Disclosure: A Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 19: Consuming Cultures

Editors' Preface As disClosure nears its twentieth anniversary, it remains committed to facilitating inter- (and sometimes, anti-) disciplinary discussions of social theory that address, although sometimes indirectly, pressing cultural and political concerns. With Consumin9 Cultures, the editorial collective of disClosure has attempted Lo continue that tradition. The exact meaning of "Consuming Cultures" (like exact meanings in mosl instances) is difficult to articulate. It refers, among other things, to cultures as both potential subjects that consume and as potential objects to be consumed. For this reason, while the articles in this volume treat a variety of themes from a number of theoretical approaches, each one highlights, in its own way, the imbrication of culture and consumptive practices.

We believe that the pieces appearing here can help us Lo examine the cultural meaning and value of consumption practices while also interrogating cultural practices situated in circuits of commodity production and consumption. Each contribution has its own specific way of addressing bolh the cultural implications of consumption and the consumption of cultural objects. Herein, consumption of and by bodies is explored, along wilh the production and consumption of food, folk art., scholarship, celebrity, cinema, and religion, among other objects.

The call for papers Lhis year elicited a wide variety of submissions including personal essays, creative nonfiction pieces, academic articles and sculpture. Given lhe long history of work on the subject of consumption and culture in so many critical and creative realms and the diverse nature of Lhe submissions we received, i l is clear thal this topic continues to inspire people to investigate, reflect, and create. We are excited Lo be able Lo showcase some thought-provoking pieces Lhal challenge us Lo engage critically with consumption and culture.

In "Bodies of Knowledge," Ben Agger reflects on the possibilities of a dis-alienated body politics that would eschew commodified "solutions" Lo lhe problems presented by capitalist modes of production and consumption and positivist modes of knowing. Amanda Fickey, in "Commodifying My Culture," discusses her own experiences as a native of Appalachia who simultaneously studies, creates, consumes, and resists a discourse on Appalachian culture that she ultimately finds limiting.

In "Consumed with (and by) Collecting," Gretchen E. Henderson extends Adorno's insight on the self-destructive tendency of creative work to unearth Lhe ways that literary texts can contain within themselves, nol only the seeds of Lhei r own deslruclion, bul also a tendency to exhibit, for a reader's consumption, their own implication in a broader cultural context In "Consumption and the Construction of Community in Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle," Jennifer Spohrer distinguishes Tali from other mid -Lwenlielh-ce nlury critics of consumer society in France and employs his ideas to critique variations of "new urbanism."

The two creative non -fiction pieces Lhal are being published in this year's volume both trace the intersection between tradition, modernity and food. Brendan Edwards' "Invited Lo Lhe Slaughter'' is a reflection of his lime spent in Slovakia. Specifically, he explores the disappearance of traditional Slovakian culinary practices in the context of globalization. Alice Driver's "An In-Between Place: To Tokelau by Boal" recount's the author's powerful experiences while living on this small island in lhe South Pacific Ocean.

Her story is a gastronomic adventure as well as a criticism of the effects of modernizing technologies on the people of Tokelau. Hunter Stamps' submission of original sculpture, "Boundaries of the Self," explores the issues of self-ideation, consumption and control by investigating lhe intersection of self and other, body and meal, allraction and repulsion, and the beautiful and the grotesque.

We are honored to include two interviews with academics who participated in the Social Theory Spring Lecture Series. Joshua Gamson, in an interview with members of Lhe disC/osure collective, discusses celebrity culture, Hollywood logic and reality TV in the context of Lhe Internet age. Our interview with Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington situates the consumption of lamb flaps in a postcolonial context and demonstrates that a commodity chain can reveal much more than a product's material origin In "Consuming and Maintaining DifTerence: American Fans Resisting the Globalization of Japanese Pop Culture" Laura Beltz lmaoka discusses how the popularization of Japanese popular culture in the US has lead many American fans Lo question the exlenl Lo which their identities are constructed through the consumption of foreign cultural materials Lhal are increasingly being "Americanized." Andrew Battista's "Afi.er the Garden is Gone: Megachurches, Pastoral, and Theologies of Consumption," explores the rise of suburban megachurches and their embeddedness in ideologies and practices of consumption. Rick Dolphijn's "Care, Cure and Control," explore the temporal and spatial logics of biopolitical projects aimed al governing the consumption of food, and argues for the need to analytically distinguish between dietetics as a totalizing and as a generalizing practice. T.D. Richardson challenges lhe way thal Folk Studies has traditionally sought authenticity in "exotic," preindustrial societies. His article is a call for action to folklorists Lo challenge, what he says, is this field's greatest shortcoming.

All of these contributions, in their own way, ask us to think through the political and cultural implications of consumption, broadly defined. They ask those of us situated in lhe university lo think critically about how we ourselves produce and consume cultural narratives, and they remind all of us to remain allentive to the power relations that constitute consuming cultures. Understanding the implications of what and how we consume has become a key question in contemporary social theoretical work, in part because il is through discourses and practices of consumption (although not only those) that identities are constructed, power is exercised, and political projects are pursued in the contemporary world. ii

Acknowledgements There are numerous people that helped to make this issue of disC/osure possible.

The journal would not exist without the hard work and dedication of the social theory students who serve on the editorial collective (listed below). In particular, we wanl Lo thank Rebecca Lane and Jeffrey Zamostny for working with us from the beginning Lo end of this process. We wish them the best as they begin their work as edilors of nexl year's issue.

Dr. Anna Secor has been a strong advocate for the journal during her tenure as director of the Committee on Social Theory, and Dr. John Erickson has served as a committed and interested advisor. The editors of last year's issue, James Looney and Karen Kinslow, lefl us a wealth of useful information and continued to serve as a resource throughout the process of putting together this issue. Naomi Norasak provided vital information, reminders, and administrative support Rebecca Pittenger and Sarah Wylie Ammerman assisted with copyediting and cover design, respectively. We thank them all.

Collective Members David Hoopes is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Hispanic Studies. His research interests include twentieth-century Spanish and Lalin American literature and focus specifically on the representation of transatlantic relationships between diasporic peoples.

Drew Heverin is currently pursuing an M.A. in English Literature al Lhe University of Kentucky. His work focuses on the intersection of society and Lhe stage in Renaissance Drama. While serving on the disC/osure board, Drew also is co-editor of the literary journal Limestone, an annual collection of poetry, prose and art.

Clint Jones is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky. His research interests include social justice, eutopian conceptions of society, and identity politics. His dissertation project is an altempl to bring these three areas of thought together.

Rebecca Lane is a graduate student in the Department of Geography al the University of Kentucky. In terms of scholarly pursuils, she is interested in gender, medical knowledge, and corporeality. She also enjoys thinking about dystopias and Lhe deep sea.

Melissa Moorer is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography al Lhe University of Kentucky. Her interests include technology, gender, social theory, psychoanalytic theory, and her current research focuses on Lhe social spaces of medicine.

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Ryan O'Rourke, in addition Lo pursuing a certificate in Social Theory, is also an M.A. student in French in his second and final year. Upon completion of his M.A., he hopes to go on to pursue a Ph.D. in French Studies.

Derek Ruez received his M.A. from Lhe University of Kentucky, and will soon begin work toward his Ph.D. He is interested in critiquing liberal social and political theory from poslstrucluralisl, Marxist, and psychoanalytic angles.

Christine Smith is an M.A. student in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. Her research focuses on issues of policing, community, and illegal drugs within Lexington, Kentucky. Besides social theory, her other interests include art and gardening.

Je[rey ZamosLny is a graduate student in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky. He examines issues of modernity and sexuality in early twentiethcenlury Spanish literature. His publications on those and related topics appear in Decimon6nica, MELUS, and Diver9encias.

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BenAgger

Bodies of Knowledge: Considerations of Science, Exercise, Food and Body Politics Images of the alienaled body abound, in advertising, entertainmenl, even science. Empiricisls oflen plow their narrow fields within 'bodies of knowledge,' lo which they make their small contributions. This derives from an alienaled body politics, which, according to early Marx, lies at the heart of the logic of capital and ils man ifeslation in the wage relationship. For him, capilalism alienated bodies, labor, comm uni ty, nature, even (lhe Frankfurl School [Horkheimer and Adorno 1972) adds) science. In this sense, I am inleresled in how posilivism, a momenl of alienated body polilics, produces body sciences, including exercise physiology and nutrition, that are themselves alienations, perpetuating the duality of self and body lhal is paradigmalic of all alienalion. I also work loward a crilical theory of bodies in molion, including bodies of knowledge, that moves beyond critique.

Posilivism is an alienalion that borrows from the discourse of embodiment-e.g., lhe lerm body of knowledge referring lo what Thomas Kuhn (1964) called normal science. This body hangs together skeletally, according lo lhe literalure-review seclions that begin standa rd empirical journal arlicl es, lhrough the artifice of the author, who claims, through parenthetical strin g citalions, thal there is already consensus on fundamental findings. The rhetorical arl of the lit-review seclion is at once Lo compose the body (of findings) and Lo propose the novelly of one's own research, hence allowing the body Lo 1

Agger grow, evolve, adapL Only by accomplishing this sleighl of hand, can the busy article author seek tenure and promotion, or even the first academic job.

I (Agger 1989) have wrillen about how this approach lo science necessarily narrows knowledge, hence contributing to the decline of discourse, theory, books themselves. This approach lo the positivist body of knowledge belongs Lo a larger category of what I call 'alienaled body polilics' thal stretches from the male gaze distorting women's bodies Lo consideralions aboul food and exercise. Posilivism, a theory of knowledge, is only one manifestalion of alienated body politics. These alienations begin with capitalism (when alienalion of labor first emerges as labor, and hence the body, is commodified) but predate capitalism, especially where religious traditions put a hex on the sinful body and then, with Descartes, splil il from the elevaling mind.

I seek a way of talking about (a "discourse" of) the relationship between the body and the world thal reverses (dis-alienates) the body. Inslead of bodies of knowledge, I seek knowledge of bodies, but nol simply an objectivist knowledge reduced to quantitative indicators (e.g., weighl, blood pressure). This is self-knowledge, the kind gained through a unified/unifying mind-body thal experiences its own metabolism with the world and nature. I contend thal this unified/unifying experience of the self is the organon of disalienation, of embodied freedom . It is a utopian moment at a time when utopia has been suppressed (Jacoby 2005).

This is risky because exercise and food quickly become occasions of self-absorption for yuppies who care liLLle about alienalion and who thrive wilhin capilalism.

Lilerature aboul running, spanning the firsl (1970s-1980s) running 'revolution' to the presenl 'second' revolulion segues from the edgy and even polilical (Sheehan, Henderson f2004], early Runner's World) lo the currenl conformist and com modified version of the magazine. Henderson no longer writes for the magazine, and it recently featured a celebratory spread about Sarah Palin. Body talk can easily lose sight of 'intersubjectivity,' awash in ils own expressive subjeclivity, a topic lrealed by Jacoby (1975) in his discussion of the 'politics of subjectivity.' Within a 'culture of narcissism' (Lasch 1979), bodies can seemingly be healed without a general healing (a therapeutic synonym for socialism, perhaps).

I do nol think it is thal simple, although change has lo slarl somewhere-change here referring Lo a dis-alienated body politics. Small steps: exercise (as play), grow and eat heallhy food, build like-minded communily, and eschew fasl-capilalisl fixes such as drugoriented medicine, crash diels, stiletlo heels, steroids, plastic surgery.

Withoul using metaphors thal uninlenlionally narrow, running might be an example of the playful subject-ob ject (unified mind-body) who develops knowledge of the body that is at once self-knowledge. When one is in molion (and it doesn't have to be running), one atta ins a stale of unified subjeclivily/objectivily that refuses Lo-or simply cannoldistinguish between the mind and the body. They are one. To be sure, this happens rarely for me, and I've been running for over 30 years! Much of the lime I am not in 'the zone,' which is just the moment of unification I have been talking aboul. Regularly, the body feels like a drag on me: it mighl be sore, the motion feeling like work. Wilh age, one can be fit and still experience the body this way. But one runs for momenls of unity, of 'flow, ' that afford clarity about the unified 'self.' This is perhaps what ulopia feels like. .

This is the kind of thing George Sheehan was talking abou t in his running books, including (1978) Running & Being. Sheehan was lampooned for investing too much 2

Bodies of Knowledge ~hilosophic~lly in running. But a careful reading reveals that he was talking about these 1ss~~s of mmd-body unity as a reversal of an alienated body politics. His progressive politics were often overlooked by yuppie runners who pretend th al exercise is value-free a version of bodies in motion that draws heavily from positivist assumptions about how the self is outside the world and can be known it-self only from the outside. ~elf-knowled?e is deriv.ed from bodies in motion. Gunnar Borg (1998) demonstrates that ratings of perceived exertion correlate strongly with actual exertion. If it feels difficult it is difficult, ascending that hill or sprinting in the last half-mile of a race. ' Exercise is related to food as motion is to fuel. Carbohydrates and even fat produce energy-sugar converted into glycogen with the aid of inhaled oxygen. Aerobic exercise has enoug~ oxygen to effect this conversion, and anaerobic exercise Jacks adequate oxygen.

One might observe that both are necessary for self-knowledge.

Michae.l Pollan (200.8) a.rgues, against 'nulrilionism,' that food cannot be known only from the .out:>1de, or working m from outside to inside by tallying the nutrients, vitamins and calone~ m food. So-called primitive cultures knew what was good for them, which was usually equivalent to what they could find in their native environments. These were diets hea'-! on complex carbs, plants, lean meal or no meal Most of these people, such as the ~ex1ca~ Tarahuma:a, walked and ran long distances for their food, enhancing their fitness, as we ter~.1L, by chasing their food ("persistence hunting"). In these cultures, mind and ~o?y go und1V1ded; they are pre-Cartesian cultures, which may be another way of descn~mg them as pre-modern. In (Agger 2004) Speeding Up Fast Capitalism, I blend the non-alienated ~om.ents .of "primitive" premodern cultures (also see Diamond 1974) with post-mod~rn d1sahenation that I term the slowmodern-an Aufhebu ng (negationpreservation-transcendence) of our fast capitalism.

Theses 1. Capitalism makes us sick and then attempts lo heal us with comm odified fixes such as ~ei?ht-loss diets, supplements, gymnasia memberships, even plastic surgery.

Cap1.tahsm harms us and then tries lo heal us because alienation affects bodies.

2. Earher, bodies under Fordism and of course before Fordism labored under cruel conditions.

3. Now, bodies under posl-Fordism don't labor enough but are squeezed into cubicles and school desks.

4. Die~ ~ounded in p:ocessed food and high-fructose com syrup (Fordism applied in a~1busmess). contnbu~. lo coronary artery disease, high blood pressure, weight gam, atrophying of the JOmts and connective tissues.

5. Positivism, which is an instance of an overall alienated body politics, pretends that we can study the body objectively, from the outside, using various health indicators measured at the annual physical exam. These indicators, such as Body Mass Index (BMI), are almost always quantitative.

6. The BMI ignores percentage of body fat and hence discriminates against athletes thus rewarding people who are sedentary. ' 7. Wha~. Pollan calls 'nulritionism' examines food in terms of its chemical and nutritional constituents and then 'enriches' food that has already been processed.

3

Agger There is liLUe evidence that processed food, once enriched, is equivalent in healthfulness Lo the original unprocessed food .

8. The mainstream indicators of health revolve around weight, which is grounded in versions of acceptable femininity and masculinity. There is little evidence (see Oliver's l2006] Fat Politics) lhal obesity can kill, but rather obesity is one of the side-effects of lhe fat-laden standard American diet, eaten by largely sedentary people. Other more dangerous side effects include high cholesterol and hypertension.

9. Weight is a convenient positivist obsession because il is a single number, because the diet industry is lucrative, and because it rewards women for starving themselves, only adding lo their low self-esteem.

10. A nation that exercises necessarily reduces Lime spent in paid labor and in productive consumption.

11. To be healthy one must be fit (Emerson's 'good animal'), but fit people can be unhealthy if they become alienated from their bodies and food.

Science is not a body (of findings) but an embodiment, a mode of being in the world.

Blending Freud, Marx and Heidegger, Marcuse (1969) speculated about a "new" science and technology that would emerge from the play impulse. This dis-alienated version of science suggests science as play and praxis, like painting a picture or going for a run. J\ Cartesian version of science splits off science from the world ('body of knowledge') where science is already in the world and cannot escape the gravitational pull of time, place, body.

First Einstein and then Derrida jellison Newton's physics, which pretended lo stand outside of history, the world, lhe body, especially using lhe distancing technologies of mathematics. This was positivism's only apparent escape from Lhe prison house of language, and il fails because science is itself rhetoric- a way of making an argument, even, no especially, where il is secret writing (the author disguised under the heavy layers of 'objectivity').

It is no wonder lhal we probe bodies in reducing 'health' to various indicators such as BMI and cholesterol count, just as lhe literature review describing bodies of knowledge flows into the quantitative segment of social-science journal articles. In these ways, bodies are alienated, of lhe scientist and the citizen who play, respectively, with ideas and bodies.

Bodies, reduced lo inert lifelessness, cannot be bypassed by Cartesians.

Embodiment is not Lo be shunned but embraced, even as bodies age and slow. Bodies (of science and in motion) make themselves available Lo be known, and improved, through a deep self-knowledge that does not rely on the distancing techniques of melhod lo keep perspective, passion and politics al bay. To note that language is a prison in which meaning is incarcerated does not condemn language but requires Lhal Lruth- lrulhs- are possible within writing, but not of the kind that pretends merely lo describeEven description advocates, the more it appears not to take sides. By the same token, we cannot summarize health in body indicators. Instead, we must eat and run like the Tarahumara-swift and endu ring ulopians.

McDougall's (2009) Born to Run chronicles the running lives of the Tarahuma who, in his telling, meet and compete wilh leading American ullramarathon runners. ll is clear from his account lhal the Tarahumara run as a form of play now that they don't stalk their prey. But his tale reveals that ultrarunners (i.e., in races longer than the 26.2 mile 4

Bodies of Knowledge marathon) are our utopians: They inhabit a cooperative community in which runners help each other and they run to express themselves and explore their limits.

Turning toward the body might be seen as a departure from politics. fndeed, for many of us who grew up during the sixties, this is precisely whal happened as we experienced the righl-wing retrenchment of Nixon, Hoover, Reagan and lhe Bushes.

Not only did f leave the U.S. f decamped the sixties, along wilh many olher fool soldiers of the New LefL f retreated from politics Lo 'lheory' - an academic life- and running, along with other personal pursuits, including love and eventually family. Was I running away? Or toward? f theorized running as a non-Cartesian merger of mind and body, a connection to mother earth. I was looking for America. My Lexts were Robert Pirsig's (1974) Zen and Lhe Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. a book everyone read. And a less well-known classic called Meditations from the Breakdown Lane. James Shapiro's (1982) chronicle of his solo run across the country. A totally apolilical book wrilten by an ex-radical was really very political: like me, Shapiro was looking for 'home' within, an existentialist reaction to the end of the movement Shapiro's final words: "The bear went over lhe mountain to see whal he could see. And whal did he learn? That everywhere there is sky, everywhere there is ground. At every moment, everywhere, we are home."

Feminism developed ils personal politics by addressing home, family, body, sexuality. I developed mine Lhrough exercise. Mark Wetmore, the University of Colorado track and distance coach, borrowing from Tom Wolfe, Lalks of an Edge City of extreme physical exertion-running not into oblivion bul into meaning. Few young people seek Edge City these days, whether in running or working. They are not Lo blame; Edge Cityanother name for utopia- has been malled over. We of lhe sixlies slill search for community, albeit in ways and places uncharted during lhose original limes.

Ben Agger is Professor of Sociology and Humanities al Universil)' of Texas al Arlington, where he also directs lhe Center for Theory. He works in lhe areas of crilical lheory and culluralfmedia studies. Among his recenl books are 'Fasl Families, Virtual Children' (wilh Beth Anne Shelton) and 'The Sixties at 40.' He is working on 'Tweeting toward Utopia,' a book about how and whal kids write. He edits lhe journal 'Fasl Capitalism,' which can be found at www.fastcapitalism.com and he recenlly agreed Lo edil a book series wilh Routledge on 21st-century social problems.

5

Agger

References Agger, Ben. 1989. Reading Science. Dix Hills, NY: Falmer. .. .

-------.2004. Speeding Up Fast Capitalism: Cultures, Jobs, Families, Schools, Bodies.

Boulder: Paradigm. .

Borg, Gunnar. 1998. Borg's Perceived Exertion and Pain Scales. Champaign, IL: Human Kinelics.

Diamond, Stanley. 1974. In Search of the Primitive: A Critique of Civilization. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

Henderson, Joe. 2004. Run Righl Now. New York: Barnes and Noble Library.

Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. 1972. Dialectic of Enlightenment New York Herder and Herder. . .

Jacoby, Russell. 1975. Social Amnesia. Boston: Beacon..

---. 2005. Perfect Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age. New York.

Columbia University Press.

Kuhn, Thomas. 1964. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lasch, Chrislopher. 1979. The Culture of Narcissism. New York: Norton.

Marcuse, HerberL 1969. An Essay on Liberation. Boston: Beacon.

McDougall, Chrislopher. 2009. Born Lo Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superalhletes, and the Greatest Race lhe World has Never Seen. New York: Knopf.

