosophical attempt to think ef life in terms ef
negation, but a negation that is not negative. This life, at
once a hypostatized materiality and yet an immanence
of negation, opens onto what he variously calls continu
ity, immanence, or intimacy: 'What is intimate, in the
stronger sense, is what has the passion of an absence
of individuality, the imperceptible sonority of a river,
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Thacker - Spiritual Meat
the empty limpidity of the sky: this is still a negative
definition, from which the essential is missing.' 2 4
Bataille gives the name divine to this onto-theologi
cal problematic. The divine names not a supreme being
or transcendent reality, but the necessarily implausible
or impoverished character of the transcendent, when
it comes to stand in for the discontinuity of continuity.
The divine is this generalized culinarism that is different
from either culinarism-as-cooking or culinarism-as
transformation. But, for Bataille, this divine continuity
must necessarily remain tragic, not 'out there' and
yet never comprehended: 'This continuity, which for
the animal could not be distinguished from anything
else . . . offered man all the fascination of the sacred
world, as against the poverty of the profane tool (of
the discontinuous object) .'25 For Bataille this element
of the divine is to be distinguished from animal con
tinuity, even though it may derive from it: 'The sense
of the sacred obviously is not that of the animal lost
in the mists of continuity where nothing is distinct . . .
Moreover, the animal accepted the immanence that
submerged it without apparent protest, whereas man
feels a kind of impotent horror in the sense of the
sacred. This horror is ambiguous . . . '26
24. Ibid., 50- 1 .
2 5 . Ibid., 3 5 .
2 6 . Ibid., 35-6.
469
COLIAPSE VII
The divine is, for Bataille, the irresolution of the
material and spiritual. Divinity is not expressed in
the heady drama of disembodied, ethereal spirits,
and neither is it expressed through the back door
transcendence of the ritual of the everyday. Instead,
divinity for Bataille derives from the inaccessibility of
the continuous 'cooking' of the world, and humanity's
negative awareness of this inaccessibility.
The religious horror of the eaten and the dead
reveal different aspects of the religious horror of which
Bataille speaks. They also extend our abbreviated typol
ogy thus far. But whereas the previous terms - the eaten
and the dead, meat and corpse - were still predicated
on an ontological split between life and death, which
was then confused or rendered ambivalent, here the
indistinction is followed to its logical conclusion, in
some cases nearly inverting the terms.
On the one hand, we have the life of resurrection,
the dead life, which, as decomposing and disintegrat
ing, is also the corpse. In horror films, the corpse
becomes more than a corpse when the life of resur
rection in fact coincides with, or even precedes, the
death of the living body and its internment. It is not
simply that life precedes death temporally, but, in a
near-inversion, the life after life is ontologically prior to
the corpse. That is, the corpse becomes the buried alive.
On the other hand, we have the life of the eater and
the eaten, the eaten life, which, in the continuity of
470
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
animality, and in the transformation of the corpse into
food for worms, is also meat. Here the inversion takes
place between the dead and the eaten. The dead is not
simply that which is temporally prior to the eaten, but
the eaten is ontologically prior to the dead, in the sense
that a kind of anonymous digestion or metabolism
courses through the living, the dead, and the eaten
all together. In a sense, life only begins after having
been eaten. In short, meat becomes the eaten alive.
ABJECT ORIENTED ONTOLOGY
For Bataille, religious horror, and the impossible expe
rience of continuity on which it is founded, is always
subsumed within the real order in a tenuous, ambiva
lent way: 'The real order does not so much reject the
negation of life that is death as it rejects the affirmation
of intimate life, whose measureless violence is a danger
to the stability of things, an affirmation that is fully
revealed only in death.'27 Again: 'Death reveals life in
its plenitude and dissolves the real order.'28
The limit that Bataille confronts in the idea of reli
gious horror is that of the unhuman. On the one hand,
there is the pull towards absolute continuity, and the
dissolving of all boundaries and individuation. This
is counter-balanced by the pull towards discontinuity,
27. Ibid., 46-7
28. Ibid., 47.
471
COLLAPSE VII
and the limit of this thought of continuity for the
human being. The two culminate in what Bataille
calls the 'contagiousness of the divine,' the enigmatic
revelation of an inaccessibility that is the result of
the dissolution of a split between subject and object,
that is nevertheless necessary for the dissolution to be
thought as such.
On the surface, this seems to describe the concept
of the abject, as found in psychoanalytic theory. The
abject is that which is neither subject nor object, a
repudiated element that serves as a reminder of a
threatening, primal repression prior to subject-object
relations. But the abject, at least in this guise, remains
tethered to a psychoanalytic framework, with its lan
guage of repression, lack, and desire. It remains tied to
the paradigm of a therapeutic, human subject, even as
this subject is constantly threatened and made anxious
by the abject. Tue abject is always regarded from the
stance of the subject (even if a subject under erasure) .
Nevertheless, the abject is relevant, in that it persists
and subsists through a certain type of materiality. 'The
corpse,' writes Julia Kristeva, 'that which has irremedi
ably come a cropper, is cesspool, and death: it upsets
even more violently the one who confronts it as fragile
and fallacious chance . . . refuse and corpses show me
what I permanently thrust aside in order to live.'29
29. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. L. Roudiez (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1982) , 3.
472
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
As we've seen, the meat and the corpse, the eaten
alive and the buried alive, these are the philosophemes
of religious horror, forms of life paradoxically con
stituted by and through negation. What begins in
the discontinuity of human life, is extended in and
is coursed through by the continuity of the life after
life - the decomposing corpse, food for worms. Fur
thermore, the point of contact between the eaten
and the dead - meat and corpse, the eaten-alive and
buried-alive - is a culinary one, but a kind of culinarism
that is quite different from the usual, anthropological
meaning ( culinarism-as-cooking) or from the natu
ralistic meaning (culinarism-as-transformation) . The
culinary continuity of the eaten and the dead, of meat
and corpse, is an unhuman 'cooking' ( culinarism-as
desolation) that renders indistinct everything that an
anthropic pretence to gustatory culture - the culture
of taste, food, and humans relating unilaterally to non
humans - would claim as its metaphysical privilege.
Given this, what would it mean to consider a notion
of the abject without the human, or better, a 'religious'
notion of the abject? If psychoanalysis approaches
the abject from the side of the subject, what of the
other side, the side of the object? But such a per
spectival shift would be doomed to failure, for there
can be no objective abjection, just as there can be no
humanity in continuity, no humanity within meat
and corpse, the eaten and the dead. Would this not
473
COLLAPSE VII
require a philosophy that remains as sceptical of an
object-oriented ontology as it is suspicious of a subject
oriented ontology? Perhaps we can propose something
less than a unified theory; perhaps we can propose a
pun. Let us consider the lesson of religious horror in
Bataille - that the world abjects the human. Would this
not require an abject-oriented ontology?30
We have seen that, for Bataille, the transformation
of the animal into a thing is 'a basic human given'
that also provides the conditions for the emergence of
religion. 31 The animal can be reduced to a thing in the
two ways that we have discussed: as the eaten and the
dead. 'Thus the eaten animal can be posited as an object
provided it is eaten dead.'32 But the true articulation of
the human as human comes not just in reducing the
animal to a thing, whether it be eaten or dead. The true
ascendency of the human comes in the articulation of
the introconversion of the eaten with the dead. The
human emerges not because animals are eaten or dead,
but because they are always potentially one becoming
the other, eaten and dead. The process by which this
happens is a culinary one, one in which culinarism-as
desolation is reduced to culinarism-as-transformation,
30. Given a certain predilection for acronyms in theory today, abject
oriented philosophy could be abbreviated as AOO (as in "oww," it hurts . . . ) .
3 1 . 'The definition of the animal as a thing has become a basic human given.
The animal has lost its status as man's fellow creature, and man, perceiving
the animality in himself, regards it as a defect.' ('Iheory efReligion, 39) .
32. Ibid.
474
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
one in which culinarism-as-transformation is reduced
to culinarism-as-cooking. There is a reductionism to the
culinary that is analogous to anthropism. 'Indeed,' as
Bataille continues, the animal 'is fully a thing only in
a roasted, grilled, or boiled form . . . the preparation of
meat is not primarily connected with a gastronomical
pursuit: before that it has to do with the fact that man
does not eat anything before he has made an object
of it.'33
This provides one explanation - a philosophical
one, rather than an anthropological one - for the taboo
regarding cannibalism. As Bataille affirms, this type of
reductionist culinarism is deeply associated with the
production of the human: 'Concerning that which I
kill, which I cut up, which I cook, I implicitly affirm
that that has never been anything but a thing.'34 And
yet, '(t]o cut up, cook, and eat a man is on the contrary
abominable'. 35 This is because the type of culinarism we
are discussing is a human culinarism - indeed the terms
'human' and ' cooking' imply each other. Cannibalism,
however, troubles this, resulting in a culinarism of the
human, in which the human itself becomes reduced
to an object, the eaten and the dead. But as Bataille
jibes, with echoes of Montaigne, cooking a human
corpse really 'does no harm to anyone; in fact it is
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
475
COLLAPSE VII
often unreasonable not to do something with man . . .
despite appearances, even hardened materialists are
still so religious that in their eyes it is always a crime
to make man into a thing - a roast, a stew . . . '36
The corpse's enigmatic persistence leads to another
type of culinarism, one that, for Bataille, momentarily
opens onto the limit that is continuity. In a sense, the
corpse continues the life of matter that it has always
been, even when it was a living, breathing and discon
tinuous subject. The corpse knows no absolute change,
no fundamental shift, no momentous passage from life
to death; it only knows that continuity of material and
energetic transformations that we, from the night-side
of life, refer to as decay and decomposition. For the
corpse, everything is culinary, whether it is the body
that eats or the body that is eaten. We are invited to
think about another type of culinarism, one that has
little to do with the production of the human subject
(and its corresponding food-object) . Not only am I
a corpse (a corpse not-yet) , and not only am I meat
(food for worms) , but at the limit of an unhuman
culinarism of the world, I am just 'stuff' (and even this
says too much) . This is Bataille's version - a desolate
culinarism, a culinarism that must assume a cooking
without a 'cook,' a generic 'eating' without eaters and
eaten, a that cooking is without a how cooking is - not
a reduction of culinarism to cooking, which would
36. Ibid., 39-40.
476
Thacker - Spiritual Meat
reinforce and reproduce the human, but a culinarism
that is, in short, the reductio ad absurdum of the human.
For Bataille, the 'divine' names this impossible
experience, the unhuman experience of the world
- including the self - as fundamentally unhuman.
This divinity is also horror, but this horror exists on
several levels. At the human (perhaps all-too-human)
level, it is the existential horror of death, of what will
happen to me - and my body - after death. But it is
also the gothic horror of the corpse, of the embodied,
subjectified, living being rendered as thing, as inert,
impersonal facticity. Knowing as we do that even the
corpse does not stay the same, there is also the culinary
horror of meat (of food, of digestion, of metabolism),
of the crossing of the threshold between the living and
the non-living, while never ceasing to be material, of
becoming food for worms and other living beings.
Finally one arrives at the religious horror of this unend
ing cycle not only of growth and decay, but of eating
and being eaten. This horror opens onto a certain
mystical state of the realization of the continuity of all
things, a kind of theological metabolism in which the
eaten and dead overlap almost exactly. In this sense
Bataille's Theory ef Religion is really something like a
non-philosophy of mysticism, but a mysticism of the
eaten and the dead: 'Only a world in which beings are
indiscriminately lost is superfluous, serves no purpose,
has nothing to do, and means nothing . . . ' .37
37. Ibid., 29.
477
COLLAPSE VII
The Metaphysics of Predation1
In the two watershed works of 1962, Totemism Today
and The Savage Mind, where the 'prestructuralism' of
Elementary Structures. . . begins to give way to the 'post
structuralism' of Mythologj,ques, 2 Levi-Strauss estab
lishes a paradigmatic contrast between 'totemism' and
'sacrifice' which has come to assume, for me, a status
one could describe as properly mythic, allowing me
to formulate more distinctly what I had confusedly
perceived as being the limits of structural anthropol
ogy. Limits in the geometrical sense of the term - the
perimeter ofjurisdiction of the Uvi-Straussian method
- as well as in the mathematico-dynamic sense - the
attractor towards which certain virtualities of this
method tend. This contrast has been important, in
particular, for a rereading of Amazonian ethnography
in the light of research carried out among the Arawete,
I . Excerpted from Metaphysiques Cannibales (Paris: PUF, 2009) , with the kind
permission of Presses Universitaires de France.
2. See E. Viveiros de Castro, 'Xamanismo transversal: Levi-Strauss e a
cosmopolitica amazonica', in R. C. de Queiroz and R. F. Nobre (eds.), Uvi
Strauss: leituras brasileiras (Belo Horizonte: Editora da UFMG) , 79-124.
479
COLLAPSE VII
a Tupi-speaking people of the east Amazon.3 It has
played a pivotal role in my enterprise of rethinking
the meaning of warfare cannibalism and of shaman
ism, two central (or rather 'de-central' ) cosmopolitical
institutions of the Tupi and other Amerindian societies.
*
The question of the existence of 'sacrificial' rites in
indigenous Amazonia poses the problem of histori
cal and typological relations between the cultures of
the lowlands of South America and the Andean and
Meso-American state formations, where sacrifice is
an essential theologico-political device. Behind this
problem we discover in turn that, more vast, of the
emergence of the State in so-called primitive societies.
In Amazonia, the phenomena upon which special
ists' attention is concentrated is that of shamanism,
given that the shaman seems sometimes to assume the
pro to-sacerdotal appearance of a delegate of transcend
ence. But the Americanist consensus is that the clas
sic, franco-sociological definition of Jicrifice, 4 which
continues to serve as the general reference for the
discipline, does not give a satisfactory account of the
complex of South American shamanism.
3. E . Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy 's Point efView: Humanity and Divinity
in an Amazonian Society ( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1 992) .
4. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, Sacrifice: Its Nature and Functions (1969]
( Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
480
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
However, the connection between Arawete ethnog
raphy and the notion of sacrifice was not impressed
upon me directly on the basis of the shamanic prac
tices of these people, but rather on the basis of its
eschatological discourse. Arawete cosmology reserves
a place of honour for posthumous cannibalism: the
celestial divinities (the Mai) devour the souls of the
dead as they arrive in the sky, as a prelude to the
metamorphosis of the latter into immortal beings,
like those who devour them. As I have argued, 5 this
mystical funerary cannibalism is an obvious structural
transformation of the bellico-sociological cannibalism
of the sixteenth century Tupinamba who constituted
the most important Tupi-speaking tribe, inhabiting the
Brazilian coast, mostly in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia.
It would doubtless be useful to recall some of
the general traits of Tupinamba cannibalism. It was
a very elaborate system centred on the ceremonial
capture, execution and devouring of war enemies. The
prisoners, frequently taken from people of the same
language and culture as those of their capturers, might
have lived for some considerable time alongside the
latter, before undergoing a solemn execution on the
central place of the village. They were generally well
treated, living freely but monitored during the whole
duration of the long preparations for the great rite
of execution; it was usual to give them women of the
5. Viveiros de Castro, 'Xamanismo transversal'.
481
COLLAPSE VII
group as wives - the captives being thus transformed
into affines ('enemy' and 'brother-in-law', in old Tupi,
are said in the same way: tovajar, a term whose literal
meaning is 'opposite') . We can already see the way in
which Amerindian predation implies the question of
affinity, as Levi-Strauss observed . . . The ritual cycle
culminated at the moment of the putting-to-death
of the captive, an act that had the status of an initia
tion for the executioner (who obtained a new name,
underwent commemorative scarifications, gained the
right to marry and have children, posthumous access
to paradise, etc.), after which the captive's body was
devoured by the entire audience, that is to say the
hosts and those invited from neighbouring villages,
but excepting the officiant-killer, who not only did
not partake of the captive, but entered into a period
of funerary reclusion. In other words, he engaged in
a process of identification with the 'opposite' that he
had just put to death.
The anthropophagy of the Tupinamba has fre
quently been interpreted as a form of 'human sacrifice',
either in the figurative sense of the expression, by cer
tain of the early chroniclers, or in a conceptually precise
sense, as with one of the founding fathers of sociology
in Brasil, Florestan Fernandes, 6 who applied Hubert
and Mauss's schema to the sixteenth century Brazilian
material. To do this, however, Fernandes postulated
6. F. Fernandes, AfunfiiO social de Guerra na sociedade Tupinamba [1952] (Sao
Paolo: Livraria Pioneira Editora/EDUSP, 1970) .
482
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
something that did not figure in his sources: a recipi
ent of the sacrifice, a 'supernatural entity'. According
to him, the sacrifice was destined for the spirits of the
dead of the group, avenged and celebrated by means
of the execution and the eating of the war prisoner.
In my monograph on the Arawete, I contested the
idea that supernatural entities would be implicated in
Tupi cannibalism, and that their propitiation would be
the reason for the rite. It is true that, precisely in the
Arawete case, we find 'supernatural entities' playing
the role of the active pole of the cannibal relation.
But, according to my reading of the eschatology of
that people through the lens of Tupinamba sociology,
this supernatural condition of the devourers is of no
great importance. I argued that the Arawete Mai (their
gods) occupy the place that, in the Tupinamba rite,
was occupied by the group in the subject position - the
group of the murderer and his allies, who devoured the
captive - whereas the place of the object of sacrifice,
the captive of the Tupinamba rite, is occupied by
the dead of the Arawete. The living Arawete, in their
turn, occupy the place of cosubjects which, among the
Tupinamba, was occupied by the enemy group, the
group from which the victim had been taken. 7 In short,
7. In so far as the ceremonial death was considered as the ka!Os thanatos
( the beautiful death) , the relation between the enemy groups was endowed
with an essential positivity: not only would it give access to individual
immortality, it would also permit collective vengeance, which was the motor
and central motif of Tupinamba life. In Soares de Souza's lapidary formula:
'As the Tupinamba are very bellicose, all their fundamental principles consist
483
COLLAPSE VII
the transformation that divine Arawete cannibalism
operates on human Tupinamba cannibalism bears
not upon the symbolic content of this practice or its
social function, but consists in a pragmatic sliding, a
torsion or shift in perspective which affects the status
and functions of subject and object, of means and end,
of self and other.
I came to conclude, later, that the idea of a co
ordinated changing of points of view would do more
than describe the relation between the Arawete and
Tupinamba versions of the cannibal motif. This change
would manifest a property of Tupi cannibalism itself,
qua actantial schema. I then came to define it as a
process of transmutation of perspectives, where the
'I' is determined qua 'other' by the act of incorpora
tion of that other, which in its turn becomes an 'I',
but always within the other, literally 'through the other' .
Such a definition gave an answer to a simple, but
insistent, question: what is it, of that enemy, really,
that was devoured? It could not be his matter or
in knowing how to wage war on their opposites' (Soares de Souza Gabriel,
Tratado descritivo do Brasil em 1587 (1587] [Sao Paulo: Cia Editora Nacional/
EDUSP, 1971], 320) . On the dialectic of the death of the individual and
the life of the group, see this passage by Thevet: 'And do not think that
the prisoner is shocked by this news [that he is to be executed and rapidly
eaten], his opinion being that this death is honourable, and that it is much
better for him to die thus, than to die in his house from some contagious
disease: for (they say) one cannot avenge death, which offends and kills
men, whereas one can avenge those who have been slain and massacred in
war.' (A. Thevet, 'Cosmographie universelle' (1575], in S. Lussagnet [ed.],
Les Frar!fais en Amirique pendant la deuxieme moitie du XV!eme siecle: le Bresil et
!es brtfsiliens [Paris: P.U.F, 1953], 196) .
484
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
'substance', given that it was a ritual cannibalism, where
the consumption of the victim's flesh, in quantitative
terms, was insignificant; what is more, testimony of
any physical or metaphysical virtue being attributed
to the enemy's body is rare and inconclusive, in the
known sources. So the eaten 'thing' could not truly be
a 'thing', even if it was - and this is essential - a body.
This body was nevertheless a sign, a purely positional
value: what one ate was the relation of the enemy to his
devourers; in other words, his status as enemy. What one
assimilated of the victim were the signs of his alterity;
and what was aimed at was that alterity as a point of
view on the Self. Cannibalism and the type of war that
was associated with it implied a paradoxical movement
of reciprocal autodetermination by the point of view
of the enemy.
With this thesis I was obviously suggesting a
counter-interpretation to certain classical precepts of
the discipline. If the aim of European multiculturalist
anthropology is to describe human life as it is lived
'from the native's point of view', indigenous multinatu
ralist anthropophagy assumed as the vital condition of
its self-description the 'semiophysical' prehension - the
putting to death and the devouring - of the point of
view of the enemy. Anthropophagy as anthropology. 8
8. Or, in the vein of the ferocious humour of Oswald of Andrade, author
of the celebrated 1 928 Anthropophage's Manifesto: odontology as ontology . . .
(0. de Andrade, 'Manifeste anthropophagique' [1928), in P.F. de Queiroz-Siqueira,
'Un singulier manifeste', Nouvelle Revue de P.sychanaryse, 6, 1972: 277-81).
