Food (1999)

"Food, like eroticism, starts with the eyes, but there are people who will put just about anything in their mouth" -- Isabel Allende (90) In the beginning is not the word, but the caress of the eye, the touch of the tongue and the taste of food. From the nipple onwards, the primary pleasure of food is part of a social eroticism -- a playful eroticism -- that prefigures and sets up the logic of speaking to and loving others. And it is this sensual and emotional potential of food as a source of power that has guaranteed a place for food in cultural media such as M/C. Food as eroticism is not food as sex. In "Beyond Food/Sex", Elspeth Probyn manoeuvres the reader around the conflation of food and sex and convinces us that we really are over food porn! She tantalises instead with the idea that the way to shake off constraining prohibitions and achieve greater susceptibility to pleasure is to think through food, to sex, the universe and everything... Thinking through our tongues reminds us of our shared corporeal vulnerability -- reminds us that we are bodies, connected to others, intuitively, materially and meaningfully. This is a politicisation of desire, a passionate advocacy of the impulse to give and receive pleasure with food. Of course, this impulse has always been exploited and distorted -- power says no as often as it says yes. Centuries of extravagant personal rivalry between élites while starving masses hungrily watch spectacles of waste have shown us that patriarchy is not the sole provenance of the misuse and abuse of food. Nations, groups and individuals define themselves by and through acts of consumption that are as much about exclusion, and creating otherness, as they are about inclusion. These twin themes of consumption and identity inform much of what is written about food today. Issues of identity -- both personal and national -- are held within a tension between have and have-not; inclusion and exclusion; self and Other. And frequently these binaries are articulated within the discourse of food and gastronomy: whether it is racial vilification based on the perception of cuisine stereotypes; or snobbery about the correct pronunciation of prosciutto or the ingredients for baba ghanoush. Even something as simple and necessary as cooking is commonly gendered in problematic and political ways. The articles in this issue of M/C all, to a greater or lesser extent, address these issues. Sydney academic Elspeth Probyn has long been interested in the problematics of identity and subjectivity, and in this issue's feature article, "The Indigestion of Identities", she suggests that a productive way of interrogating identity is through the lens of food, and those themes which append to eating. As she says, "eating continually interweaves individual needs, desires and aspirations within global economies of identities". Teemu Taira continues this theme in his discussion of unemployment in Finland, "Material Food, Spiritual Quest: When Pleasure Does Not Follow Purchase". His provocative view is that for the unemployed, the socialising role of work is replaced by food preparation and consumption, a social activity which is, paradoxically, jeopardised by the marginalisation and poverty which frequently coexists with unemployment. Construction of identity through food is also featured in "You Have a Basket for the Bread, Just Put the Bloody Chicken in It", Felicity Newman's reminiscence of growing up in a Jewish part of Sydney. Warm memories of fish and chips at Bondi lead Felicity to a discussion of ethnicity and race in contemporary Australian politics. According to Todd Holden in his investigation of portrayals of food on Japanese television, "And Now for the Main (Dis)course: Or, Food as Entrée in Contemporary Japanese Television", food is important because of the way it evokes a sense of nihonjinron -- that which is unique about Japanese culture -- and its ubiquity in everyday life. Food becomes a "common conduit" through which non-food issues can be understood. "Killer Zucchini", Ric Masten's witty and clever poem about gender politics, is framed around a description of that most phallic of vegetables, the zucchini. In a first for M/C, photographer Judith Villamayor presents a series of five images that evoke themes of food, sex and consumption. As described in the editors' introduction, "Chuck Another Steak on the Barbie, Would'ja Doll", all sorts of assumptions and beliefs about the gendering of food are played out in these confronting and original photographs. Lynn Houston, in her article "A Recipe for "Blackened 'Other': Process and Product in the Work of Victor Grippo", describes the work of the Argentinian artist who combines a fascination with food with other cultural issues, especially representations of the "Other". In "What About the Women? Food, Migration and Mythology", Danielle Gallegos and Felicity Newman use the stories of three women to provide a point of departure from the dominant discourse that suggests that migration and the increased mobility of Australians fills a culinary void left by a lack of affinity with the land and its produce. "Food Deserts: An Issue of Social Justice" is the descriptive title of Sinead Furey's, Heather McIlveen's, and Christopher Strugnell's article on the growth of "food shopping deserts" in parts of the United Kingdom. These are areas where the concentration of major supermarkets on the edges of towns have caused the closure of inner-city grocery stores, making access to food difficult for low-income families, who often do not have the advantage of private transport. Finally, issues of food and nationalism are brought together in Guy Redden's article, "Packaging the Gifts of Nation", in which he examines the packaging of certain food stuffs that construct a link between the food and idealised images of nature and nation. We want to thank Team M/C for their help in the planning and production of this issue of M/C, as well as our reviewers and all the authors who contributed to the journal. We especially want to thank Ian Van Wert who helped with translations from Spanish. Throughout the production we have scrupulously avoided the temptation to fall into obvious and regrettable food puns. Now, as the work is nearly done, we can afford the liberty of claiming one for ourselves: if this collection resembles a smorgasbord, we invite you to enjoy as much or as little of the offerings as you desire, but hope that all the dishes will provide satisfying food for thought. Bon appétit! Vikki Fraser, John Gunders -- 'Food' Issue Editors References Allende, Isabel. Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses. Sydney: Flamingo/HarperCollins, 1998. Probyn, Elspeth. "Beyond Food/Sex: Eating and an Ethics of Existence." Theory, Culture and Society 16.2 (1999): 215-28, 244. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Vikki Fraser, John Gunders. "Editorial: 'Food'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.7 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php>. Chicago style:M Vikki Fraser, John Gunders, "Editorial: 'Food'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 7 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Vikki Fraser, John Gunders. (1999) Editorial: 'Food'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(7). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9910/edit.php> ([your date of access]).