Oliver, J. Eric. 2006 Fal Politics. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pirsig. Roberl M. 1974. Zen and lhe Art of Molorcycle Maintenance. New York: Morrow.

Pollan, Michael. 2008. In Defense of Food. New York: Penguin. . .

Shapiro, James. 1982. Meditations from Lhe Breakdown Lane: Running Across America.

New York: Random House.

Sheehan, George. 1978. Running & Being. New York: Simon & Schuster.

6

Gretchen E. Henderson

Consumed with (and by) Collecting: Museology as Narrative Strategy Exhibit

A: Novel Museumed Novels

Museumlng,

The German word musea/ ("museumlike") describes "objects lo which the observer no longer has a vital relalionship and which are in lhe process of dying," writes Theodor Adorno in his ''Valery Proust Museum" (17 5). Localing the "mortality of artifacts" in "family sepulchers of works of arl" (i.e., museums as mausoleums), Adorno juxtaposes two writers' views of lhe museum Lo consider how an artwork's crealion "contains wilhin itself lhe impulse of its own destruclion" (178). Organized as a series of "Exhibits," lhis essay finds a similar affinity, since its creation is consumed with (and eventually by) an inclination toward destruclion.

Adorno's etymologic emphasis has remained timely afler a half-cenlury, parlicularly Loday, when museology is in constant flux - straddling disciplines, de bales aboul curatorial and conservation issues, and conflicts aboul provenance and lhe reslitution of acquisilions- lo lhe poinl lhal museums can become tangled in "a politically orchesl1aled game of musical chairs" (Price 103).1 As objects are shuffled among arl, anlhropology, and archeology collections, sometimes across national borders, some advocates favor a universal or encyclopedic museum-model to connecl viewers wilh a "cosmopolitan culture"; others believe that modern

7

Henderson nations sharing geography wilh pasl civilizalions should manage their extant artifacts.2 Given the global scope of these sociocultural debates, museology can help to illuminate literary representations lhat become entangled in comparable conflicts.

In recent decades, museums and literature have come together in theoretical realms. W.J.T. Milchell, Nicholas Minoeff, and olher scholars have framed such inlerseclions in lhe context of Visual Culture. Artistically-driven initiatives arise in literary subgenres, yielding colleclions like Barbara K. Fischer's anlhology, Museum Mediali~ns: Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary Poetry, and "Meditations" that punctuat~ Bettina Messias Carbonell's Museum Studies: An Anthology of Conlexts. 3 Museums and literature also meet in the event of authorial retrospectives that utilize archival materials (for instance, exhibitions of drafts and ephemera relating Lo manuscript production, lilerary schools, and the like). With regard to "thing theory" and "object lessons," Bill Brown has drawn upon Michel Foucault's The Order of Things, jean Baudrillard's The System of Objects, and other scholarship to suggest how schemes of taxonomy have privileged order to the extent that objects themselves seem to disappear from view (Brown 90, 146). Said anolher way: an inanimate object's worlh becomes animated by its potential loss. As the object becomes possessed and repossessed, it st1addles varied cultural notions of "object" and "subject" (not to mention "museum") and defies the "dying" quality that Adorno describes.

Adorno himself concludes: "The natural-history collections of Lhe spirit have actually transformed works of art into the hieroglyphics of history and brought them a new content while the old one shrivelled up" (185). The inherent narralives in such movements from "old" to "new" have led cultural theorists to follow an increasingly "textual approach" in museology, "reading the objecl of analysis like a text for its narrative structures and stralegies." 4 • • Against this reanimating backdrop, museology itself seems lo fu ncl1on as a narrative strategy and prompts me to offer a term- "museumed novel"- as. a ~ode of li~e~ry analysis. The modern institution of lhe museum roots back Lo Hellenic times ( a building connected wilh or dedicated Lo the Muses that inspired lhem"), but lhe term museolo9y did not come into use until lhe nineteenth century, around the same time as museuming and the verb form of museum.s Museumized and museumed: lhe suffix -ed places lhe word syntaclically in the pasl, while also making lhe familiar noun transgress to an unfamiliar verb or adjective. Colloquially rare, lhe word shares similarity wilh modern lheorelical coinages, like the fraught ohettoized. Beyond examples cited in the Oxford English Dictionary, Gayalri Chakrovorty Spivak has used lhe archaic const1uclion in her foundalional essay on the subaltern : "It goes without saying that museumized or curricularized access lo elhnic origin- anolher battle lhal must be fought- is nol identical with preserving subalternity" (2207, italics mine). Similarly, Sherman Alexie adopts museumed in his poem, "On lhe Amtrak from Boston lo New York City": 11

... I have learned little more about American history during my few days back East lhan what I expected and far less of what we should all know of the tribal stories whose architecture is 15,000 years older lhan lhe corners of lhe house that sits museumed on lhe hill ... (251, italics mine) 8

Consumed with (and by) Collecting

For both Spivak and Alexie, a "museum" is not an idolized repository of artworks inspired by the muses, but is laden with cultural baggage; an institution Lhal paradoxically stifles cultures whose objects it purports to preserve. /\s an etymologic "mausoleum," the word's overtone conveys its "mortality," as Adorno suggests, bul also encapsulates colonial and imperial enterprises whose consequences continue to be fell. Indeed, museum's syntactic transgression lo museumed further disturbs Lhe conlexl in which il is found. A novel that is "museumed," then, reanimates its complicated history, implicating itself in sociocultural consequences, even crimes.

This critical-even criminal-attention to "museumed novels" leads lo lhe heart of my argument, since I will be "museuming" Lhrough four twentieth -century American novels: Djuna Barnes' Nightwood (1936), Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952), Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover (1992), and Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods (1994). I am interested in how these novels, and novels generally, can straddle museological grounds as a kind of narrative strategy, utilizing collected and managed objects lo make readers complicit in cultural crimes. Roger Silverstone has referred to "the particularities of lhe museum as medium: with its role as story-teller, as myth maker, as imitator of reality,'' and Susan Pearce has suggested that "more closely and with more detail than the olher genres," novels "contain imaginary or virtual objects lo which we give the same status as physical things, and which interact with the characters to create Lhe mesh of actio n, and serve as the organizing poetic principle of the narrative" (Silverstone 143; "The Strange Story of the Thing" 37).6 To put these two mediums- museum and novel - in conversation with each other, I have chosen four novels Lhal share a general heritage (twentieth-century American) historically following both Lhe formalization of museology and Lhe emergence of the modern novel: "not just an entertaining description of life, bul so melhing Lha l co uld 'compete with life' and improve upon it," creating a "dialectical relationship, a fundamen ta l back-and-forth, in which Lhe realities of modernity make the novel [and the museum, I would add] more artful, and Lhen the artful techniques developed give back new realities" (Matz 16, 20).7 Put more simply, these novels (varying in lengths, slruclures, points of view, and degrees of self-consciousness, which move toward a "postmodernist deprivileging of any one discourse") have led me to think about museology's inherent complexities and the propensity lo collect, specifically in rel ati on Lo "crime"-as defined by Nightwood's infamous Dr. Matthew O'Connor: "Lhe door lo an accumulation, a way lo lay hands on lhe shudder of a past thalis still vibrating" (qld. in Carbonell 8; Barnes 119).e By "museuming" through them, I mean lo implicate myself in a related act via rhetoric Lhal holds meaning through collecting, preserving, and exhibiting words. Making myself complicit in this weighty act by curating "Exhibits" with quotations from novels and scholarship, I am going so far as lo liken my writing of this essay Lo crime, Lo explore a few ideas about what criteria might constitute a "museumed novel."

Exhibit E: Witnessing "Their" Possession: Museuming in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood (1936) As a quintessentially modern novel, Nightwood provides an apropos starling point for museuming in this essay, given the quotation lhal marks my thesis ("lo lay hands on the shudder of a past that is still vibrating") and the text's abundance of museums. Told in eight 9

Henderson chapters, beginning with a lime catapult from 1880 to 1910, then into Lhe 1920s (Lhe h~art of the novel), Nightwood traverses Vienna, Paris, Berlin, and the New York countryside, following the ever-wandering Robin Vole ("the infected carrier of the past") through her failed relationships wilh her hu sband, Felix Volkbein, and her lovers, Nora Fl?od and jenny Pelherbridge (37). The ever-wandering Robin abandons her husband and ch1l~, Lhen Nora, in favor of jenny, who is caught between "two tortures- the past tha~ she cant share, and the present that she can't copy," before sliding toward her almost animal darkness (124).

In the shadows of Old Europe and America between the wars, an array of thwarted relationships entwine wilh myths, emphasizing tensions between primitive and civilized, night and day, old and new, memory and forgetting, life a~d de~~; . .. .

Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine have focused on Lhe poetics ~f exh.~b1t1on display ~nd the idea of "voice," akin to narralologisl Gerard Genette, who considers the way narratmg itself is implicated in the narrative" (qld. in Carbonell 5). In Nightwood, through tangled foreshadowing and remembrance, a reader is made complicit in the charact~rs' crime_s of Lhe heart, one might say, suggested by Dr. Matthew O'Connor (an Insh-Amenca.n expatriate, Lransveslile, unlicensed gynecologist, alcoholic) when he tells Nora that shes "made [Robin] a legend" (125). References Lo legends and history, memories and dreams convolute Nightwood's chronology, not lo mention the psyches of charac~ers who cannot move beyond their emotional wound s. Museums appear frequently, w1Lh reference_ lo characters' abodes and actual museums, a longside "living statues," artworks, rehcs, circuses, Lhealers, cathedrals, exhibitions, and self-displays (13). Robin is compared lo a "figurehead in a museum," Felix (wilh his faux pedigree) is "the 'collector' of his own past/' and living spaces are described as "museum[s] of their encounler[s]" (38, 10, 5, 56). _J~ne Marcus and other scholars have linked the "museum of their encounter" lo the Bakhtiman carnival as an un-American space that Nora desires lo create for herself and Robin, filled with he~erosexual objects imposed on a lesbian relationship. By extension, De~ora_h TylerBennell has considered Lhe "museum" as "Nora's allempl lo create a space which is other: an eclectic mixture of the religious and secular, which is intensely personal'' (49). Like complicities Lhal complicate Wise Blood, The Volcano Lover, and Jn the Lake of the ~oods, as 1 will discuss, Ni9htwood inhabits an interstitial space between possession and di spossession. . . /\ltempling to repossess their losses, real and 1magmed, the characters seem to consume one another's pasts and futures. One of Nora's dreams involves her grandmother's room in America (replete with the portrait of a relative who died in the Civil war), even though the envisioned room does nol resemble the actual room Lhal had been.

The dream of the room is "saturated wilh the lost presence of her grandmother, who seemed in the continual process ofleaving il" (63). Similarly, ~ora's hea~t i_s sa.tur~ted ~ith Lhe losl presence of Robin, a loss that is characterized almost hke an exh1b1l w1lh its pnzed relic: "In Nora's heart lay the fossil of Robin" (56). Possession lies at the heart ~f Nightwood- and al the heart of museological debates-all Lhe way lo Lhe novel s cu lmination in "The Possessed." Dr. O'Connor has already foreshadowed that "one dog will find [Robin and Noraj both'' (106). By the lime he a~nounces "Now ..:the end" (concluding the penultimate chapter), Nightwood undergoes a kind of repossession (166). The story almost consumes itself- like Horkheimer and Adorn o's analysis of Enlightenment., the novel that has arisen from m~th returns Lo Lhat realm (27).9 In this fina l chapter, both notions of "possessed" come Logelher: owned and inhabited by a spirit- explicitly, if enigmatically, so: 10

Consumed with (and by) Collecting when Robin heads to Nora's chapel, Jenny accuses her of "a sensuous communion with unclean spirits" (168). A reader becomes complicit in this "sensuous communion" by witnessing a kind of possession beyond the grave, pure as instinct, embodied in lhe women's barking with Nora's dog. "Now" able to be chronologically and spatially placed lo a degree, "the end" branches outside time, just as Nora is composed of "the tree coming forward in her, an undocumented record of time" (50) . Having germinated in the prison of history, Ni9htwood can only branch inlo the realm of myth. And myth is of course where we find the Muses: the root of the word "museum."

Exhibit M: Destabilizing "MVSEVM" in Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1952) Derived from shrines to the Muses, museums enjoy a long history evolving in Western tradition from Greco-Roman temples, through Christian churches and monasteries, into medieval and Renaissance apothecaries, anatomy theaters, and curiosity cabinets (Wundercammern and Kunstcammern), palaces inlo more modern museums.10 The rise of secularism and science in the Enlightenment covered various trends of collecting. "Marvels" became emblems of status and intellect, increasingly taxonomic: correlated with botanical and zoological gardens, world fairs and "civilizing" displays, carnivals and other forms of human entertainmenL Beyond lhe nineteenth -century's formalization of museology as a discipline, recent developments include "New Museology," which reexamines the roles of museums in society.11 All of this is lo say (via an admittedly compressed history) : museums, as inanimate spaces lhal house inanimate objects, have evolved by constant reanimation, like items contextualized and reconlextualized within their domains.

The very process of reanimation complicates the instilulions that purport lo represent things, the things themselves, and those people who visit them - a theme lhal enlivens Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. More novella than novel in length, Wise Blood unfolds in fourteen chapters lhal chronicle the "conflicting wills" of Hazel Moles, after his return to the American South (Tennessee) in the middle of the lwenlielh century. After being released from the army and finding his fami ly home abandoned, he becomes a preacher of the Church Without Christ, pursuing sin as he renounces its existence, attracting a number of duplicitous characters (including Asa Hawks, a preacher who pretends to be blind; Sabbath Lily Hawks, Asa's seductress daughter who aids his schemes; Enoch Emory, a foolhardy teenager who works in a zoo and, among other activities, s teals a mummy and gorilla suit; and Mrs. Flood, Haze's greedy landlady who plans lo marry him for his pension). As O'Connor follows Haze through interactions with these characters, until his death, Wise Blood ilJuminales some mystery between truth and fact, like Gaston Bachelard describes, where "the duality of subject and object is iridescent, shimmering, unceasingly active in ils inversions" (xv).

Inverting subject and object, truth and fact, and other dualities, Wise Blood manipulates museums, even etymologically: MVSEVM.12 MVSEVM appears in the context of public signs (FROSTY B01TLE, CITY FOREST PARK, MEN'S TOILET. WHITE.) capitalized lo make such signs appear strange. Because Enoch does not know wha l MVSEVM mean s, readers are able to see the letters through his eyes, not as dead bul a live. The letters vibrate with mystery. Daniel F. Lilllefield, Jr. has compared the museum lo other civic institutions in the story (the zoo, pool, park, movie theater), "all of which represent the 11

Henderson institutions in the story (the zoo, pool, park, movie theater),. "a~! of .which represent th e leisure afforded by the prosperous society," a material prosperity basic to .[the characters] distorted sense of spiritual purpose" (128, 130). For Enoch, the MV~EVM m .the par~ takes on a kind of religious presence ("the stTange word made h~m sh.iver' ), s~. he is descnbed as "exalted" like a "visionary'' as he follows the impulses of his wise blood and undertakes a bizarre religious ritual (Three Novels SO, 51, 70, 40). The mummy ~at he steals becon:es the "new Jesus," placed in a "tabernacle-like" cabinet that otherwise holds the slop-Jar, before eventually being broken by Haze (89, 67). .

Georges Bataille has written that: "A museum is like a lung of a great city; each Sunday the crowd flows like blood into the museum and emerges purified and fresh" (25).

Loaded with corporeality, Bataille's reference lo "Sunday" evokes the analogy of .museum as church- a conflation that occurs in O'Connor's novel, more as corrupting th~n purifying.1 3 By complicating MVSEVM and ils. ca~tive. obje~ls (na.mely the mummy), Wise Blood succeeds as a "museumed novel," imphcating itself m soc1ocul ~ral ~onsequen:es, even crimes. Enoch's "wise blood'' urges him to show the mummy lo a spec1~l person, lo the point that if he does not, he feels like he will "steal a car or rob a bank or 1ump out of a dark alley onto a woman" (41). Haze runs over Solace Layfield~ his "twin," am~ng other violent acts toward others and himself. With regard lo collecting, another ~nme-scene appears outside of the present action: the carnival where Haze remembers gom.g as a boy with his father, s neaking inside the "SINsational" Lent with the naked ~oman 1.~ the ?ox (31). Afterwards, he fill s his s hoes with pebbl~~ and. stones and walks m ~em lo satisfy Him," as if collecting penances, looking for a d1V1ne sign that he never rece1~es (33). A~er Haze blinds himself with quicklime as an adult, he repeals thal action with his s hoe~, lelhng his landlady Mrs. Flood that he doesn't have lime lo preach, only}o walk a~ound m .shoe~ with pebbles and glass, "lo pay." When she asks, "Pay for what? he says, 'You can l see 1

11

(115). As varied Ienses (eyes and glasses, physi ca I and m ela Physical blind n.esses) engage O'Connor's notion of the grotesque, "the characters have an inn er coherence, 1f no~ alway~ a coherence lo their social framework Their fictional qualities lean away from typical social pallems, toward myslery and the unexpected" (Myste?' and Man~ers ~0). The theme of (not) "seeing" relates lo Bakhtin's theory of the car~1valesque, nfe with spectacles and social inversions (in venues like lhe childhood carnival, the z?o, ~he ~VSEVM), n~t to neglect the larger racial backdrop of the American South.14 Like m N19htw~o~, ob1~cts make the Lexl museum-like: from Haze's preacher's and panama ha ls, to Enoch s mhenled purse pouch, the stolen mummy and gori ll a suiL Building upon O'Connor~. ow~ .theory of the grotesque, Marshall Bruce Gentry has co nsidered the consequences ~f lnd1v1~ual and Communal Grolesquerie": "Al one extreme, the grotesque character is displaced, 1s~lated, necessarily a n individual in a hoslile society. Al the other extreme: the gr~tesquene ~f ~ character is a sign of that character's participation in the re~emption of hi s com.mumty (487). Such redemption is arguable by the end of Wise Blood, 1f taken on the novels terms.

Afler Haze's death, Mrs. Flood gazes a long time into his hollow eye sockets, then sh~ts her eyes and sees a pin point of light: "as if she had finally got lo th e beginning of something she couldn't begin" (Three Novels 120). As Wise Blood concludes, these words suggest a potential (if not actualized) beginning, not only for. Mrs. Flood but also for the cen tral character, who becomes a pinpoint of light, no longer ma Haze.

1

12

Consumed with (and by) Collecting

Exhibit S: Witnessing "You": Museuming in Susan Sontag's The Volcano Lover (1992) In "Museum/Studies and the 'Eccentric Space' of an Anthology," Bettina Messias Carbonell describes how "a number of museum exhibilions now appear inclined lo emulate the 'dialogic imagination' of the novel, finding ways lo criticize the museum itself and incorporate parody and travesty of its own and other canonical genres .... establishing a 'zone of contact with the present in all its openendedness'" (8). 15 Beyond Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of heteroglossia ("many-voicedness"), Linda Hulcheon has described how "historiographic metafiction" works at once within and against realist historical narratives, in contrast to what Susan Stewart calls "distressed genres" that replicate antique forms and lack irony.16 Considering these varied approaches, curators and novelists alike can engage alternative and even competing narratives in their mediums, where one strategy may subvert another-as is the case with Susan Sontag's The Volcano lover: A Romance.

Subverting both Romance and Reason while working within their trappings, The Volcano lover entwines multiple narrative strategies. 17 The novel unfolds in four parts: the first two parts (each with seven chapters) follow the "volcano-mad" Sir William Hamilton (British ambassador to the Neapolitan court, otherwise called "the Cavalier," defined by his obsessive collecting), before a pithy third part inhabits his perspective as he dies (not marked as a chapter, rather dated "6 April 1803"), culminating in the fourth and final part: four chapters all told by women who are his contemporaries. In the process of shining narrative perspectives, readers find themselves and Sontag increasingly complicit in the crimes of the Cavalier and his companions.

Traversing centuries (1992 to 1772 to 1944), the Prologue establishes a slippery quality to the point-of-view that persists through the lengthy first two parts of the book, slowly closing the gap between "he," "she, "you," and "I." Self-references slip in and out of more omniscient narration that shifts lenses, lacks dialogue with quotation marks, and streams description into characters' consciousnesses, into the author's point of view, into a reader's. The chameleon-like narrator defines the Cavalier in relation lo his era, correlating the general propensity to collect with crime: from intimate indiscretions lo national revolutions. Claiming that "Every collector is potentially (if not actually) a thief," the narrator compares a "huge museum" to "booty," and calls Napoleon an "art predator" (73, 201, 214). The Cavalier's second wife, the lowbrow but beautiful Emma Harl (who has an infamous affair with Lord Nelson), is called his "most valuable possession" after the Portland vase, which loses its value after being replicated by Wedgwood (138). The novel includes living statues alongside more traditional ones, variations on Pygmalion and related tales. Sontag's covert commentary incorporates contemporary allusions that would be impossible in a work of historical fiction set in the late eighteenth century: "rain-inSpain lessons," "ruins" in "Berlin today," the "Disneyesque fate of Ludwig ll's Neuschwanstein," and the artificial volcano in front of a Las Vegas hotel (133, 162, 344, 327). Erupting the notion of "Romance," she makes herself (and us) complicit in varied activities: "what happens once can happen again ... you may have lo wail a long lime. We come back We come back" (8).