485
COLLAPSE VII
This idea came to me in listening to Arawete war
chants, in which the warrior, through a complex deictic
and anaphoric play, speaks of himself from the point of
view of the dead enemy: The victim, who is the subject
(in both senses) of the song, speaks of all the Arawete
people he has slain, and speaks of his killer - who is
he who 'speaks', that is to say, he who actually sings
the words of the dead enemy - as a cannibal enemy
(although among the present-day Arawete one eats
only words) . Through his enemy, the Arawete killer
sees himself as enemy, in his capacity as enemy. He
apprehends himself as a subject on the basis of the
moment when he sees himself through the eyes of
his victim, or rather, when he pronounces his own
singularity in the voice of the latter. Perspectivism.
The warrior semiophagy of the Tupi is far from
being an uncommon development in the Amerindian
lands. The idea of an indigenous political philosophy
of cannibalism, which would be at the same time a can
nibal philosophy of politics, was broached in its broad
strokes by Pierre Clastres's theory of primitive war.9
However, its ethnographic generality and complexity
only began to be recognized thanks to the efforts of
9. P. Clastres, 'Archeologie de la violence: la guerre dans !es societe s
primitives', Libre 1, 1977, 137-73. See also: 'Echange et po;ivoir: philosophie
de la chefferie indienne', in P. Clastres, La societe contre l'Etat (Paris: Minuit,
1974) , 25-42 - see P. Clastres and L. Sebag, 'Cannibalisme et mort chez les
Guayakis', Revista do Museu Paulista XIV, 1963, 1 74-8 1 ; H. Clastres, ' Rites
funeraires guayaki', Journal de la Societe des amiricanistes LVII, 1968, 62-72,
for the pioneering articles.
486
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
various Amazonist colleagues, more or less at the same
moment when I embarked upon an analysis of the
Tupi material.1 0 These works point towards a predatory
economy of alterity as constituting the basic regime of
Amazonian sociality: the idea that the 'interiority' of
the social body is integrally constituted by the capture
of the symbolic resources - names and souls, persons
and trophies, words and memories - of the exterior. In
choosing as principle of movement the incorporation
of attributes drawn from the enemy, the Amerindian
socius comes to 'define' itself according to the same
10. Certain among them deserve a special mention: Bruce Albert's essential
thesis on the bellico-funerary complex of the Yanomami (Temps du sang,
temps des cendres: representation de la maladie, systbne ritual et espace politique
chez les Yanomami du Sud-Est (Amawnie bnfsilienne) [Universite de Paris
X ( Nanterre) , 1985]); the studies pubished in the special issue 'Guerres,
societes et vision du monde dans Jes basses terres de I'Amerique de Sud'
( ed. P. Menget) of the Journal de la Societtf des amtfricanistes LXXI, 1985),
most notably Taylor's article on the headhunting of the Jivaros as apparatus
of capture of the virtualities of persons ( 'L'art de la reduction'), Chaumeil's
on the cosmological economy of war in the Yagua ( 'L'echange d'energie:
guerre, identite et reproduction sociale chez Jes Yagua de l'Amazonie
peruvienne') and Menget's own work on the system of 'adoption' of
enemy women and children by the Ikpeng ( 'Jalons pour une etude
comparative [dossier 'Guerre, societe et vision du monde dans Jes basses
terres de l'Amerique du Sud'). One should also mention Menget's 'Note
sur !'adoption chez Jes Txidio du Bresil central' , in Anthropologi,e et Societtfs
12(2], 1988: 63-72, Philippe Erikson's article on the cannibal ethnosociology
of the pano-speaking peoples ( 'Alterite, tatouage et anthropophagie chez
Jes Pano: la belliqueuse quete en soi', Journal de la Societtf des Amtfricanistes
LXII, 1986: 1 85-210), and Joanna Overing's on the images of cannibalism in
the cosmology of the Piaroa ( 'Dualism as an expression of differences and
danger: Marriage exchange and reciprocity among the Piraoa of Venezuela',
in K. Kensinger ( ed.) , Marriage Pmctices i n Lowland South America [Urbana/
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1984]). In the following years,
studies multiplied (beyond the numerous works of the researchers already
mentioned, let us cite those of Ph. Descola, B. Keifenheim, I. Combes, A.
Vila1<a, C. Fausto, A. Surrales, D. Karadimas, and T. Stolze Lima) .
487
COLLAPSE VII
attributes. This is what can be seen in the course of
the great ritual moment ofTupinamba life, the putting
to death of the captive, where the place of honour is
reserved for the twin figure of the killer-and-his-victim,
who reflect each other and reverberate to infinity.
Ultimately, here is what is essential in the 'metaphysics
of predation' of which Levi-Strauss speaks: primitive
society as a society without interior, which only arrives
at being 'itself' outside itself. Its immanence coincides
with its transcendence.
It was thus less via shamanism than via war and
cannibalism that I came to deal, for the first time,
with the problem of sacrifice. Now, if the Maussian
definition seemed to me inappropriate (no recipient
of the sacrifice, no notion of 'the sacred') the notion
proposed by Levi-Strauss in his discussion on totem
ism, on the contrary, appeared to me to shed a new
light on Tupian anthropophagy.
*
The contrast between totemism and sacrifice presents
itself from the start in the form of an orthogonal
opposition between the totem and manido systems of
the Ojibwa, established in the first chapters of Totemism
Today .11 In Chapter VII of 'lhe Savage Mind the opposition
1 1 . C. Levi-Strauss, Le totemisme aujourd'hui ( Paris: PUF, 1962) , 32.
488
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
is generalized, redrawn12 and systematized in the fol
lowing terms:
• Totemism postulates the existence of an homology
between two parallel series (natural species and social
groups) by establishing a formal and reversible cor
relation between two systems of globally isomorphic
differences.
• Sacrifice postulates the existence of just one series,
continuous and oriented, along which is effected an
actual and irreversible mediation between two polar
and non-homogeneous terms (men and divinities) ,
whose contiguity must be established through suc
cessive analogical identifications or approximations.
• Totemism is metaphorical, whereas sacrifice is meto
nymic; the first is an 'interpretative system of refer
ences'; the second a 'technical system of operations';
the first is of the order of language [langue]; the second,
of the order of speech [parole] .
It can be deduced from this definition that sacrifice
actualizes processes of a different type, at first glance,
from the equivalences of proportionality at work in
totemism and in the other 'systems of transformation'
analysed in The Savage Mind. The logical transforma
tions of totemism are established between terms whose
reciprocal positions are modified by permutations,
inversions, chiasms or other combinatory or extensive
redistributions - totemism is a topic of discontinuity.
12. C. Levi-Strauss La pensee sauvage (Paris: Pion, 1 962) , 298.
489
COLIAPSE VII
Sacrificial transformations, on the contrary, unleash
intensive relations which modify the nature of the terms
themselves, for they 'make something pass' between
them: the transformation, here, is less a permutation
than a transduction, in Gilbert Simondon's sense - it
appeals to an energetics of the continuous. If the
objective of totemism is to establish a resemblance
between two series of differences each given on their
respective side, the goal of sacrifice is to induce a zone
or a moment of indiscernibility between two poles
supposed to be self-identical - a goal that engages
difference in an entirely other way (via the inside
rather than via the outside, so to speak) . To return to a
mathematical allegory, one could say that the model of
structural transformations of totemism is combinatory
analysis, whereas the instrument necessary to explore
the 'realm of continuity' (Levi-Strauss) established
by the intensive metamorphoses of sacrifice instead
comes down to something on the order of differential
calculus: imagine that the death of the victim is the
tracing of a tangent, the best approximation to the
curve of divinity . . .
Thus, the Levi-Straussian definition o f totemism
apprehends the latter as a system of forms, whereas
that of sacrifice has recourse to formulations that
suggest the presence of a system offorces. A veritable
fluid mechanics: Levi-Strauss utilizes a whole schema
tism of communicating vessels to speak of sacrifice,
490
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
referring, for example, to a 'solution of continuity'
between 'reservoirs', to a 'deficit of contiguity' filled
'automatically' and other similar expressions. All of
this evokes irresistibly the key idea of a difference ef
potential as the principle of sacrifice.
The same hydraulico-energetic language reappears
in the analysis of laughter and aesthetic emotion as dis
charge of accumulated symbolic energy, in the 'Finale'
of The Naked Man. Here, Levi-Strauss has recourse to
it when he turns to societies with a 'cold' history, who
struggle against entropy by utilizing differences of
potential contained in their inequalities of class or in
the exploitation of other people, thereby to engender
becoming and energy.13 The notion of difference of
potential plays a decisive, if little-remarked, role in
the construction of the concept of mana in Outline
ef a General Theory ef Magjc. Hubert and Mauss hold
that mana expresses the general idea of the differential
value of things and of beings ( 'it is always a matter, in
magic, of respective values recognized by society' ) , and
thus, of their hierarchical arrangement, and that this
hierarchical difference of value ( Mauss avec Nietzsche ! )
is coherent with the translation of concepts of mana,
orenda, etc. by Hewitt as 'magical potentiality' . And
they conclude:
13. C. Levi-Strauss & G. Charbonnier, Entretiens avec Claude Levi-Strauss
( Paris: UGE, 1961), 44-8 .
491
COLLAPSE VII
What we call the relative position or respective value
of things could also be called a difference in potential,
since it is due to such differences that they are able
to affect one another . . . [T]he idea of mana is none
other than the idea of these relative values and the
idea of these differences in potential. Here we come
face to face with the whole idea on which magic is
founded, in fact with magic itself. .14
The Levi-Straussian interpretation of mana in terms
of an inadequation between signifier and signified15
is therefore a compromise between a totemic-type
explanation, in so far as it appeals to a model of cor
relative differences between a signifying series and a
signified series, and a sacrificial-type explanation, in
so far as it depends on the observation of a perpetual
disadjustment (the absence of a 'perequation') between
two series, a disequilibrium that very much resembles
Hubert and Mauss's 'difference of potential' .
I n short, two different images o f difference, an
extensive image and an intensive image: form and
force. Images that are so different as to be 'incompat
ible', suggests the author16 - a judgment I shall allow
14. H. Hubert & M. Mauss , 'Esquisse d'une thforie generale de la magie'
(1902·3] , in M. Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologie (Paris: PUF, 1950), 1 14.
(Translation by R. Brain from M. Mauss, A General 1heory ofMagic (London/
NY: Routledge Classics, 2001)].
15. C. Levi-Strauss, 'Introduction a !'oeuvre de Marcel Mauss', in M . Mauss,
Sociologie et anthropologie, XLIX.
16. Levi-Strauss, La Pensee Sauvage, 295.
492
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
myself to interpret as aiming to indicate complementary
images, in the sense of Niels Bohr, an author frequently
cited by Levi-Strauss.17 In this case, rather than des
ignating two 'systems', totemism and sacrifice would
designate two descriptions - both necessary, but mutu
ally exclusive - of a same general phenomenon, sense
or semiosis qua articulation of heterogeneous series.
However, such a complementarity, at least as far
as Levi-Strauss is concerned, is clearly asymmetrical.
In his inaugural lecture at the College de France, the
author affirms that, unlike history, structural anthro
pology must utilize 'a method that would be that of
tranifonnations rather than ofjluxions',18 suggesting
with this something more akin to a group algebra
than to a differential dynamics. Recall that 'method
of fluxions' was the name given by Newton to what
would later be called differential calculus. And, in fact,
it is as if the structural method in anthropology - or
rather, the usual interpretation of this method - was
conceived to take account of form rather than of force,
of the combinatory rather than the differential, of the
corpuscular rather more easily than the undulatory, of
language to the detriment of speech, of categorization
17. See, for example: Levi-Strauss [1952], Anthropologi,e Strncturale (Paris:
Pion, 1958), 326; 'La notion de structure en ethnologie', in Levi-Strauss
Anthropologi,e strncturale, 398; 'Pensee mythique et pensee scientifique' in
M. Izard (Ed.) Livi-Strauss (Paris: L'Herne, 2004) , 42; Levi-Strauss and
Charbonnier, Entretiens, 18, 25.
18. C. Levi-Strauss [1960) , ' Race et histoire', in Levi-Strauss, Anthropologi,e
strncturale deux (Paris: Pion, 1973), 28.
493
COLLAPSE VII
in preference to action.19 Consequently, those aspects
that seem to resist to a greater or lesser extent the struc
tural method are habitually treated by Levi-Strauss as
semiotic (or even ontological) minor modes - it is not
by chance that I speak at the beginning of Metaphysiques
Cannibales of a minor anthropology - either because
they bear witness to the limits of the thinkable, or
because they belong to the asignifying, or, finally,
because they express the powers of illusion. Thus, as
we know, sacrifice is held to be imaginary and false,
and totemism esteemed as objective and true,20 a judg
ment that repeats and generalizes the great opposition
between myth and ritual developed in Naked Man; 21
a judgment which, we are tempted to say, teaches us
more about certain aspects of Levi-Strauss's cosmology
than about the cosmology of the peoples he studied
so intensively. 22
19. This having been said, Deleuze observed, already in 1972, on the subject
of structuralist mathematics: 'Sometimes the origins of structuralism are
sought in the area of axiomatics, and it is true that Bourbaki, for example,
uses the word "structure." But this use, it seems to me, is in a very different
sense [ . . . ] The mathematical origin of structuralism must be sought rather in
the domain of differential calculus, specifically in the interpretation which
Weierstrass and Russell gave to it, a static and ordinal interpretation, which
definitively liberates calculus from all reference to the infinitely small, and
integrates it into a pure logic of relations.' (G. Deleuze, 'A quoi reconnait·
on le structuralisme?' [1972], in D. Lapoujade [ed.], L 'lle dtfserte et autres
textes. Textes et entretiens 1953-1974 [Paris: Minuit, 2002] , 247 . [Translation
from 'How do we Recognize Structuralism?' in Desert Islands and other Texts
1953-1974 (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) , 2004)] ) .
20. Levi-Strauss, Anthropologi,e structurale II, 301-2.
21. C. Uvi-Strauss, Mythologi,ques IV: L 'HommeNu (Paris: Pion, 1971), 596-603.
22. This opposition between myth and rite proposed in Naked Man was to
494
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
Totemism, today, is dissolved in the general classifi
catory activity of savage thought;23 sacrifice still awaits
a comparable constructive dissolution. We know how
totemism was undone by Levi-Strauss: it ceased to be
an institution, becoming a method of classification
and a system of signification in which the reference
to a series of natural species was contingent. Would
it be possible to rethink sacrifice along similar lines?
Would it be possible, in short, to see the divinities that
function as terms of the sacrificial relation, as being as
contingent as the natural species of totemism? What
would this look like: a generic schema of sacrifice, of
which typical institutional crystallisations would only
be particular cases? Or, to formulate the problem in
a language more sacrificial than totemic, what would
be the field of dynamic virtualities of which sacrifice
is a singular actualization? What forces are mobilized
by sacrifice?
be a great obstacle for the structuralist legacy, as can be seen in various
attempts at modalisation, reformulation or flat-out rejection of the latter
(and with it, sometimes, of whole areas of Levi-Straussian anthropology) .
Americanist ethnology, in particular, has had to confront this opposition
in at least two fundamental studies on Amazonian ritual systems
(S. Hugh-Jones, 7he Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in North
West Amazonia [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979] ; B . Albert,
Temps du sang, temps des cendres: representation de la maladie, systt!me ritual et
espace politique chez les ranomami du Sud-Est {Amawnie bresilienne] [Paris:
Universite de Paris X (Nanterre), 1985] ) .
2 3 . With the important exception, already remarked upon, of P h . Descola's
theory, where the term comes to designate a specific ontology, typically
exemplified by Australian aboriginal cultures.
495
COLLAPSE VII
Setting aside Levi-Strauss's value judgements, the con
trasts established between metaphorical discontinuity
and metonymic continuity, positional quantity and
vectorial quality, paradigmatic reference and syntag
matic operation, were a great help to my own work,
and led me to inscribe Tupi ritual cannibalism in the
column (the paradigm ! ) of sacrifice. A true anti-totemic
operator, cannibalism would engage a transformation
that is virtually reciprocal (the imperative of vengeance
that gave it its entire sense in Tupinamba society) but
actually irreversible between the terms that it connects,
through the medium of acts of a supreme contiguity
and 'discontiguity' (the violent physical contact of
execution, the dismembering and consumption of the
victim's body) which imply a movement of indefinition
and the creation of a zone of indiscernibility between
killer and victim, devourers and devoured. It is not at
all necessary to postulate the existence of supernatural
entities to realise that one is indeed in the element of
sacrifice. In the tripolar interpretation of Tupinamba
ritual developed in my ethnography of the Arawete,
the actants are ( I ) the group of devourers, ( 2) the dual
person executor-victim, and (3) the enemy group.
'Death' is but a vicarious function assumed alternately
and successively by the three poles of the rite; but it
is death that conducts the forces circulating in the
process.
496
De Castro - Metaphysics of Predation
This is all very well. But does the concept of 'sacrifice',
in this new Levi-Straussian sense, really describe what
happened in the cannibal ritual? There is nothing of the
imaginary, and even less of the false, in Tupi cannibal
ism. Not even vengeance, which is strictly speaking
'impossible', was imaginary; for it was, before anything
else, a schematism of social poiesis, a mechanism for
the ritual production of collective temporality (the
interminable cycle of vengeance) via the installation
of a perpetual disequilibrium between enemy groups. 24
And in any case, even if one must always imagine the
enemy - construct the other as such - the objective
was really to eat him - to construct the self qua other.
There is something that does not pass through the
concept of sacrifice, even if many more things pass
through it than through that of totemism.
24. 'Perpetual disequilibrium' is a key concept of Histoire de Lynx (C. Uvi
Strauss, Histoire de Lynx [Paris: Pion, 1991]), elaborated - as if by chance on the basis of the analysis of the Tupinamba myth of the twins, recorded
by Thevet around 1554.
497
COLLAPSE VII
Ex- N i h i l o : Form ing a Body Out of
N othi ng1
1. CAN A S U BJECT EAT?
What does an eating subject do? He incorporates what
he is not. That does not only mean that he transforms
what is not his body into what composes his body.
It also means that he transforms himself into what
he is not. As one incorporates food into oneself, one
incorporates oneself into the realm of food: the realm
of dead animals and plants. Eating is an act of survival;
eating is an act of merging one's life with death. 2
Eating blurs the difference between one's body and
a corpse. The stomach is 'a zone ef indiscernability or
1. I wish to thank Gabriel Catren for feeding my thoughts on the issues
discussed here and Dylan Trigg for commenting on a previous version of
this article. I am grateful to Reza Negarestani for inviting this contribution.
I acknowledge the support of the 'European Plaiformjor Life Sciences, Mind
Sciences, and the Humanities Volkswagen Stiftung grant.
2. G. Didi-Huberman, Disparates sur la voracittf. MLN, 106, 1991, 765-79.
499
COLLAPSE VII
undeci,dability' between life and death: what happens 'in
there' is not a combination but rather the processing
of the common factor between life and death, 'not an
arrangement of [life and death] , nor a resemblance,
it is a deep identity, a zone of indiscernability more
profound than any sentimental identification [ . . . ] That
is the reality of becoming' :3 'every man who [eats] is
a piece of meat'. 4 Unfolding these claims will allow
considering what 'eating' and 'eating nothing' can
teach us about the constitution of who we are: can a
subject eat without negating himselfas such?
2 . C O N C E PTUAL TOOLS
Phenomenology has significantly contributed to the
characterization of the subject of conscious experi
ence as being irreducible to the object. The subject
is what the object is not. In particular, the object is
understood phenomenologically as what is aimed
at by the intentional act of consciousness and the
subject as the one who aims at the object. Schemati
cally, the subject is the ineradicable starting point of
the 'arrow' of intentionality and the object its ending
point. Crucially, in this view, the subject (of conscious
ness) does exist but not as an object (of consciousness) .
3. G. Deleuze, Francis Bacon: Logique de la sensation (Paris : Seuil, 1981 ) ;
trans. D.W. Smith as Francis Bacon, 'Ihe Logic of Sensation (London/NY:
Continuum, 2003), 25.
4. Ibid., 23.
500
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
Not being an object of consciousness obviously does
not prevent the subject from being a body. However, it
is important to underline here that the bodily subject
is also irreducible to an animate material thing - an
organism living anonymously - and to an inanimate
material thing - a corpse. It is in this sense (and only
in this sense) , that here it is said that the subject is
no-thing. The subject is thus constituted as a double
negativity: the specificity of a subject lies in what an
object of consciousness is not and in what a material
thing is not. In what follows, the term 'object', when
used with no more specification, will be used to cover
both 'object of consciousness' and 'material thing' . The
negation of objecthood will be termed no-thingness.
This ambivalence will allow us to capture at once the
double negativity constituting the subject.
The characterization of the subject's double negativ
ity allows the consideration of the multidimensional
ity of bodily self-consciousness.5 On the one hand,
consciousness of one's body-as-subject is a dimension
of bodily self-consciousness that is pervasive, as it cor
responds to the experience of any object from one's
bodily anchored perspective. For example, experienc
ing an object to one's right is experiencing oneself as
5. D. Legrand, 'Pre-reflective self-consciousness: on being bodily in the
world', Janus Head, ' Special Issue: The Situated Body', 9/1 , 2007, 493519; 'Phenomenological dimensions of bodily self-consciousness', in S.
