Eating in Theory Experimental Futures Technological Lives, Scientific Arts, Anthropological Voices A series edited by Michael M. J. Fischer and Joseph Dumit Annemarie Mol Eating in Theory Duke University Press Durham & London 2021 © 2021 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ∞ Cover designed by Aimee C. Harrison and Courtney Leigh Richardson Text designed by Aimee C. Harrison Typeset in Minion Pro and Avenir LT Std by Copperline Book Services Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Mol, Annemarie, author. Title: Eating in theory / Annemarie Mol. Other titles: Experimental futures. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2021. | Series: Experimental futures | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020030114 (print) LCCN 2020030115 (ebook) | ISBN 9781478010371 (hardcover) ISBN 9781478011415 (paperback) ISBN 9781478012924 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Eating (Philosophy) | Food—Environmental aspects. | Food habits—Psychological aspects. | Food habits—Netherlands. Classification: LCC TX357.M653 2021 (print) | LCC TX357 (ebook) DDC 394.1/2—0dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020030114 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020030115 Cover art: Apple branch. Courtesy Guiter Dina/ Shutterstock.com. Contents 1 Empirical Philosophy 1 2 Being 26 3 Knowing 50 4 Doing 75 5 Relating 102 6 Intellectual Ingredients 126 Acknowledgments 145 Notes 149 Bibliography 177 Index 195 This page intentionally left blank Empirical Philosophy 1 Among current global problems, those of ecological sustainability are particularly pressing. It is no wonder, then, that scholars from a wide range of backgrounds seek to get an intellectual grasp on them. This book seeks to help with that quest. It has no practical solutions to offer, but it does present some suggestions about how the theoretical tools of the social sciences and the humanities might be adapted to the pressing realities of environmen- tal destruction. My contribution takes the shape of an exercise in empirical philosophy. Drawing on ethnographic stories about eating as sources of in- spiration, I seek to enrich existing philosophical repertoires. This is urgent, since the theoretical terms currently in use in academia are equipped to deal with the problems of the past. Those problems have not gone away, but the terms crafted to tackle them are not particularly well attuned to addressing present- day human interferences with life on earth. This is because they are infused with a hierarchical understanding of ‘the human’ in which thinking and talking are elevated above eating and nurturing. What if, I wonder, we were to interfere with that hierarchy? What if we were to take bodily suste- nance to be something worthy, something that does not just serve practical purposes, but has theoretical salience as well? In this context, the term theory does not stand for an overarching explana- tory scheme that results from a process of analytically drawing together a wide range of facts. Instead, it indicates the words, models, metaphors, and syntax that help to shape the ways in which realities are perceived and han- dled. It connotes the intellectual apparatus that makes it possible for some thoughts to emerge and be articulated, while others are forced into the back- ground or blocked altogether. If ‘theory’ opens and closes ways of thinking, the question arises as to what the theoretical repertoires currently prevalent in academia help to articulate — and what they silence. Here is my concern: the theoretical repertoires that contemporary social sciences and humanities draw on were pasted together in relation to humanist ideals such as seeking liberty from feudal overlords, protecting human beings from alienation, or dreaming up peaceful political arrangements. Over the past century, scholars have spoken for human dignity, argued against the ways in which industrial processes use people as resources, insisted that human subjects should not be treated as dumb objects in laboratory research, and defended rationality and due process in response to wars in which millions were killed. Time and again, it has been said that humans deserve more respect than many of them were — and are — granted. However, as human rights were, at least in theory, accorded to all of humanity, humans were, again in theory, disentangled from the rest of the world. Their ability to think and talk, or such was the idea, set them apart. This is human exceptionalism — the belief that somehow ‘the hu- man’ is an especially deserving kind of creature. Over the last few decades, human exceptionalism has been widely crit- icized. The critics do not deny that it makes sense to try to protect ‘the hu- man’ from abuses like coercion, alienation, and violence, but they question restricting our empathy to humans. Other living creatures deserve similar respect, they say, and so do nonliving things on earth. Recent multispecies scholarship attends to elephants, dogs, tomatoes, earthworms, salmon, rub- ber vines, wheat, and many other forms of life; and, added to that, more- than-h uman work also reaches out to such varied stuff as rocks and rivers, water and oil, phosphorus and salt.1 The scholars involved seek to query these phenomena on their own terms. But what are those terms? It is possible to talk about the agency of sheep, microbes, or molecules; or to celebrate the unique subjectivity of ticks, vines, or rocks. However, here is my concern: terms such as ‘agency’ and ‘subjectivity’ have been thoroughly informed by a particular understanding of ‘the human,’ the very humanist version which (building on earlier precedents) took shape in twentieth- century philosoph- ical anthropology. It is from this observation that the present study departs: ‘the human’ inscribed in our theoretical apparatus is not the human, but a human of a quite particular kind, a human rising above other creatures, just as his [sic] thinking rises above his bodily engagements with the rest of the 2 Chapter One world. Hence, robbing ‘the human’ of his exceptionalism by spreading out his particular traits over the rest of the world is not enough. These traits, too, de- serve to be reexamined. What is it to be human? The intellectual apparatus of the humanist philosophical tradition permeates contemporary ‘international’ social sciences and humanities. In this book, I will primarily refer to work done in English. This is not to say that the the- ories embedded in adjacent languages are radically different. Both German and French have been crucial to the formation of the particular versions of philosophical anthropology about which I come to write. To acknowledge that I was raised and educated in the Netherlands, I will mobilize some Dutch sources, too. However, the commonalities and frictions between these lin- guistically adjacent tongues fall beyond the scope of the present book.2 Over- all, I keep the precise boundaries of my inquiry unexamined. All I seek to do is interfere with the traces of the hierarchization of ‘the human’ that are left behind in current academic work published in English. This hierarchiza- tion comes in variations. Sometimes, ‘the human’ is split into two substances, stacked on top of one another: a lowly, mortal body, and an elevated, think- ing mind. Elsewhere, it is not substances but activities that are differentiated. In this case, metabolic processes such as eating and breathing are deemed basic; moving is situated somewhat higher; perception is above that; while thinking stands out as the highest- ranked activity. In other scholarly work, the senses are judged comparatively, which leads to a mistrust of smell and taste, touch being doubted, and sight and hearing being praised as providing information about the outside world. In this book, I explore this ranking in detail, but this short summary already indicates that, in one way or another, eating (pertaining to bodily substances, a metabolic activity, and involving untrustworthy senses) has been persistently downgraded. This informs my quest: What if we were to stop celebrating ‘the human’s’ cognitive reflections about the world, and take our cues instead from human metabolic engage- ments with the world? Or, to put it differently: What if our theoretical reper- toires were to take inspiration not from thinking but from eating? To address this question, I analyze a few ways in which current intellec- tual repertoires are marked by hierarchical understandings of ‘the human.’ As points of contrast, I will, time and again, introduce exemplary situations of eating, as so many alternative sources of theoretical inspiration. These in- terventions are grouped together under a series of general terms. For chapter 2 this is being. Under scrutiny, this abstract term is filled with quite specific Empirical Philosophy 3