Given this narrative set-up, the concluding chapters of the book are particularly important in making readers complicit in these characters' crimes. After the brief Part Ill passes in the dying Cavalier's viewpoint, Part IV remains. The four chapters told in first person by women include: Catherine (his first wife), then Mary Cadogan (Emma's mother

13

Henderson who apparently has been apart from her daughter only a few weeks since her si~en~ birthday yet there's barely reference to her until this chapter), Emma (who at one pomt is compar~d to Lady MacBeth), and finally the as-of-yet-unseen Eleanora Fon~eca Pi~entaJ (a prisoner of the revolution who has the final say: "Damn the~ ~ll ). "!his layering ~f female- as opposed to feminist, since only one could be called f emm1st- I s makes drastic departures from the majority of text, as a dominating narrative of this era is repossessed by widely-varying women narrators, including Sontag. Eleanora acknowledges Sontag near the end : "Sometimes I had to forget that I was a woman lo accomplish the best of which I was capable. Or I would lie Lo myself about how complicated it is Lo ?ea woman. Thus do all women, including the author of this book" (419). Given th.e narrative str~tegy,..~e (ec~o: 'We come back") become complicit and capable of these crimes of collecting- mcludmg the author of this book," who takes liberties with many historical events and personages (Lord Nelson, Goethe, the Marquis de Sade, Marie Anloinelle, Joseph Banks, and so on) and compares her own list-making to the larger impulse Lo collect Notably, she does not include a bibliography and on the verso of the tiUe page vaguely acknowl~dges her debt to "many modern historical studies and biographies as well as from memo1:s .~nd l.e~:s the period.'' Jn the vein of James Joyce's "slolentelling" and Kathy Ackers plagianzmg, Sontag herself becomes the kind of collector-thief that she exposes. A~ ~ "museu~ed novel " then The Volcano Lover succeeds on these terms, leaving us comphc1l and holding the vibratin~ collection that is the object of the book. "There's a volcano in my breast," reads the novel's epigraph from Mozart's Cosi fan tulle, just as Sontag herself us.e.s the volcano to "project" the "complicity with destructiveness, of anxiety about your ab1hty to feel" (82).18

?,e

o:,

Exhibit U: feeling the Destabilized "I": Museuming in Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods (1994) "The construction of such a radical division between self and other," writes Mieke Bal (as she deconstructs narrative strategies in the American Museu~ of ~a~ral History), "works LO deny the connicl in contemporary society where cultural d1vers1ty is present, so much so that the construction of 'them' is no longer possible" (572).19 Like in The Volcano Lover, the construction of self and other lies at the heart of Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods. Structured kaleidoscopically, the novel follows john and Kathy Wade, who retreat to Minnesota's boundary waters afler his landslide loss for the race for U.S. Senate, befo~e she disappears. Compressing middle decades of the twentieth century. into ~ few days. m 1986, In the Lake of the Woods resists closure, testing psychological realism w1~l10ul ally~ng itself LO any historical genre like Lhe Romance. More traditional chapters (with ~hangmg lilies: some following the present action, others detailing john's past~ alte;,nate with.s:ven collage-like chapters of textual "Evidence" and eight chapters. entitled Hyp,?the~1~, ..all examining potential ways that Kathy went missing. Given the importance of ~xh1b1ts less like a gallery, more like a legal trial-the crime of this "museum~d no~el" anse~ from a different mode of collecting than in The Volcano Lover. The Cavalier thmks a thief who steals a famous painting must feel "deprived" al keeping his colle~tion hidden (13~). In conlTast, john Wade has grown accustomed lo keeping certain knowledge hidden, especially from himself.

A reader becomes complicit in john's ability to forget, to play the Sorcerer, to make things (his mother's scarves and copper pennies, his wife, a village) vanish. john cannot 14

Consumed with (and by) Collecting

remember the events of his final night with Kalhy and realizes only by Lhe end of Lhe day that she is missing. Ambiguous objects around the house are likened to "clues," whos uncertain meaning amplifies with fog, "swirling and changing shape" (17, 5). O'Brien use repetition, dislocations, and reassociations of objects (iron lea keWe, pholos of a boal and destroyed houseplants, unplugged phone, invenlory of magic tricks, quolations by family and friends and acquaintances and texts, Court Martial leslimony, wooden hoe) lha accumulate potentially-but not definitively-lo prove John Wade's guilL The phone firs appears casually unplugged, then is wrapped in a towel under lhe sink, then is discovered by a second party Lhat interprets its meaning as part of a crime scene. Re-presenling archival elements, O'Brien reveals information about John's father's suicide, his obsession with magic, his stalking of Kathy, and his role in lhe My Lai massacre. By recasling Lhe objects in different hypothetical scenarios and reconlextualizing them against material about John's pasl and larger cullural histories, a reader awakens lo Lhe horrific capacilies of John and the general human condition.

Just as in olher "museumed novels" (brimming wilh speclacles and self-displays), the theme of (not) seeing also marks In the lake of the Woods. When John Wade corresponds wilh Kalhy from Vietnam, he writes, "Sorcerer can see" and obsesses aboul her eyes (at one point wanting to "suck Lhem from lheir sockets .... [and] roll lhem around like lemon drops," 39, 71). As a child, John does magic tricks in fronl of a basemenl mirror, and that mirror transforms into the secret mirror in his adult head, flickering so "unilies of time and space had unraveled" (51). The ominous probability for Kathy's fate involves his pouring boiling waler from the teakettle onto her eyes, which is not lo neglect Lhe "public eye" from which the couple retreats lo Lhe woods in Lhe first place, as well as Lhe authorial "I" that emerges in footnotes: I arrived in-country a year after John Wade, in 1969, and walked exactly the

ground he walked ... lhrough Lhe villages of Thuan Yen and My Khe a nd Co Luy. I know what happened that day. I know how il happened. I know why ....The overwhelming otherness. This is not lo juslify what occurred on March 16, 1968, for in my view such juslifications are both futile and outrageous. Ralher, it's lo bear witness lo th e mystery of evil. (113, 199) To some degree, such bearing of witness- indireclly or direclly-emerges from "museumed novels," which reanimate pasts lhal seem static or dead, but are nol: "the story of the changing but still vital complicity" (Bal 588). In In the lake of the Woods, John feels within the empty cabin "a new sliffness lo the place, like a museum, everything frozen and hollow" (88). The novel's foolnoles and quotations make il mor e "museumed," lending a caption-like quality, as they comment on varying portraits of hus band and wife. /\s John and readers museum within this museum, so does O'Brien, who makes himself co mplicit in footnotes. This doubling of John's character, by extension lo O'Brien and olhers, destabilizes the reader's posilion outside of the narralive in lim e an d space. The narrative at times attests to the sense "as if it were still happening" (7). By likening the selting to a museum and filling his lexl wilh animated inanimate objects, O'Brien gives objects and even words (like "Kill Jesus!") lolemic power. Mirrors reflect and refract John outside his own life, within national history and politics (from Vietnam lo Custer's Last Stand, where 15

y e s d y al t d g n e l f

, e l d , f s

Henderson "John" was a name used for Native Americ~ns, ~e novel Lelis u~) and psychology (specifically trauma theory), implicating his actions with our own. Ultimately, we a~e left with what is evident bul absenl, with a blurred boundary between trulh and facl, having lo judge for (and of) ourselves.

Exhibit Z: Museumed Novels, Novel Museuming .

A ubiquilous phrase marks many maps- You ARE llERE-gu1de~osts through labyrinths like lhe Metropolitan Museum of /\rt, the Museum of Natural H~story, and .the Louvre. Following cues of curalors, while bound by a single enl:cince and exit (at least, ma traditional gallery), "You" do not follow a single, predetermined path. Each .vecto~ed variation allows for allernale palhs, much like my essay may have proceeded in vaned ways, more than these "Exhibits" tested the polential of viewing novels thro~gh a museological lens. By increasingly alluding to "You," I have allempled lo make meaning as a visitor to a museum, like Riannon Mason has described how "the textual analogy: ... can shift. emphasis away from Lhe curalor-as-aulhor and his/her inlenlions toward lhe V1S1t~r­ as-reader and his/her responses. The visilor is therefo~e. understood to be a,, crucial parlicipanl in the process of meaning-ma~ing" (27). 20 . Inv1lmg Lhe same of 'Y?u,. I. have written an essay consumed with collecting lhat ultimately begs the question. ~f. "':'e parlicipale in like-minded acts, even al Lhe level of read ing and writing, are we comphc1l in (and fated to be consumed by) analogous cri~e.~? . . . ,, In "Museums and Historical Amnesia, Wtlltam H. Truetlner wnles Lhal most museum administrators are willing to group works under broad historical ~ellings, but more crilical insights, the kind that dig deeply inlo Lhe darker, more desln:1c~ve e~en~ of an era are still out of bounds .... nol because museums wish to deny shifting h1stoncal perspe ctives, or Lhe misdeeds they may uncover, but because Lhey wish lo keep art clear of history- lhe kind lhal would seem lo degrade it And works of art, many r~c~nt sch~l.ar~ have noled, are complicil in Lhis stralegy'' (360).2 1 The notion of an artworks comphc1ty may sound outlandish al first glance, buL Truellner acknowledges LhaL curators a.nd educators are searching for more transparent approaches "lo make "':'arks of art.come ahve as a complex mix of ideas and aeslhelic slralegies." Novels .are fictive, not trying l~ pa~s themselves off as fact, as is the case with museum narratives; h?wever, storytelling is inherently present in both mediums.22 Viewed Lhrough a museolog1c~I .f1:1mework, nov.els can help Lo illuminate Lhe "complex mix of ideas" (of creation and acq u1s1tion, ~f.possess1.on and repossession, of aeslhelic strategies) Lhal arise ~hen cu lt~ral and olh~r cn~cal ~lud1es converge and converse to complicate reduclive readings of ob1ects, alongside h1slones and myths of Lheir consumplion. , .

Djuna Barnes' Ni9htwood, Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood, Susan Sontag. s 1he Volcano Lover, and Tim O'Brien's In the Lake of the Woods succumb lo and resist the propensity to collect, possess, and exhibit In different wa~s, each of these novels acts "museumed," implicating itself directly or indirectly in soc10cullural co~seq~ences and, even, crimes. Collectively, they complicate our past and present by rea.mmating a crossseclion of narralive slralegies shaped by lileralure, museum~, and Lhe1r share~ cult~ral contexts. With lhis cross-seclion in mind, I am left. to consider what strategies m1~ht furlher develop "muse umed" sludies of narralive. Beyond the c~nlemporary museolo~1cal debates outlined al the beginning of Lhis essay, Museum Studies progr~ms have arisen belween varied disciplin es, physically and virtually, including Second Life and Museum 1

1

16

Consumed with (and by) Collecting Informatics. 23 Illustrated literary works (with photographs, films, graphics, hypertext, and/or other media) afford fruitful materials for further analysis, which is not to neglect the "museumed" potential of poetry and creative nonfiction. Fu lure studies also might explore works that identify themselves expressly as "museums" or "galleries," whether organized around "exhibits" or sustaining explicit curatorial agendas. Whatever the approach, museum-focused analyses of literature can continue to respond to Truettner's caution about "historical amnesia," lo work both within and against its seemingly retrospective tide, to acknowledge that such analyses-including this essay-arise from a like-minded impulse lo collect Here lies my complicity with activities outlined in these pages- in my museuming-like Sontag writes in The Volcano Lover: Collecting ... generales the added pleasure of scorekeeping, of enumeration.

Volume and tirelessness of conquest would lose some of its poin land savor were there not a ledger somewhere ....The list is itself a collection, a sublimated collection. One does not actually have to own the things. To know is lo have (luckily, for those without great means). IL is already a claim, a species of possession, to think about them in this form. (202) In addition to this essay, I have been writing a "museumed novel" (entitled Galerie de Difformile1 that forms itself through generic-as in genre: poetic, fictional, scholarly, illustrated-deformation, including "Exhibits," ultimately asking the reader lo metamorphose the physical object of the book Lo participate in a creative act lhal might be viewed, from one cultural stance, as an act of defamation, in contrast to what otherwise might be considered spiritual, communal, even healing (in the vein of Navajo and Tibetan sandpaintings).24 Apart from that creative project, this essay's form of collecting gestures to a number of "crimes" that "shudder ...slill vibrating," in an a llempl lo draw attention forward and back like the two-headed Janus. By looking in both directions, utilizing a scholarly rhetoric to frame "museumed novels," I have been museuming within these "Exhibits" Lo chart a kind of loss on personal and cultural levels. The implication of what is destroyed suggests that my very act of writing (lo echo Adorno's words that introduced this essay) "contains within itself the impulse of its own destruction." This realization leads me to reiterate what value is calculated through loss, lo recognize my own complicity in classifying through this narrative: which holds meaning through collecting, preserving, and exhibiting words. And in so doing, I must consider not only the genre's potential metamorphosis, but also its unfathomable loss. By loss, I do not mean falling out-of-print or erasure from a hard drive. In Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, Jonathan Lear describes "real loss" through the story of Plenty Coups, the last great chi ef of the Crow nation (32). 25 Lear describes what Plenty Coups said after the buffalo went away-"nothing happened"-and analogizes Lhe situation for a contemporary readership by offering two hypotheticals (38). In the first, you go to a restaurant and order a buffalo burger but are told that you cannot have one, since the last buffalo has been killed. In th e second, there is no cultural institution of the restaurant, and no meaning for "ordering."

Lear's example leads me lo wonder about your very act of reading this essay, beyond my writing it Both practices indicate that we give meaning lo this activity, which is only one

17

Henderson aspect of our mullilayered lives. Yel can we imagine the "real loss" o~ any or all p~actices that we currently enact? Whal if our activities did not favor collecting and keeping, ~ut centered instead around sharing or giving away? And if the taller, what form would shan~g and giving take, rhelorically?26 When Lear describes how Plenty Co~ps dreams tha~ his people can survive by "listening like the Chickadee," Rad~cal Hope a~ks 1mporta~t questi_ons about the vitality of any cultural narrative and the narrative strategies upon which our hves are built-and their vulnerability (80). I have tried lo ask something of that sort from novels and museums, whose future entwines with our own.

Gretchen E. Henderson, Ph.D. received the 2010 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer:s Prize for her manuscript, Galerie de Difformile, from &NOW Books. Fictional a~d po~tic "Exhibits" from this forthcoming book can be found at <http:/ ( d1fforn:1te. wordpress.com/>, including an invitation lo participate in her c?llabo~tive pro1ecL Recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she is an Affiliated Scholar m Enghsh at Kenyon College.

18

Consumed with (and by) Collecting

Notes 1

"Museology" is "the science or practice of organizing and managing museums; museum curation" (OED) . For a more detailed definition, see Bettina Messias Carbonell, ed., Museum Studies: An Anthology ofContexts (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004) 4-5.

2 For background about this debate, see Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World ofStrangers (New York: Norton, 2006), particularly Ch. 8: "Whose Culture Is IL, Anyway?" (115-135); and Mark Busse, "Museums and the Things in Them Should Be Alive," International journal ofCultural Property 15 (2008): 189-200.

3 Regarding Museum Studies, these "Meditations" conclude each of five sections (approximately 20 pages lotal of 640 pages) and consisl of Alice Fri man's poem, "Al Lhe Holocaust Museum" ("Like Dante, we too are led/ down ...," 123); Zora Neale Hurslon's editorial 'Whal While Publishers Won'l Prinl" (regarding Lhe "indifference, nol Lo say skepticism, to the internal life of educated minorilies" lhal r es ults in representations of lh e "convenienl 'typical, '" leading Hurslon lo describe "TllEAMERICAN MUSEUM OF UNNATURAL HISTORY," 216); James Fenton's poem, "The Pill-Rivers Museum, Oxfo rd " ("You have come upon the fabled lands where mylhs /Go when lhey die ...," 308); Le Corbusier's "Other Icons: The Museums" (with the cautionary nole he wishes lo be added lo all museums: '"Within will be found lhe mosl partial, lhe leasl convincing documenlalion of pasl ages; remember this and be on your guard!"' (406-7); and Barbara Kirs henblall-Gimblelt's "Secrets of their Encounter" (which analyzes the Museum for African Art's inaugural 1993 exhibit, Secrecy: African Art That Conceals and Reveals, organized in lo six seclions thal each explored a question: "How does art conceal and reveal secrel knowledge? How does art mark physical and social boundaries? How does arl express lhe secrets held by each gender? How does art identify owners of secrel knowledge? How does arl lransmil secret knowledge? Can we ever really understand anolher cullure's secrets?" 577). Regarding lhe enterprise of the anthology, Carbonell concludes lhal "as Franz Boas and olhers have laughl us, principles of organization and classification bear ongoing inspection. This mighl apply as much to anthologies as it does Lo museums, and so a second Table of Con Lents/Al Lerna live Taxonomy suggests anolher organizing design for Lhis material" (2, 10; for the "Alternative Taxonomy" related to "Museum Poetics," see xiii-xiv).

4 In "Cultural Theory and Museum Studies," Rhiannon Mason draws upon works by Mieke Bal, Roger Silverstone, Henrietta Lidchi, Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine, among others, lo speak of this "lextual approach"; see A Companion to Museum Studies, ed. Sharon Macdonald (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006) 26. Claiming lhat "museum studies is exerting, and should continue lo exert, a reciprocal influence on cullural lheory," Mason s ummarizes varied textual dimensions of museology, including approaches critiquing the "voice" of exhibits, identifying conflicting lexlual and spatial narratives, and subdividing museum analysis into interconnected components. "Another useful aspecl of lhe idea of lexluality is thal it raises the queslion of uninlentional meanings, omissions, or conlradiclions presenl within the displays .... for their internal consistencies" (26-9).

5 According to lhe OED, "museology'' came inlo use in 1885, "museuming" in 1875, and "museum" (v.) in 1838. In contrast, the noun form of "museum" appeared a few centuries earlier. Regarding lhe verb, the entry ciles one usage from a leller by Henry James: "I

19

Henderson

breakfasted, dined, Lhealre'd, museumed, walked and Lalked lhem." A more recenl example appears in Jeanelle Winlerson's Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Ene~gy (London: jonalhan Cape, 1995), in which she wrile~: "O n~e lhe novel ~as. n?vel; 1f we cannot continue to alter it, to expand its boundanes wtthout dropping 1t m~o even ~eater formlessness lhan lhe shape Lempls, then we can only museum it L1lerature 1s not a museum it is a living thing" (176, italics of museum mine). .

6 Additionally, Silverslone wriles: "The sludy of narrativity of lhe museum ~r the henta.ge display involves a study of an exhibition's capacity to define a route (matenal, ~edagogic, aeslhetic) for lhe visitor, and Lo define lhereby a particular logic of representation, a particular legitimate and plausible coherence for itself' (143-44). . . .

1 Here Malz draws upon Henry James' essay, "The arl of fiction" ~1884), ~h1ch ins1~ted that "fiction is one of lhe fine arts," developing a definition of modernism th~t 1s :;io:e Vlta~ than lhalpresenled by Ferenc Feher, who wrole in Lerms.o~arl lh~l modernism shines wtlh Lhe brilliance of bygone high cultures [being] bul an exh1b1l on display, a~d no longer a , cullurally driving force .... lhis 'museification"' (qld. in Llewellyn Negnn, "On lhe Museums Ruins: A Critical Appraisal," Theory, Culture & Society 10 (1993): 98). Sus.an ~earc~, Alexandra Bounia, and Paul Marlin have highlighted lhe lheme of collecting m fiction from an earlier period, as lhey wrile in The Collector's Voice (B.urlington, VT: Ashgate, 20~0): "For many fiction wrilers, and perhaps particularly lhe mnelee.nlh- ~nd early twent1elhcenlury novelists and shorL slory wrilers who are our concern 1n lh1s volume, .the , relationship wilh lhe material world is the mainspring of some, al least, of their charact~rs aclions. Objects, nol people, lrigger Lhe complex inleractions betw~e~ perso~s. ~~d plol, in a style appropriale lo a world increasingly focusing upon Lhe voyeunstic poss1b1hties of Lhings as consumerism develops" (xix). ,. . . . a In "Museum Education Embracing Uncertainty, Danielle Rice descnbes how postmodernism has encouraged a "new model'' for museum e~ucalors where "inlerprelalion is reciprocal" (qld. in Carbonell, Museum Studies, 8). . .

9 Horkheimer and Adorno wrile: "The Lask of cognition does nol cons1sl m mere . apprehension, classificalion, and calculation ....The more Lhe ~achi~ery of thought sub1ects existence Lo itself, Lhe more blind ils resignation in reproducing existence. He~~e enlighlenment returns Lo mylhology, which it never really .knew .how to elude.

10 Many scholars have wrillen on Lhe hislory of museums, includm? Ivan Karp ~nd Steven D. Lavine, Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum D1spl~y (Washington: Smilhsonian, 1991); Eilean Hooper-Greenhill's Museums and the Shap1~g of Knowledge (London: Roulledge, 1992); Tony Bennett's Th e Birth of th~ Mu~e~m: History, The.ory, Politics (London: RouUedge, 1995); Andrea Wilcomb s Re-11nagtntn9 th~ Museum. Beyond the Mausoleum (London: Roulledge, 2003), among other citations in this essay, to name a 1

¡ h d ¡b few. ) h u See Peter Vergo, ed., The New Museology (London: Reaktion, 1989 , w erem e escn es efTorts lo prevenl museums from becoming "living fossils" (3-4). See also Andre~ Hauenschild, Claims and realitJ! of new museology: case studies in Ca~ada, the Umted States and Mexico (Washington, D.C.: Center for Museum Studies, 199~). Given that New .