Gallagher ( ed. ) , Oiford Handbook ef the Seif ( Oxford: Oxford University
Press, forthcoming)
501
COLLAPSE VII
bodily located to the left of the object, experiencing
a surface as affording support to one's steps is a way
of experiencing one's bodily weight. In these cases,
one's body is not taken as an object of intentional
consciousness, but is experienced as subject.
On the other hand, consciousness of one's body
as-object is a special case of intentional consciousness
where one takes one's own bodily states as intentional
objects of consciousness, be it explicitly or not. For
example, one experiences one's body-as-object when
one evaluates one's body as being thin or fat, on the
basis of a mirror reflection of one's bodily shape; one
may also experience one's body-as-object when focus
ing on the interoceptive sensation of one's heartbeats
which one may be able to count accurately or not.
Now considering that the body is a material thing,
and that the subject is irreducible to a material thing (is
no-thing) , it is important to underline that any experi
ence qualifying as a form of bodily self-consciousness
involves the experience of oneself as material. The body
may be experienced as material in various ways. One
may scrutinize one's body as if it were any typical object
(e.g. one may pay attention while cutting meat, because
one experiences that the knife may cut as well through
one's fleshy finger, thereby experiencing the common
materiality of meat and finger), or one may experience
one's body while encountering or using other objects
(e.g. one may use one's fingers as instruments to grab
502
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
food, one's tongue as an instrument to lick, feel the
texture or test the temperature of a meal, because one
experiences the common materiality between one's
bodily instruments and food) . One may also experi
ence the materiality of one's body while merely looking
forward, which involves, albeit implicitly, experiencing
oneself as a material subject, voluminous, located and
oriented in space. 6
In addition to these experiences of the materiality of
one's body-as-object and of one's body-as-subject, one
may experience the materiality of one's 'anonymous'
body. Indeed, the materiality of one's body may be
experienced as escaping one's experiential grasp, unveil
ing one's complicity with anonymous materials.7 As
will be further evidenced below, one's own materiality
may be experienced as being common to the material
ity of inanimate things and corpses, while it may also
be experienced as participating to the pre-personal
dynamic of the physiological processes of one's living
organism. Importantly, such 'anonymous' processes
and aspects of one's body fall within the range of one's
experiences ef oneself as they may be experienced as
one's own participation in the material realm, as one's
own anonymity.
6. Legrand, 'Phenomenological dimensions'.
7 . R. Negarestani, Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials
(Melbourne: Re.press, 2008).
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COLLAPSE VII
The double negativity of the subject - irreducible to
objects of consciousness and to material things - will
be used and developed throughout this contribution.
Two points should thus be kept in mind from now on.
First, the present discussion is not concerned with
any purported divide between the subject and the
body; between soul and matter. The distinctions that
are at stake here are experiential and are intrinsic to
the experience of the body. What will be discussed is
not the distinction between an experience of oneself
that would be bodily and one that would not; what
will be discussed is different dimensions of bodily self
consciousness. Secondly, starting from the distinction
between subject and object, it should be remembered
that differentiation is not separation. While the differ
ent modes of experiencing oneself are irreducible to
each other, they are also typically integrated with each
other. The view defended here is that bodily self
consciousness is typically multidimensional in the
sense that its different 'dimensions' are equi-primordial
to the constitution of self-consciousness.
Notice that such a conception of bodily self-con
sciousness as pervasively multidimensional counters the
view that focuses on the 'primordial absence'8 of the
body. For example, as repeatedly described in phe
nomenology, the seeing eye is not itself seen: 'the body
conceals itself precisely in the act of revealing what
8. D. Leder, The Absent Body (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 22.
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Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
is Other' . 9 The bodily subject would recede from con
sciousness, efface itself, in favour of the perceptual field
that it discloses. This, however, does not describe ade
quately typical bodily self-consciousness. In particular,
it leaves aside two considerations of importance. First,
if subject and object are irreducible to each other, the
absence of the body-as-object in one's experiential field
would not eradicate the pervasive presence of one's
body-as-subject as anchoring one's experiential field:
one may not see one's eye (one's own seeing eye cannot
be taken as object of visual experience), but one may still
pervasively experience one's seeing body (as subject)
as anchoring one's visual experience.1 0 Ignoring this
experiential evidence involves the unwarranted reduc
tion of experience to its intentional object, thereby
precluding any consideration of the conscious experi
ence of one's body-as-subject. Second, if consciousness
of one's body-as-subject and consciousness of one's
body-as-object are equi-primordial, then the latter, far
from being an 'aberrant type of appearance' ,11 would
rather fully constitute one's bodily self-consciousness.
Ignoring the structuring role of one's consciousness
of one's body-as-object would run the risk of reducing
consciousness to its subjective dimension.
9. Ibid.
10. D. Legrand, 'Objects and Others in Anorexia Nervosa' , in Philosophy,
Psychiatry and Psychology, forthcoming 201 1 ) .
1 1 . J.-P. Sartre, L 'etre et le neant (Paris: Tel Gallimard, 1 943) ; trans . . Tr. : H .
E. Barnes a s Being and Nothingness (New York: Philosophical Library), 357.
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As one is a body, one experiences one's materiality
as-subject, as-object and as-anonymous. None of these
dimensions of bodily self-consciousness are ever fully
eradicated from one's experiential field. The intention
of the present contribution is to unfold the scope
of this conception of bodily self-consciousness. In
particular, what is proposed here is that, due to their
mutual irreducibility and complementarity, the different
dimensions ofbodily self-consciousness are neitherfully inte
grated to each other norfully dis-integrated.from each other.
Rather, typical bodily self-consciousness is characterized by
a tension inherent to its multidimensionality, a tension that
may atypically lead to what will be described here as
processes of 'constitutive self-negation '. To anticipate,
as conceptualized here, 'constitutive self-negation' is
a process of constituting oneself through a process
of negating oneself, or a process of negating oneself
in order to constitute oneself. In particular, and as
touched upon above (section 1) , while eating, one is
not only assuming survival; one is also negating one's
subjecthood by incorporating food, thereby incorpo
rating oneself into the realm of anonymous organic
processes and of corpses, assuming one's dependence
to one's objecthood, thereby negating the sovereignty
of one's subjecthood. Conversely, one may eat nothing
as an act of constitutive self-negation: while eating
nothing, one may refuse to let one's subjecthood sur
render to one's objecthood. One may then seek to
506
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
constitute one's subjecthood by negating one's object
hood, refusing to incorporate food, thereby refusing to
be incorporated into the realm of anonymous organic
processes and of corpses.
3. EXPERIENTIAL D E S C RI PTIONS
To start with, the idea that there is a tension inherent
to bodily self-consciousness, and the consequence
that it may have on one's experience of oneself, and
on one's constitutive self-negation, should be clarified
at the experiential level. For this, I will first give voice
to the people who I will be referring to throughout
this contribution when considering atypical bodily
experiences, quoting (at length) from their published
reports. I will first present the quotes 'raw' so that
the reader can get a sense of how they 'taste' on their
own, and I will then 'bake' them in the conceptual
'oven' proposed above - together with some other
'ingredients' and 'spices' .
Marya Hornbacher
The first type of atypical bodily experience that will
be discussed here is anorexia. For the sake of consist
ency and conciseness, I will refer here to one par
ticular story 'only' . Marya Hornbacher was born in
197 4, in California. When she was 23, she wrote her
507
COLLAPSE VII
autobiography entitled Wasted.12 There, she describes
how she 'became bulimic at the age of nine, anorexic
at the age of fifteen [ . . . ] and now, at twenty-three,
[she isJ an interesting creature, an Eating Disorder
Not Otherwise Specified'.13 An eating disorder, she
describes, has 'the centripetal force of black holes'14
as 'one's worth is exponentially increased with one's
incremental disappearance' .15 She describes an eating
disorder as
a bundle of deadly contradictions: a desire for power
that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength
that divests you of all strength. A wish to prove that
you need nothing, that you have no human hungers,
which turns on itself and becomes a searing need for
the hunger itself. It is an attempt to find an identity,
but ultimately it strips you of any sense of yourself,
save the sorry identity of "sick." It is the grotesque
mockery of cultural standards of beauty that winds
up mocking no one more than you. It is a protest
against cultural stereotypes of women that in the end
makes you seem the weakest, the most needy and
neurotic of all women. It is the thing you believe is
keeping you safe, alive, contained - and in the end,
12. M. Hornbacher, Wasted. A Merrwi efAnorexia andBulimia (NY: Flamingo, 1998).
13. Ibid., 2.
14. Ibid., 129.
15. Ibid., 4.
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Legrand
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Ex-Nihilo
of course, you find it's doing quite the opposite.
These contradictions begin to split a person in two.16
She reports:
I have never been normal about my body. It has
always seemed to me a strange and foreign entity.
I don't know that there was ever a time when I was
not conscious of it. As far back as I can think, I was
aware of my corporeality, my physical imposition
on space [ . . . ] I do not remember very many things
from the inside out. I do not remember what it felt
like to touch things, or how bathwater traveled over
my skin. [ . . ] I did not like to be touched because
I craved it too much. [ . . . ] I remember the body
from the outside in. [ . . . ] I remember wanting. And
I remember being at once afraid and ashamed that
I wanted. [ . . ] Somehow, I learned before I could
articulate it that the body - my body - was danger
ous. The body was dark and possibly dank, and
maybe dirty. And silent, the body was silent, not
to be spoken of. [ . . . ] I watched it with a wary eye.17
.
.
According to Hornbacher,
16. Ibid., 6.
1 7 . Ibid. , 1 3·4.
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COLLAPSE VII
the shrinks have been paying way too much attention
to the end result of eating disorders - that is, they
look at you when you've become utterly powerless,
delusional, the center of attention, regressed to a
passive, infantile state - and they treat you as passive,
infantile creature, thus defeating their own purpose.
This end result is not your intention at the outset.
Your intention was to become superhuman, skin
thick as steel, unflinching in the face of adversity,
out of the grasping reach of others.18
David Nebreda
The second person I am calling in here is David
Nebreda. Born in 1952 in Madrid, he is a photographer,
exclusively devoted to self-portraits and to the writing
of books that 'recount the story of a schizophrenic
process'.19 Though he has not been diagnosed with
eating disorder, the peculiarity of his eating behaviour
and the radical consequences it has on his body, as
well as the potential ( existential ) relations between
schizophrenia and eating disorder20 make his story
18. Ibid., 68.
19. D. Nebreda, Autoportraits. (Paris : Editions Leo Scheer, 2000), 9.
20. L. Binswanger, 'Der Fall Ellen West', Schweizer Archiv far Neuroloie und
Psychiatry, 1 944; 'The Case of Ellen West, An anthropological-Clinical
Study', in R. May et al. (Eds.) Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and
Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1958).
510
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
a relevant case of 'constitutive self-negation' in the
present context.
David Nebreda has 'the conviction that there still
exist spaces for genuine investigation concerning
behaviour - human and non pathological - and its
limits' . 21 Such investigation is 'in accordance with [his]
most intimate project' .22 He describes how he lives this
project in the following way:
I live alone, have neither family nor any social contact
in my country. [ ] I live concentrated, devoting
myself to my reflections, I do not do anything else;23
I stayed, during nine years of my life, without getting
outside and without pronouncing a single word.24
. . .
Always working alone, he says,
forces me to be perfectly conscious of my brain and
of its instrument - my body, its possibilities, the most
minimal nuances of its movements, its situations in
space and its continual alterations25
I seek - always sat on the bed, in silence, eyes closed,
that's how I spend my time - to approach and to see
21. D. Nebreda, Sur la Revelation (Paris : Editions Leo Scheer, 2006) , 1 7 .
2 2 . Ibid., 17.
23. Ibid., 21.
24. Ibid., 27.
25. Ibid. , 22.
511
David Nebreda, Le cadeau de la mere. Le couteau nouveau portant mon nom.
[The gift of the mother. The new knife having my name]
(D. Nebreda, Autoportraits, 62) . ©2000 Editions Uo Scheer
Legrand
-
Ex-Nihilo
an image of myselfwhich must not only be perfectly
composed [ . . . ] but also obey to a precise rule of
reflection26
Once the mental image has been perfectly con
structed, measured and justified, I use my camera. 27
He insists:
my body is only an instrument whose control must
always be subjected to an idea of general discipline. 28
Self-portrait is an exercise of reflection and of internal
organization, much more than an exercise of repre
sentation [ . . . ]. Self-portrait can be neither biographi
cal, nor artistic, nor cathartic, nor complicit [ . . . ]. The
self-portrayed body [ . . . ] must be calm and precise. 29
For that to happen,
the first decision contents itselfwith ceasing (silence,
lack of hygiene, of food, of movement, of clothes . . . ),
when this is not enough anymore, one must open
oneself, lacerate oneself, bite oneself, flog oneself,
burn oneself, maintain the wounds infected [ . . . ], the
body must exhaust itself, for the foreign matter to be
26. Ibid., 22.
27. Ibid., 23.
28. Ibid., 26.
29. Ibid., 29.
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COLLAPSE VII
put to the test. [ . . . ] One cannot talk of violence - no
matter the violence inflicted - since genuine violence
would come from preventing it. 30
In the notes about the self-portraits he took in 1989-90,
David Nebreda asks: what is 'the relation between him
self and the photographical other' ?31 And he answers:
One knows well that the reality of this relation is
the 'other', [ . . ] once one reaches the goal initially
set to renounce one's own identity in favour of the
new one, the fruit of this relation, that is, that of the
photographic witness (and not of the photographic
object) in his status as another me, more real and
more definite. 32
.
Being constrained to stay at the psychiatric hospital
from 1990 to 1992, he then lives 'seven years of silence
and of near-paralysis'. 33 When he gets back to pho
tography in 1997, he acknowledges being 'conscious
of not being and mistaken about his real image'. 34
His work becomes an 'attempt at the self-recovery of
30. Ibid., 72.
3 1 . Nebreda, Autoportraits, 1 74.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid., 1 7 5-6.
34. Ibid., 177.
5 14
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
oneself, at the self-reconstitution of an image':35 'the
author acquired the awareness of not being, from this
abolition and exhaustion [ . . . ]; he begins a therapeutic
attempt at the recovery of a vital cycle which does not
manage to happen'. 36
One of the questions David Nebreda asks, and that
might be the most strikingly relevant one in the present
context - the interrogation of the notion of 'constitu
tive self-negation' - is the following: 'How to maintain
an identity when this demands and is recognizable only
by the means of offering relentlessly proof of one's own
destruction?'. 37 It is this question that is at stake in his
life, 'to the extent that the demonstration of his own
existence, that the awareness of his own identity are
not questions of rhetoric any more but a daily tour de
force' . 38 It is notably this question that is at stake also
here, only at a theoretical level.
35 . Ibid.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., 162.
38. Ibid., 184.
515
COLLAPSE VII
4. THE M I RRO R AND THE TENSION BETWE EN
ONE ' S B O DY-AS - S U BJECT AND ONE ' S
BO DY-AS - O BJECT
What follows from the aforementioned distinction
between subject and object (section 2) is that bodily
self-consciousness is characterized by an irreducible
self-fracture between one's consciousness of one's
body-as-subject and one's consciousness of one's
body-as-object. In particular, as identified by Lacan39
and further commented upon by Merleau-Ponty,40
recognizing one's image in a mirror transforms the
subject who can now acknowledge that there can be
a spectator of himself: contrasting with the body as 'a
strongly felt but confused reality [ . . ] the collection
of confusedly felt impulses',41 the recognition of the
specular body as one's own brings together with it
the possibility of an ideal image of oneself, image
which would 'henceforth be either explicitly posited or
simply implied by everything I see at each minute'.42
.
39. ]. Lacan, J, 'Le Stade du Miroir comme Formateur de la Fonction du
Je', in J. Lacan, Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 93-100; trans. B. Fink as 'The
Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience', in Ecrits (New York: Norton, 2006) , 75-8 1 .
40. M . Merleau-Ponty, ' Les Relations avec autrui chez l'enfant' (Centre de
Documentation Universitaire, 1 95 1 ) , in M. Merlea,u·Ponty, Merleau-Ponty a
la Sorbonne. Resume de cours 1949 1952 (Grenoble : Editions Cynara, 1988) .
41. Ibid., 136.
42. Ibid.
516
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
What matters for the point at stake here is the expe
riential split that is involved in the recognition of
oneself in one's specular image: 'at the same time that
the image of oneself makes possible the knowledge of
oneself, it makes possible a sort of alienation' . 43 This
'alienation' does not involve the vanity of some exces
sive fascination for one's physical appearance. Rather,
it involves the fact that with specular recognition, the
immediately lived body is confiscated for the benefit
of the mediatively seen body: one's 'visible me' is
given priority relative to one's bodily feelings. This
'captation'44 is constitutive of oneself, as one is both
at once subject and object. Experiencing oneself thus
involves a tension between what is given 'here' - one's
body-as-subject - and 'there' - one's body-as-object.
By introducing such tension, the objectification of
the body that occurs with mirror self-recognition would
introduce a negation of the purity of one's subjecthood,
a 'negation of its absolute'. 45 In reaction against such
a 'narcissistic wound', the child recognizing himself
in a mirror would assume 'the armour of an alienat
ing identity, which will mark with its rigid structure
the subject's entire mental development'.46 From the
43. Ibid.
44. J. Lacan, J, La Relation d'Object. Seminaire IV (Paris : Seuil, 1 998), 17.
45 . Henri Ey, quoted in ]. O'Neill, 'The Specular Body: Merleau-Ponty and
Lacan on Infant Self and Other', Synthese, 66/2, 2007:201 -17, 202.
46. Lacan, 'Le Stade du Miroir', 4.
517
COLLAPSE VII
identification - 'the transformation that takes place
in the subject when he assumes an image'47 - due to
mirror self-recognition, the subject 'flounders in quest
of the lofty, remote inner castle' ,48 projecting himself
into 'the unthinkable of an absolute subject' ,49 seeking
an ideal of integrity.
Points of controversy notably concern whether the
transformation that occurs through the identification
with one's specular image can be achieved via other
routes, whether the body lived prior to the mirror stage
is a 'body in bits and pieces' [corps morcele1 or whether
the body is first lived as a synesthetic whole which is
particularly sensitive to the rejecting or caring behavior
of others. 5 0 These different scenarios are nonetheless
united by the idea that bodily self-consciousness hosts
a tension between one's body-as-subject and one's
body-as-object.
With this in mind, it is interesting to consider again
the bodily experiences reported by Marya Hornbacher.
She says:
I remember my entire life as a progression of mirrors.
[ . . ] my mother, as I scuttled along sideways beside
her like a crab, staring into every reflective surface,
.
47. Ibid., 2.
48. Ibid., 5 .
49. Ibid., 5 .
50. O'Neill, 'The Specular Body', 209.
518
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
would sniff and say, Oh, Marya, You're so vain. That,
I think, was inaccurate. I was not seeking my image
in the mirror out of vain pride. On the contrary, my
vigilance was something else - both a need to see that
I appeared, on the surface at least, acceptable, and a
need for reassurance that I was still there.51
This suggests that the mere experience of her body-as
subject does not suffice to attest her existence. Quite
the opposite: she seeks to validate her self-experience/
self-existence in the experience of her body-as-object,
in her body image. It would be as if, facing her image
in a mirror, a surprising thought - conscious or not would suddenly come to her mind: 'so all this really
does exist ! ' . 52 To exploit here Freud's description of his
experience of incredulity when facing the Acropolis,53
it's as if the person who would express such surprise
would be divided from herself, far more sharply than
is usually noticeable. On the one hand, she would
behave as though she is obliged, under the impact of
an unequivocal observation (the sight of the Acropolis
for Freud, the sight of herself for Marya) , to believe
in something the reality of which had hitherto seemed
doubtful (Freud encountering himself as a man who
5 1 . Hornbacher, Wasted, 13-4.
52. S. Freud, 'A Disturbance of Memory on the Acropolis' , Standard Edition
Vol XXII , 237-48, 236.
53. Ibid.
519
COLLAPSE VII
really has gone a long way, while facing the Acropolis;
Marya encountering her own objecthood when facing her
own body image) . On the other hand, she is justifi
ably astonished, because she had been unaware that
the real existence of the Acropolis (for Freud) or of
her own body-as-object (for Marya) had ever been
objects of doubt. We see here how the identification
with one's mirror image leads the subject to experience
the (potentially 'depersonalizing') tension between,
on the one hand, his body-as-object captured in an
image and, on the other hand, his body-as-subject
never captured as an image.