Museology tends to be more cultural and political in approach, 1t may be w~rth. echoing T.S. Eliot's Introduclion Lo Ni9htwood: "To regard lhis group of people as a hornd sideshow of freaks is ... to miss the point" (xvi).

20

Consumed with (and by) Collecting

12

Wise Blood frequently negotiates "truth" versus "facL" For Hazel Moles, who preaches th Church Without Christ, there's "only one truth-that Jesus was a liar," and that behind all truths, "there's no truth" (Three Novels 62-3, 84). In contrast, the preacher who pretends lo be blind, Asa Hawks, says: "Jesus is a fact'' (26). O'Connor writes elsewhere: "Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his not being able lo [get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree lo tree in the back of his mind] . Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able lo do? I think usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, bu l many wills conflicting in one man." Qtd. in Donald E. Hardy, Narratino Knowled9e in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction (Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 2002) 85.

13 In Museum Studies, Bettina Messias Carbonell has described the changing connotations o the museum, not to mention the study of museums, which are "now less reverential ('religious'), less confined lo a single domain of inquiry ('domestic' professional and/or academic spheres), more heterogeneous and dialogic, engendering work in a variety of fields from a variety of subject positions, becoming 'a major place of convocation' for cultural and political debate" (1).

14 See M.M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene lswolsky (Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1968).

5

Referring to Bakhtin, Carbonell further correlates the museum with the novel, identifying the rise of both mediums in the eighteenth century.

1 6 See M.M. Bakhtin, "From The Dialo9ic lma9ination: Four Essays" and Linda Hutcheon, "Historiographic Metafiction," Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach, ed. Michael McKean (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2000) 321-353, 830-850; Susan Stewart, "Noles on Distressed Genres," Crimes of Writin9: Problems in the Containment of Representations (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991) 66-101.

17 Sontag's practice of pastiche is detailed by Julie C. Hayes in "Fictions of Enlightenment: Sontag, Suskind, Norfolk, Kur.lweil," Bucknell Review 41 :2 (1998): 28-29.

18 The epigraph's translation here comes from the librello of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte, trans.

Burton D. Fisher (Miami, FL: Opera Journeys, 2003) 50, italics mine.

19 Near the end of "Telling, Showing, Showing Off," Bal writes: "The repressed story is the story of the representational practice exercised in this museum, the story of the changing but still vital complicity between domination and knowledge, possession and display, stereotyping and realism, between exhibition and lhe repression of history'' (588, italics mine).

1

20

To echo Adorno: "[M]useums certainly emphatically demand something of the observer, just as every work of art does" (185).

21

One documentary project, The Rape ofEuropa (2006; based on the 1994 book by Lynn H. Nicholas and subtitled The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War), provides a glimpse of the duplicitous paths that artworks and artifacts can travel.

22

In The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988), James ClifTord has described ethnographic studies as "constructed domains of truth, serious fictions" (10), and Llewellyn Negrin concludes about art museums in "On The Museum's Ruins": "the order that is imputed to Nature or to History is not an objective reality as is assumed, but is a projection of our own subjective categories of thought on lo the world" (120).

21

Henderson

he

o

of

,

Related lo virtual museums are projects like William Gillespie's "Word Museum," programmed by Jason Rodriguez and ~avi.d Da~ al the Br?wn U~iversity ~VE: a~ "ostensibly literary digital art installal1on ma VIrlual reality e~VIronment wherein a viewer moves through "aircraft-hanger sized rooms ...co~fronting te~tual scul ptures and paintings, some static, most kinetic." See William Gillesp1e, Iowa Review Web, Word Museum" 2006, Web, 15 Dec. 2009.

24 For m~re information about Galerie de Difformite (forthcoming from Lake Forest College Press/&NOW Books), see http://difformite.wordpress.com/.

25 Lear writes: "The issue is that the Crow have lost lhe concepts with whic? ~ey would construct a narrative. This is a real loss." He goes on to explain: 'What is stri.kin? abou~ young Plenty Coups's dream-and the interpretation lhal the l~ibe gave Lo 1t-1.s that 1t was used nol merely to predict a future event; it was us~d b~ ~he tribe to strug~!e wtth the intelligibility of events that lay al the horizon of their ab1l.1ly lo und.erstand (68). .

26 For further consideration of this question, see The Lo91c of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity, ed. Alan D. Schrin (New York: Roulledge, 1997).

23

1

g

22

T.D. Richardson

Andy Warhol: Folk Artist in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Folklorists like to lhink lhat they are misunderstood, that no one appreciates how sophisticated lheir field really is. It all starts with the name. Although "folklorists" in Europe have followed lhe example of allied fields like Anthropology and Sociology and adopted an academic-sounding Greek-rooted word, Ethnology, lo describe what they do, America n Folklorists, out of stubbornness or pride, continue lo identify what they do with lhe awkward sounding AngloSaxon compound "folklore," a word coined, in a parenthetical aside, by the British writer William Thoms in 1846.

The problem with the word, however, isn't etymological: ralher it's the word's popular connotations lhal prove most vexing for academic Folklorists. Folklore is commonly understood as knowledge that is spurious (so-called "old wives' tales" ' urban legends, rumor, elc.) or culture that is "backwards" (i.e. the culture of pre-industrial people, whether from the Australian Outback or Appalachia). Folklorists, consequently, are onen seen as having an irrational devotion lo dead and dying traditions, producers of scholarship that is, through association, "spurious" and "backwards."

Unforlunalely,many Folklorists implicitly endorse this popular misunderstanding. A great deal of folklore scholarship (especially early ~o mid lwenlielh century scholarship) is devoted lo the oral, "factually23

Andy Warhol challenged" kno~ledge of "primitive" people in places like Appalachia (for loo long, the seat of American folklore); and contemporary Folklorists continue to conceive of the.ir ''missio.n" as the preserv~tion of culture endangered by "progress," the rationale behind lhe field s genesis. As a field of study, Folklore Studies developed as a modernist phenomenon, one lhal endeavored lo preserve lhe "quaintness" of cultural traditions threatened by Western notions of progress. "In the modern world," ~obe.rt Cantwell .writes in Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture, the idea of folkhfe belongs to the romantic tradition and, like that tradition, ~s a r~sponse lo, an instrument of, and a phenomenon of modernity'' (1993, xv). The idea 1s perhaps mosl clearly seen in that personification of modernity, Henry Ford: Ford sen~ed the lhreal that his production melhods and lheir corresponding impact on Amencan ways of life posed Lo "traditional" culture, a threat he attempted to defuse by s h~wcas i.ng his comm itment lo "country values" by hosting folk dancing and folk ~us1c festivals, eventually opening Greenfield Village, a large outdoor folk museum m Dearborn, Michigan in 1929(Bronner1986, 37). . In he: history ~f the field In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies, Reg ma BendLX sees lhe folkloric escape from modernity typified in lhe field's historical emphasis on "authenticity." "Folklore has long served as a vehicle in the search for the authentic," she writes, "satisfying a longing for an escape from modernity. The ideal folk community, envisioned as pure and free from civilization's evils, was a metaphor for everything that was nol modern" (1997, 7). Bendix co~tends that Folklore Studies has historically masked its anti modern impulses with this rhetoric of authenticity, a rhetoric lhal bestows on the field an unsustainable authority while draining energy from more meaningful possible contributions: The idea of 'authentic folklore,' legitimated as a disciplinary subject through ever newly formulated shades of authenticity has situated lhe field of folklore al the margins of both society and the academy. The radical, utopian, and anlimodern lure of the authentic, all at times made folklore and some of the discipline's ideas sociopolitically attractive, propelling il inlo momentary and sometimes, in hindsight, regrettable fame. The greatest strength of folklore studies is the perennial finger they hold to lhe pulse of whal human beings, through their expressive cul lure, crave or fear most deeply. (1997, 21) For Bendix, "authenticity" is a panacea for the disciplinary homelessness of Folklore She argues that Folklorists need to better acknowledge what they can do, to recognize that the strength of Folklore Studies isn't in the two-hundred-year-old quest to find, define, and preserve what is "genuine"-that mission was misguided fro~ the firsL The field 's strength, rather, comes from its ability to see what people chensh mosl, whether authentic or inauthentic, in their everyday lives.

The last fifty years of American Folklore Studies has been characterized by a move a:-ray from the discipline's earlier anlimodern impetus and an increasing emphasis on lhe progressive nature of folk culture. In order lo create for themselves a sustainable position in the academy and sociel)', Folklorists have struggled to define the field in a way that confronts modernity rather than retreating from it, an Studie~.

24

Richardson

endeavor exemplified by Dan Ben-Amos' generally accepted defini lion of folklore as "artistic communication in small groups." Ever since, critical texts like Richard Bauman's Verbal Art as Performance and Henry Glassie's Material Culture, watershed publications in the field, have emphasized, "that folklore is a contemporary, dynamic phenomenon, integral to every person's life, not a holdover from some earlier primitive stage of development" (Prahlad 1999, 573). Or as BenAmos himself put it: Folklore Studies "is not a research of the eleventh hour'' (274).

As progressive as this all sounds, the popular conception of folklore hasn't kept pace with these forward-thinking ideas, in large part because most of lhe scholarship on the ground hasn't either. Bendix argues that the changes that have occurred over lhe last half-century have only altered the focus of folklore studies, not the assumptions: "the vocabulary of authenticity that permeated disciplinary discourse escaped the paradigmatic changes." She writes, "original, genuine, natural, naive, noble and innocent, lively, sensuous, stirring- the sl1ing of adjectives could be continued. Folklorists since the eighteenth century have used them lo circumscribe lhe longed-for quality that they saw encapsulated al first in folklore texts and later in folklore performance" (1997, 15). No amount of radical -sounding discourse can veil the fact that Folklorists are still more likely lo conceptualize "folkness" as an anlimodern phenomena found in preindustrial places.

As Folklore Studies continues its struggle lo define itself in an age of mechanical reproduction, I think il proper for the discipline lo look for examples and affinities in previously unexplored places, most notably in avant-garde art, similar lo how James Clifford, looking for a model for anthropologists struggling lo unburden themselves of lhe colonial assumptions underpinning their field, found inspiration in Surrealist ArL In The Predicament of Culture, Clifford notes the close relationship between ethnography and surrealism, particularly in Paris and New York between World Wars I and II, arguing that the lwo "methodologies" complemented one another: each approached the problem of modern ily from different directions. "The ethnographic label suggests a characteristic altitude of participant observation among lhe artifacts of a defamiliarized cultural reality."

Clifford writes, "The surrealists were intensely interested in exotic worlds, among which they included a certain Paris. Their attitude, while comparable lo that of the fieldworker who strives to render the unfamiliar comprehensible, tended lo work in the reverse sense, making the familiar strange, of which ethnography and surrealism are two elements" (1988, 121). Clifford calls this confluence "Ethnographic Surrealism," arguing that il provides a model through which anthropologists can reinvigorate their field.

Just as an appreciation for surrealist art complicates positively the modes and methods of anthropological ethnography, I believe an appreciation for Andy Warhol's pop art can complicate positively the modes and methods of folkloristic ethnography. Following Andy Warhol's example, Folklorists can generate new ethnographic content through new methods of representation, and, in the process, develop a FolkJoristics that engages with modernity, one that I eaves behind the cumbersome, misguided rhetoric of authenticity.

Connecting Warhol with American folklore isn't entirely unprecedented as he was a voracious collector of American folk art. In 1977, his folk art collection was 25

Andy Warhol shown in the "Folk and Funk" exhibit al the American Museum of Folk Art, and he was for a time1 a member on that museum's board of trustees, albeit not a pas~ionate mem ber-On September 11, 1979, Warhol recalled . i~ his diary his frustration that he "stupidly'' paid thirty-five dollars to see an exh1b1t sponsored by the museum before he remembered he was a trustee and was entitled to free admittance; "I hate all that American Primitive Stuff now anyway," he said, "it looks like junk" (1989, 237). On March 31, 1986, he noted in his diary "The Folk Art Museum kicked me off the board of trustees! It was ridiculous anyway, but I mean, they never even bothered lo send me a notification! (1989, 722).

To think of Warhol as just a folk art collector, however, colossally underestimates his possession prowess: Warhol collected everything. AJthou~ his collections of American Indian art, early Americana and Art Deco were especially strong, he also had significant collections of movie memorabilia, Russel Wright ceramics, Fieslaware, women's shoes, all manner of pornography, perfumes, magazines, postcards, cigarette lighters, toasters, q~ilts, a~d . this doesn't even scratch the surface-in 1988, his collection of ceramic cookie Jars (he had calle d them "lime pieces") sold for $250,000; the six-volume catal?gue for th~ Sotheby.s auction of Warhol's estate was the largest ever published m the auction houses history (Reif 1988, Cl).

I'm not arguing that Andy Warhol should be understood as a folk artist, but I do think that that argument can be made. Warhol is on.en credited (or blamed) for blurring the distinction between high and low art, but I have yet to encounter a serious consideration of how he blurred the distinction between fine and folk artperhaps because the distinction is so blurry to begin wit~..~ol k ~rt is ~ost commonly distinguished from fine arl in its production: folk art t~ p:a.ctica~ art,. ~e product of a craft or trade whereas fine art is the product of an md1vtdual s arti~tic vision-"the folk artist." Barre Toelken argues, "will Lend lo resolve the tension [between conservation of tradition and experimentation 1 in the direcli?n of gr~up consensus, while the fine artist will follow the impulse to resolve it by do~ng something new and dynamic" (1996, 221). Yet Warhol, canonized .as ~ fin: a~tist., was quite open about his preference for following group c?nsensus m his p~m~.~gs : "I was never embarrassed about asking someone, literally, What should I pam t . he recollects in Popism, a curiously "ethnographic" memoir of life in and around The Factory in the 1960s. Further, if folk is interpreted as "craft" or "t::ade,". Warh~l ' s painting process used "folk methods." Silk screening was a com.me~c1al pr.'.ntma~m~ technique over a century old by the Lime Warhol started using 1t for. pr~ctt.cal reasons-"il was all so simple-quick and chancy" (1980, 22_). Warho.~ s pa~~tin~s are "traditional arl" if "traditional" is understood in the folkloric sense: Tradition is not some static immutable force from the past," Toelken writes in The Dynamics of Folklore, "but those pre-existing culture-specific materials and options that bear upon the performer more heavily than do his or her own personal tastes and talents.

We recognize in the use of tradition that such matters as conten.~ and style have been for the most part passed on but not invented by the performer (1996, 7). . , For Folklorists however, an appreciation of Warhol 's use of folk customs 1sn l as instructive as a consideration of Warhol's art as a form of avant-garde ethnography, one that used new methods of representation lo make visible the folk 1

26

Richardson cultures he was both part of and witness Lo. Warhol didn'L creale cul Lure, al leasl nol in the traditional romantic sense of an isolated, distraught genius struggling Lo express his vision. Warhol represenled culture. This is, I believe, what Warhol was implying with statements such as "If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it" (Goldsmith 2004, 90). Such statements have facilitated the conception of Warhol as a passive mirror, a reflective surface that offers no comment, a reading of Warhol that belies the profound ethnographic significance of his work Like all ethnographers, Warhol endeavored to represent culture, and although he would inevitably shape that representation, aestheticize it, determine its final form, he was ultimately bringing to light culture originaling from Lhe outside, culture he identified as "all the great modern things that the Abstract Ex pressionists tried so hard not to notice at all" (1980, 3).

On even the most superficial level (keeping in mind Warhol did call himself "a deeply superficial person"), Warhol feels like an ethnographer. His pose of cool detachment, of being in but not part of his surroundings, is decidedly ethnographic.

Ethnographers stand al the margins of cultures; they are observers, ever alert to how others are expressing themselves. Michael A. Agar calls ethnographers "professional strangers," individuals who parlicipale in culture bul never completely, always maintaining a degree of observalional distance (1996) . I think Warhol would like being called a "professional stranger" as iL's how he ofLen presented himself: "A lot of people thought it was me everyone at the Factory was hanging around, that I was some kind of big allraclion thal everyone came lo see, but that's absolutely backward: it was me who was hanging around everyone else" (1980, 74).

Warhol wasn't just any observer, however: he was a savvy one, evidenced by the following description of his tape recorder, Lhe ethnographer's essential fieldwork tool: I didn't get married unlil 1964 when I got my first tape recorder. My wife. [ ...] The acquisition of my tape recorder really finished whatever emotional life I might have had, but I was glad Lo see it go. NoLhing was ever a problem again, because a problem jusl meanl a good Lape, and when a problem transforms itself into a good tape, it's nol a problem any more. An interesting problem was an interesting tape.

You couldn't tell which problems were real and which problems were exaggerated for the tape. Belter yet, the people Lelling you the problems couldn't decide any more if they were really having problems or if they were just performing. (1980, 26-27)

On one level, Warhol's description of his obsessive field recordings - he produced over 10,000 hours of audio by the Lime of his death-highlights the opportunistic detachment of fieldwork; "Fieldworkers," John Van Maanen writes, "learn to move among strangers while holding themselves in readiness for episodes of embarrassment, affection, misfortune, partial or vague revelali on, deceit, confusion, isolation, warmth, adventure, fear, concealment, pleasure, surprise, insull, and 27

Andy Warhol always possible deportalion" (1988, 2). More significantly, Warhol articulates the performative nature of what was recorded, and he does ~o four yea~s before Richard Bauman would revolutionize Folklore Studies with essentially the same observation: "Verbal art may comprehend both myth narrati~n and the spe.ec.h expected of certain members of society whenever they .open their ~ouths, and 1t 1s performance that brings them together in culture-specific and vanable ways, w~y~ that are lo be discovered ethnographically within each culture and community (1977, 291).

What makes Warhol's detached pose ethnographic rather than merely voyeuristic are the representations that followed, representations that we:e not invasive or prurient (well, maybe sometimes), but rather compassionate, sophisticated representations of American folk expres~i~n. In his art,. Warhol represented Lhe informal cusloms of various folk comm.unities, groups rangi.n~ from gay subculture to high society to American co~sumers m gen.er~!. The definitions of folklore are many and I'm not going sellle the issue here; I will 1usl say that folklore consists of those cultural elements that slip through the cracks, the unrecorded (meaning untexlualized), informal aspects of community experience, the substance of so much of Warhol's work Folklore is easiest to identify when it belongs to someone else, a consequence of the Western paradigm that argues whal "we" have is culture and what "they" h~ve is folklore: The closer it is Lo home, the harder il is Lo see; or, to steal an allusion from Anand Prahlad, as the Zen proverb says "The fish in the waler cannot see th~t they are wet" (1999, S68) . Unlike the Surrealists :Vho. s~ugh~ ethnographic inspiration in exotic, foreign cultures, Warhol found inspiration m the c~ltures around him, in the folk customs of the drug users and wealthy Manha~nites he encountered daily, in the new traditions of industrial American consumensm: Pop was everywhere- that was the thing about it, most people still look il for granted, whereas we were dazzled by it-to us, it was the new ArL Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign the sa~e way again. And once you thought pop, you could never see Amenc~ the same way again. [...] We were seeing the ~ture and v:e ~ew it for sure. We saw people walking around in it without knowing 1l, because they were still thinking in the past But all you had to do was know you were in the future, and that's whal put you there. (1980, 39-40) By represenling these new customs, this new cul.~re, he made the f~lklore ~f American modernity that was visible Lo him, VIS1ble Lo everyone:. 'Wa:hol s embracing of industrial culture makes our own rece.nt past into. something distant enough Lhal we can see il with new eyes and make 1t our own, in every sense that such ownership implies" (Tinkcom 2002, SS) .

The ethnographic aspect of Warhol's arl can be seen mosl clearly in his films.

During a five-year span in the 1960's Warhol made more tha~ sixty films, all of which provided a venue through which the people around him could showcase everyday behavior, sometimes spectacular, sometimes mundane-Warhol recall~d "I only wan Led to find great people and let them be themselves and talk aboul what 28

Richardson they usually talked about and I'd film them for a certain lenglh of lime and thal would be the movie" (1980, 110). Catherine Russell, in Experimental Ethnooraphy, remarks that in Warhol's films, "the denizens of his factory become a lillle like the ethnographer's 'own' villagers, whom he or she has come to know well enough Lo film" (1999,17).

Warhol films like Eat, Kiss, and Sleep are named for the folk customs they chronicle. Thal last one, Sleep, may not seem like a folk cuslom (everyone, regardless of their folk group, has to sleep), but Warhol explained the film, six and a half hours of John Giorno sleeping, as ifhe were salvaging folk behavior: I could never really figure oul if more things happened in the sixties because there was more awake time for them Lo happen in (since so many people were on amphetamine), or if people started taking amphetamine because there were so many Lhings Lo do Lhal they needed more awake lime Lo do them in. [ ... ) Seeing everybody so up all the time made me think that sleep was becoming pretty obsolete, so I decided I heller quickly do a movie of a person sleeping. (1980, 33) Similarly, after seeing Warhol's film Kitchen, Norman Mailer wrote, "I think Warhol's films are historical documents. [...] I suspect that a hundred years from now people will look al Kitchen and say, 'Yes, that is the way il was in the late Fifties, early Sixties in America. That's why they had the war in Vietnam. That's why the rivers were gelling polluted. That's why there was typological gluL That's why the horror came down. That's why Lhe plague was on its way.' Kitchen shows that heller than any other work of that time" (qld in Stein 1994, 234). As obnoxious as his jeremiad is, Mailer sees Kitchen like Warhol saw Sleep, as a representation of the day-lo-day goings-on of a culture undergoing rapid change.