While (some) anorectics are obsessed with their
mirror image, David Nebreda, quite in contrast, did
not face any mirror since twenty-one years. He explains
that 'the observation of the mirror had been forbid
den [ . . . ] and, after all those years where one has not
looked any mirror, the only reference I have of my
image is the one that the photographic double gives
me and continues to give me';54 'Mirrors [ . . . ] did not
disappear, they are covered with papers (not entirely,
frame etc. included, but only their reflecting surface)'. 55
Despite his aversion for mirrors, David Nebreda also
constructs the image of his body-as-object, along the
lines (some) anorectics do. But most radically, he
does not only shape his body by controlling his eating
54. Nebreda, Autoportraits, 183.
55. Nebreda, Sur la Revelation. 27.
520
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
behaviour, by cutting and burning his body, but also
controls the way he appears to himself, by cancelling
any spontaneous image of himself: ' I seek [ . . ] to
approach and to see an image of myself which must
not only be perfectly composed [ . . ] but also obey a
precise rule of reflection. [ . . ] an improvised image is
rarely satisfactory. 56
It appears here that, on the one hand, the body
as-subject and the body-as-object are in tension with
each other, while on the other hand, this tension, as
radical as it may be, does not lead the subject to seek
the eradication, but rather the controlled traniformation
of the body-as-object and its image. It is not accidental
that this self-transformation is operated through a
hyper-controlled eating behaviour by both Marya
Hornbacher and David Nebreda (who also uses many
other strategies) . Indeed, the incorporation of food is
possible only on the premise that the subject accepts
the fundamental ambivalence of his own being - at
once body experienced as subject, corpse-like thing
experienced as object, and living organism experienced
as one's anonymity. One may experience as unbear
able the tension there necessarily is between these
dimensions of one's own being; as a reaction, one
may refuse one's ambivalence, and seek to reduce
the tension by transforming oneself, operating on an
.
.
.
56. Ibid., 22.
521
COLLAPSE VII
ambivalent process that one can deliberately control:
food-incorporation.
One may wonder, however, how the tension
between the experience of one's body-as-subject and
the experience of one's body-as-object, paradigmati
cally experienced in mirror recognition - typically
benign - may have such a tremendous impact that it
may become life-threatening, as it is the case both for
Marya Hornbacher and for David Nebreda. The next
sections intend to unfold this issue.
5. D E S I RE VS . NE E D
To understand the impact of the experiential tension
there is in particular between one's body-as-subject
and one's body-as-object, it is relevant to explore
the experiential tension there is in general between
the subject and any object. And this tension may be
adequately captured by introducing here the notion
of desire.
The notion of desire is relevant here as it contrasts
with that of need. On the one hand, reaching the
needed object (e.g. grabbing food) fulfills the need
(e.g. fills in the stomach) , thereby appeasing it (e.g.
calming hunger) . On the other hand, reaching the
target of one's desire (e.g. savouring the taste of the
very special hot-chocolate that your grandmother
used to bring you in bed when you were a child) does
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Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
not fulfill the desire (e.g. your desire to activate your
cherished childhood memories) , does not appease it,57
but rather exacerbates it through the very fact of satisfy
ing it (e.g. exacerbates nostalgia) . 58 Need is awakened
by the absence of the needed object (e.g. food) , and
turned off by its presence. Need thus involves a form of
lack (e.g. hunger) in the sense of a default of presence
(e.g. an emptiness in mouth and stomach) . Desire, by
contrast, is not characterized by a lack of fulfillment:
it lacks nothing in the sense that no thing can fill it
in (e.g. it is neither the absence of hot-chocolate nor
the lack of memories that activates nostalgia through
the taste of hot-chocolate) . The experience of food
catalyzing feelings and emotions is very common
but very revealing nonetheless. What it underlines
is, again, the ambivalence of eating behaviour: one is
never related to food as merely fulfilling one's needs
but also as feeding one's desires. Not only food, but
any object can occupy such ambivalent place;59 but
the ambivalence seems particularly acute in the case of
food. Indeed, owing to human neoteny, which forces
the child to receive food from others, one's need for
food is deeply linked from early on to one's desire for
inter-subjective relations.
57. R. Barbaras, Introduction a u nephtfnorrufnologie de la uie (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 134.
58. Ibid., 127.
59. Lacan, La relation d'object.
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COLLAPSE VII
Food materializes inter-subjective relations under
specific conditions. First, it may be given and received
as a sign of the sensitivity of the giver to the receiver's
need and desire, if it is given consistently with the mani
festation of the subject's call for food and attention. 60
In this sense, the desire expressed by the subject's
call may be validated inter-subjectively if it receives
appropriate feedback. In contrast, there are multiple
ways of invalidating the subject's desire. One such
way involves not replying at all to the subject's call,
not giving anything. In this case, even the needs of
the deprived subject are not met (the child remains
hungry) . Such privation61 differs significantly from the
frustration at stake when the subject's desire is not met.
In this latter case, an object (food) may be obtained
and may fulfil the subject's need (appease his hunger),
while failing to carry subjecthood from the giver to
the receiver, failing to materialize inter-subjective rela
tions, failing to feed the subject's desire (for care and
attention) . Moreover, fulfilled needs may substitute the
frustrated desire, the subject regressively nipping the
latter in the bud.62 In this context, desire is
what is evoked by any demand beyond the need that
is articulated in it, and it is certainly that of which the
60. Ibid., 182.
6 1 . Ibid., 36, 55.
62. Ibid., 189.
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Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
subject remains all the more deprived to the extent
that the need articulated in the demand is satisfied.
Furthermore, the satisfaction of need appears only
as the lure in which the demand for love is crushed,
by sending the subject back to sleep [ . ]. But the
child does not always fall asleep in this way [ . . . ],
especially if the Other, which has its own ideas about
his needs, interferes, and in place of that which it does
not have, stuffs him with the choking pap of what
it has, that is to say, confuses his needs with the gift
of its love. It is the child one feeds with most love
who refuses food and plays with his refusal as with
a desire (anorexia nervosa) . 63
. .
We see here how food (and, according to Lacan, any
object) is intermeshed in inter-subjective webs. As one
understands that the ( m)other may or may not respond
to one's hungry calls, given or refused objects (food)
acquire the value of a testimony of (m)other's power
of acknowledging or censuring one's need and desire.
Objects are thus endowed with two layers of potential
satisfaction: they may fulfil a need (for food) , while
they may as well satisfy a desire (for care) thereby
symbolizing the favourable power of the (m)other.64
63. J. Lacan, ',La Direction de la Cure et Jes Principes de son Pouvoir' [1958],
in J. Lacan, Ecrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 585-646: 627-8; trans. A. Sheridan as
'The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power', in Ecrits. A
Selection (London: Routledge Classics, 2001 ), 1 73-214: 200.
64. Lacan, La Relation d'Object, 69.
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COLLAPSE VII
In contrast, they may still fulfil a need (for food), while
being frustrating as well, when they fail to feed one's
desires, failing to materialize (m)other's care, thereby
symbolizing the withdrawal of (m)other's favour.65
This framework conveys specific conceptions of the
subject's relations to objects, to himself and to others,
conceptions which are all interrelated to each other
but which will be discussed for their own sake in the
following sections.
'
6 . THE S U BJECT S RELAT I O N S TO O BJECTS
As far as the subject's relations to objects is concerned,
the current framework allows us to understand the
'painful dialectic of the object, at once there and never
there'66 following which the demand of the desir
ing subject can never be satisfied by a need-fulfilling
object67 but only by what is 'beyond' the object, i.e.
the materialization of inter-subjective relations. Recip
rocally, what engenders frustration is not the lack of
objects but the absence of inter-subjective validation
of one's desire.
It appears here that a tension lays at the core of
any subject-object relation, not only due to the afore
mentioned irreducibility between subject and objects
65. Ibid., 180- 1 .
6 6 . Ibid., 183.
67. Ibid., 101.
526
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
(section 3) but also due to the discordance between
any object and the target of the subject's desire: on the
one hand, objects are matters of transactions between
subjects, as they may be given, refused or retrieved; on
the other hand, what is desired is not some exchange
of objects but interrelations between subjects. The
consideration of desire as constitutive of subjective
experience thus leads to the conceptualization of the
subject's relation to objects as involving unavoidable
tensions, 68 as the latter can never satisfy the desire of
the former. This view69 stands in sharp contrast with
some idealist conception of a subject who, like a spider
pulling out of itself the strings of its web, would project
the constitutive images of his own world, projected
world which would thus suit the subject harmoniously.
The experiences reported by (some) anorectics
contrast with the conception of the spider-subject
and his fulfilling world. It could even be said that the
anorectic suffers from knowing all too well that she is
not a spider, in the sense that she experiences that the
world of objects, on the one hand, and herself, on the
other hand, are incommensurable: anorexia involves
'the release, the comfort, the power, however illu
sory and short-lived, of being able to conquer nature.
Of being able to spit in the face, or rather puke on
68. Ibid., 16.
69. Ibid., 55.
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COLLAPSE VII
the shoes, of this material realm'.70 Eating as an act of
ingesting objects which are meant to be assimilated by
the subject thus becomes both absurd and unbearable
as it acts against the irreducibility of the subject to any
object. For the anorectic, not only is the subject what
the object is not, but moreover the subject is what the
object cannot/should not fill in. Interestingly enough,
there is some philosophical appeal to this mode of
being anorexic. Sartre may be relevantly convoked
here. He argues:
The description of knowledge is too often alimen·
tary. [ . . . ] we are not yet rid of that primitive illusion
[ . . . ] according to which to know is to eat - that
is, to ingest the known object, to fill oneself with
it (Eifiljflung) , and to digest it ('assimilation'). We
shall best account for the original phenomenon of
perception by insisting on the fact that the relation of
the quality to us is that of absolute proximity (it "is
there," it haunts us) without either giving or refusing
itself, but we must add that this proximity implies
a distance. It is what is immediately out of reach,
what by definition refers us to ourselves as to an
emptiness. Contemplation of it can only increase our
thirst for being as the sight of the food out of reach
added to Tantalus' hunger. Quality is the indication
70. Hornbacher, Wasted, 121.
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Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
of what we are not and of the mode of being which
is denied to us. 71
In this quote, Sartre characterizes two forms of subject·
object relation (in the particular case of perceptual
knowledge) : one involves the full assimilation of the
object by the subject who would thereby be filled in;
the other, which Sartre advocates, involves a never·
fulfilling object whose capture by the perceiving sub·
ject reflects to the latter what he is not: objecthood is
the mode of being that is denied to the subject. Sartre
describes here the irreducibility of one's subjecthood:
no capture of any object would ever suffice to fill in
the subject who remains inevitably 'empty', i.e. not·
an-object, no-thing.
7. THE CONSTITUTI ON OF THE DESIRING SUBJECT
Conceptualizing subject-object relations in terms of
desire involves conceiving of the subject as driven by
an orientation towards desired objects, by an aspira·
tion towards what he is not. 72 The notion of desire
also allows the characterizing of this process of reach·
ing out as incessant, since the satisfaction of desire
7 1 . Sartre L 'etre et le neant, 223-4; Being andNothingness, 187.
72. Barbaras, Introduction a une phenomenologie de la vie; D. Legrand,
'Self-consciousness and World-consciousness', in D. Zahavi ( ed. ) , Oiford
Handbook if Contemporary Phenomenology ( Oxford: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming) .
529
COLLAPSE VII
fuels the desire itself and unavoidably fails to nul
lify the distance between the subject and the object
desired (section 5) . Importantly, for a subject, being
incessantly irreducible to an object does not amount
to a lack: being a bodily subject inevitably involves
being already an object too. Moreover, being an object
is not something one could ever fully achieve without
losing one's specificity: being oneself constitutively
involves being a subj ect, i.e. it irreducibly involves
not-being-an-object.
This characterization contrasts interestingly with
Sartre's view. According to Sartre, the subject is deter
mined as a 'lack of being' . 73 Sartre characterizes an
'original connection',74 or 'bond'75 between the sub
ject ('for-itself') and what he lacks ('in-itself'). In
this framework, the subject is 'an incomplete being'
surpassing itself toward a 'particular totality which it
lacks'.76 Nonetheless, Sartre insists, this is an 'impos
sible synthesis': 'this totality can not be given by
nature, since it combines in itself the incompatible
characteristics of [objecthood] and [ subjecthood] ' . 77
The subject is thus suffering because it is 'perpetually
haunted' by a totality or coincidence with itself which
73. Sartre L 'etre et le neant, 121; Being and Nothingness, 85.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., 122; 85.
76. Ibid., 125; 89.
77. Ibid., 126; 90.
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Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
remains unreachable, precisely because one cannot
attain objecthood without losing oneself as subject.78
Such 'unhappy consciousness with no possibility of
surpassing its unhappy state' would involve the fear of
losing oneself in the very search for oneself. As is often
the case with Sartre's views, however, this characteriza
tion would better suit atypical states of consciousness
than typical ones.79 Interestingly, this equivocation
sheds some light on a common point between atypical
and typical states of consciousness, namely, the tension
between irreducible dimensions of oneself. Further
more, it would be contingent whether such tension
is experienced as such, whether it is experienced as a
threat to one's integrity, or whether it is experienced
as a happy contribution to one's complexity.
The case that Sartre elaborates on, the 'unhappy
consciousness' of the subject 'perpetually haunted'
by the search of a perfectly harmonious version of
oneself, and constantly threatened by the risk oflosing
oneself in this very search, this case would not capture
self-consciousness as such but atypical forms of it. In
particular, this characterization suits the experiences
reported by (some) anorectics well. For example,
Marya Hornbacher states: 'somewhere in the back of
my brain there exists this certainty: The body is no more
than a costume, and can be changed at will. That the
78. Ibid.
79. Legrand, ' Subjective and physical dimensions'.
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COLLAPSE VII
changing of bodies, like costumes, would make me into
a different character, a character who might, finally,
be all right' .8 0 Notice here that, in her mind, neither
costumes nor one's body are only external envelopes to
the self: one could not change costumes or exchange
bodies at no cost to oneself and one's self-experience.
Rather, for her, one can 'judge a book by its cover',
and she seeks to make her body-as-object fit perfectly
herself-as-subject - in vain, since these dimensions of
bodily-self-consciousness are irreducible to each other.
She believes that the body can be transformed, like
one would change clothes, to fully match the way she
feels about herself. Reciprocally, she believes that the
way she feels about herself can be changed by chang
ing her body, thereby offering to herself the 'right'
being. Seeking perfect harmony between one's body
as-subject and one's body-as-object thus haunts (some)
anorectics. But the threat that this search represents
is also vividly present in their experience. Indeed,
as subject and object are irreducible to each other,
harmonizing them would require losing one or the
other. To avoid eating is thus a mode of refusing the
assimilation of objects to oneself, in the fear of becom
ing an object oneself; it is a mode of being a subject
by avoiding being an object, by literally voiding one's
body from objects before they get incorporated; it is
a refusal to be unharmonious, a refusal of the tension
80. Hornbacher, Wasted, 3 1 .
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Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
there is between one's body-as-subject and one's body
as-object, as well as a refusal to solve this tension by
incorporating and being incorporated to objects.
On this point, it may be said that Marya Horn
bacher and David Nebreda are opposite to each other.
Indeed, if Marya Hornbacher seeks to regain a sense of
her identity by preserving her body-as-subject, David
Nebreda may be involved in the opposite process of
regaining a sense of his identity by projecting himself
fully in the body-as-object. Of course, this body-as
object is quite peculiar in that its natural functioning
is controlled, to the point of its' being annihilated.
Indeed, he explains that 'the first big decision consists
in accepting myself definitively and secretly as nega
tion of any natural state whatsoever' .81 This includes
negating the pre-personal functioning of the body,
'the search for any mode of putrefaction apart from
the one that is inherent to any micro-organism'. 82
Moreover, its image is also rigorously controlled by
the practice of photographical self-portraits (section
3) . But this radically controlled body image seems to
become David Nebreda himself: the 'photographic
witness' is not a 'photographic object' but 'another
me more real and more definite' in whose favour he
'renounce[ sJ [hisJ own identity' . 83 Renunciation here is
81. Ibid., 72.
82. Ibid., 66.
83. Nebreda, Autoportraits, 1 74.
533
COLLAPSE VII
a mode of constituting oneself without suffering from
the intolerable tension between different dimensions
of oneself.
Nebreda makes this inner tension painfully clear. At
the end of the period of work where he produced his
first series of colour self-portraits, he was constrained
to stay at the psychiatric hospital from 1990 to 199 2 .
He then described the
degeneration in which one found oneself when the
psychiatric entity demonstrated peremptorily the
intolerable character of [one's visionary project,
which leads to the new life materialized by means of
pictures and of notes], and when it [(the psychiatric
entity)] maintained without a shadow of a doubt
that what it had before its very eyes was not a vital
project but a pathological and dangerous entity
which must be eradicated as quickly as possible.
[ . . . ] One will have to renounce [the photographic
witness] to protect him. From the moment that all
his previous history, personified in the 'evil', had
rejected him and evicted him from himself following
his experience of death and of rebirth, and [from the
moment] that one has to renounce the 'good' [(the
photographic witness)] for its own good [ (to protect
it from the psychiatric entity)] , the only perspective
534
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
that remains is that of 'nothingness', the everyday
hell of radical and profound negation of oneself. 84
It is at this period that he lives 'seven years of silence
and of near-paralysis'. 85 This description, sharp as a
razor, captures the way the tension hosted within one
self may become unbearable. It also underlines the way
such tension is itself immersed in an inter-subjective
context where others represent one's own body at will.
The impact of others on one's bodily self-consciousness
is multi-faceted. Below, I consider only some of the
ways inter-subjectivity may be involved in (a)typical
bodily experiences and eating practices.
8 . THE I NTERLAC I N G O F D E S I RI N G S U BJECTS
It follows from the characterization given above that
desire targets others. Indeed, the desiring subject may
only be satisfied by an object if it materializes others'
sensitivity to his desires.86 In this sense, the 'painful
dialectic of the object, at once there and never there'87
also materializes a dialogue between giving-receiv
ing subjects (section 5) . This interlacing of desiring
84. Ibid., 1 75-6.
85. Ibid.
86. Lacan, La Relation d'Object, 141.
87. Ibid., 183.
535
COLLAPSE VII
subjects may be best explained by appealing to
Kojeve's reading of Hegel's Master-Slave dialectic. 88
In the current framework, a subject is first of all
not-an-object, no-thing. According to Kojeve/Hegel,
the subject is revealed to himself as a desiring subject
and receives a positive content from the action that
arises from his desire. This content is relative to the
desired target: as no-thing, the subject's 'void' is pen
etrated by the object his desire targets. 89 By desiring
a 'natural' object, the subject assimilates, incorpo
rates, internalizes such object, thereby constituting
himself as object-like, e.g. targetting food, he is a fed
body, a container of feeding matter. Notice that this is
exactly what (some) anorectics refuse: to be reduced
to an object by assimilating objects (section 6) . To
genuinely constitute himself-as-subject, the subject
cannot assimilate any thing, he can only desire no
thing. In particular, if the subject desires another
subject, he assimilates the nature of this subject, i.e.
desire. Thereby, we see here that mutually desiring
subjects exacerbate their subjecthood by amplifying
their respective desires, feeding each other. In this
88. A. Kojeve, Introduction a la lectu;e de Hegel : leron,s sur la PMnomtfnologi,e de
!'Esprit prefessees de 1933 a 1939 a !'Ecole des Hautes Etudes (Paris : Gallimard,
1 980) , trans. J. H. Nichols as Introduction to the Reading ef Hegel: Lectures
on the Phenomenology if Spirit (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1 980) .
89. G. Catren, 'The Thing and The Shrink', conference presentation,
Dark Materialism, Kingston University, UK, January 12, 201 1 . At http://
backdoorbroadcasting.net/201 1/01/dark materialism/.
536
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
sense, desire is 'anthropogenetic', i.e. it constitutes
humans as self-conscious beings, when it does not
target objects but others' desire. For example, subjects
desire food as humans when they react not only to
their bodily need for food, but to the desire to be fed
by others, food thereby becoming a materialization
of others' care.
(Some) anorectics epitomize the inter-subjective
constitution of the subject. 9 0 Their sense of themselves
is mediated not only through their image (section 4) ,
but also through others. Through others' approbation,
they seek the objective confirmation of their being.
They exist for themselves only through others: 'What
are you worth if no one's looking? How do you know
you're even there?'.91 In Sartre's words, the self is here
enslaved to the other: 'I am a slave to the degree that
my being is dependent on the centre of a freedom
which is not mine and which is the very condition of
my being'. 92 In this sense 'my original fall is the exist
ence of the Other'. 93
Moreover, (some) anorectics recognize all too well
that others cannot validate them if they are themselves
enslaved; that the attitude of the master treating slaves
as dependent animals is an existential deadlock: only
90. Legrand, 'Subjective and physical dimensions', 'Objects and Others'.
9 1 . Hornbacher, Wasted, 125.
92. Ibid., 267 .
93. Ibid, 263.
537
COLLAPSE VII
a free desiring subject can validate one's own desire;
only mutual desires are constitutive. Like a slave, the
anorexic subject understands that she depends on
others' subjecthood to be validated as subject. Like
a slave, she must free herself from any unidirectional
dependency in which her desire would suffocate for
the benefit of others' desire. To establish reciprocity,
she must negate herself as slave. As she cannot negate
her dependency upon others, as others' desire remain
her master, she cannot do anything other than negate
herself; as she cannot reduce others to slavery without
thereby losing the inter-subjective recognition her
being relies upon, it is her own body that she subjects
to slavery. This latter point will now be unfolded.
9.
NEGAT ING ONE ' S BO DY·AS · O BJECT
As we saw above, in the current framework, the subject
is conceived of as revealing himself as a desiring subject
and as receiving a positive content from the action that
arises from his desire. Such action negates the desired
target, not by eradicating it but by transforming it.