Bul like so much of Warhol's arl, il isn'L thal he simply reflected what he saw: His significance is in what he chose to represent. Warhol wasn't Figure I. Warhol, Andy. Kiss. passively archiving the experiences of post-War America: he was bringing lo light cultural traditions Lhal had, until then, been invisible. Warhol was, in the words of Catherine Russell, "an elhnographer of a particular subculture" (1999, 170). The first of his films to be publicly screened, Kiss, features a sequence of three and one half minute shots of couples kissing. "The film becomes a documentary of a promiscuous culture," Russell argues, "naturalizing bisexuality, homosexuality, and interracial sexuality wilhin the conventions of the cinematic kiss" (1999, 172). By selecting these folk groups for represent.alion, Warhol made their cul lure, previously ignored or taken for gran Led, visible.

29

Andy Warhol

A similar bul less apparent ethnographic impulse is present in his paintings.

Warhol didn't design the Coke bottle, the Campbell's soup cans, the Brillo. bo~; he didn't even take the phoLograph of Marilyn Monroe he would make ubiquito~s through replication. Jn each instance, Warhol represente~ ~no.th~r. craftspersons work: he was, in a way, "collecting" one of modernity s invisible folk .arts: commercial art "Folk art is often described as extraordinary art by ordinary people." Kenneth L. Ames writes: "This glib definition oversimpl~fies the ~atter more than a bit, for much of the best 'folk art' is the work of paid prof~ssion~ls working outside the milieu of elite arl'' (2002, 85). As a former comm~rcial artist, Warhol knew the talent and ingenuity of artists like Earl R. Dean, designer of the Coke botlle, and Steve Harvey, designer of the Brillo box. folk artists whose wo~k was taken for granted until Warhol made their artistry visible th~ough ~thnograp~ic representation. "The thought thal must have gone into lHarvey s] design for Bnllo was almost certainly closer Lo real artistic thought than whatever went through Warhol's mind in inventing Brillo Box as sculpture," Arthur C. Danlo contends.

"Warhol merely selected whal Harvey had wrought and turned it into a:t witho~t changing anything" (2001, 31). Only Warhol didn't turn the .Bri!lo B~x mto arl: tl was already arl, folk art, even if Steve Harvey, its craftsman, didn t see it th~t way~ Harvey, a frustra ted Abstract Expressionist painter, worked as a comme:cial artist to pay the bills; he didn't consider his design arl, saying "it was a mechanical sort of thing. J could do it in my sleep'' (qlci in Gaddy 2007).

The most ethnographically engaging of Warhol's media is, for me, his grandest and least studied project, the Time Capsules. Starting sometime around 1974, Andy Warhol began collecting the miscellany of his lifepersonal correspondence, magazines, source materials, ticket Sl'Ubs, halfeaten food, etc.-in cardboard boxes he kept by his desk. He describes the process in The Philosophy of Andy

Warhol: "Whal you should do is get a Figure 2 Warhol. Andy. One Hundred Brillo . box for a month and drop everything in il and al the end of the month lock it up.

Then date it and send it over to jersey. You should try to keep track of it, but if you can't and you lose it, that's fine, because it's one less thing to think about, another load off your mind." When Warhol died, he left behind roughly ?OO of these box~s, each an intimate and disjointed chronicle of the day-Lo-day goin.gs-o.n of an artist and his community. Now housed in the Andy Warhol Museum m Pitt.sburgh, the Time Capsules have only recenUy attracted serious critical attention, largely because so few were aware of what Warhol had been doing.

John W. Smith, assistant director for collections and research ~.t T~e. Andy Warhol Museum, compares the contents of the Time Capsules t? the artistic. and ethnographic" contents of Wund erkammens, "fetish cabinets" which housed ob1ects 1

30

Richardson that defied official calegorizalion (they were a precursor lo Lhe "popular anliquilies" tradition which was, in turn, a precursor of conLemporary Folklore Studies). Smith contends that Warhol's Time Capsules "identify him noL only as an artisL of vasL and far-ranging interests, but also as a humanist with a desire lo catalogue and inslill a sense of order lo his world" (2003, 13). "Through the Time Capsules," Smith writes, "Warhol created a thorough, though often cryptic, diary of his life and the worlds through which he moved" (2003, 12). The Time Capsules were, in other words, a form of ethnography, a peculiarly autoethnographic one: by collecting the minutia of his life and giving it form in boxes, Warhol was representing not only who he was, but the culture of which he was a part The ethnographic form of the Time Capsules is essential. "The incongruiLy between the different items taps an energy source that enables us to see emotionally." Mario Kramer wriLes in his introduction lo Andy Warhol's Time Capsule 21, "The rational form of the box, by contrast, concentraLes lhat abundance" (2003, 15). This, l believe, captures the essence of Warhol's ethnographic impulse, and, really, of all ethnography: the substance of ethnography, the experiences gained in "the field," are disparate, discrete, troubling in their incongruity, buL Lhe incongruity is reconciled (even if only superficially) when it is shaped inLo an ethnography. What makes Warhol's approach unique is Lhal he did n'L reconcile the jumble of field experiences through texlualization: he did it through spalialization; he gave form lo everyday cultural expressions by pulling them into boxes.

These "ethnographic spaces" Warhol creaLed provide, I believe, an example for a new form of folkloristic elhnography, one that engages with modernily rather Lhan retreating from it There's a picture of lhe Time Capsules as Lhey're stored at the Warhol Museum in PilLsburg, all stacked neatly and symmeLrically, blending into a blur of cardboard. YeL hidden within this fi eld of sameness are unimaginable treasures-each box tells a different story abo ut a differenl period of Warhol's life; one need only open a Time Capsule lo reveal the uniqueness belied by their apparent uniformity. The contents of each hox are, individually, cultural detritus; but within the frame of sameness of the Time Capsules en masse, they become a portrait of Warhol's milieu al a specific time, of Lhe occupalions and preoccupations of an artist and his community.

His obsessive collecting employed the same sophisticated ethnographic maneuver, a maneuver al lhe core of his work lhroughouL media. On one level, Warhol's colleclions, as Matthew Tinkcom puls iL, "characLerize how we engage with Lhe profusio n of objecls made possible by life in industrial society," which is, in iLself, a form of folklorislic ethnography in Lhe age of mechanical reproduclion (2002, 50). YeL iL is importanL Lo remember lhat Warhol wasn'L interested in the authenticity of his Figure 3. The Archives Study Center at possessions- "[ don'L know where the arlificia l the Andy Warhol Museum stops and Lhe real starLs" he famously remarked.

He embraced mass-produced objecLs as valuable

31

Andy Warhol objecls regardless of their "sameness." In ra:.t. iL was their "sameness" ~?ich dr_ew him to objecLc;: "Like the silk screen process, Jonathan Flatley observes, collec~ng is a machine for the production of similarities: the collector translaLes ~n ob_1ect from one system-the one defined by the various necessities of everyday hfe-mto another, one organized by likeness'' (2002, 101). . .

But a collection can also be "a machine for the production of aesthetic difference" (Flatley 2002, 100). "Authenticity," Regina Bendix points out, _"is generated not from the bounded classification of an Other, but from the probing comparison between self and Other, as well as between internal and external states of being" (1997, 17). Warhol, conversely, didn't compare. ~elf and other; he compared self and self. Whereas ethnographic lexls have trad1tionall~ ~ndeavored Lo search for authenticity in other cultures, Warhol generated authenticity through the creation of ethnographic spaces, spaces that engendered diffe~ence through the juxlaposilion of sameness- "[Warhol] presciently understo~d ~he 1mpo_rtance of the objects as they express different sensibilities that arise within American popular modernism, and their meanings are enhanced by the contrast made apparent when the differenL lines are seen side-by-side" (Flately 2002, 55).

Warhol's strategy resembles a common approach in tradition~! Folklore Studies, the one exemplified by Slith Thompson's Motif Index of Folk Literature, a six-volume classification of every known folk motif, and the central text of _Folklore Studies for most of the Lwenlielh century. BuL there's an import.ant difference between the two approaches: unlike Thompson who identified pure motif form~ and arranged varialions accordingly, Warhol didn't represenL pure forrT_ls. No ~mgle Marilyn in his Marilyn Diptych is the Marilyn. Warhol arranges the images m an ethnographic space Lhrough which the uniqueness of each becomes ap_parenl,. an? since no one image is definitive, each is "authentic." When Warhol said h~. d1dn t know what was arlificial, he inverted the more common postmodern lamenL I don L know what's real." For Warhol, Lhe issue wasn't a scarcity of "authenticity"-it was the surpl us of "authenlicity" generated by the juxtaposition of app~rent sameness, whether il was Marilyns, kisses, Campbell's Soup cans or Cookie Jars he was juxtaposing. . . .

This, more than the subject of his represental1ons, is what Folkl?nsts should Lake from Warhol: everylhing's authentic. Far from being Lhe end of d1fferenc~, the age of mech anical reproduction is an a~e of infi~ite "folkne~s.''. As James Chffor~ encourages anthropologists Lo expenmenl w1Lh surr~ahsl1c ~ollage as .a ethnographic form, I encourage Folklorisls Lo .expen~enl w1~ ~arh~h~n seriali1.ation as an ethnographic form. Instead of looking for _authenticity m exotic, preindustrial comm uniti es, Folklorists can create ethnographic ~paces that ~en_e~Le new authenlicilies through Lhe juxtaposition of sameness. In do mg so, the d1sc1pl_me might be able Lo create for iLself a sustainable posilion in the age of mechanical re production.

1

T. D. Richardson is a Ph.D. candidate in the English department of the University of Missouri-Columbia. His research examines the inlerseclions of American Folklore

32

Richardson

Studies, Neo-Avanl-Garde practice, and conceptualizations of authenticity. He is currently completing his dissertation, I is Authentic, in which he argues against Folklore Studies' scientistic tum over lhe last half-century, contending that folklorists should revisit the "quackery and dilettantism" that characterize their disciplinary progenitors.

Illustrations Figure 1. Warhol, Andy. Kiss. 1963. film still. ©The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, New York.

Figure 2. Warhol, Andy. One Hundred Brillo Boxes. 1960. Silkscreen on wood. 20 x 20 x 17 in. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ ARS, New York Figure 3. The Archives Study Center al Lhe Andy Warhol Museum. 2007. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ARS, New York

Works Cited Agar, Michael. 1996. The Professional Stran9er. New York: Academic Press.

Ames, Kenneth L. 2002. "Americana." Possession Obsession: Andy Warhol and Collecting. 75-85.

Andy Warhol's Time Capsule 21. The Andy Warhol Muse um. Cologne: Dumont, 2003.

Bendix, Regina. 1997. /n Search ofAuthenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies.

Madison, U Wisconsin P. Bronner, Simon. 1986. American Folklore Studies: An Intellectual History. Lawrence: Kansas UP. Cantwell, RoberL 1993. Ethnomimesis: Folklife and the Representation of Culture.

Chapel Hill: U North Caroline P. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament ofCulture. Cambridge: Harvard UP. Danto, Arthur C. 2001. The Madonna of the Future: l:.s says in a Pluralistic Art World.

Berkeley: U California P. Flatley, Jonathan. 2002. "Liking Things.'' Possession Obsession: Andy Warhol and Collecting. 94-103.

Gaddy, James. 2007. "One Man's Box, Another Man's Art?" Print. July/AugusL Glassie, Henry. 1999. Material Culture. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Goldsmith, Kenneth, Ed. 2004. I'll Be your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews: 1962-1987. New York: Avalon.

James, James. 1999 "Andy Warhol: The Producer as Author." Allegories of Cinema: Film in the Sixties. Ed. David E. James. Princeton : Princeton UP. 58-84.

Jones, Carolline. 1996. Machine in the Studio: Construclin9 the Postwar American Artist. Chicago: U Chicago P. Kirshenblatt-Gimbletl, Barbara. "Folklore's Crisis." journal ofAmerican Folklore 111.441 (1998): 281-328.

Kramer, Mario. 2003. "The Last of the Wunderkammern." Andy Warhol's Time Capsule 21. 14-21.

Possession Obsession: Andy Warhol and Col/ectin9. 2002. Ed. John W. Smith.

Pittsburgh: The Andy Warhol Museum.

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Andy Warhol Prahlad, Anand. "Guess Who's Coming Lo Dinner: Folk.Jore, Folkloristics, and African American Literary Criticism." African American Review. 33.4 (1999): 565.

A ·1 575).

Reif, Rita. "Warhol's World on View: Gems and Cookie Jars." New York Ttmes 15 pn 1988: Cl. ,r Russell, Catherine. 1999. Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age 01 Video. Durham: Duke UP ..

Smith, John w. 2003. "Andy Warhol's Time Capsules." Andy Warhol's Time Capsule 21. 11-13.

Stein, jean. 1994. Edie: American Girl. Ed. George Plimpton. New York: Grove.

Thoms, William. "Folk.Jore." The Study of Folklore. Ed. Alan Dundes. New York: Prentice Hall, 1965. 4-6.

Tinkcom, Matthew. 2002. "Kitsch and the Inexpensive." Possession Obsession: Andy Warhol and Collecting. Ibid. 49-55.

Toelken, Barre. 1996.The Dynamics of Folklore. Logan, UT: Utah Slate~ P. Van Maanen, John. 1988.Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago: U Chicago P. Warhol, Andy. 1989. The Andy Warhol Diaries. Ed. Pal HacketL New York: Warner.

---. The Philosophy ofAndy Warhol. 1975. New York: Harcou_rL. .

Warhol, Andy and Pal HackeLL 1980. Popism: The Warhol S1xt1es. New York.

HarcourL

34

Amanda Fickey

Commodifying My Culture: An "Appalachian" Reflects on Her Role in Sustaining a Limited Discourse of Appalachia

.

I grew up a coalminer's daughter eating leftover LitUe Debbie cakes from my father's lunch pail. I remember feelin g a strong sense of security in Eastern by majestic Kentucky, surrounded mountains which kept me safe. I al so remember growing up with a sense o civic duly, participating in 4 -H, Save the Children, JROTC, and the East Kentucky Lea?ership . Network. I did not grow up feeling different.. impoverished or insignificant nor did I grow up thinking Lhal I was part of an American sub culture, as so many scholars have labeled my home. In fact, I had no idea that this discursive construction of Appalachia existed.

I grew up with a desire Lo help others, with an appreciation for the past and how it could help me understand possibilities for the future. I grew up knowing that the world was open to me and that I was nol restricted or isolated by the mountains surrounding me. Like mosl youth of Eastern Kentucky, afraid Lo leave my family and friends and al the same Lime afraid not to, I ten the mountains and headed to Lexington.

However, a l the University of Kentucky I learned Lhal others saw me differenlly. I began lo recognize the distinction my fellow students made between individuals from Eastern Kentucky and those from other portions of the state. My accent, for example, was a primary distinction thal was often pointed out. Of course, I quickly learned that the discourse that existed

35

r, m g n c o of e y p r g d s a

p t d p e d e o e e .

I I y s m r l y d

Fickey about Appalachia, that the region was different, impoverished and even backwards, was associated with my accenL This cultural characteristic that I had brought with me somehow attached these negative stereotypes Lo me as an individual, although these views of my home had never been my own.

Thus, I found a need to create pride within myself and a need to perpetuate an appreciation for Appalachian culture. At Western Kentucky University, where I completed my Master's degree I learned the trades of the Folklorist, Oral Historian, and Historic Preservationist and added these to my History toolkit that I had started at the University of Kentucky. Surely I could do no wrong with so much training, al least it seemed that way to me. However, what I failed Lo understand as a student at Western was how my work in ~ese disciplines ha~ the . potential Lo contribute Lo this stereotypical and negative discourse of Appalachia, a discourse that represents the region as traditional, impoverished and isolated, geographically and culturally apart.

Out into the field I went, eager lo make a difference. I worked extensively throughout Lhe region of Eastern Kentucky as an arts and culture outreach coordinator. I worked with arts organizations and institutions, I visited each settlement school, I planned and facilitated arl fairs, I completed National Register of Historic Places nominations, and I conducted oral history interviews. The work I produced through these projects assisted in perpetuating Lhe discourse and cultural identity of Appalachia. When conducting workshops for arts organizations, I would train local artists in entrepreneurial methods, such as how to sell their handmade crafts inside and outside of the region. When I c~~pleted National Register nominations, my research was used to encourage outsiders to ~1s1.t .these historic places because they had been preserved. Within these spaces, mdtvtduals could view older architecture, typical of Appalachia and more specifically of Eastern Kentucky. I was essentially promoting and facilitating the consumption of my own culture.

While in the field, I stopped one day to visit a small county fair held at a local technology center. The fair was being held by the county's UK extension office. It was here that I had an important epiphany. At this fair 1 saw a sketch of Riza Hawkeye. At that moment, I stopped and I asked myself, what am I preservinB and for whom am I engaging in these practices? For those of you who don't know, Riza Hawkeye is an anime character from Fullmetal Alchemist. Anime, by the way, simply refers to Japanese Animation. The picture was drawn by Morgan, a young girl from Eastern Kentucky. The picture was dead on, a great rendition of Riza, but it had not received a ribbon ... I stood and awkwardly stared at Lhe picture, asking myself if it was appropriate to draw anime in Appalachia. After a while, I asked the county 4-H Agent to give Morgan my business card and ask Morgan to send me her picture. Fortunately, Morgan was willing to send me this picture, which now holds a special place on the wall in my aparlmenL Dulcimers, quilts, baskets ... all products that are marketed and portrayed as traditional and all items which would sell well in Berea or at various art fairs throughout Lhe state and beyond. I could continue to preserve and promote only these "traditional" or "authentic" crafl.s, but what about this anime drawing? In my efforts to preserve and protect what l had considered traditional or authentic Appalachian art forms, I was rendering work like Morgan's piclure invisible. lt is quite sig nificant that Morgan enjoys J~panese Animation and she too is representative of Appalachia. I had been perpetuating a discourse of Appalachia, particularly Easlern Kenlucky that presenled this culture as

36

Commodifying my Culture frozen and crystallized in time. Within this discourse th e networks and flows that would have allowed Morgan to be aware of Japanese Animation were hidden. I was continuing the work of so many interventionists in the region before me of preserving particular aspects of a culture which could easily be accommodated into the craft industry of the region, but what was I doing for/Lo Morgan? This of course led me lo ask myself, why was I not celebrating crafters who make new and original artwork alon g with crafters who use traditional methods and patterns? Rather than perpetuating ideas of LTaditionalism and perhaps even fatalism in my work, I realized that I must strive Lo recognize this diversity of Appalachian culture which I had until this point excluded.

I find myself once again in Lexington, once again a student al the University of Kentucky, this time adding a Doctoral degree in Geography to my toolkit. I have been drawn to the field of Economic Geography, because I am interested in addressi ng questions of consumption and production practices within Kentucky's craft industry, and looking more broadly at questions of economic developm ent in rural regions. I am now committed to deconstructing the discourse of Appalachia, examining the ways in which the region's economy has always been connected to the broader economy, thus breaking down the notion of isolationism that has plagued this region. I no longer romanticize "traditional" or "authentic" forms of small-scale craft production; rather I examine small-scale and largescale forms of production with an equal amount of vigor. Nor do I engage in preservation projects which may benefit only local elites. 1 am now fully aware and cognizant of the forms of creative destruction that preservation projects may create.

I suppose the lesson to be learned from this cautionary tale, for me anyway, is that I must always be commilled Lo reflecting on each th eory I employ, each article I write, and each interview I conduct.. I will always be reflecti ng on how I might be commodifying my own culture for consumption and the role I play in sustaining the discourse on Appalachia.

Amanda Fickey is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography al the University of Kentucky. Her research interests include economic geography, political economy, alternative economic spaces, diverse economies and regional economic development policy. Amanda's dissertation research examines conventional economic development practices and alternative economic strategies within Eastern Kentucky's handicraft industry.

37

Celebrity Culture and the Rise of the Ordinary: Intervi ew with Dr. Joshua Gamson Conducted by David Hoopes and Drew Heverin 7 March 2009

dC: Dr. Gamson, we've been beginning each interview in this series with a question based on the title of our journal, Consuming Cu/Cure. This short phrase is relatively ambiguous; il refers both Lo cultures that consume and to the consumption of culture. From your standpoint as a sociologist and specialist in media studies, how do you interpret our theme?

JG: When I hear that term, I think of cultures in which consuming is central to social experience, where shopping, buying and gelling commodities is central Lo social existence, where consumption is part of how people make their identities, part of how people connect with one another. It's where people mark their individual identities and collective identities with products.