Kojeve takes eating as an example of such an action
that is negating without being merely destructive: the
subject who eats creates and maintains his own being
thanks to the transformation, internalization, incor
poration of food, i.e. a foreign, external object which
the subject is not. Again, this is quite precisely what
538
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
(some) anorectics refuse: to be constituted through
the assimilation of foreign objects, to be constituted
by alterity, as this would threaten the autonomy and
irreducibility of themselves-as-subjects.
For the subject to be constituted as subject, he
cannot content himself with desiring objects (section
8) . Rather, he must prioritize his subject-specific desire
over the fulfillment of his object-related need. As it
turns out, fulfilling needs involves self-preservation,
the maintaining of the constancy of a pre-constituted
internal milieu, the conservation or restoration of a
self-constituted subject and in particular the homeo
static conservation of one's life. It follows that it is by
bracketing the preservation of himself as a given living
being that the subject may attest his subjecthood: self
constitution must overcome self-conservation.
In particular, prioritizing his desire, the subject
negates the need of his body. Therefore, even though
'there appears round our personal existence a margin
of almost impersonal existence, which can be practi
cally taken for granted, and which I rely on to keep me
alive', and even though 'for most of the time personal
existence represses the organism without being able
either to go beyond it or to renounce itself; without, in
other words, being able either to reduce the organism
to its existential self, or itself to the organism', in par
ticular circumstances, 'my human situation abolishes
539
COLLAPSE VII
my biological one' .94 To continue with Kojeve's own
example, the subject may be revealed to himself as
desiring food, but as the subject eats, he assimilates
the objecthood of food, thereby negating as much as
constituting his subjecthood. Negating food, on the
contrary, as both Hornbacher and Nebreda do radi
cally, allows the subject to overcome the fulfilment of
his bodily needs, thereby overcoming the constitution
of himself as an animate material thing - an organism
living anonymously - and as an inanimate material
thing - a corpse (section Q) .
To negate food, however, is not to stop eating all
together. Rather, it notably involves controlling vol
untarily one's eating behaviour. What is negated is the
nutritional need of one's body, as fulfilling nutritional
needs represents the surrendering of the subject to the
matter of his body, to his belongingness to the realm
of anonymous organic processes and of corpses. As
Deleuze argues, anorexia:
is not a matter of a refusal of the body, it is a matter
of a refusal of the organism, of a refusal of what
the organism makes the body undergo. [ ] The
anorexic void has nothing to do with a lack, it is on
. . .
94. M. Merleau-Ponty, Phinominologi.e de la perception (Paris: Editions
Gallimard, 1945), 99-100; Phenomenology if Perception (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1962) , 84.
540
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
the contrary a way of escaping the organic constraint
of lack and hunger at the mechanical mealtime. 95
Nutritional needs are negated by being transformed
into (non-)eating projects representative of one's sub
jecthood, and thereby constitutive of it. Physiologi
cally, the human being is an omnivore. Constructing
oneself beyond one's need thus involves selecting
specific aliments, not for their nutritional value but
for their subjective value, that is, for how they may
symbolize oneself-as-subject. Anorectics do not stop
eating, or they die: 'People have this idea that eating
disordered people just don't eat. Wrong. They have
rules about what they eat';96 'I had decided to ingest
one hundred calories a day. It seemed a good number,
a tidy number, a 'diet' rather than a disorder, a Plan.
Carrots, mustard, two pretzels, the milk in my coffee. 97
Anorectics live thanks to a careful selection of aliments
that represent and express who they are or want to
be(come) . As for Nebreda, 'vegetarian since more
than thirty years, [he] follow[ s] a strict diet composed
of a small number of invariable food (eight or nine)
which [he] eat[ s] raw or simply cooked in water'. 98
95. G. Deleuze, C. Pamet, Dialogues (Paris: Flammarion, 1977), 132;
trans. H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam as Dialogues (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1987) , 110.
96. Hornbacher, Wasted, 1 13.
97. Ibid., 119.
98. Nebreda, Sur la Revelation, 2 1 .
541
COLLAPSE VII
These cases put the selection of food to such an
extreme that they exemplify unequivocally that what
is at stake here is not some game, coquetry or vanity,
but the constitution of oneself by risking one's life,
the constitution of oneself as a desiring subject by the
negation of one's bodily needs. Negating over and over
again the constitutive belongingness of one's body
to the realm of anonymous organic processes and
of corpses is necessary for the incessant constitution
of oneself-as-subject, which always risks falling into
mere objecthood as one eats, thereby internalizing the
objecthood of food.
1 0 . MATERIALIZ I N G N O -TH I N G - N E S S
This framework allows us to understand that a lack
of objecthood is not sufficient for the constitution of
subjecthood. Rather, what is at stake is the dialectical
negation of one's objecthood: its transformation. To
understand the type of transformation that is relevant
for the constitution of one's subjecthood, let us return
to the idea that subjecthood is constituted through
inter-subjective validation, that is, through reciprocal
recognition: the other who I value as a subject must
recognize me in return to validate me as a subject
(section 8) . For that to happen, subjecthood must be
expressed in the material world that the subject shares
with others. Tue subject must be capable of showing
542
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
himself to others specifically as subject, i.e. he must
materialize his no-thing-ness.
Strikingly, both Hornbacher and Nebreda must
make their subjectivity exist in the outer world in
order for them to believe that they exist. Neither of
them are 'Cartesian' subjects who could be certain that
they exist while doubting about their materiality. As
Marya Hornbacher describes, 'a disappearing act, the
act of becoming invisible, is, in fact, a visible act, and
rarely goes unnoticed' .99 Here again, (some) anorectics'
reports would join Sartre's words:
What we call 'noble' or 'good' or 'true' suffering and
what moves us is the suffering which [ . . . J is presented
to us as a compact, objective whole which did not
await our coming in order to be and which overflows
the consciousness which we have of it; it is there in
the midst of the world, impenetrable and dense, like
this tree or this stone; it endures [ . . . ] . And it is as such
that it fascinates us [ . . . J. Tue suffering which I experi
ence, on the contrary, is never adequate suffering [ . . . ] .
I t escapes a s suffering toward the consciousness of
suffering. [ . . . ] If I must suffer, I should prefer that
my suffering would seize me and flow over me like
a storm, [ . . . J but this enormous, opaque suffering,
which should transport me out of myself, continues
instead to touch me lightly with its wing, and I can
99. Hornbacher, Wasted, 129.
543
COLLAPSE VII
not grasp it. I find only myself, myself who moans,
myself who wails, myself who in order to realize this
suffering which I am must play without respite the
drama of suffering. I wring my hands, I cry in order
that [ . . ] their sounds, their gestures may run through
the world [ . . . ] . Each groan, each facial expression
of the man who suffers aims at sculpting a statue
in-itself of suffering. But this statue will never exist
save through others and for others.100
.
As this quote emphasizes, the materialization of one's
experiences in the material and shared world allows
grasping those experiences and offering them to inter
subjective validation. As already seen above (section
4), for (some) anorectics, the experience of one's body
as-subject may indeed be too dim and would need a
supporting validation requiring its materialization
into one's body-as-object.
As for Nebreda, his photographical witness assures
him that he exists for real. The construction of this
highly-controlled image is a 'vital project' for him.1 01
The material world must express one's subjecthood;
one's 'endemic hungers' must be materialized in a
'made-to-measure ectoplasm' .10 2
100. Sartre L 'etre et le neant, 128; Being and Nothingness, 91 ·2.
101 . Nebreda, Autoportraits, 175.
102. Nebreda, Sur la Revelation, 56.
544
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
Both cases evidence that one's own body must be
seen as the carrier of one's subjecthood. As such carrier,
the body-as-object is fundamental for the constitution
of oneself-as-subject. The body-as-object may carry,
express, expose subjecthood to the subject himself
and to others, thereby participating to the constitution
of oneself-as-subject. Conversely, if the subject is not
carried, expressed, exposed by the body-as-object, he
fails to be recognizable by others and evaporates as a
solipsistic illusion. Being or rather becoming a subject
thus involves practices of bodily self-transformation
leading the body-as-object to expose one's subject
hood. Plagiarizing Negarestani's characterization of
decay allows understanding the sense in which ano
rexia and other forms of constitutive self-negation like
the one performed by David N ebreda are building
processes involving the objective manifestation of
subjecthood: 'a building process toward exteriority' . 10 3
1 1 . C O NSTITUTIVE S E LF-SUBTRACTION
Crucially, self-transformation may be both at once
self-constituting and self-negating. To unfold this
point, let me import here what N egarestani described
in another framework, namely the Etruscan torture in
which 'a living man or woman was tied to a rotting
103. R. Negarestani, 'Undercover Softness: An Introduction to the
Architecture and Politics of Decay', COLLAPSE VI, 379-430: 385 .
545
COLLAPSE VII
corpse, face to face, mouth to mouth, limb to limb,
with an obsessive exactitude in which each part of
the body corresponded with its matching putrefying
counterpart' .1 04 After Aristotle, N egarestani discusses
this torture as an 'analogy with the twofold composite
of the body and soul' .1 0 5 In this view, 'we are punished
much as those tortured by the Etruscan robbers: so
our souls, tied together with our bodies as the living
fixed upon the dead' .1 06 This view affiliates the body to
a corpse and links the living to the soul. N egarestani
exploits this in the aim of unfolding the necrocratic
dynamic of life itself. For my own purpose, however,
I will maintain the torture at the bodily level. But
instead of linking one's living body to another dead
body, the torture may be an analogy of the tension
there is between the different dimensions of one's own
body. On the one hand, the corpse figures the body
as-object, as both partly share common attributes:
shape, opacity, etc. On the other hand, the living body
figures the body lived as subject, while the corpse lacks
subjectivity. The Etruscan torture can thus function as
an allegory for the double-sidedness of one's own body:
at once subject and object, characterized at once by
features specific to subjects and by features shared with
objects. This is the 'necrophilic intimacy' of the body.
104. R. N egarestani, 'The Corpse Bride: Thinking with Nigredo', COLLAPSE IV,
129-16 1 .
1 0 5 . Ibid., 1 30.
106. Ibid., 1 32.
546
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
In this sense, anorexia would be a necrophobia, since
(some) anorectics refuse the 'dead' that composes their
body - and who would blame them for being repulsed
by the Etruscan torture?
Negarestani's analysis of aphairesis ( from the Greek:
withdrawal, separation) is most relevant here: ' aphaire
sis emphasizes simultaneously removal ( that which is
taken away) and conservation ( that which is left behind
by removal ) - the removed and the remainder' .1 0 7
Aphairesis is an operation of subtraction which, as such,
is composed to two vectors: 'The negative vector is the
vector of removal whereby belongings or attributes are
subtracted from a magnitude. The positive vector, on
the other hand, emphasizes the possibility of conserva
tion and persistence against subtraction. The vectors
of aphairesis respectively effectuate the removed and
the remainder in subtraction' .1 0 8 These two vectors are
necessary to each other: on the one hand, shedding
continues only as long as some remainder can support
the operation of subtraction; on the other hand, the
remainder is attested only as long as it resists some
subtraction.
Inevitably, one thinks here about atypical bodily
experiences. Remember ( section 3b ) David Nebreda's
striking question: 'How to keep an identity when this
demands and is recognizable only by the means of
107. Ibid., 1 36.
108. R. Negarestani, 'Differential cruelty', Angelaki 14: 3, 2009: 69-84, 73.
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COLLAPSE VII
offering relentlessly proof of one's own destruction?' .10 9
N egarestani's analysis of the notion of aphrairesis allows
us to address this question, as he shows how relentlessly
proving one's existence and identity requires relentlessly
proving its resistance to subtractive self-negation.
Anorexia can also be better understood in this frame
work - the anorectic's eating nothing may be seen as
a subtractive operation. In fact, Negarestani's charac
terization of aphairesis could be used, word for word,
to describe anorexia: 'a procedure which takes away all
that exists extraneously and negatively contributes to
all that remains and itself progressively diminishes' .110
We understand here that the anorectic's necrophobia
does not lead her to mortification111 in the sense that the
very process she is engaged in requires that her body to
remain - to remain less and less without disappearing
all together: it is through the diminishing persistence
of her body that the anorectic attests the continuity
of her existence/identity: as she needs to continuously
attest herself, she is constrained to 'the infinitesimal
persistence of the decaying object - in other words,
its limitropic convergence upon zero'.11 2 Letting the
body persist minimally is thus necessary not only for
the continuation of the anorectic's life but also for the
109. Nebreda, Autoportraits, 162.
1 10. Negarestani, 'The Corpse Bride', 138.
1 1 1 . Ibid., 139.
112. Ibid., 388.
548
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
continuation of the anorexic project. The same can
be said about David Nebreda: the living body must
relentlessly bleed to attest its own decay and recovery,
thereby attesting its existence. In both cases, the 'vital
project' involves continuing to remain/become oneself
by continually stripping oneself of what's foreign (the
corpse-likeness of the body-as-object and pre-personal
spontaneity of the organism) .
1 2 . NO·TH ING·NESS
Now, one must ask: what is it that guarantees and is
attested by the operation of subtraction? It cannot
be an object since, ultimately, all objects will have
to be stripped off for the subtraction to continue
up to its own radical limit. As Negarestani shows,
what guarantees and is attested by the operation of
subtraction can be neither what remains contingently
and will eventually be removed nor what is already
removed: rather it is a 'resistance toward correlation
with what remains and what is removed' .113 In other
terms, what guarantees and is attested by the opera
tion of subtraction cannot be an object, it has to be
no-thing qua non-object. No-thingness is thus what
guarantees the continuation of subtraction, thereby
guaranteeing the continuation of the attestation of
this very no-thingness.
113. Ibid., 144.
549
COLLAPSE VII
In particular, what guarantees and what is attested
by one's self-subtraction is one's own no-thingness,
one's irreducibility to objecthood, i.e. one's subject
hood. We understand here that the one way of attesting
oneself-as-subject is by peeling away one's body-as
object as an act of revealing one's body-as-subject as
no-thingness. The anorectic takes this literally and
traps herself in a deadly contradiction: being nec
rophobic, i.e. refusing to surrender to the corpse
likeness of her body-as-object, she ends up mimicking
the dead. She 'prioritize[ s] the reign of the void qua
non-belonging' .114 She constructs herself/her body
'as a byproduct of the differential regurgitation of a
shriveling body which is in the process of becoming
less and less, without ever finding the relief of complete
annihilation' .115 What is negated here is oneself as a
given, in favour of oneself as self-constituted through
an operation of self-negation. It is only by constituting
one's body-as-object actively, by actively negating the
body as given, that the body-as-object may express
one's subjecthood. The operation at stake here is thus a
dialectic negation that is, a conserving suppression or
suppressing conservation. Tue entity that is suppressed
dialectically is cancelled in its contingent aspect of
being a naturally given being (pre-personal life and
death) but it is retained as significant and meaningful
1 14. Negarestani, 'Differential Cruelty', 76.
115. Negarestani, 'The Corpse Bride', 382.
550
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
(oneself-as-subject) . On the one hand, anorexic proc
esses can be said to involve a dialectic negation in the
sense that the negation of their body as manifesting
their corpse-likeness involves the constitution of their
body as manifesting their subjecthood. On the other
hand, David Nebreda can be said to be involved in a
dialectic negation, not because he produces 'art', but
first of all because he produces what he considers/
experiences as himself (his photographic double) .
1 3 . SYM BOLIC NEGATION
In the view proposed here, anorexia is not understood
as primarily involving the construction of a body-as
object with obsessive care for its shape and weight.
What (some) anorectics primarily seek is rather the
formation of the body-as-object as a manifestation of
their body-as-subject, which can thereby be carried
in the world and expressed to others. Such anorexic
subject exposes to others what she is as subject: no
thing. And she shows how to relate to others beyond
the transaction of objects and exchange of bodies.
Inter-subjective relations are shaped by sig;ns oflove,
attention, understanding, listening of the subject('s
desires) .116 As the expression of inter-subjectivity can
not be reduced to the transaction of any thing (section
5) , the clearest sign of inter-subjectivity (love) is the
1 16. Lacan, La Relation d'Object, 140.
551
COLLAPSE VII
gift of what one lacks. Reciprocally, inter-subjective
relations target no thing, i.e. the subject and what he
lacks.117 It thus appears here that (some) anorectics (like
the young homosexual woman described by Lacan)118
want to expose to others how they want to be loved.
What such an anorexic subject materializes is that
she is not an object of love and that she refuses to be
so; what she begs is to be loved, not for what she has,
a body-as-object with breast and hips, but for what
she is, a body-as-subject, no-thing. She wants to be
given the type of love she's been frustrated of, as her
desires have been choked by the (over-)fulfillment of
her needs (section 5) .
We understand here that this anorexic subject may
refuse fulfillment to preserve the function of desire119
and that this process is inter-subjective. More in detail,
eating relies primarily on the goodwill of others. The
demand to be fed, addressed by the subject to others,
is the simplest oral demand. To this demand, the
(m)other responds by the inverse demand that the
subject lets himself be fed. It is in this encounter of
two demands that lies a (inter-subjective) desire that
overflows the (nutritional) demands themselves. We
see here that fulfilling nutritional needs may silence the
1 1 7 . Ibid., 142; A. Johnstone, 'Nothing is not Always No-One: (a)voiding
Love', Filozqfiki vestnik. XXVI: 2, 2005, 67-81 .
1 1 8 . Lacan, L a Relation d'Object, 145-7.
1 19. ]. Lacan, Le Transfert. Seminaire VIII (Paris: Seuil, 2001 ) , 1 78)
552
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
demands, in turn extinguishing the desire expressed
in their confrontation. This view sheds light on why
a subject who is hungry may not allow himself to be
fed, as he may refuse to disappear as desire by being
fulfilled as demand. Abandoning one's desire to oth
ers, enslaving one's desire to the power of satisfaction
which the (m)other is endowed with, is accepting that
one's desire may be shattered by the fulfilment of one's
bodily needs, a stuffed mouth being unable to express
desire in the oral demand. As in idealized love (that,
strangely, is understood as specifically masculine) ,
what is sought in anorexia (mostly seen as feminine)
is non-fulfilment.120
Anorexia is seen here as an inter-subjective proc
ess whereby a subject expresses her desire that others
desire her as desiring. Another way of saying this is to
say that anorexia is a symbolic process.121 Rather than
focusing on (normative) body image, unfolding the
idea that anorexia is a symbolic process leads to the
distinction between an object and a gift: a gift is an
object received as a sign of the sensitivity of the giver
to the receiver's desire. As such, it is not reducible to
the transaction of any particular object but materializes
the interaction of subjects. A gift materializes no-thing
and as such, it exists symbolically, the materializing
object being replaceable by any other object. It may
120. Lacan, La Relation d'Object, 109, 141 .
121. Ibid., 155.
553
COLLAPSE VII
be replaced by words,122 and it may as well be replaced
by no thing at all. According to Lacan, this is what
explains anorexic symptoms. Anorexia is not a refusal
to eat, a negation of activity, but an act efeating nothing,
a no-thing which exists symbolically.123 No-thing is
savoured as such and is used to preserve one's desire
from being swallowed up. In anorexia, the hungry
subject refuses to respond to (m)other's demand: 'let
me feed you'; by annihilating the object (food) that
materializes both her dependency on bodily needs
and her dependency on the demanding ( m)other, she
builds up 'a perfect response to a lack of autonomy' :124
'The anorexic body seems to say: I do not need. It says:
Power over the self [ . . . ] power over the body, over the
life, over the people around you, power over a world
gone berserk' . 125
The role of the (m)other in David Nebreda's project
is particularly delicate to characterize/understand and
any 'interpretation' would be unwarranted. Encoun
tering his work, it is impossible not to see that his
self-portraits are culturally anchored, that his mother
is particularly 'present' in his writings and photographs
(one picture of her and many references), that the very
act of exposing his photographs and of publishing his
122. Ibid., 175.
123. Ibid., 1 84-5 .
124. Hornbacher, Wasted, 68.
125. Ibid., 85.
554
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
words places him in a socially recognizable and inter
subjectively shared location. Nebreda says that his
experience of the look of the other is not very different
from that any other person may have.126 Importantly,
however, he insists that he lives and works alone (sec
tion 2b) ; exceptionally he pictures himself and only
himself; his art is not primarily directed at others - at
first, he buried his self-portraits. His books are not
for him an opportunity of encountering others but an
'outlet for all the negations' .127 Nonetheless, he himself
describes that 'it is by thinking of me, by demanding of
myself, by ripping myself, by contradicting myself, but
above all by giving up myself that I constitute myself
necessarily in a cultural form' .128 Importantly, he does
not pursue the representation of himself. Rather, as
Baudrillard says:
he finds the strength to inscribe himself in a living
sign, the living equivalent of [his] mental destruc
tion - the sign of his own body. His own body or his
personal body? At any rate it is the only living object
available to him in his reclusion with which to put
his own death into circulation. [ . . . ] He manages to
deny himself absolutely and to produce that denial
126. Nebreda, 'J'espere que Mon Travail Sera Toujours Innocent. Entretient.
Propos recueillis et traduits par Anna Gui116', La Voix du Regard, 15, 2002 :
72-7, 77.
127. Nebreda, Sur la Revelation, 57.
128. Ibid., 61.
555
COLLAPSE VII
as work, and even as artwork. For his photos are not
mere testimony, they are works. And this is where art
appears as the perfect simulacrum: not just the sign,
but the simultaneity of the thing and the sign [ . ]
That is not in any way representative.129
. .