Joshua Gamson is Professor ofSociology at

dC: Do you think that this is characteristic of all contemporary cultures?

the University ofSan Francisco, and author of the books Claims to Fame: Celebrity in ContemporaryAmerica, Freaks Talk Back:

JG: Well, I focus on American culture, so that is certainly my frame of reference. I suppose that's also my shortcoming. But I think of market-based cultures, capitalist where advertising and societies marketing are dominant and become the model for a lot of other parts of one's experience.

Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformitv, the Stonewall Book, the Award-winning The Fabulous Sv/vester and numerous scholarly and non-scholarly articles. In 2009, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in Oakland with his husband and their two daughters.

38

Celebrity Culture

In American culture, where branding becomes an important part of non -business enterprises-for political movements and so on-they're operating according lo the logic of branding. They brand themselves and sell their products to consumers. And to some degree, people who come into contact with these enterprises encounter them as though they were a product lo be consumed.

People do that with themselves, too, with their own individual identities. I think that this phenomenon has lo do with living in a society where a market logic dominates. Nol all societies are like that

dC: We'd like lo tum lo some of the issues raised in your Lalk yesLerday. If you would allow me to paraphrase your thesis: "In celebrity culture today, there's been a triumph of th e ordinary." Could you expand on that?

JG: Yes. Since the beginning of modem celebrity culture, there has been a part of this culture that emphasizes the ordinariness of the celebrity through showing their private lives or their private selves in some way. For example, celebrities have been shown in circumstances that are nol necessarily glamorous- in a tabloid without make-up or sloppy after a night out, or often in a softer kind of "al the beach with their kids" momen t., just doing something regul ar, being human instead of fancy stars. Th is has been around for a long time. However, in the last 15-20 years, that kind of emphasis on th e ordinariness of celebrities-not to mention the phenomenon of ordinary people becoming celebritieshas become really dominanL dC: I suppose the ordinary is attractive sometimes.

JG: It comes and goes, and it's really here now. There have always been stories of ordinary people becoming famous accidentally, for a kidnapping or something si milar, like the Lindbergh Baby. However, this phenomenon where the credential for becoming famous is that one is ordinary, that's preUy pronounced now, especially in reality TV. dC: Do you think that this has resulted from the obsession we had with seeing celebrities as ordinary?

JG: It builds from that., for sure, but I think it's more direcUy related to developments in lhe media production sys tem. Televis ion producers, who were und er financi al pressure in the late 1980s, came up with a cheap alternative to scripted progra mming: Make drama out of ordinary lives. Fortunately, there were already some genres Lha L lent th emselves Lo thi s model like game shows and similar programs. That's how TV production works: You Lake

39

Gamson somethi ng that's already working and you tweak it a little bit and see if the new tweaked version will work also. There was already a model of ordinary people appearing on TV (on Lalk shows) and giving them a more sustained formal where they have the cameras on them for a while is a low-risk, low-cost production. It has the advantage of being both manageable and unpredictable. You set people up and try lo get some real emotions to display. dC: Thal accounts for the impetuses behind the production of that form of entertainmenL But how do you account for its extreme popularity and consumption by the public?

JG: I think people Lend LO enjoy, first of all, imagining that it could be them or their friends.

There's less social distance between them and the people who everybody is watching. With really big stars, you know clearly that they have something you don 't, some talent., or internal quality or just some powerful machine behind them that you can't have. Even if you don't think they're LalenLed, they are supported by a machinery that you are not going to gel access lo.

dC: In Freaks Talk Back, you talk about the representation of extTeme groups on talk shows.

How are extreme groups or marginalized people represented in Reality TV? JG: It's nol lhe same kind of freak show strategy as some of the TV talk shows but there is certainly some of the same kind of social broadening, although probably for different reasons. For example, with the Real World and Big Brother, you get a bunch of people who are different and put them in a house. Then you wind them up and try to generate some conflict by wearing them out in some way so that they are cranky enough to fight with each other. This is not all that different from what the tabloid-type Lalk shows did. dC: And regarding lhe presence of marginalized groups?

JG: In terms of visibility for previously stigmatized groups or previously invisible people, it has some of the same dynamics also. For the "casting," if you are trying to set people up for conflict, you have Lo find people who are differenL For this reason, The Real World is where you saw Pedro Zamora. We had never seen a young, gay Latino on TV before that More recently, America:'> Next Top Model had a transgender woman, also something you don't see lhat often on TV. Thal said, you see it here not because they are trying Lo shake things up or be politically hip but rather because they are trying lo make a show that will attract an audience whose attention they can sell lo advertisers.

40

Celebrity Culture

dC: We talked yesterday about pleasure and its link to the real and unmasking the non-real.

However, now I forget which one was pleasing. Was it pleasing to see the real or was it pleasing to unmask the non-real? I've been turned around ...

JG: I actually think it is some combination of those. I think there is something satisfying about discovering something that has broken through that layer of management so typical of consumer cultures. Remember that one thing about a consumer culture is that everything is commodified, manipulated or filtered through advertising. When you are conscious that all that is going on around you, breaking through and unmasking the real is very satisfying. It's about that unmasking momenL There's something rea ss uring in knowing that ultimately, underneath it all, there is something real. Rather than feeling like underneath there is just another image, another performance, another fake thing, another mass-produced person, there's something reassuring in knowing that there is real life left and that you know how to detecliL dC: Speaking of the rise of the real, how is Hollywood responding to the triumph of the ordinary?

JG: Honestly, the Hollywood system and TV production has created most of iL dC: But at the same time, it is true that a lot of these reality shows grow out of that initial expression online, like for example the show with Tila Tequila.

JG: Yes, and for some of them Internet fame is all they want or can gel Certainly, in other cases, mining online celebrity is one of the newer ways that the established TV system is finding and using reality stars. Typically, YouTube and online celebrities don't initially have any connection lo any existing celebrity or to the entertainment industry in Hollywood.

What seems to be happening now is that Hollywood is absorbing internet celebrities who have shown that they are established and can attract attention. Entertainment industry companies know that it is a pretty good deal to simply find figures that already have peopl e who are following them. For example, Julia Alison in New York has managed to market herself by being a pain in the ass on Gawker and by having herself photographed whil e going out partying and then writing about it She has managed to attract a following nol necessarily because she is liked but because she annoys. But it doesn't make much of a difference: she attracts attention and then she sells the fact that she can attract attention to whatever company wants lo buy iL And it makes more se nse for a compa ny to give that a try than lo try to discover someone like Julia Alison and put h er on TV and hope that people might be interested in her exploits; it's less risky since an audience has already been

41

Gamson demonstrated-just as Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie were already known commodities before they had a reality TV show. dC: At the beginning of your response you said that these online celebrities, figures like Julia Alison, achieve their celebrity, al least initially, outside of the Hollywood market Do you think that thi s sort of notoriety constitutes any sort of resistance to the Hollywood logic or has it been completely absorbed and commodified?

JG: I think we'd have Lo figure out how we are using the term resistance. I don't think there is necessarily any ideological resistance. However, I do think there are a lot of people who want to bypass gatekeepers, and that is a form of resistance. It is resistance when people outside the Hollywood and New York celebrity industries are trying to do the selecting themselves, and trying Lo control access to an audience, doing it their own way. There's a form of resistance there, in the self-made celebrities and the viral celebrities you find on line. dC: But al the end of the day, they still just want Lo enter into the same system?

JG: I think a lot of people just want Lo go where the center of the action is, and where the obvious cash is. But I think it won't be possible lo totally colonize these online celebritymaking processes. It's not new Lo have people on the fringes attracting audiences, cult celebrities who are known in a particular subcultural community-like drag performers for instance. These are not all people who want a reality show. Often, they're more invested in subcultural expression. I think a lot of the mini -celebrities you find on line are more like cult figures, who aren't attempting to "cross over." Their whole thing is Lo embody some form of critique, sometimes even a direct critique of Hollywood control of celebrity, or of the worship of celebrity. They try to undercut that in some way, Lo play with and against it, and that's their form of entertainment and expression; that's the basis of their little bit of fame.

There is a lot of that kind of energy among the people who become online celebrities.

It doesn't all gel commodified. It's not possible at this point to do that As YouTube and other similar sites continue down the path of trying Lo con lrol things, with restrictions and licensing- which is starting to happen- the energy will move somewhere else, the way it does and has. I'm not someone who argues that cultural resistance always gets commodified; it takes different shapes and often just moves somewhere else, literally.

dC: How do you negotiate the precarious position of being both the media critic and the guy who loves American Idol?

42

Celebrity Culture

JG: You know, I think, basically, I work it I have a good reason for tuning into the parl of me that enjoys it I believe Lhal Lhe pleasures that people gel from culture, including consumer culture, are crucial to understanding it, and we need that understanding in order lo be able to make any meaningful critique. If you are really making a cri lique because you wanl lo see things change, you need lo be inside Lhe logic of il, Lhe meaning of it, Lhe pleasure of iL I think my enjoyment is crucial lo my critiques. dC: Finally, what's your favorite show?

JG: Tha~s a good question. My lasles are prelly varied. I was in love wilh The Wire and Six Feet Under in their day, and am still in love with True Blood an d Dexter. Going on my current Tivo lisl, I'd have lo say 24, Project Runway, Entourage, Modern Family, American Idol, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. dC: Thank you very much.

JG: My pleasure.

43

Hunter Stamps

Boundaries of the Self The human body is meat These ceramic sculptures address issues of self-ideation, consumption and control by investigating Lhe various psychological associations and social implicalions of Lhis facL The work manipulates and conceptualizes the boundaries of Lhe body and explores the relationship between self and olher, interior and exterior, attraction and repulsion, as well as the beautiful and the grotesque. Erasing Lhe distance we place between food and our own bodies Lhrough depicting the human body as meat emphasizes the corporal and abject condition of our existence. Of particular interest is how we as individuals deal wilh aspects of obsession and control associated with ealing and lhe body. Consuming has the ability to evoke a wide range of emotions, disorders and phobias.

Food can be perceived as attractive, seductive, and irresistible, sparking urges that render us unable to control our own behavior and actions. It can also be perceived as repulsive and nasty, igniling emotions of fear, abhorrence and self-loathing. The inlenl of my work is to seduce and engage Lhe viewer with temporal surfaces and organic forms that, upon closer inspection, trigger conflicting bodily feelings of repulsion and disgusL In my artistic strategy I make reference lo a wide range of sources such as gross anatomy, butcheries, Aztec Xipe Totec ritualism, psychoanalytic theories and abjection.

Hunter Stamps is an Assistant Professor ofCeramic Sculpture in the Department ofArt at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Hunter received an MFA from Indiana University in Bloomington and a BFAfrom the University of North Carolina in Asheville. His mixed-media sculptures address contemporary issues of the body and incorporate ceramics, fabricated metal, molds, encaustics and rubbers. Hunter's work has been published in periodicals such as Ceramics Monthly and exhibited in numerous national and international juried, invitational and solo exhibitions.

44

Boundaries of the Self The physicality of my ceramic process exploits lhe malleability of clay and its tendency to convey the elasticity and muscularity of lhe body. The clay is kneaded, wedged, pressed, pushed, squeezed, altered and sliced lo create bodily forms that linger between death and life. The soft disjointed forms barely holding shape convey a moment of mutability and abjection - when meaning collapses and lhe boundaries of self dissolve, becoming hard to distinguish from the other. To further deny the interpretation of a coherent whole, lhe wax exterior of my sculptures are intentionally irregular and penetrative, creating a temporal experience of lhe body lhal has lhe potential lo make one think differently about consumption and the body's corporal identity.

Carnal Remains

45

Stamps

Stress Associated with Shedding

46

Boundaries of the Self

Self

47

Stamps

Com modifying

48

Brendan F.R. Edwards

Invited to the Slaughter in Surany, Slovakia "Ahoj, my Canadian friend.

Would you join us next weekend in Surany? My family and I have a special event planned for you! We are going Lo kill a pig!"

IL was late February, 2006 when my friend, Jan Kova~, rang me on the phone wilh this unique invitation. Al the Lime, I was Leaching English at a high school in Trnava, Slovakia, and Jan was eager Lo involve me in what used lo be a common Slovak tradition: lhe late-winter practice of butchering a pig. The lhoughl of butchering a pig, or any animal for Lhal mauer, gave me a queasy feeling. Sul as a guest in lheir country, and not being someone who passes up new cultural experiences, with some reluctance I accepted Jan's invit..alion.

Slovakia calls itself "the heart of Europe," and it is a filling description. If one looks qui ckly al a map of modern Europe, and imagines where lhe heart of the contin ent sho uld be, th en you should easily spot Slovakia. It has been some 17 years since the peaceful break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and Lhe official form a tion of the fully autonomous nations of Lhe Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic in January, 1993, but a good number of North Americans are only vaguely aware of this facL Perhaps this has something lo do with lhe fact we always referred to Czechoslovaks as "Czechs," even before the break-up, and not too many of us are old enough

49

Edwards to remember when lhe two republics existed as sovereign states in the early part of the twentieth century. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, and the subsequent fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, Czechs and Slovaks came lo imagine separate futures. Although they share a similar history, Czechs and Slovaks are two distinct peoples aft.er all, and their languages are also similar, yet different Since 1993, the Czech Republic has blossomed, and Prague has become one of the most visited cities in lhe world. Slovakia, on the olher hand, initially struggled as a sovereign state, with an insular government and a low international profile. But in 2004, when the European Union expanded, Slovakia joined alongside lhe Czech Republic. Even though it has historically been overlooked as the Czech Republic's "little sister," Slovakia has in recent years (al least, until the recent global economic downturn) been known as the economic "tiger" of new Europe. A small country, in population and geography, Slovakia has much lo ofTer tourists as well - from plains and agricultural fields in the west, to lhe High Tatra mountains in the north, numerous natural spas, hundreds of ancient caslles and castle ruins, and an emerging world class capital in Bratislava. I have worked and travelled in Slovakia seven times now, spending more than a year of my life in this friendly and interesting hidden gem of central Europe. As a new member of the EU, Slovaks are keen to show Europe and the world what they are made of - determined to correct the negative stereotypes of a backward, poor, and dirty nation perpetuated by Hollywood films like EuroTrip and Hostel. With a history closely tied to lhe Austro-Hungarian Empire, Slovaks have always considered themselves to be a part of Europe, but development and tourism suffered under Communist rule. With new EU money, the country is now busy upgrading its transportation systems and focussing on drawing new tourism to the r egion. The Slovak people are generally very welcoming and accommodating, particularly to English speakers. English, of course, is the official language of business in the EU, so most Slovaks are keen Lo learn or practise the language.

And il was through my status as a native English speaker that I came to experience a traditional Slovak pig slaughter in late winter, 2006. Now, before you form an image of a group of peasants in lhe backcountry somewhere, crudely killing and carving up a poor pig, tel me begin by saying thal my hosts for lhis event were a typical upper-middle-class family. The Kovac family resided in the small city of Surany, in south central Slovakia. Jan Kovac, and his twin teenage daughters, Iveta and Zita, had been students of mine at a summer language school several months earlier, so it was wilh mixed emotions that I accepted their invitation to the slaughter - on one hand I very much wanted lo see them again, . but I ~as apprehensive about the idea of attending the killing and slaughter of a pig. Growmg up in relatively urban late-twentieth century Canada, I had never before been a witness or actor in the killing and cleaning of my own food, aside from catching and cleaning lhe occasional fish, and hobby gardening. Far removed from the actu~l processes of raising and producing my own food, my imagined ideas. of what a ?â&#x20AC;˘g slaughter would entail made me more than a litlle unsure of w hat I might be getting myself in lo.

I need not have worried. Jan had been the manager of an Austrian metal parts company in ~urany for several years, and the family had recently built a lovely house with an outdoor swimming pool - a luxury Lo most Slovaks, many of whom

50

Invited to the Slaughter still live in blocks of flats that were built en masse during Lhe Communist era. A single family house alone is still a luxury in Slovakia - and a hou se with a swimming pool is all the more uncommon. The traditional Slovak pig slaughter was a common practice only a few years ago, particularly when food costs were high and selection was limited under Communist rule. But today, under a fasl growing capitalist democracy, a fast dwindling number of Slovak families still bother to raise and produce their own foodstuffs. An era of hypermarkets and box stores has emerged in Slovakia too - for better or for worse - so in truth I think Jan had arranged the pig slaughter partially for my benefiL In years pasl, several families would pool their resources together to buy a pig, raise it, and slaughter it in the winter. In doing so, all families involved would be stocked with pork for several months (pork is one of th e staples of Slovak cuisine). The Kovacs, of course, did nol need Lo do this - Lhe Lime and efTorL involved in a Lradilional slaughter can now be easily skirted with convenient trips Lo the local hypermarket - bul I am grateful Lhal they did. IL was an experience in both cul lure and good cuisine.

Jan and I rose at Sam on a Saturday Lo prepare for the slaughter. His teenage daughters showed lillle inleresl in parlicipaling in Lhis event, so they did nol gel up from their beds until several hours later. Jan's son and wife reluclanlly woke Lo assist us. The slaughter, afler all, was going Lo be an all-day event., and we needed a chauffer to the house of "Ivan the Butcher," where our unsuspecting pig had been living comfortably for the past months. You see, as wilh most things "Lradilional" in Slovak culture, the slaughter also included the consumption of a fair amount of homemade spirits. The evening before, Jan had taken me Lo the home of a friend who had a small cellar under his garage, to select some wine for Lhe event (the wine also served as a parl of Ivan's paymenl). With several lilres of while wine in Low, we arrived at Ivan Lhe Butcher's house a little after 6 am. Ivan also lived in ~urany, in a slightly less modern family house, and he and his wife were in their early sixties.

The walk-in basement al Ivan's house was already prepared with Lhe butcher's Lools of the trade, and his wife was busy attending Lo two huge cauldrons warming on some old outdoor woodstoves.

I was a little horrified when I realized the pig we were slaughtering was still very much alive - somehow I had imagined that Lhe butcher had taken care of this small detail. Bul before Lhe deed was done, I was Lold we had some traditional Slovak business Lo take care of.

Out of an old cupboard in Lhe cellar, Ivan withdrew a dusty bottle of what looked to be vodka or gin. But I am told Lhis spirit was called pivovica,1 and after two shots each (al only 6:45 am), we were ready to begin.

I will spare readers the bulk of Lhe details in the actual killing and slaughter, but I must emphasise Lhal I was never once queasy, despite my earlier feelings of misgiving. The pig itself (weighing more than 130 kg)2 never had any nolion of ils

51

Edwards fate (il died a quick. clean death), and nothing was wasted - and I mean nothing.

Ivan was a true professional - and he should be; he told me he had slaughtered sixty pigs a year for the lasl forty years. And although we stayed warm all day with occasional sips of warm while wine (boiled with figs and water), we never became intoxicated. The business of the slaughter was, in fact, rather official business. By lOam we tasted the first fruits of our labours, as the men's wives had quickly taken the liver after it was removed (and weighed) and returned an hour or two later with a delicious breakfast Speaking as someone who has never particularly had a taste for liver, I can say in all honesty thal this dish was simply delectable. Steaming hot and tender, served with shredded cabbage and bread, I had never eaten liver so tasty - my palate was no doubt positively influenced by my having witnessed and played a small part in the preparation of this dish. At the end of the day - more than Len hours taler - the Kovacs were supplied with enough sausages, steaks, and fat for cooking, Lo lasl several months. And all of this pork. I can safely and honestly say, was the finest I have ever tasted, before or since. !vela and Zita, Jan's twin teenage daughlers, never did make an appearance that day. Laler, Iveta told me Lhal sh e does nol even like the t.asle of pork, bul thal her father insisted the family do this - perhaps for the last Lime. The Kovacs sent me back home Lo my liLLle rented room in the cily ofTrnava with two large grocery bags packed with various pork specialities. Having observed and played a small part al every step of the slaughter, I could personally vouch for the meal's quality and manner of preparation - I would not ~e consuming any mystery meal in the days to come. I was so pleased that the ~ovacs had shared so much of their pork bounty with me thal I neglected to mention to Lhem that I had no fridge in my small flat Still being !ale winter, my lack of a fridge did nol cause me any.~orry. What I did not give away the nexl day to friends in Tmava, I carefully positioned on my outside windowsill. I intended Lo eat nothing bul pork for the nexl week and would have eaten every last morsel if not for a late-night thief three days a!ter ~~return.

Living only on the ground floor, my windowsill was unfortunately still w1thm reach of an apparently Lall (and observant) scavenger. I heard my thief that .night, but by Lhe Lime I goL up from bed and Lo Ute window, they had safely made their getaway.

52

Invited to the Slaughter At first I was angered - I slill had a good lhree or four meals worlh of the finest tasting pork ever.... But after a few minutes I came to my senses. Clearly whoever stole from my windowsill was in some kind of need, and lhey likely had no idea of the kind of bounty they were snagging al the time. Allhough Slovakia has never been immune to degrees of poverty wilhin sociely, lhe gap between the rich and the poor is certainly greater today - twenty years after transitioning lo a capitalist democracy - lhan il was under lhe Communisl regime. 3 As Slovaks continue to emulate American consumer culture, focussing less on lhe collective and more and more on lhe individual, and on lhe convenience of shopping for lheir food rather than playing an active role in producing il themselves, the gap between the poor and rich only continues lo widen. Jan and his family co uld easily afford lo buy all of their food al any one of Surany's hypermarkelS fresco, Terno, or Lid!, for example), bul they still made an efTorl lo pa rlicipale in Lhe Lraditional practice of "killing a pig." Even if only for the benefil of his Norlh America n guest.. Jan's acL of performing this elemenl of Slovak culinary Lradition was al once a sublle display of resistance to consumerism and an act demonslrating Lhal whal was good from Lhe collective Slovak pasl is nol yel forgollen. And although I can only guess whal the socio-economic circumstances of my pork Lhief were, I only hope lhal he/she look that tasty and carefully prepared pork home Lo a hungry family and had a small party in celebration of the fine food they had happened upon.

Brendan F.R. Edwards holds a doclorale in hislory from the Universily of Saskatchewan, and master's degrees from Trenl and McGill Universilies. He is Lhe aulhor of various works on Nalive-Newcomer relalions in Canada, including Paper Talk; a history of libraries, print culture, and Aboriginal peoples in Canada before 1960 (Scarecrow Press, 2005). He is a regular visilor Lo cenLral/easlem Europe, particularly Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Romania.

Notes 1

Literally, "beer brandy" a homemade liquor distilled from barley. This drink Is somewhat s imilar In strength, If not In taste, to the "official" Slovak spirit, s llvovlca, a plum brandy.

2 Our pig was never weighed, but Its liver was - a method that with some calculation Is remarkably accurate, so I am told .

3 See for exa mple, Charles Hauss, Comparatfve Po/ftfcs: domestic responses to global challenges. Sixth edition (Wadsworth Cengage Leaming, 2009) 216; and World Bank. Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Uni t. Europe and Central As ia Region. Slovak Republic Uvlng Standards, Employment and Labor Market Study. Report No. 22351 ¡SK (World Bank, 2001) <http://go.worldbank.org/CN3WBE4M90>.

53

Alice Driver

An In-Between Place: To Tokelau by Boat 36 hours to nowhere. 36 hours to nowhere. Not but a dot on the map, not but sandy beach and a few palm trees surrounded by the vast ocean. The Japanese dreamed, green with envy, of the fal yellow tuna that populated lhe waters of Tokelau. 1 imagined feasts of coconuls and roasled pigs as I boarded the Tokelau 223 wilh 49 other passengers.

Imposing islander bodies were scattered over two decks, most of them lying on foam mauresses in order to claim their sleeping spots. I kept staring at their toes, each one as fal as a holdog, spilling out of their sandals and onto the deck Their loes and lheir necks, linebacker necks, rugby player necks - men and women alike.

I was overwhelmed by their corporeality: even their shadows had a certain weight thal engulfed me, pressing down on my lungs and making me di sappear. Al firsl, my husband, Isaac, and I sat on the lower deck, but we quickly realized lhat although it was protecled from potential rain, there was no airflow. The smell of damp, slightly rotting vegetables became noticeable. On the upper deck, I looked out upon a sky dark and pregnanl with rain, and walched as veterans of the voyage lay out plastic tarps below their bedding. I was sitting on a bench trying to claim our sleeping space, bul when Isaac left to go to lhe bathroom a huge Samoan man with fleshy arms and mulliple tattoos sat down in his place. I looked at him warily, wondering if he wanted lo take my spot The tattoos curled off his arm and wove themselves inlo my hair; lheir geometric shapes left us bound together, my pale body pressed againsl his brown corpulence.

54

An In-Between Place The boat was a lot smaller than I had envisioned considering Lhal we were going lo be on the open ocean for 36 hours. Most of the other passengers were Tokelauans who used the twice-monthly boal lo travel to and from Western Samoa for medical emergencies, to pick up supplies or to visit family. Tokelau, a group of three remote atolls that are protectorates of New Zealand, can only be reached by boaL The captain appeared on the upper deck and outlined the safety rules: he pointed to a life raft, called oul a list of names and then had his assistant pul on a worn life jacket with multiple ties al the sides. In the case of an accident the unlucky soul thal failed lo tie Lhe jacket well would slip out and be borne away by the currents. We were headed oul Lo open sea - one of the few places where it was still possible lo gel lost, lo fall of the electronic map and lo imagine being eaten by a shark. There were reefs surrounding the harbor, and in Lhe distance the crashing waves made il seem as if the waler were Loo shallow Lo allow the boat out lo sea.

Everyone was lying down. I realized why as soon as the boat started Lo move and nausea overtook me. A teenage Tokelauan girl motioned for me lo lie down, and I immediately fell better. Isaac, on the other hand, wanted lo watch as the boat wenl oul lo sea, and within minutes, he was vomiting over Lhe side. "I have a stomach of steel," I shouted to him. While I lay down two Hungarians on a bed near me introduced themselves.

They were working on a project related Lo remote radio communication, and Tokelau would be the 42nd Pacific island they had visited.

I made a niche for myself next lo Lhe railing, and imagined that if I fell asleep I would roll into the sea and the waves would eal me up. Around me imposing Tokelauan men and women - Lall, big-boned and muscular - slepL The exhaust from the boat flew in my face, and I suddenly realized why no one else claimed my comer. I wondered how many times the other passengers had made this trip, and if they were still in awe of the journey.

I walked to the railing and stared al the waler, wondering if I had ever seen anything so bewitching. From the lop deck the waler appeared deep cobalt. while around the boal il frothed, boiled and bubbled into a brilliant turquoise. From the lower deck, when I was no more than Len feel above the water, il was a fierce indigo lhal defied classification. I wanted to jump in to Lest the true color of the waler, lo take possession and be possessed by something so intense. The ocean beckoned Lo me, and the urge lo throw myself overboard was sickeningly strong. I stepped away from lhe edge of the boa L To jump in I knew that just for one moment I would have lo abandon all reason, and make a leap Lhal would leave me floating far behind the boat in the embrace of Lhe indigo sea. I envisioned the moment of elation, the embrace of the waler and then the grip of terror as the boal became distan L Sharks. Sharks. Sharks. Equal parts frightening and fascinating. Of course thal is how I imagined my end in the ocean. Sharks.

The boat captain, a short light skinned man with a jolly paunch, attempted lo reel in, over a period of 45 minutes, a swordfish. He called for his straps, some giant suspend ers that would hook him lo the boaL Someone brought him a chair, and two other deck hands took turns helping him hold Lhe fishing pole. The fishing line was so long I couldn'L lell how far oul it extended: where Lhe horizon met the waler, the line became indistinguishable. I looked out in the distance and saw the waves rolling endlessly, eating up the line and giving the struggling swordfish a sense of comfort. Al some point, all three men hung onto lhe fishing pole, their faces stretched in concentration. The two deck hand s were large Samoan men wearing flip -flops half the size of their meaty feel Their toes oozed on lo the wel deck 55

Driver as they slipped abouL The captain, muscles bulging, held onto the fishing pole, eyes lost in the distant waters.

As the fish lired and was reeled in, lhe men grabbed a large spear and took three boards from the side of the boat lo create an opening that would allow them to drag the fish onto the deck. The swordfish's iridescent skin gliltered in the water, each silvery scale burning itself onto my retina. I mentally willed it to escape, feeling young and naive as I did so. Moments later, they stabbed the flailing muscle of a fish and threw it on deck. It fought tenaciously, smacking the weight of its six-foot body against the deck in hopes of propelling itself back into the water. That fierceness was met with several sharp blows on the head, bul lhe swordfish maintained its fury. I drank in the violence. Whack. Whack. Whack.

Three men descended upon it with blows; a river of blood ran from its gills as it finally laid still. In the next instant the swordfish was healing lhe deck again, bul it stopped in the blink of an eye - iLc; momentary resurrection the last muscle spasms of the rec~ntly dead.

The men began washing blood off the deck and then picked up the ~sh to. move t~ closer ~o lhe hose. Al any moment, I expected the fish Lo smack them with its mighty ~tl and ~ip back into the waler. Or, al least, thal was whal I envisioned as a happy ending until I realized that the fish would be my dinner, which was also a pleasant thought Immediately there was talk of how lo divide up the meal and what to cook. I heard Oka mentioned a traditional Western Samoan and Tokelauan dish consisting of raw fish, coconut cream.' cucumber, onion, to ma lo, sail and pepper. They cul up the fish in no time flat: slit the belly, pulled out and cleaned the entrails, found a whole fish inside the swordfish's stomach, and cul the meal inlo filets. The captain handed me the swordfish's head, and laughed as he said, "You can hang this on your wall at home." I _took_ the _wet, partially bloody head in my hand, bul all I could think of was the swordfish ghstemng hke a metallic rainbow, flushing from life to death as it fought to escape the blows of the deck hands and return Lo those mesmerizing indigo waters. I Jell the head on the lower deck. but carried the vision of it wilh me.

We arrived on Atafu a bile-sized atoll with a population thal fluctuates from 400500, with rubbery sea legs. walked off the boat and flopped onto the ground. After closing my eyes for some time, I sal up and began lo explore my surroundings. ~ot far _away I spotted a slim figure in a bright sari. Only as I began to look more closely did I reahze that despite the long hair decorated with flowers, lhal il was a young man, a malw, to the more specific. My understanding from a few days of living on Western Samoa was that "!ahus, men who dressed like women and assumed female roles, were an accepted part of tsland culture. There was some confusion as to where we would be staying, but eventually we were introduced Lo Vie and Teleti, and they Look us Lo their guesthouse. ~ie'~ kindly fac.e and while hair did nol prepare me for lhe stern, scolding tone of her v01ce. _we weren t prepared for you. No one told us you were coming," she sai~. Later, o~er a dinner of raw tuna Vie and Teleti informed us of a schism in the commumty that might affect our stay sine~ Vie and Teleti were on the minority side of the disagreement "Do you like raw fis_h?" asked Vie as she set the table. We did our best to convince her that we would eat anything, regaling her with stories of our eating adventures on Western Samoa. "Th,al's right. It's not important what you put into your mouth, but what comes out Thats what can hurt people," Vie affirmed. .

Isaac spent his days learning about Lhe construction of the traditional vaka out:1gger canoe. l tried Lo navigate the social mores of island life and find a place for myself m lhe

i

56

An In-Between Place community. The rules of the isla nd included : All wom en had lo wear a hal lo chu rch, preferably handmade. No wa tching TV, no listening to music, no playing video ga mes or eating ice cream, no swimming and no running aro und on Sundays. In facl, all Lhe people who sold ice cream, sweets or other goods from their h ome shut down on Sundays. To be sure, Sunday was my mosl difficull day. I was Lempled Lo calch u p on lhe news, and I craved ice cream. One Sunday I was watching news in th e living room w hen a next-door neighbor w hose house was only a few feet away wa lked in, Lurned il off and scolded me for not being properly pious. "I don 't share your religious views," I said, but lhal was a concept that didn't appea r to exist on the island. Ther e was only one church, and everyone wenl lo it In additi on to the many prohibited activities Lhal seemed a bil silly Lo me, lhere was a whole lisl of da rker aclivilies Lhal were sa nclioned by Lhe com munity. These included alcoholism and wife beating, and, as I would later find out, ch ild molestati on. The suicide rale on lhe aloll, taking into accounl the liny populati on, was one of Lhe highesl in Lh e world. In fact, I rememb ered r eading a n article in lhe New Yorker about Tokelau in which the author described Leens w ho commilled suicide by gelling inlo metal di nghies and motoring off into the ocean, n ever to return. Despile the palm trees and turquoise waters, there was a fe eling of suffocation tha l someli mes came over me, and I imagined lhat I was not the only one who experienced it There were secrets on the Liny islan ds. In the dark of night rocks rained down on selecl houses or harsh wo rds p ierced the silence. The story slowly unfolded over my six-week stay.

A per son's whol e spatial conceplion is cha nged by island life. I could wa lk lhe whol e length of the island in 30 minutes, a nd did this at least two li mes a day to prevent myself from going s tir-crazy. On one end of the island were houses cl u slered Logether no more than a few feet apart. Most didn't have curta ins, and it was clear Lo me from the level of gossip thal everyone kn ew, down to the minulesl detail, th e fac ls of olher peoples' daily lives. At the opposile end of lhe village w ere th e pigs, hundre ds of them, surround ed by beautiful slon ewalls. I loved visiting the pigs, and esp ecially li ked the really fa t ones. As I walked to visit the pigs, I was often stopped and asked where I was go in g. My reply shocked people and prompled them to reply, "Bul that is so far away.'' One person even offered me th eir motorbi ke. On an island so ti ny r was surprise d to find that there w ere two mo to rbikes, one fl atb ed truck, one golf earl, a m ini-backhoe an d scores of bicycles. I t ried Lo imagine having lived my entire life on an island so small, a nd I began to understand how their conception of lime and space might be en Li rely differenl fro m my own.

In terms of tim e, everythin g moved much more slowly. Many isla nders bega n their mornings swimming in the lagoon or silting in th e wa ler ea ting raw fish a nd coconut. On most days everyone worked communally, and ta sks wer e divided by gend er. I worked with the women on ta sks Lhal generally involved cooking ga rgantuan a mounts of food. In addition to brea kfast, the Tokelauans had a 10a m "Lea Lime" whi ch consisted of a feast of eggs, cakes, mea ts, fresh fruil and fried foods. The first Lim e I parti cipa ted in cooking food for "tea time" I becam e confused. "What is all Lhis food for?" I asked. "For a snack a l tea," was the reply. Th e Tokelauan diel had changed draslically in th e lasl 20 years due Lo more frequ ent visits by supply ships whi ch dropped off cases of coke, beer and, most ironically, canned fish. Dia beles and obesity ar e serious problems fo r th e co mmunily of At.afu becau se, although mod ern conveni ences have arrived, the accompa nying health educali on

57

Driver and health care have noL However, many islanders also maintained elements of the traditional diet of fresh fish, coconut and other seafood.

The main island where people live is surrounded by a ring of other smaller islands, which are home to the coconut crab, a crab whose mighty claw can cut off a finger. Stan, one of Vie and Teleti's sons, inviled us lo go coconul crab hunting. Stan and his son, Stan Jr. motored us across lhe lagoon to a grove of coconut trees. Once there, they began walking around and poking the ground wilh a stick, looking for the den of the mighty cobalt and periwinkle beasL Once they found its lair, young Stan would reach his arm into the hole and pull out a coconul crab. He then broke their necks. The crabs, fierce fighters the size of a human head, had a huge sack on their tail end thal seemed to be filled with some kind of liquid. "That is the best parl for eating," said Stan as l examined the crab. Big Stan began to collecl coconul fronds and pile them together. Then he threw the crabs on top and covered them with more fronds. He lit the whole pile on fire as I laughed at the simplicity of the whole procedure. "How do you know when they're done?" I asked. 'When their shells turn bright red," replied young Stan.

We sat down in lhe sand and cracked into our crabs and ale lhem with fresh coconuL "It tastes like peanul butler," said Big Stan as I stared at the crab's liquid sack He opened it for me and I dipped a piece of coconut into the caramel colored liquid. It was creamy and rich, a nice contrast to the crisp sweet11ess of the coconut Perhaps both my best and worsl memories involved food. The richness of raw yellow tuna, fresh coconut cream and roasted pig are burned into my memory. We were generously included in community life and piled wilh food. Our first pig roast took place at sunset and kids played in lhe water, women wove coconut frond crowns and men drank bottles of beer while roasling whole pigs over an open fire. I will not soon forget the sight of those pigs skewered in the posilion of running, crisping and sizzling in the flames. This was a gathering of extended family Lo celebrate children being home from university. The women were weaving crowns on a mat near the shore, and invited me to sit dow~. They measured my head with a fibrous ribbon of frond and then lied a knot to hold the circular shape. I folded leaves in half and Lied them on, slowly maki ng a thick, green crown. The sun set, its rays striking out across the waler li ke names. Baskets of raw tuna and coconuts full of soy sauce and wasabi were passed around. Isaac and I were handed fresh coconuts, and men offered us palm frond baskets of BBQ lamb and chi cken still hol from the fire. Men an d women brought oul guitars an d ukuleles and began to sing. The night was warm and the wind soflly car ried the r ising voices out into the lagoon. The pigs were taken off the fire and leaned against a tree to cool. It looked as if their chan¡ed bodies were trying to run up. the lree. The meat was sliced up and passed around. I watched the men cut through the cnspy ski n as fa t dripped down. They gave me a browned layer of skin and fat; it was as rich as cream, as smooth as bu tter. People sang and danced as they wailed for the moon to appear; il would provi de the necessary lighl to navigate the boa Le; around the corals an d back to the village.

My negalive experiences wilh food invo lved canned fish, spa~, coke and other processed foods. I r emember working wilh the village women one morning to make gravy that consisted of 8 bottles of vegetable oil and some flour. Th is gravy was poured over spam and given Lo the men for th eir lunch. A heaping plate of i Lwas also offered ~o me, and I tried Lo eat as mu ch as possible. However, the Tokela uans were generally not impressed wi lh my app etite a nd often insisled lhat l eat more food unlil my "no" became hollow and

58

An In-Between Place exhausted. I remember seeing babies drinking bottles filled with Fanla or Coke and other carbonated beverages and wanting to take the bottles away and lecture the mothers.

Obese children. Too much TV. Junk food. On some days il was easy Lo romanticize island culture, but on others I was reminded of the fragility of their traditional way of life.

For Isaac, the complexities of modernity on Tokelau could be summed up by looking at the situation of the traditional outrigger canoe, the vaka. "Look al the lengths we go Lo in order to accommodate our machines," Isaac said Lo me as we stood among the numerous metal dinghies that dotted the beach of the lagoon. The vaka, when well maintained, lasted one hundred years. However, il was so heavy Lhal il had to be moved and manned by a team, which meant that fishing was a communal activity. The dinghies were lighter and allowed individuals Lo go fishing, a practice that eroded the traditional inali system of dividing all food caught among members of the community. The aluminum dinghies also became so hot under the Tokelauan sun that fi shermen had lo carry ice boxes in order to keep the fish from spoiling. This was unnecessary in the vaka whose wooden sides remained cool despite the heat In addition, there was the need Lo buy gas for the dinghi es, the problem of motor accidents and the issue of how Lo dispose of old dinghies al the end of their seven-year life span. The use of the dinghy also inspired a particular acrobatic ritual in which men in snorkels jumped over Lhe side of the dinghy and swam away from iL Then they took day-old fish from a pouch around their waists, chewed it up and spit il into the water. This attracted bail fish, which the fishermen then hooked with tiny poles while underwater and stuck in another pouch around their waisL All of this was necessary because the sound of the waler slapping on the dinghy sca red fi sh away, something that had not been a problem when the vaka was used. "Who am I Lo tell them not Lo take advantage of modern conveniences?" Isaac asked me. "Whal right do I have lo romanticize their traditional way of life?" For that. I had no answer. ll is over fresh fish that Isaac and I had lunch with the preacher and his wife, wh o lived across the street from Isaac and me, no more than a few feel from our house. He was articulate, thoughtful and calm, one of the few islanders who would di scuss the problems of modernization on Tokelau with me. At the same time, as I sat there looking al him, I knew that he had been accused of child molestation. He was the man creating the schism in the community, the one accused of acts that disgusted me. There were those in the community who said that God believed in forgiveness, and they choose lo forgive the preacher.

However, in the minority were some families who believed that the preacher should be removed from his position and punished by the law. I had looked al him with mean eyes from afar, but when r was talking to him, I didn't know what lo think. There was such beauty and intelligence housed in the same body that had done the unspeakable. I saw this in the village as well, acts of great beauty and others so sad, ugly and thoughtless Lhal I wanted to weep. Some days I raged against injustices and others I saw life as a whole range with the good and the bad bound so tightly together that il was almost impossible lo separate them.

I found myself in Atafu surrounded by turquoi se waters and palm trees but crying every day. Sometimes they were tears of joy and sometimes I simply wepL When a 30minute walk takes you to the end of the world, where can you go lo escape? Aft.er six weeks of living on Atafu I found out that Tokelau 223 saw both swordfish and islanders through the rites of death. Manu and Tessa, friends who had included us in their lives and spent Saturday afternoons diving off a piece of upturned coral in the lagoon, had lost a baby. It

59

Driver was sick with a fever that refused lo lessen. A baby with a fever, a child with a severe kerosene burn, an adult with appendicitis - either they survived the 36 hour boat ride across an unending in-between, or they flushed from life to death like the swordfish.

Alice Driver is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky. Her dissertation, Resisting Oblivion: Cultu ral Production and Memory Projects in Ciudad Juarez, 1998-2008, analyzes representations of power in a variety of cultural production to show how power structures influence the memory discourse on femicide in Cd. Juarez. Alice's travel writing has appeared in the guidebooks To Vietnam With Love (Things Asian Press, 2008) and will be featured in the upcoming To Thailand With Love (Things Asian Press, 2010).

60

Jennifer Spohrer

Consumption and the Construction of Community in Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle

French director Jacques Tati's third feature film, Mon Oncle (1958), presents a nuanced analysis of consumption's impact on society through a juxtaposition of two worlds. The titl e character, Uncle Hulol, lives in a more "lradilional," nineteenth-century quart.ier, in which buying, selling, and consumption are largely public and central Lo local society. By contrast, in lhe sleek modern suburb inhabited by his sister's family, the Arpels, consumption has retreated Lo the confines of the single-family home and society has all but disappeared. In its portrayal of the Arpel's suburban lifestyle, Tat.i's film shares the ambivalence toward modem consumer society characteristi c of contemporary French intellectuals such as Roland Barlhes or Henri Lefebvre, whose work has received greater scholarly allenlion. However, perhaps because Tali himself was nol an intellectual, he differs from such contemporaries in arguing lhal lhe problem was nol consumer capitalist society itself, so much as the choices and values that "modern" French consumers embraced, which consislenlly reinforced socia l distinctions and tended lo destroy, rather than create, community. This emphasis on consumer choice nol only sel Tati apart from his contemporaries, bul also offers a challenge to present-day proponents of "new urbanism" who seek lo recreate the physical space of a Lradilional Lown center within the context of modem co ns umer capitalist society.