The 'simultaneity of the thing and the sign' would
indeed be at the core of Nebreda's 'production' . It is
in this sense that his work is a production ef identity.
He would not be able to represent his identity, as
this would presuppose the existence of the identity
to be represented. He is rather moulding himself by
the very act of picturing himself. The 'photographic
double' and the act of giving birth to it is not 'just' a
crucially important aspect of himself; it is himself as
he lives himself. In exposing his photographs, he is
thus giving himself to the gaze of others, and to their
(mis )interpretation.
1 4 . CONCLUSION
What has been proposed here is that, for the body
to attest to rather than cancel one's subjecthood, the
subject must form his body, for it to escape the status
of a natural (living or dead) object. To be more or less
than an object, the subject must realize himself as a
129. J. Baudrillard, L 'Echange Impossible (Paris : Editions Galilee, 1 999) ;
trans. C. Turner as Impossible Exchange (London: Verso, 2001 ), 125-6.
556
Legrand - Ex-Nihilo
self-made body. This work of self-realization is rooted
in the anxiety of death,13 0 as it is rooted in the negation
of one's bodily needs, the negation of the preservation
of oneself as a given (section 9) . One's irreducibility
to objects must be expressed in the material world in
order for others to recognize it, to validate the subject's
subjecthood (section 10) .
If one's subjecthood were only internal, intimate,
invisible, mute, it would conflict with other subjects
who live in solidarity with the material world. In this
sense, as defended by Kojeve, if a subject changes and
his change remains 'private' , purely subjective,
revealed to himself alone, 'mute', not communicated
to others [ . . . ] this "internal" change puts him at vari
ance with the World, which has not changed, and
with the others, who are bound to the unchanged
World. This change, then, transforms man into a
madman or a criminal, who is sooner or later anni
hilated by the natural and social objective reality.
Only work, by finally putting the objective World
into harmony with the subjective idea that at first
goes beyond it, annuls the element of madness and
crime that marks the attitude of every man who driven by terror - tries to go beyond the given World
130. Kojeve, Introduction a la lecture de Hegel.
557
COLLAPSE VII
of which he is afraid, in which he feels terrified, and
in which, consequently, he could not be satisfied.131
While un-exposed subjecthood turns the subject into
a madman or a criminal, the expression in the mate
rial world of one's subjecthood - as atypical it may
be - may be motivated by the desire to accord oneself
with others, by building a world where one has a place,
and where one can share oneself with others, thereby
appeasing one's craving for inter-subjective validation.
One's own body seems the most primary locus of the
self-transformation that must occur, for matter to
expose one's subjecthood. And manipulating food
incorporation seems the most basic way to perform
such self-transformation. In particular, a radical
subtraction from one's body of the elements of pre
personal life and death can be conceptualized as involv
ing two contemporaneous processes: shedding one's
objecthood, thereby attesting to the irreducibility of
one's body-as-subject and one's body-as-object; and
exposing one's no-thingness, thereby attesting to their
ineradicable interrneshing.
1 31 . Ibid., 28.
558
•
•
COLLAPSE VII
On Phi losophical Alchi mery, or
Why Al l Chimeric Com positions are
Philosophical Stones
lfyou have a phUosophical stone, do you therefore also
have a mathematical and artistic stone? etc.
NOVALI S 2
I have always dreamed and attempted something else, with
the patience efan alchemist, ready to sacrifice all vanity and
all satisfaction, as in thepast one burned hisfurniture and
the beams efhis roef, tofeed thefurnace efthe Great Wo1*.
MALLARME3
1 . http://www.cristianturdera.com/.
2. Novalis, Notesfor a Romantic Encyclopaedia, Das Allgemeine Brouillon, trans.
E.W. Wood (Albany, State University of New York Press, 2007), 16.
3. S. Mallarme, ' Lettre a Paul Verlaine, 16 novembre 1885', in S. Mallarme,
<Euvres completes, ed. B. Marchal (Paris : Gallimard, 1998), tome I, 789.
561
COLLAPSE VII
The system of faculties of a local subject is a prism that,
according to the different possible interests of reason
and the concomitant entanglements of faculties, refracts
experience onto different abstract planes or sections
(e.g. theoretical, ethical, esthetical, affective, etc.).
We shall call mode ef thought a discipline that aims
to mediate the limits of the regional historical world
that surrounds the subject according to a particular
abstract plane efexperience. Each mode of thought (e.g.
science, politics, arts, psychoanalysis, etc.) defines a
monochromatic trans-regional - or universal-oriented gradient of mediation coplanar to the corresponding
spectral section. Philosophical reason is a systematic or
trans-modal regime of thought, that is to say a regime
of thought transversal to the different planes, whose
goal is to compose concrete polychromatic mediators
by bringing the abstract vectors of mediation into
concert. Such a philosophical concrete synthesizer
produces, from the spectral decomposition of experi
ence provided by the abstract modes of thought, a
polyphanic overcoming of a regional field of experi
ence. The constitutive abstract trans-regionality of
the diverse modes of thought is thus enriched with
a concrete operatic trans-modality. This means that
systematic philosophy should not be understood in
terms of a volatile overarching encyclopedic survey
of the different interests of reason, but rather as a
katabatic deepening of the bottomless concreteness of
562
Catren - Philosophical Alchimery
trans-modal experience. We shall then call philosophical
stone the adamant converging pole of the concrescent
operations carried on by a particular process of trans
modal philosophical synthesis. The orchestration of
a philosophical stone requires an amalgrammation
of the local grammars that literalize the diverse modes of
thought into a unique grimoire, and the arrangement
of the regulative ideas that provide different prismatic
orientations in thinking into a single constellation. The
very possibility of this philosophical ars mag;na relies on
the following theses: firstly, that every regj,onal environ
ing world is immersed in a unique non-horizontal (i.e.
non-arche-earth-centred) universal field of experience;
secondly, that every abstract mode of thought is a
section of one and the same concrete field of experi
ence; and lastly, that every form of transcendentally
determined intentional experience is an immanental
reflexive self-experience of the impersonal field itself.
This universal and concrete field of immanental self
experience will be called absolute. It follows that the
different regulative ideas that orient the labour of
the abstract modes (e.g. the Verum, the Bonum, the
Pulchrum, etc.) are just kaleidoscopical cases of the
idea of the absolute as such. To concoct a philosophical
stone, the philosopher begins by inserting and dissolv
ing the different prismatic modes of thought into the
solvent field of concrete experience. This liquefactio of
the abstract modes of thought into a unique concrete
563
COLLAPSE VII
solution triggers a process of fertilizing corruption
that proceeds by means of free associations, impure
mixtures, transversal contagions, epiphytic transplan
tations, teratological combinatorial processes and
communicant vessels of the highest connectivity. The
monochromatic chastity of each abstract plane is thus
( re) inserted into the universal menstruum (N ovalis) of
impure experience. In the wake of Hegel, we could say
that the philosophical track towards the concrete must
traverse the Spirit's treasury of this unconscious night,
this dark chaos which contains every production of
spirit in its destratified simplicity - a wealth of infinite
theoretical representations, artistic percepts, imagina
tive schemes and eidetic poles.4 This absolution with
respect to the prismatic foliation of experience permits
the philosopher to attune himself to the monstrous
parousia of the absolute in its uttermost infinite ( trans )
versability (N ovalis ) : 'only out efthe chalice efthis realm
efspirits,foamsforth to him'5 the trans-modal mercurial
menstruum.
In order to compose a concrete organon of media
tion, the philosopher has to distill a particular set of
spectral mediators from this cacophonical mixture. The
ingression of these ingredients into the opus requires
4. Cf. G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel and the Human Spirit. A translation ef the Jena
Lectures on the Philosophy ef Spirit (1805-6), trans. L. Rauch (Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 1983) , 87.
5. Cf. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. AV. Miller (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977), 493.
564
Catren - Philosophical Alchimery
whitening the composite by means of a spectral syn
thesis of their monochromatic gradients of mediation.
The superposition of this linearly independent set of
mediating vectors permits the philosopher to span and
clear a multimodal theatre of operations. The philo
sophical alchimery enriches the resulting composite by
means of transversal operations of internal consistency,
operations that will permit the concrescence to hold
itself. The production of counterpoints between dif
ferent themes, the introduction of topological twists
between the overlapping phenomenological sheaves,
the extrapolation of the motifs far beyond their natural
domains, the chimerical wedding of disconnected
kingdoms, the knitting of textural montages between
divergent lines of escape, the compossibilisation of
different harmonic keys, the tiling of multidimensional
musaics of glass beads, the potentialization of the
different components to higher powers, the knotting
of the relevant interests of reason in new sinthomatic
ways - all these diagonal operations permit the phi
losopher to entangle the heterogeneous ingredients
into a consolidated concrescence that overflows every
single abstract section. Thanks to the lysergic injection
of this korova lacta philosophica, the ingredients are
joined together into a composite that, overcoming
the state of a mere cultural juxtapositive multiplicity,
coagulates into a coalescence of mutual implication.
This condensation allows the philosopher to transmute
565
COLLAPSE VII
the volatility of the abstract modes into the downward
weightiness of the concrete. Once the dissolve and
coagulate phases are over, the furnace of the magnum
opus, fed by the furniture and the beams of the roof
that accommodate and shield the anchored existence
upon the transcendental earth, will ignite and propel
a multistage-alembic. In the crimson phase of the trip,
the alembic heads towards the supposed elementary,
immediate and unilateral last instances of regional
experience. The elementary grains which voxel the
local historical world that surrounds the alchimerical
theater, far from defining the outermost edges of any
possible experience, result from a particular transcen
dental coarse-graining. In order to circumvent the
narcotic hypostasis of these cut-offs and unground
the local renormalization of experience, the opus has
to mediate, resolve andfibrate the transcendental trellis
and decompactif.y its concealed higher-dimensional
abysses. In this way, the philosophical composite,
being concocted in a particular - cultural, histori
cal, cosmological, linguistic - phenomenological
horizon, will project itself towards the trans-regional
interzone of manifestation disclosed beyond these
contingent and permeable thresholds. Instead of trav
elling through the 3+ I spatiotemporal dimensions of
the firmament painted on the underside of the outer
sheltering umbrella, this sort of at-homeness-fired
alembic-chuggabug tears open the firmament itself
566
Catren - Philosophical Alchimery
to frame in a new light a stereoscopical vision of the
polyphanic landscape that appears through the lattice. 6
This trans-modal 'vitrauxlisation'7 of the environing
world is as philosophical as the fortuitous hierogamy
of a sewing concrete machine and a doxical umbrella
in a Klein retort (Lautreamont) . Once the acclimatized
integrity of the local Zabriskian atmosphere has been
blown-up, the propelling furnace is turned off, the pre
modern orni-theological mystifications are 'right away
evaporated in mists', and the bluish katabatic stage of the
voyage begins. By dropping away the propelling stages,
the remaining stoned kernel starts its groundless free
falling into the nested unconcealed underworlds. The
consistent unheard ef combination of heterogeneous
ingredients forms a sort of crystalline lens whereby a
stereoscopic, atonal and polyphonic experience of the
absolute - in the double sense of the genitive - takes a
cleared place and pulses a diachronic time. The more
concrete the philosophical stone is, the deeper the
musaical descent into this nether yonder.
6. Cf. G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, What is Philosophy?, trans. H. Tomlinson
and G. Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994) , 203.
7. Cf. nakH ab Ra, Breve Diccionario de Brujeria Portatil, in Nosotros, los Brujos.
Apuntes de arte, poesfa y brujeria, ed. ]. Salzano (Buenos Aires: Santiago Arcos
editor, 2008) , 267.
567
ANALYTI CAL jELLY
Gelatine (30g)
Lemonjuice (100ml)
Water ( 400ml)
Plain cream (80g)
Sugar (little spoon)
Its translucent, tasteless structure
will be essential.
Will help bring about the aseptic,
astringent product desired.
What can be said? Will wash away
all obscurities.
Whiteness of 'white' will ensure
a firm blend.
To keep open a door to 'other worlds'.
Dissolve the gelatine in water, add the lemon juice, the cream,
put in a pan, soak and boil . Throw away the sugar, no one is
looking. Allow to cool . Sell it as a magnificent dish, whose prep·
aration involved great difficulties. Make its aura shine. Enjoy
with your closest friends and distribute to the World.
TRANSMODERN TATIN
Flour (330g)
Butter (330g)
Icing sugar (110g)
Egg yolks (3)
Apples (6)
Will bring you down to Earth.
Worst will be the best.
Nature and artifice will
come together.
Life will have to surface.
What can be said? Will obscure all .
Do not worry much about the preparation. Forget good orders
and canonical behaviours . Just do it. Or, better, travel to France,
recall that you are still an heir of Romanticism, and, in some
remote village, ask for a wonderful Tarte Tatin.
568
COLLAPSE VII
Analytical Jelly and Transmodern
Tatin : Two Trivial Reci pes
Good cooking comes from small villages and long tra
ditions. One cannot favour, for instance, France's petite
cuisine over its cuisine villageoise. A solid, rooted, gener
ous, con.fit de canard aux !entitles, deliciously magnified
in Moissac, far exceeds a light, pretentious, stingy,
remoulade de tourteau a l'aneth, saucejleurette citronnee,
served at Taillevent's. But philosophy in the twentieth
century has followed fashions far meaner than those
of the petite cuisine. The analytical (and anglosaxon)
obsession with language and (classical) logic has
obscured many earlier, wider pursuits of knowledge,
related to a necessary blend of philosophy with creative
mathematics, chemistry, art and literature. Neverthe
less, well beyond petite analytical hunting estates,
some giant critics stood firm: Warburg, Florenskij,
Benjamin, Cassirer, Merleau-Ponty, Blumenberg, to
569
COLLAPSE VII
name just a few boundary-crossers. With reference to
Llull, Leibniz, Novalis or Peirce (mandatory readings
are J ordi Gaya's La teoria luliana de los correlativos1
and Laurent Margantin's Systeme mintfralogi,que et cos
mologi,que chez Novalis) , 2 culture as a continuum was
also continually explored in the twentieth century. Of
course, the death of universals and of metaphysics alike
has been greatly exaggerated.
A savoury paradox shows how contemporary math
ematics produces new understandings of universals
without an Absolute, with extremely interesting 'rela
tive universals', in category theory and model theory,
rising renewed from the ashes. Following Rosa Maria
Rodriguez Magda,3 we may understand Transmodern
ism as a Modernism which never died; which, like the
Phoenix, continues to rise again. Transmodernism
maintains Postmodernism's open spirit of dissemina
tion, as well as some of its main emphases (not new con
quests, since we find them already in Novalis, Valery,
Florenskij , etc.) on the fragmentation of truth and
the conjunctions of antinomies, but goes well beyond
the mere register of singular breakdowns and tries to
propose new relative nets to encompass residuation.
A rich counterpoint emerges between Postmodernism
1. Palma de Mallorca, 1979.
2. Paris: Harmattan, 1 998.
3. La Sonrisa de Satumo. Hacia una teoria transmoderna (Barcelona: Anthropos,
1 989) .
570
Zalamea - Two Trivial Recipes
and Transmodemism: break, locality, differentiation,
contradiction, ambiguity, the impossibility of univer
sals, 'all is equally worthwhile', death - what might
be called postmodern dissonance - contrasted with
revision, local/global dialectics, oscillation, differentia
tion/integration, partial gluing of relative coherences,
fabrics of vagueness/exactness, relative universals,
'some are more worthwhile than others', renaissances
- a sort of transmodern harmonics.
We propose these two 'trivial recipes' in order to
give a hint of the pendulum between petite and vil
lageoise philosophy. But beware ! - After the Jelly, the
Tatin becomes mandatory! If not, a nasty taste in the
mouth may result, that lasts months, years, or . . . a
century already . . .
571
COLLAPSE VII
Append ix
573
COLLAPSE VII
WO RLD - S O U L
P LATO, TIMAEUS
Now that which is created is of necessity corporeal and
visible and tangible - visible and therefore made of
fire, tangible and therefore solid and made of earth.
But two terms must be united by a third, which is a
mean between them; and had the earth been a surface
only, one mean would have sufficed, but two means
are required to unite solid bodies. And as the world
was composed of solids, between the elements of fire
and earth God placed two other elements of air and
water, and arranged them in a continuous proportionfire:air: :air:water, and air:water: :water: earth,
and so put together a visible and palpable heaven,
having harmony and friendship in the union of the
four elements; and being at unity with itself it was
indissoluble except by the hand of the framer. Each
of the elements was taken into the universe whole
and entire; for he considered that the animal should
be perfect and one, leaving no remnants out of which
another animal could be created, and should also be
free from old age and disease, which are produced
by the action of external forces. And as he was to
contain all things, he was made in the all-containing
form of a sphere, round as from a lathe and every
574
Appendix
way equidistant from the centre, as was natural and
suitable to him. He was finished and smooth, having
neither eyes nor ears, for there was nothing without
him which he could see or hear; and he had no need
to carry food to his mouth, nor was there air for him
to breathe; and he did not require hands, for there was
nothing of which he could take hold, nor feet, with
which to walk. All that he did was done rationally in
and by himself, and he moved in a circle turning within
himself, which is the most intellectual of motions; but
the other six motions were wanting to him; wherefore
the universe had no feet or legs.
And so the thought of God made a God in the image
of a perfect body, having intercourse with himself and
needing no other, but in every part harmonious and
self-contained and truly blessed. The soul was first
made by him - the elder to rule the younger; not in
the order in which our wayward fancy has led us to
describe them, but the soul first and afterwards the
body. God took of the unchangeable and indivisible
and also of the divisible and corporeal, and out of the
two he made a third nature, essence, which was in a
mean between them, and partook of the same and
the other, the intractable nature of the other being
compressed into the same. Having made a compound
of all the three, he proceeded to divide the entire mass
into portions related to one another in the ratios of
575
COLLAPSE VII
1, 2, 3, 4 , 9, 8, 27, and proceeded to fill up the double
and triple intervals thus:
- over I ,
over
4/3, 3/2,
-
over
2, 8/3, 3, - over 4, 16/3, 6,
8:
1, 3/2, 2,
27;
- over
- over
- over
3, 9/2, 6, - over 9, 27/2, 18,
in which double series of numbers are two kinds of
means; the one exceeds and is exceeded by equal parts
of the extremes, e.g. 1, 4/3, 2; the other kind of mean
is one which is equidistant from the extremes - 2, 4, 6.
In this manner there were formed intervals of thirds,
3:2, of fourths, 4 :3, and of ninths, 9:8. And next he
filled up the intervals of a fourth with ninths, leaving
a remnant which is in the ratio of 256:2 43. The entire
compound was divided by him lengthways into two
parts, which he united at the centre like the letter X, and
bent into an inner and outer circle or sphere, cutting
one another again at a point over against the point at
which they cross. Tue outer circle or sphere was named
the sphere of the same- the inner, the sphere of the
other or diverse; and the one revolved horizontally to
the right, the other diagonally to the left. To the sphere
of the same which was undivided he gave dominion, but
the sphere of the other or diverse was distributed into
seven unequal orbits, having intervals in ratios of twos
and threes, three of either sort, and he bade the orbits
576
Appendix
move in opposite directions to one another - three of
them, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, with equal swiftness,
and the remaining four-the Moon, Saturn, Mars,
Jupiter, with unequal swiftness to the three and to one
another, but all in due proportion.
577
COLLAPSE VII
PREPARAT ION O F AND ANTIDOTE TO A POISON
I B N WAH S H IYA 1
One procures the lizard which exists in houses and
inns - the larger the better - and adds to it a kind of
blister fly which is green and small, having long legs
and something like flour on its wings, and which often
alights on the trees of the large and small cucumbers.
They are both put into a large glass bottle with a
wide mouth. On them olive oil is poured and the bottle
is stoppered tightly. It is hung in a bakery or kitchen
until both animals are dissolved in the oil.
If you see that they have been dissolved and con
sumed, shake the contents of the bottle for three days,
then bury it in ass manure for fourteen days. Then take
it out; all of what is in it has become black.
A daniq and one-half of this can kill in one to two
days. The victim has a burning of the palate, a con
traction of the opening of the stomach, a violent pain
in the bowels, swelling of the tongue, and abundant
vomiting. One and one-half daniqs of this poison are
given in hot gravy or hot water. If the humour of the
victim be cold, then it is fatal in four days. He will die
unless he is cured before this by the remedy.
1 . , from M . Levey (ed., trans.) Medieval Arabic Toxicology: the Book on Poisons
(Kitab Al-Sumum) o[Ibn Wahshiya and its relation to early Indian and Greek Texts,
(American Philosophical Society: 1966), 53.
578
Appendix
Preparation efthe Remedy Antidotal to This Poison.
It is obtained from two mithqals each of laurel seed,
Aristolochia, germander which has the five leaves,
dry sea moss, and seed of the white poppy, and three
mithqals each of the crystalline matter attached to the
dried leaf of the rose, and cabbage seed. Ten dirhams
of amomum and twenty dirhams of crystalline sugar
are added. All are pulverized until they become like
dust. Then they are kneaded with bee honey which
has been mixed in wine. It is left for two months. Two
mithqals of its beverage is used with hot water after
the poisoned one has vomited, if God wills.
579
COLLAPSE VII
EXPERI M E NTS TOUCHING BURIALS
F RAN C I S BAC O N '
E:rrerimenla in coruort toudaing bu.riala CJr in/u1i01U of di11er1 bodiu in earth.
376. Bu rials in earth serve for preservation, and
for condensation, and for ind uration of bodies.
And if you intend condensation or induration, you
m ay bury the bod ies so a.'t earth may touch them :
as if you will make artificial porcelane, &.:c.
And
the l ike you may do for conservation, if the
bodies be hard and solid ; as clay, wood, &c. B ut
if you inteDd preservation of bodies more soft and
tender, then you must do one of these two : either
yo u must put thr.m in cases, whereby they may
not touch the earth, or else you must vault the
earth, whereby i t may hang over them and not
touch them : for if the earth touch them, it will
do more hurt by the moisture, ca u si ng them to
putrefy, than good by the virtual cold, to conserve
them, except the earth be very dry and sandy.
377. An oran ge , lemon, an d apple, wmpt in a
linen cloth, being buried for a fortnight's space
.
four foot deep within the earth , thou gh it were in
a moist place, and a rainy timf!, yet came forth
noways mouldy or rotten, but were hE>come a
little harder than they were ; otherwise fresh in
their colour ; but their juice eomewhat fiatled.
But with the burial of a fortnight more they be
came putrefied.
1. In Phenomena qfthe Universe or Natural Historyfor the Building Up of
Philosophy (1607) .
580
Appendix
378: A bottle of beer, burled in like tnanner as
before, became more lively, better tasted, and
clearer than it wu. And a bottl e of wine in
like manner. A bottle ofvinegar so buried came
forth more l i vel y and more odoriferous, smelling
almost l ike a violet. And after the whole month's
burial, all the three came forth as fresh and
lively, if not better than before.
379. It were a profilahle experiment to preserve
oranges, lemons, a nd pomegranates, til l summer,
for the n their p rice w ill be m i gh ti ly increased.
Thia may be d o ne , if you put them "in a pot or ves
ael well covered, that the moisture of the earth
come not at them ; or else by p u uing them in a
conservatory of snow. And generally, w hosoever
will make ex pe rimen ts of cold, l et him be provid
ed of three things ; a conaerntory of snow ; a
good large vault, twenty foot at least under the
ground ; and a deep well.
380. There hath been a tradition, that pearl,
and coral, and turquoia-stone, that have lost their
colours, may be recovered by burying in the earth,
which is a thing of great profit, if it would sort :
but upon trial of six weeks' burial , there followed
no efl'ect. It were good to try it in a deep well, or
in a conservatory of snow ; there the cold may
be more conatringent ; and so make the body
more united , and thereby more resplendent.
581
COLLAPSE VII
NOTE O N THE RO C K S WH I C H C ONTAI N DRI E D
OUT PLANTS A N D F I S H - WITH REFERE N C E TO A
LO ST RECIPE BY LEIBNIZ
B . L E B OV I E R D E F O N T E N E L L E '
What we reported in l'Histoire in 1703, about those
rocks found in the Verona area which contain dried out
plants and fish, has been confirmed by Mr Leibniz. He
says that in the land of Brunswick around Osterode, in
the County of Mansfield around Eisleben and in many
other places in Germany, one finds veins of slate, more
or less horizontal, in which there are representations,
though very exact and very detailed, of various kinds
of fish or plants, which appear in their natural length
and width, but without any thickness. These traces
are often etched in a mixture of copper, which even
contains silver. Some of these plants are unknown in
those regions, but they are found in pictures of plants
from the Indies.
Mr Leibniz conceives that a kind of soil covered the
lakes and surrounding areas, and buried fish and plants
in it, or that some muddy water loaded with soil envel
oped them or carried them away. This soil has itself
since hardened into slate, and the length of time, or
some other cause, destroyed the delicate matter of the
fish or plant, almost in the same manner in which the
bodies of flies or ants that are found encased in yellow
1. In Histoire de l'Academie des Sciences de Paris [1 706], 202-3.
582
Appendix
amber have disappeared and are not now tangible at
all, but simple delineations. The matter of the fish or
the plant, being consumed, left its form imprinted in
the slate, by way of a hollow which remained in it, and
this hollow has eventually been filled by a metallic
matter, whether a subterranean fire burning the soil
into slate has made the metal that was mixed in it
come out, or a metallic vapour penetrating the slate
fixed itself into these hollows. Mr Leibniz adds that
one can imitate this effect by a rather curious process.
One takes a spider, or some other suitable animal, and
buries it within clay, while keeping an opening that
enters from outside into the hollow. One puts the mass
in a fire in order to harden it; the matter of the animal
disappears in cinders, which one can make come out
by way of some liquid. After which one pours through
the opening some melted silver, and when that cools
down, one finds inside of the mass the figure of the
animal wonderfully represented in silver.
583
COLLAPSE VII
COOKING EARTH WITH SALT AND GRAVITY
I SAAC N EWTO N 2
When mercury sublimate is re-sublimed with fresh
mercury, and becomes mercurius dulcis, which is a
white, tasteless earth scarce dissolvable in water, and
mercurius dulcis re-sublimed with spirit of salt returns
into mercury sublimate; and when metals corroded
with a little acid tum into rust, which is an earth taste
less and indissolvable in water, and this earth imbibed
with more acid becomes a metallic salt; and when some
stones, as spar of lead, dissolved in proper menstruums
become salts - do not these things shew that salts are
dry earth and watery acid united by attraction, and
that the earth will not become a salt without so much
acid as makes it dissolvable in water? Do not the sharp
and pungent tastes of acids arise from the strong
attraction whereby the acid particles rush upon and
agitate the particles of the tongue? And when metals
are dissolved in acid menstruums, and the acids in
conjunction with the metal act after a different man
ner, so that the compound has a different taste much
milder than before, and sometimes a sweet one - is it
not because the acids adhere to the metallic particles,
and thereby lose much of their activity? And if the acid
be in too small a proportion to make the compound
2. From Newton 's Philosophy efNature: Selections.from His Writings (Whitefish,
MT: Kessinger, 2003), 166-7.
584
Appendix
dissolvable in water, will it not by adhering strongly
to the metal become unactive and lose its taste, and
the compound be a tasteless earth? For such things
as are not dissolvable by the moisture of the tongue,
act not upon the taste.
As gravity makes the sea flow round the denser
and weightier parts of the globe of the Earth, so the
attraction may make the watery acid flow round the
denser and compacter particles of earth for compos
ing the particles of salt. For otherwise the acid would
not do the office of a medium between the earth and
common water, for making salts dissolvable in the
water; nor would salt of tartar readily draw off the
acid from dissolved metals, nor metals the acid from
mercury. Now, as in the great globe of the Earth and
sea, the densest bodies by their gravity sink down in
water, and always endeavour to go towards the centre
of the globe; so in particles of salt the densest matter
may always endeavour to approach the centre of the
particle: so that a particle of salt may be compared to a
chaos, being dense, hard, dry, and earthy in the centre;
and rare, soft, moist, and watery in the circumference.
And hence it seems to be that salts are of a lasting
nature, being scarce destroyed unless by drawing away
their watery parts by violence, or by letting them soak
into the pores of the central earth by a gentle heat in
putrefaction, until the earth be dissolved by the water,
and separated into smaller particles, which by reason
585
COLLAPSE VII
of their smallness make the rotten compound appear
of a black colour. Hence also it may be that the parts
of animals and vegetables preserve their several forms,
and assimilate their nourishment; the soft and moist
nourishment easily changing its texture by a gentle heat
and motion till it becomes like the dense, hard, dry,
and durable earth in the centre of each particle. But
when the nourishment grows unfit to be assimilated,
or the central earth grows too feeble to assimilate it,
the motion ends in confusion, putrefaction, and death.
586
Appendix
VERM I C U LAR PRE PARATIONS
C HARL E S DARWI N 3
During the grinding process, the particles of earth
must be rubbed against one another, and between the
stones and the tough lining membrane of the gizzard.
The softer particles will thus suffer some attrition, and
will perhaps even be crushed. This conclusion is sup
ported by the appearance of freshly ejected castings,
for these often reminded me of the appearance of paint
which has just been ground by a workman between two
flat stones. Morren remarks that the intestinal canal is
'impleta tenuissima terra, vel uti in pulverem redacta' .
Perrier also speaks o f 'l'etat d e pate excessivement
fine a laquelle est reduite la terre qu'ils rejettent,' etc.
As the amount of trituration which the particles of
earth undergo in the gizzards of worms possesses some
interest (as we shall hereafter see) , I endeavoured to
obtain evidence on this head by carefully examining
many of the fragments which had passed through
their alimentary canals. With worms living in a state
of nature, it is of course impossible to know how
much the fragments may have been worn before they
were swallowed. It is, however, clear that worms do
not habitually select already rounded particles, for
3.In On Humus and the Earthworm: The Formation if Vegetable Mold through the
Action ef Worms with Obseroations on their Habits (London: John Murray, 1881),
123, 126.
587
COLLAPSE VII
sharply angular bits of flint and of other hard rocks
were often found in their gizzards or intestines. On
three occasions sharp spines from the stems of rose
bushes were thus found. Worms kept in confinement
repeatedly swallowed angular fragments of hard tile,
coal, cinders, and even the sharpest fragments of glass.
Gallinaceous and struthious birds retain the same
stones in their gizzards for a long time, which thus
become well rounded; but this does not appear to be
the case with worms, judging from the large number
of the fragments of tiles, glass beads, stones, etc.,
commonly found in their castings and intestines. So
that unless the same fragments were to pass repeatedly
through their gizzards, visible signs of attrition in the
fragments could hardly be expected, except perhaps
in the case of very soft stones.
[ . . . ] Nor should we forget, in considering the power
which worms exert in triturating particles of rock,
that there is good evidence that on each acre of land,
which is sufficiently damp and not too sandy, gravelly
or rocky for worms to inhabit, a weight of more than
ten tons of earth annually passes through their bodies
and is brought to the surface. The result for a country
of the size of Great Britain, within a period not very
long in a geological sense, such as a million years,
cannot be insignificant; for the ten tons of earth has
to be multiplied first by the above number of years,
and then by the number of acres fully stocked with
588
Appendix
worms; and in England, together with Scotland, the
land which is cultivated and is well fitted for these
animals, has been estimated at above 32 million acres.
The product is 320 million million tons of earth.
589
COLLAPSE VII
CANN I BAL C O RPSES
APARE C I DA V I LA9A 1
[ . . . ] In reporting a number of cases of cannibalism
among [Pano language-speaking] populations, Ger
trude Dole comments:
But in spite of the obvious supernatural element in
Panoan funerary endocannibalism, some of the data
indicate that there is also a gastronomic aspect to
the practice. The Capanahua, for example, roasted
the body 'like game' [ . ] The Cashibo ate their old
people with delight . . . 2
.
.
I suggest we need to examine this emphasis on the
pleasure of eating human flesh with more caution,
before we extract from it any rapid conclusions on the
protein value of the meal, a notion which empties the
food of all its symbolic character. I wish to highlight
the fact that such claims of gustative pleasure coexist
with others which appear to be set in contradiction.
The Guayaki ate intestines which were only slightly
spoiled, as well as less putrid parts of the decomposing
1. From 'Relations between funerary cannibalism and warfare cannibalism:
the question of predation', Ethnos 65/1 (2000) , 83·106.
2. G. Dole, 'Endocannibalism among the Amahuaca Indians', In P.J. Lyon
(Ed.) , Native South Americans: Ethnology of the Least Known Continent (Boston:
Little, Brown, 1 974) : 302·8, 306.
590
Appendix
corpses. 3 By contrast, as I discuss later, Wari' corpses
were roasted after they had already reached an
advanced state of putrefaction, and then eaten with
some sacrifice. Nonetheless, faced with this almost
indigestible meat, the eaters politely exclaimed: "this
is good, it isn't at all rotten ! "
If we suppose a relation of continuity between the
type of exclamation made by the Wari' and the claims
about the deliciousness of the corpse's meat reported
by other authors, it becomes clear that we are presented
with people's efforts to prove the edibility (far from
evident) of the deceased's flesh. A corpse does not
look like food, whether this is due to the recognition
of a kinsperson or group member, or due to its rotten
state. For this reason, in the presence of the corpse or that of the astonished ethnographer face-to-face
with such a bizarre custom - what is stressed is the
unobvious: the corpse is food. This kind of exertion is
not restricted to the consumption of a dead member of
the group. Here, we may cite Cunhambebe's famous
phrase in reply to Hans Staden's disapproval of the
farmer's consumption of human flesh: "I'm a jaguar.
It's tasty".4 In turn, we may contrapose this state
ment to Anchieta and Abbeville's observations on the
repugnance held for human flesh by the Tupinamba:
3. P. Clastres, Chronicle ef the Guayaki Indians [1968], trans. P. Auster (NY:
Zone Books, 2000) .
4. H. Staden, Duas Viagens ao Brasil [1557] ( Sao Paulo: Editora Universidade
de Sao Paulo, 1 974) , 1 32.
591
COLLAPSE VII
some expressed an enormous disgust for this flesh, and
would vomit after eating it. 5 Relish and disgust are not,
in my view, contradictory aspects associated with the
consumption of human meat, attributable simply to
individual taste. Rather, both are attitudes whose aim
is to evince the edibility of the meat, dehumanizing
the deceased, but without failing to preserve some
of his or her humanity: this explains the obligatory
abstention of some, such as the enemy's killers, or the
kin of the dead group member in the Wari' case, who
sometimes express their avoidance precisely in terms
of repugnance. As we shall see, this double posture in
relation to the humanity of the deceased or the enemy
corresponds to the equally dual nature of these rites.
In the case of the Wari' funeral, a failure to perceive
its double aspect - in which the deceased's humanity
and inhumanity remain in constant opposition - could
lead us to a partial interpretation, one which misses
the rite's essence.
As far as the Wari' material is concerned, my hypoth
esis - possibly applicable to some other ethnographic
universes, as I hinted above - is that ingestion is a
fundamental classificatory operator, one intrinsically
bound to the notion of predation, understood here
as a relation between predator and prey. Given the
basic identity between humans and animals, predation
5. Cf. E. Viveiros de Castro, From the Enemy 's Point of View: Humanity and
Divinity in an Amazonian Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992) , 56.
592
Appendix
has as its aim the marking of a difference in a human
continuum, or the explication of this difference which
in another mode would remain masked. Let us see how
this takes place among the Wari'.
[ ... ] The Wari' conducted war expeditions with the
sole aim of killing enemies: Indians of other ethnic
groups and Whites. A group of men would leave in
the direction of the enemy village and lie in hiding,
waiting for someone to approach. The technique of
attack was ambush. When the enemy approached
all the men released their arrows, shooting even if
the first arrow had been sufficient to kill. In this way,
everyone became a killer, returning to the village and
beginning a period of seclusion, during which they
remained almost immobile, sustaining themselves on
great quantities of non-fermented maize drink (chicha)
produced incessantly by women. Tue killers - all of
them - contained the spirit of the dead enemy within
them, and it was this which, with the help of the maize
brew, caused them to swell and fatten; the ultimate
purpose of the seclusion.
Whenever possible, the killers brought with them
parts of the victim - head, arms and legs - which were
carried, raw, in baskets slung over the shoulders exactly
like animal game, differing only in that the latter - with
the exception of large animals such as tapir - are usu
ally carried whole. Tue enemy's trunk, very heavy, was
left in situ. The genitals ( especially male genitals ) were
593
COLLAPSE VII
taken by the men in order to be admired by women
(and then thrown on the fire to burn) .
The enemy's flesh was transported raw for roasting
in the village. However, if the journey was lengthy, it
could be roasted in the forest by the killers. What is
crucial here to our analysis is that the enemy's flesh,
just like the flesh of game, was never eaten rotten.
Arriving in the village, the women, who constituted the
majority of the people who stayed behind, welcomed
the killers exuberantly, especially if they had brought
enemy flesh, and this meat was roasted and eaten by
them and by the men who had not been involved in
the kill.
Near to home, the warriors whistled or sounded
their flutes. Everyone ran to meet them. They handed
the enemy's body over to the women, saying "Roast
my prey" (Xainje watama) . The enemy's flesh was con
sumed in the same way as animal game, the meat eaten
off the bone. The Wari' say, however, that they ate the
enemy's flesh with anger. The killers, who contained
the spirit of the enemy inside them, refrained from
eating his flesh.
It is important to stress that the essential aspect
of warfare was killing the enemy, not eating him. In
less favourable circumstances, when the killers were
forced to flee, the victim's body was left were it fell.
Everything happened exactly in the same way on their
arrival, including the seclusion of the killers, although
594
Appendix
the enthusiasm of the women was slightly lessened.
Eating the enemy was an excess, a pleasure which they
allowed themselves whenever possible. In contrast to
the flesh of deceased Wari' which, as we shall see, had
at least to be tasted, the enemy - having been killed
like an animal - did not need to be eaten. Predation
by itself confirmed his animal status, placing the Wari'
in the position of humans.
What should be underlined here is that the Wari'
do not strive to differentiate warfare and hunting: they
endeavour to approximate them. When they hunt and
eat their favourite game, they quickly become subject to
reprisal, a counter-predation, which is likewise defined
by hunting and by warfare. As such, enemy ( wijam)
and prey (karawa) are equivalent positions with which
the Wari' maintain the same type of relation: both are
shot and eaten.
So, on one hand, the identity between wijam and
karawa is founded on their mutual difference from the
Wari', who themselves occupy a position of humans
- the unique humans, wari' . This equivalence occurs
in the context of the relation between elements; that
is, in the context of predation. Ideally, the Wari' are
those who prey and this is what differentiates them,
what characterizes them as humans, wari', and con
stitutes enemies and animals - both equally prey - as
non-humans. Yet, on the other hand, what enables
them to be related to the Wari' is precisely their human
595
COLLAPSE VII
potential; the capacity to act as humans (also see
Chaumeil 1985, for an analogous vision of Yagua
warfare) . In this sense, legitimate game is that which
is also a predator, and the animals preferred as prey
by the Wari' are precisely those which are capable of
preying on them (symbolically) . These animals and
enemies can potentially occupy the position of preda
tors; they are capable of attacking, killing and eating
the Wari', and are, during these moments, humans,
wari' (which makes the Wari' non-humans wijam or
karawa) . Thus, the Wari' take the subjectification of
war victims to an extreme, extending it to the animals
which they choose to eat.
However, it is important to note that when the
Wari' speak of enemies and game in the context of
predation, they emphasize their animal characteristics,
not their human ones. Their desire is to demarcate that
what is killed and eaten is not people. An interesting
fact is that the Wari' never use the female gender when
speaking of enemies, even when this involves women,
as the female gender only exists for human beings.
To refer to a woman from an enemy group, they say:
'female enemy (femea),' just as they speak of animals,
and not 'enemy wife'.
We turn now to the Wari' funeral, where the corpse
food equivalence is less perceptible, masked by ritual
procedures whose aim is precisely to differentiate this
meal from both daily alimentation and the devouring
of enemies . . .
-
596
Appendix
REC I PE FOR D I SASTER
E U G E N E THAC K E R
What You 'll Need
• Incredulity towards reality, accompanied by a period
of psychic fatigue;
• A loss of the Presence of consciousness, in the form
of physical comedy;
• An acute sense of imperfection, built on an ectoplas
mic form of ennui;
• The pain of God (may be substituted with periodic
Self-Naughting) ;
Directions
1. Allow the logical paralogism to consist in the falsity
of a syllogism due to its form, whatever its content may
otherwise be. Its impression can be rendered complete
in the semi-darkness that glimmers in vaulted caverns
or starry temples, beneath the branches of a lofty forest
glade, strangely quickened and stirred by the enigmatic
play of half-lights in the horrific quiet after the rain;
empty distance, remote voids, and a daemonic dread
far too serious.
2. Make sure that the transcendental paralogism,
however, has a transcendental ground for inferring
falsely due to its form. I swayed and moaned, clum
sily clutching each of the strange growths like fresh
597
COLLAPSE VII
bruises. When I finally looked, the skin had peeled
back painlessly, revealing an almost reptilian crust
that reminded me of tree bark. There was only one
possible conclusion to draw from what had happened,
and it almost defiled common sense. These lonely
ruins were alive.
3. Keep in mind that a fallacy of this kind will have
its ground in the nature of human reason, and will
bring with it an unavoidable, although not insoluble,
illusion. Occasionally reflect on the Plain of Obsid
ian Fire or the Black Arch of the Absurd, which both
pass out of the Unknown Lands, by the Place of the
Ab-humans, which tends to always be immersed in a
mossy green, luminous mist (whole libraries had been
assembled there, and many a thousand million had
mouldered into the forgotten dust of its long, softly
singing corridors) .
4. Thus there will be syllogisms containing no empiri
cal premises, by means of which we can infer from
something with which we are acquainted to something
of which we have no concept, and yet to which we
nevertheless, by an unavoidable illusion, give objective
reality. In respect of their result, such inferences are
thus to be called crystalline rather than rational infer
ences; even though they might lay claim to the latter
term on account of what occasions them, because they
are not thought up, nor do they arise contingently, but
have sprung from the nature of tragicomedy.
598
Appendix
Nutritional Information
The street organ drawl, the polar explorers and botani
cal linguists, all inadvertently united on the arid plain
of a manuscript, will hoist black flags signaling the
presence of pentacular ambergris flying out of the still
night of an ink-well, abandoned to those preoccupa
tions of those who, in every perfect liquid night, do
nothing except make stains with crabbed, articulated
fingers, and in that way are incapable even of leading
into error the ridiculous seraphim of logical deduction.
599
COLLAPSE VII
SERVI NG THE OPEN (AN EXEGETICAL EXERC I S E )
MANAB RATA GUHA
Being devoured is, after all, also aform ef existence. 1
FANTASIES ON A BIOLOGICAL MODEL OF SUPER-EGO
FORMATION2
H.'s spontaneous statement on her fatness: 'all this
fat is my mother'. If she felt freer inside from the dis
astrous ( introjected) mother-model, then she noticed
a decrease in the fat padding, and at the same time
she lost weight.
During the week, in which, for the first time, he faced
up defensively to his cruel mother: S. felt he had lost
weight. At the same time, however, he had the idea
that this fat was that of his equally cruel grandfather.
These observations lead to the idea that formation of
the super-ego occurs as the final outcome of a fight,
in reality lost, with an overwhelming (personal or
material) force, roughly in the following way:
A precondition is the existence of an 'intelligence'
or a 'tendency to deal with things economically',
with an exact knowledge of all the qualitative and
quantitative energy charges and possibilities of the
1. Ferenczi, Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods ef Psychoanalysis
(London: Karnac, 1994) , 230.
2.Excerpt from Ibid, 227-30.
600
Appendix
body, also of the ability of the mind to accomplish,
to bear, and to tolerate; in the same way this 'intel
ligence' can estimate with mathematical exactitude
the distribution of power in the external world. The
first normal reaction of a living being to external
unpleasure is an automatic warding off, that is to
say a tendency to self-preservation. If beaten down
by an overwhelming force, the energy (perhaps in
fact the external power of the trauma) turns against
the self. In this moment the 'intelligence', which is
concerned above all with the preservation of the
united personality, seems to resort to the subterfuge
of turning round the idea of being devoured in this
way: with a colossal effort the 'intelligence' swallows
the whole hostile power or person and imagines that
it itself has devoured somebody else and, in addition,
its own person. In this way man can have pleasure in
his own dismemberment. Now, however, his person
ality consists of a devoured, overgreat (fat) aggressor
and a much smaller, weaker person, oppressed and
dominated by the aggressor, that is, his pretraumatic
personality. Many neurotics symbolize their illness in
dreams and symptoms as a bundle that they have to
carry on their backs; in others this bundle becomes
part of the body and turns into a hump or growth;
also favoured is the comparison with an enveloping
great person which, as it were, enwraps maternally
the former personality. The psychological 'devouring'
601
COLLAPSE VII
seems to be associated with greedy voracity and
increased hunger for assimilation: putting on fat as
a hysterical symptom. If, by the analytic reservoir
of the traumatic struggle, the person has been freed
from the overwhelming power, then the obesity, the
physiological parallel phenomenon, may disappear.
Physiological and chemical aspects: the muscle and
nerve tissues consist, in essence, of protoplasm, that is
to say mainly of proteins. Protein is specific for each
species, perhaps even for each individual. Foreign
protein acts as poison; it is therefore broken down
and the specific protein synthesized anew out of the
harmless constituents. Not so with unspecific fat.
Pork fat, for instance, is stored in the cells as such,
and can quite well stand as the organic symbol, or
the organic tendency to manifestation, which runs
parallel with the devouring of the external powers.
Here a still quite vague idea emerges. Is it possible
that the formation of the super-ego and the devour
ing of the superior force in defeat may explain the
two following processes: ( 1) 'Eating up the ancestors',
and (2) adaptation in general.
(1) Plants grow and develop through the incorpora
tion of minerals. Thereby the possibility of existence
within the organism is offered to minerals (inorganic
substances ) which, however, is equivalent to being
devoured by the organism. How far the inorganic
matter as such is destroyed or dissolved, however,
602
Appendix
remains problematic. Quantitative analysis rediscov
ers the consumed inorganic substances to the last
grain. When the plant is devoured by a herbivorous
animal, the plant organism is destroyed, that is to
say reduced to organic or even partly inorganic com
ponents. It remains problematic whether or not,
despite this, part of the plant substance survives and
conserves its individuality, even in the body of the
herbivorous animal. In this way the animal body is
a superstructure of organic and inorganic elements.
Expressed psycho-analytically (although at first
glance highly paradoxical) this means: the animal
organism has devoured one part of the (menacing?)
external world and thus provided for the continua
tion of its own existence.
Tue same thing happens at the devouring of animal
organisms. It is possible that we harbour ill our
organism inorganic, vegetative, herbivorous, and
carnivorous tendencies like chemical valencies. The
likewise highly paradoxical aphorism here is as fol
lows: 'Being devoured is, after all, also a form of
existence.'
Tue idea then emerges that one ought to consider in
this process the possibility of a mutual devouring,
that is to say a mutual super-ego formation.
2. Adaptation in general appears to be a mutual
devouring and being devoured, whereby each party
believes that he has remained the victor.
21.9. 1930
603
COLLAPSE VII
We begin with a personality, an individual, a discrete
entity - bounded, internally consistent, and self
affirming. It occupies space by asserting its existential
right. Such entities, which share not boundaries but
economies of relations, operate under a diktat which
asserts that the
. . . precondition [for the formation of the super-ego]
is the existence of an intelligence or a tendency to
deal with things economically, with an exact knowl
edge of all the qualitative and quantitative energy
charges and possibilities of the body, also of the mind
to accomplish, to bear, and to tolerate; in the same
way this intelligence can estimate with mathematical
exactitude the distribution of power in the external
world.3
But what happens when this discrete entity, the indi
vidual, Ferenczi's patient, finds herself threatened with
being 'consumed' by her mother's fat? Under such
conditions, what happens to the economy of relations
or that which Ferenczi refers to as the 'tendency to deal
with things economically' ? Is this logic of economic
relationality overwhelmed by an external force (of
an external world) with which the individual had
prior relations? What impact does this have on the
individual, the discrete, the particular? What insight
3. Ferenczi, Final Contributions, 228.
604
Appendix
does it give us into the individual, the discrete, the
particular?
Ferenczi reports that the first stage in the strategic
defence of the discrete entity in the face of an intrusive
external and traumatic power or force consists in the
designing of a quantitatively and qualitatively precise
act of resistance. But, when faced with the prospect
of such a mathesis of defence being overwhelmed by
the external force, the 'tendency to deal things with
economically' compels the discrete (defender) to
expand the logic of relationality to be 'open' to the
external force: The discrete (defender) allows itself to
be infiltrated by the external force, but with the ulterior
motive of being able to contain it - by consuming it.
In other words, the apparent tactical retreat effected
by the discrete (defender) could be considered to be
a feint - a deceptive strategic manoeuvre executed at
the local or tactical level - designed to contain the
external force by internalizing it - by make the exter
nal force its own. For Ferenczi, this presence of the
external force inside the discrete (defender) is akin to
an 'alien transplant' that resides or is nested within the
discrete. As a consequence of this, as Ferenczi points
out, the originally discrete entity (the defender) is
now co-constituted not only by itself, but also by the
presence of this alien intruder that lurks within itself.
It is worth pointing out that when Ferenczi refers to
the trauma inflicted by the 'external force', he is not
605
COLLAPSE VII
referring to a cut in the sense of an externally-inflicted
opening. Instead, the feint executed by the discrete
(defender) is a self-opening to the external force (which
we can now restate as 'the open' ) . In this way, the
discrete 'consumes' 'the open' in what will eventually
be a feeble attempt to keep 'the open' at bay. Ferenczi
alludes to this when he observes that
[m]any neurotics symbolize their illness . . . as a bun
dle that they have to carry on their backs; in others
this bundle becomes part of the body and turns into
a hump or growth; also favoured is the comparison
with an enveloping great person which, as it were,
enwraps materially the former personality. 4
But there is a twist in this account of tactical defence
on the part of the discrete: By being open to 'the open'
- in its attempt to maintain its fidelity to the econ
omy of relations that guide the discrete - the discrete
( defender) also opens itself to a deep chemistry that
radically alters it to unimaginable extents. In Ferenczi's
case-study, where his patient expresses her neurosis
in terms of assigning the presence of fat in her body
to her mother, 'the psychological "devouring" seems
to be associated with greedy voracity and increased
hunger for assimilation' . 5 But this assimilation
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
606
Appendix
is not digestive in the sense that what is being devoured
is chemically assimilated, that is to say, fully inter
nalized without increasing the constituency of the
discrete. Rather, this assimilation is expressive of a
nesting - like the harbouring of chemical valencies within the discrete ( defender) . As Ferenczi explains,
the mechanism of defence - or what we have referred to
as a tactical defensive manoeuvre - of the discrete is a
matter of chemical valencies. 6 In a somewhat grotesque
description, Ferenzci shows how 'consumption' is the
intensive dissolution of discrete entities (in this connec
tion, he refers to plants, herbivorous and carnivorous
animals, including the human being) into both organic
and inorganic substances, which make their way and
leave their traces ( traces which, according to Ferenczi,
can be quantitatively analyzed) along the chain of
consumption. Note that the radical indeterminacy at
play here - what is consumed can be rendered into
organic and inorganic substances - is an instance of
the subversion of the Law of the Excluded Middle.
In this sense, what is operative here is not so much a
logic of continuity, but a logic of plasticity that fuses
the discrete and its now internalized - but not fully
assimilated - organic and inorganic substances. It is
this logic of plasticity that guarantees the continued
existence of the discrete ( defender) albeit in a form
and manner quite different from its original state.
6. Ibid., 229.
607
COLLAPSE VII
The discrete, in fact, does not survive as the discrete;
rather, it exists as a nested possibility of existences
(local possibilia) along and across a continuum of
chemical valencies, i.e., 'the open'. We can then say
that there are two models of consumption at play
here: The first is the most obvious one which involves
the discrete consuming 'the open' by being open. The
second is the intensive consumption efthe discrete by
'the open' which lurks within the former. In the con
text of our exploratory exercise concerning the Bhut
]olokia,7 this serves as an example of a highly subversive
para-tactical model of operability. The trick (and the
challenge) is to review the emerging battlespace in
terms of nested chemical valencies drawn from what
we have referred to as the continuum (or 'the open')
rather than in terms of the mechanical relationali
ties that normatively connect discrete entities. In this
sense, Ferenczi's 'highly paradoxical aphorism . . . Being
devoured is, after all, also a form of existence' with
stands the scrutiny of our exegetical exercise. Thus we
can say that while a para-tactical mode of operability,
which remains true-to-the-universe logj,c ef delivering all
expressions ef isolation and discreteness 'remorselessly into
the open, may - as Ferenczi is at pains to point out in
his case-study - reinforce the assertion that resistance
7. Present volume.
608
Appendix
may be futile, existence per se, along different and often
alien modal possibilities, is not.
609
COLLAPSE VII
Notes on Contri butors
and Acknowledgements
AO& are a Vienna-based semi-nomadic organisa
tion consisting of Philipp Furtenbach, Philipp Ric
cabona, Thomas A. Wisser and Rainer Fehlinger.
AO& work with sites and environments to create
settings and sequences for people to gather and
interact. Their interventions often involve food,
from simple dishes to multicoursed menus, strictly
using aliments and products from disclosed origin.
http://www.aound.net.
JOHN COCHRAN is a Washington DC-based practicing
Chef with thirty years of experience in both the United
States and the United Kingdom. He is currently work
ing on his dissertation for his PhD at the European
Graduate School while simultaneously cooking din
ners at several DC locations.
611
COLLAPSE VII
GABRIEL CATREN holds a PhD in theoretical physics
(University of Buenos Aires) and a PhD in Philosophy
(University of Paris) . Currently he works as a researcher
in philosophy for the Argentinean National Research
Council for Sciences and Technology (CONICET)
in Buenos Aires, and directs the project 'Savoir et
Systeme' at the College International de Philosophie
in Paris.
ANDREW DAKIN recently completed an HBSc in Psy
chology and Sociology at the University of Toronto.
He will be pursuing graduate studies in Fall 2012,
focusing on the interaction of culture and cognition.
S EAN A. DAY holds a PhD in Linguistics, with BA
and MA degrees in Anthropology. He is a congeni
tal synaesthete, who sees coloured, textured objects
before him when he hears musical instruments, tastes
flavours, or smells odours. He is current President of
the American Synesthesia Association, and the creator
and operator of The Synesthesia List, an international
forum for synaesthetes and researchers.
EDOUARDO VIVEIROS DE CASTRO teaches anthro
pology at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro.
He has also held the Simon Bolivar Professorship of
Latin American Studies at Cambridge University and
was Directeur de recherches at the CNRS in France.
612
Notes on Contributors
His main publications are From the Enemy 's Point ef
View: Humanity and Divinity in an Amazonian Society
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), A lncon
stancia da alma selvagem (Sao Paulo: CosacNaify, 2002)
and Metaphysiques cannibales: lignes d'anthropologie post
structurale (Paris: PUF, 2009) .
RICK DoLPHIJN is Assistant Professor at Humanities,
Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He is the author
of Foodscapes: Towards a Deleuzian Ethics ef Consump
tion (Delft/Chicago: Eburon/University of Chicago
Press, 200 4) . He is now finishing a book entitled New
Materialism (with Iris van der Tuin) and struggling
with Manifesto for the Mouth: a Philosophy ef Raw and
Untamed Matter.
F I E L D C L U B was initiated in 2004 as a live research
project based on a four-acre field in Southwest Eng
land. The project collaborators, artist Paul Chaney
and researcher Kenna Hernly, seek to deconstruct the
post-modern notion of self-sufficiency through inter
disciplinary art practice and direct interaction with
the land. FIELDCLUB's findings have led it to diverge
from contemporary ecological discourse, and develop
theories of 'nature' which rest outside of conventional
humanist frameworks.
613
COLLAPSE VII
JOHN GE RRARD (born Dublin, 197 4) has been the sub
ject of recent solo exhibitions at the Scottish National
Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, the Hirshhorn
Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.
and the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Aus
tralia. In July 2011, his major new work, Infinite Free
dom Exercise, will be installed in Lincoln Square in
Manchester as part of the Manchester International
Festival.
CAROL GooDDEN, born London 19 4 0, emigrated to
the western USA in 19 45 to start a long career in horse
training. Interspersed were years in Spain, published
writings, group photography shows, a clinical psych
ology degree, a long involvement with the NYC art
world. She was co-founder of FOOD and a member of
the Trisha Brown Dance Company. Currently living in
New Mexico, she has resumed her studies with horses.
IAIN HAMILTON GRANT is Senior Lecturer in Philoso
phy at the University of the West of England. He is the
author of Philosophies ofNature qfter Schelling (London/
NY: Continuum, 2006) and of numerous articles on
Kant and post-Kantian Idealism, philosophy of nature,
philosophy of science and technology, and contempo
rary philosophy. He is currently working on a book
entitled Grounds and Powers.
614
Notes on Contributors
MANABRATA GuHA is Assistant Professor at the
National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Ban
galore, India. His research work focuses on 'future
war', network-centric warfare, and counter-strategic
theories of war and combat. He is the author of Re
Imagi,ning War in the :.zzst Century: From Clausewitz to
Network-centric Waifare (London: Routledge, 2010 ) .
DOROTHEE LEGRAND is is a researcher at CREA:
Centre de Recherche en Epistemologie Appliquee
(CNRS, Ecole polytechnique, Paris) . She is trained in
psychology and cognitive sciences and holds a PhD
in philosophy. Thematically, her work focuses on the
investigation of (a)typical bodily subjectivity.
VANINA LESCHZINER is an Assistant Professor in the
Sociology Department at the University of Toronto.
Her primary areas of interest are theory, culture,
cognition, and organizations. She is working on a
book manuscript about Elite Chefs. Her research has
appeared in Theory & Society and Sociologi,cal Forum,
among other publications.
NANDITA B1swAS MELIAMPHY is an Assistant Profes
sor of Political Theory in the Department of Political
Science and Centre for the Study of Theory and Criti
cism at Western (uwo.ca) . She is author of The Three
Stigmata efFriedrich Nietzsche: Political Physiology in the
615
COLLAPSE VII
Age efNihilism (Palgrave Macmillan, QOIO ) as well as
essays published in various journals and anthologies.
http://uwo.academia.edu/biswasmellamphy
DAN MELI.AMPHY is an Adjunct Professor of Literary
Theory and Criticism in the Departments of English,
Modern Languages and Literatures, and the Centre
for the Study of Theory and Criticism at Western. His
work has appeared in various journals and anthologies.
He is the co-founder of the annual Nietzsche Work
shop @J Western, co-translator of Gilbert Simondon's
treatise On the Mode ef Existence ef Technical Objects
(Semiotexte/MIT Press: forthcoming) , and editorial
board-member at Helvete and Punctum Books.
http://uwo.academia.edu/mellamphy
JEREMY MILLAR is an artist living in Whitstable, UK.
His recent solo exhibitions include 'Mondegreen'
(with Geoffrey Farmer), Project Arts Centre, Dublin;
'Resemblances, Sympathies, and Other Acts', CCA,
Glasgow; 'Amongst Others', Plymouth Arts Centre;
and 'Given', National Maritime Museum, London;
his work has also recently been included in 'Never the
Same River (Possible Futures, Probably Pasts) ', Cam
den Arts Centre, London; and 'The Dark Monarch',
Tate St Ives. He is currently tutor in art criticism at
the Royal College of Art, London.
616
Notes on Contributors
MICHAEL A. MORRIS is Professor in the Department
of Chemistry, University College Cork, and a found·
ing member of the Centre for Research on Adaptive
Nanostructures and Nanodevices [CRANNJ at Trin·
ity College , Dublin. His current research interests
are associated with the synthesis of nanomaterials
and nanostructured materials and their subsequent
characterisation.
EUGENE THACKER is is the author of several books,
including After Life (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2010) and Horror ef Philosophy (London: Zero
Books, 2011) . Thacker teaches at The New School in
New York City.
CRISTIAN TuRDERA is a graphic designer, illustrator,
and publisher. http://www.cristianturdera.com/.
RICHARD WRANGHAM is Ruth Moore Professor of Bio
logical Anthropology at Harvard University, teaches
in Harvard's Department of Human Evolutionary
Biology, and is co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee
Project. He is the co-author, with Dale Peterson, of
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origi,ns efHuman Vwlence (NY:
Houghton Mifflin, 1996) and author of Catching Fire:
How Cooking Made Us Human (NY: Basic Books, 2009 ).
617
COLLAPSE VII
FERNANDO ZALAMEA, born Bogota, 1959, is Profes
sor of Mathematics at the Universidad Nacional de
Colombia. Scholarly works on Peirce, Lautman and
the philosophy of contemporary mathematics have
not deterred him from exploring other avenues. As
an essayist and cultural critic, he has written a dozen
books on Latin American and European thought. His
Synthetic Philosophies ef Contemporary Mathematics will
be published by Urbanomic/Sequence Press in 2012.
Interview with Iain Hamilton Grant conducted in Bristol
by Robin Mackay and via e-mail by Robin Mackay and
Reza Negarestani.
Interview with Carol Goodden conducted via e-mail by
Robin Mackay and Kenna Hernly.
Interview with AO& conducted in New York and via e-mail
by Robin Mackay.
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro 's 'Metaphysics ef Predation '
translated by Robin Mackay.
Thanks to:
Miguel Abreu and Katherine Pickard at Sequence Press
for their support and enthusiasm; Stewart Cauley for his
invaluable typographical expertise; Laurence Symonds,
Concept Shed (Falmouth) for his engineering ef Jeremy
618
Notes on Contributors
Mi/tar's print; Gwendolyn Owens, Louise Desy and Julia
Dawson at CCA Montrealfor their help in sourcing images
ef Gordon Matta-Clark's work; and to David Rylance,
Tobias Huber, Martine D 'A nglejan-Chatillon, John Ger
rard, Paul Chaney, Kenna Hernly, Simon Preston, and
Teresa Gleadowe.
Special Thanks to Kristen and to Louise.
619
COLLAPSE
Philosophical Research and Development
VOLUME VII
CoNTRmtrroRs:
AO&,
Eduardo
Viveiros
de
Castro,
Gabriel Catren, John Cochran, Sean Day, Rick Dolphijn,
FI E L D c Lu B,
Michael A. Morris and John Gerrard, Carole
Goodden, lain Hamilton Grant, Manav Guha, Dorothee
Legrand,
Vanina
Leschziner
and
Andrew
Dakin,
Dan
and Nandita Mellamphy, Jeremy Millar, Eugene Thacker,
Richard Wrangham, Fernando Zalamea.
Collapse VII brings addresses, from multiple perspectives, the
multifaceted question of cookery, exploring how the question of
the culinary - in an extended and expanded sense - is bound
up with some profound and enduring issues in the history of
philosophy, and can also suggest new approaches to contemporary
philosophical problems.
ISBN 978-0-9567750-9-2
I
9 780956 775092 >