61

Spohrer Tati's films were part of a wave of French cultural and intellectual in terest in modernity, consumer society, and everyday life in the 1950s and 1960s, which Kristin Ross has attributed largely lo the particularly rapid economic growth, modernization, and social change the French experienced in these decades. Reading the work of French sociologist Henri Lefebvre, Ross notes lhat she was struck by the "almost cargo-cult-like sudden descent of large appliances into war-tom French households and streets in the wake of the Marshall Plan. Before the war, il seemed, no one had a refrigerator; after the war, it seemed, everyone did" (Ross 4). French intellectuals were similarly struck. In the 1960s, French sociologist Edgar Morin undertook a detailed empirical study of the effects that the advent of such consumer goods, along with attendant changes like mechanized farming and large-scale retailing, had on the economy and society of Plodemet, a rural Lown in Brittany.

Other French intellectuals approached similar topics from a more analytical angle. In his Crilique of Everyday Life, for example, Henri Lefebvre was one of the first lo apply a Marxist critique lo consumption and what he called "everyday life," as dimensions of capitalist society overlooked by previous genera lions of Marxists concerned primarily with capitalist production and its exploitation of workers. Barthes pioneered the semiotic analysis of consumer advertising and mass media in order lo understand how myths and meanings were created in contemporary capitalist society. 1 As Douglas Smith has noted in his analysis of French cultural critiques surrounding plastics - the quintessentially "modem" material of lhe 1950s - post-war intellectual analysis of this new material culture reflected a broader ambivalence about the socio-economic changes that produced and accompanied il (135-151).

Political and intellectual trends also played an important and sometimes underemphasized role in fostering French interest in contemporary consumer society. It is worth noling, for example, lhal Henri Lefebvre's work in this vein began before the massive postwar growth in marketing and consumer goods: lhe first volume of his Critique of Everyday l ife was published in 1947, when ralioning, black markets, and housing shortages were still evident in France.2 Like many French intellectuals of this period, Lefebvre, Morin, and Barlhes were Leftists, and their inleresl in consumption and everyday life was driven in part by the desire lo reconcile developments in the industrial West with Marxist intellectual theory. On the political fron L, the crystallization of the Cold War, the revelation of Stalinist atrocities following Stalin's death in 1953, and the violent suppression of the Hungarian Revolution destabilized faith in the Soviet Union as a leader in Marxist inlerpretalion. Meanwhile, in the 1960s, French intellectuals rediscovered, translated, and republished the works of Grygory Lukacs, a Hungarian literary scholar whose interwar inlerpretalions of Marx had been previously disregarded as loo radical. Lukacs' work reintroduced Westerners Lo Marx's early manuscripts and to concepts like "alienation" and Lhe "felishizalion of commodities." These ideas proved useful for analyLing the mechanisms for manufacturing desire lhal existed within modern capitalist economy and, especially in Lhe 1960s, resonated wilh scholars attempting Lo understand why social unrest and dissatisfaction remained in industrialized Western societies even as workers' material needs were increasingly met.

Like con temporary intellectuals, Tati used his work to call attention to and comment on the profound material and socio-economic changes Lo French society in the 1950s and 1960s. Mon Oncle was the second mm to feature Tati's signature character, Monsieur HuloL 3 Like Charlie Chaplin (Lo whom he is oflen compared), Monsieur Hulot is a guileless

62

Mon Oncle

and congenial man who unwillingly wreaks havoc for Lhose around him as he negoliales a complex and often baffling world. 4 In his debul film, Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), a 1950s seaside resort provides the backdrop for Hulot's misadventures. However, in Lhe remaining Hulol films - Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1968), and Traffic (1972) - such misadventures stem from Hulot"s encounter with modern consumer society more generally.

However, Tati lacked the interest in structural analysis and political ideology common to contemporary inlellecluals, and his critique of lhis modern consumer society stems more from the viewpoint of an observer of human behavior. Although provided wilh the educational opportunities typical for a male scion of a bourgeois family, Tali never performed well in school and was neither particularly well-read nor politically active as an adulL He made his way on stage and into film through a Lalenl for pantomime and mimicry, both stemming from a keen eye for gesture and mannerisms as markers of social class, human aspirations, and human foible (Bellos 11-16, 28-77, 201-203). As a filmmaker, Tati's style of production in turn encourages viewers lo identify with Lhis perspective of Lhe observer. He generally films scenes from a distance wilh a fixed camera, and several different vignettes are often enacted within a single frame. His actors convey elements of character and plot largely through dress and pantomime, and whal liLLle dialogue exisls is often fragmented, overlapping, or barely audible, as if il were accidentally overheard or merely atmospheric noise (Fawell). Since Tali plays Lhe part of Monsieur Hulol in Lhese films, Hulot's response to the world around him is somewhat privileged over those of other characters, but always in a detached way. For example, there are no camera shots fro m Hulot's perspective that would allow the viewer lo see Lhe world from his poinl of view, and he rarely speaks loudly enough for lhe viewer Lo "overhear."

In Mon Oncle, modern consumer society is represented by the suburban world of Hulot's relatives, the Arpels, as contrasted with the more "traditional" society of a smalltown French centre ville, where Hulot lives. In Tali's portrayal, this centre ville is somewhat shabby, with impossibly crooked buildings, street-level shops, sidewalk cafes, slreetsweepers, and ubiquitous stray dogs. By comparison, the suburbs are "modern" in a 1950s sense: clean, planned, orderly, and designed Lo facililale the flow of automobile Lramc. 5 However, Hulot finds the subu rbs baffling and uncomfortable, and much of Lhe humor in the film stems from his inability Lo properly use or appreciate modernist furniture, appliances, and gardening. His young nephew, Gerard, is similarly unimpressed wilh suburban life, preferring to spend his time romping about in the old Lown with his uncle or his unruly school chums. Gerard's suburban loneliness and his father's dismay over lhe boy's clear preference for Uncle Hu lot add an element of pathos Lo the critique.

Given Tali/Hulol's and Gerard's response Lo su burbia, il is easy Lo dismiss Mon Oncle as simple nostalgia for the "traditional" France and a rejection of modern co nsumer society (Fawell 222). Moreover, Hulol visually suggests that Lradilional France is doomed by the relentless drive toward modernization. As the film' s opening credits roll a large crane is constructing a boxy new modernist building, and the closing scene begins with a car rid e past crews demolishing older buildings on the periphery of the centre ville to make room for more. By Tali's nexl film, Playtime (1968), modernization has triumphed, for the Parisian landscape that Hulol navigates has become a grid of fully automated glass and 63

Spohrer steel skyscrapers, among which one occasionally catches a glimpse of a familiar monument, like the Eiffel Tower.

Recent critics have argued that Tali does not reject modernity in the Hulot fiJms, so much as try Lo "defang" or mediate it through humor. John Fawell argues that Tati undermines the power of modernity and modern technology through humor, by exaggerating or repeating certain elements, such as the hum of a factory or the click-clack of a busy secretary's high heels on a concrete floor, untiJ they become ridiculous rather than dehumanizing (Fawell 223). Similarly, Lee Hilliker has noted the role that Hulot plays in "mediating" technology. One of the more disturbing aspects of the modem world as Tati envisions it is its tendency to subordinate human needs to the needs of technology. Hilliker argues that Hulot does not reject technology so much as creatively redeploy it so that it serves his needs - for example, by turning the Arpels' stylish, but completely uncomfortable "modem" sofa on its side, in order to make it a more comfortable spot for a nap. In such scenes, Tati/Hulol "refashions and rescales the technoworld, making it into a source of humor and bringing about an implicit reevaluation of its functions and effects" (Hilliker 60).

Similarly, I would argue thal Tali does nol reject consumer society or capitalism altogether, for both neighborhoods depicted in Mon Oncle are quite clearly consumer societies. Although he certainly pokes fun al contemporary consumer pursuits, such as electric kitchen gadgets and chrome-bumpered cars, they alone do not cause the alienation characlerislic of suburbia. Likewise, the liveliness of lhe centre ville is nol due Lo the lack of consumer goods, so much as Lo consumption habits and choices that foster social connections. In other words, whereas contemporary intellectuals saw structural elements al the root of the problems in modem capitalist societies, Tati saw and depicted consumers as agents, who shaped their physical, social and economic environments through their consumption choices and values.

Buying and selling are literally central lo life in the centre ville as Tati portrays it Physically speaking, a charcuterie, a newsstand, and a cafeoccupy the ground floor of three of lhe buildings on the square where Hulol lives, and produce vendors set up lheir earls and trucks in Lhe slreeL Moreover, shopping and consumption are part of broader rituals of perambulation and neighborly human exchange, and thus integral to the social fabric of life on the square. Sales are always negotiated and are parl of a routine of greeting and chatting lhal transcends class and occupational differences - lhe street sweeper stops to Lalk to the painter, who slops Lo talk Lo a neighbor, and so forth. Residents run their errands and do their work on fool, on bicycles, or in horse-drawn wagons, and the more leisurely pace of these technologies accommodates s uch interaction. Commercial exchanges often involve and allracl comment from passers-by. For example, when we first meet Hulot, he is pulled into a lengLhy conversation with a produce vendor, an.er the latter mistakenly chides him for knocking a Lomalo Lo the ground. (The daughter of Hulot's landlady, who is hovering about in lhe hopes of flirting with Hulot, is the actual culpriL) In another humorous vignette, a shopper's prolesls al the cost of a grapefruit draws the attention of two bystanders, who discover thal the Lill created by a flat lire on lhe fruil seller's beat-up old truck was causing the grapefruit Lo seem heavier and thus more expensive than they actually were.

By contrast, Tati never shows the modern, suburban Arpels venturing out to do a litUe shopping. In fact, with the exception of an evening out on her anniversary, Madame

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Mon Oncle

Arpel does not appear lo leave home at all; she spends all of her lime flxing meals, cleaning the already immaculate house, or showing guests its high -tech housekeeping appliances, state-of-the-art floor plan, and hyper-modernist furnishings. When she needs oranges for a party, she has them delivered, and although this provides an opportunity for Monsieur Arpel to interact with the produce vendor, their exchange is marked by class distinctions notably absent from the mercantile exchanges on the town square. M. Arpel lips the vendor, who in turn doffs his cap and looks about incredulously at the Arpels' garden, clearly ill at ease.

Meanwhile, although Monsieur Arpel and their son Gerard leave the house every morning, they drive through streets devoid of any retail shops, produce stands, or sidewalk cafes. The only activity on these neatly striped, mulli-laned s uburban streets is the continuous flow of shiny, chrome-bumpered cars, which Tali films from angles that rend er their human drivers completely invisible and irrelevanL 6 This lack of shops and the enclosed nature of the cars stifle human interaction, and it is only when the flow of traffic is interrupted - by a boys' prank that makes the drivers think they have run into one another and step out lo investigate - that we see conversation on a suburban street.

Tati clearly thinks that architectural limitations and choices help Lo shape society in both quartiers. Hulol lives in the garret apartment of an old, crooked building that appears to have been constructed in stages and according lo no particular plan. We chuckle each time he wends his way through the impossibly twisted maze of stairs, hallways, and galleries that winds through the building lo his apartment, but the close quarters and irregularity of the building almost guarantee that its inhabitants inleracL Indeed, when descending one day Hulot runs into a young woman clad in only a slip and curlers in Lhe hallway. While this particular encounter is clearly awkward, lo judge by the shuffling of their feet on the stair (this is all that we can see of them th rough a window), Tali suggests that such simple inleraclions can also be the basis of more lasting relationships. In one scene, after leasing the landlady's daughter, who girlishly flirts with him al every opportunity, HuloL indicates to another tenant LhaL he remembers this pre-teen when she was only knee-high.

While Hulol's ramshackle apartment building encourages broad social interaction, the design of the Arpels' modern, single-family home deliberately and methodically precludes iL Here "community" is ostensibly a key value when i L comes lo Lhe interior of houses: in showi ng guests her home, Mme. Arpel points out Lhal all of Lhe rooms connect Lo the large, open space of"/e living room." "It's modern," she says, "everything communicates" - Lhe irony being that although the rooms may communicate, the Arpels often do not, as their conversations are often drowned out by the noise of Lheir appliances. Communication with the outside world is equally discouraged by th e imposing concrete and metal fen ce surrounding the house. Tali visually underscores the role Lhis fence plays in separating th e Arpels from the rest of the comm unity in the opening scene, when the Arpels' dachshund returns home after rooting about in garbage cans in the centre ville with a pack of charming strays. The litUe dachshund wiggles through the bars in the gale, but its gaps are too narrow for the strays, who watch as Mme. Arpel fusses over her dirty dog. Moreover, since this gate can be opened electrically from inside the house, Lhe Arpels have eliminated the need to physically interact wiLh people standi ng "outside." Visitors who buzz al the gale -

65

Spohrer whether family like Uncle Hulot, upper-class guests, or tradesmen making a delivery must gain admittance lo the Arpels' private world in order to interact with them. Those inleraclions must take place on Lhe Arpels' terms.

At the same lime, Ta ti makes it clear that differences in technology or the built environment alone do not cause the Arpels' alienation or the sociability of the centre ville, for even when the same elements exist in both neighborhoods, residents use them differently. Consider, for example, windows. In the centre ville, windows are generally open and permeable. People often stand al their windows or in doorways and continually call to one another through them. Moreover, in at least one scene permeability is portrayed as deliberate preference, when Hulot not only opens his windows on to the square below, but positions the windowpane so that the reflected light prompts a neighbor's canary to sing for him. By contrast, while the Arpels' house also has prominent windows, they never lean oul of them lo chal with anyone, not even the neighbor they meet during the course of the film. However, they do use the windows to spy on and discuss that neighbor, and to evaluale her skill al housekeeping! Indeed, the position and roundness of the house's two windows suggests eyes, and Tati underscores the metaphor in a night-time scene in which silho uettes of monsieur and madame appear inside the windows, moving in tandem like the pupils in a pair of eyes, as they peer out to investigate a noise below. While residents of the centre ville use windows to communicate, the Arpels use the same technology lo separate Lhemselves from and control the outside world.

The problem with contemporary consumer society, Tali suggests, is that in pursuing ''modern" values like cleanliness, privacy, and order, consumers like the Arpels consistently make choices that break down community. They alienate themselves from community not only by erecting physical barriers, but also by incorporating miniature, privatized versions of Lradilional public leisure spaces into the private world thus created. Their minutely planned garden, with its neat little lawns, geometrically shaped hedges, beds of pastel gravel, and central fountain, resembles a French public garden - albeit in hyperbolically modern ized forms. Similarly, the umbrella-shaded table where Mme. Arpel serves monsieur his demitasse aner lunch looks like a smaller version of the centre vii/e's sidewalk cafes.

However, Lhe resemblance is only superficial. The cafes in the centre ville are the crossroads of the neighborhood, drawing residents of all classes and occupations like a magnet. On a Sunday anernoon, we see the butcher, still dressed in his white apron, heading there with friends, while a man in a suit beckons lo one of the produce-mongers from the doorway. On another occasion, Hulol's neighbor gets pulled in while still in his pajamas, distracted from his morning chores of watering the plants and taking the dog out By conlrasl, M. Arpel sips his coffee silently and alone in his manicured garden "cafe." The pathos of the scene is heightened by a wide-angle shot that renders him a small figure in this landscape, and by its context, for we have just seen Gerard reject his father's overtures and leave with Uncle Hulol lo play in the centre ville. Although M. Arpel does not seem to realize it, his sense of abandonment is a self-imposed isolation and a product of his consumer choices. By choosing to take his afternoon coffee in the peace and privacy of his back patio, M. Arpel has abandoned a simple, everyday ritual of public consumption that would allow him to forge lies with his fell ow men.

In contrast to the socio-economically mixed world of the centre ville, there are elements of class distinction and class snobbery in the isolated suburban world that the Arpels create for themselves. M. Arpel manages a plastics factory for a company operating

66

Mon Oncle

on a multinalional scale, lo judge by the large map of the world with lines radiating oul from France displayed prominently behind its president's desk Such a company would have been at the forefront of French economic modernization in the 1950s, and its managers part of a growing number of middle-class employees who could afford a bourgeois lifestyle, even though they depended on a salary, rather than capital investments, for a living. Nonetheless, the suburban lifestyle that Tali imagines in Mon Oncle would have been out of reach for all but the very upper echelons of this group in 1958. Car ownership was uncommon in France, with only 1 car for every 25 people in 1950, rising lo only 1 for every 10 people by 1960. By comparison, in the United States the ratios were 1 car lo 4 people in 1950, and 1 car lo 3 people Len years later (Hilliker 63). Similarly, home ownership was relatively rare: in 1954 it applied Lo only 35% of French households (Bonvalel and Lelievre 552). Given the housing shortage that plagued France and other European societies after World War ll, the large multi-family apartment building und er conslruclion al the beginning of Mon Oncle was far more typical of postwar construclion than the Arpels' spacious si ngle-family house, particularly in the suburbs of France's largesl cities.

However, Tati mocks the Arpels not so much for being wealthy, but for consistently and deliberately usi ng their wealth, and lhe consumer goods and technologies il buys, to mark class distinctions and distance themselves from the hoi polloi. The most humorous example of his mockery involves a fish -shaped fountain in the center of the Arpels' garden.

This fountain dominates the garden. IL is large, made of shiny metal, and stand s on its Lail in a small pool pointing vertically lo the sky. Even more notably, however, the plumbing makes loud sucking and gurgling sounds every lime il is turned on as lhe waler begins Lo flow, which calls attention Lo the way the Arpels use it Lo mark the status of their guests.

Every time someone buzzes at the gate, Mme. Arpel runs lo swi tch on the fountain from a panel inside the house. As the fountain gurgles Lo life, she presses another bullon on lhe same panel to admit the visitor. Yet not every visitor qualifies as a "guest," and the fount4in is for guests only. For visitors within the Arpels' social set, such as the female friend who drops by in her shiny car or the haute-couture-clad neighbor, the fountain remains on an d becomes the backdrop for an elaborate ritual in which Madame and her guest exchange and rebuff compliments as they click toward one another along the garden walk in thei r high heels. On the other hand, family members like Hulol or tradesmen like the producemonger who comes lo deliver oranges do not rate such treatment, and Madame quickly and equally noisily switches off the fountain the moment she sees them. Indeed, so consistently is the fountain used that it becomes a signal lo other family members of the presence of important guests: M. Arpel straightens his clothing in preparation for greeting them if he sees it on when he arrives home, while Hulot attempts Lo run the other way.

In the Arpels' world, the ability Lo appreciate, use, and afford modern technologies becomes a marker of class distinction. While upper-class visitors, such as the Arpels' nexldoor neighbor, express the appropriate appreciation for lhe hyper-modern appliances, furnishing, and architecture, lower-class visitors are completely bemused. On his way in and out. the produce-monger stares incredulously al lhe Arpels' electric fence, geometric garden, and in particular lhe giant fish -s haped fountain, showing just how alien he finds this environment And although Mme. Arpel's well -dressed neighbor and friend murmur

67

Spohrer admiri ngly al the openness of le living room, the wife of M. Arpel's plant foreman looks aroun d the bare room with its hard tiled floor and metal furniture, and exclaims "but it's so empty!" She clearly lacks the sophistication and class of the other female guests, for she wears a fur jacket Lo a daytime garden party and dark shoes with a pastel dress, and she laughs much Loo loud and much Loo often. Yet she says what we have all been thinking, and what Tati suggests is characteristic of modern consumption as a whole - it may be private, clean, and orderly, but it is also empty.

Similarly, while Madame Arpel's kitchen is clearly a parody of the contemporary craze for electric household appliances, Tati is mocking the way that she uses these consumer goods as much as the goods themselves. The kitchen itself exaggerates appliances Lo their logical, yet absurd ends, with a remote control for flipping steaks or cabinets that automatically open via an electric eye. Hulot's interaction with the gadgets only highlights their absurdity: his initial surprise when a cabinet door automatically opens leads Lo experimental arm-waving before he can figure out how to keep the door open long enough Lo retri eve a glass. Madame Arpel, on the other hand, Lakes obvious pride in the gadgets and in her skill al using them. We are introduced to them as she shows them off to her guests, who murmur admirably. In one such scene she comments "you see, my dear lillle friends, here I am really al home," before she proceeds to the litany of different switches and buttons: "for the dishes ... for the linen ... push here for the vegetables ... slerilizalion ... ventilation." The loud grinding and whirring noises that ensue with each name call into question her definition of "home."

Tati illustrates lhe role that consumption plays in constructing and impeding community by juxtaposing scenes of consumption in lhe centre ville with their counterparts in suburbia. As we have already seen, part of the problem with the Arpels' suburban lifestyle is lhal in removing traditional leisure experiences from public space, the Arpels segregate themselves socially. This is on one level a deliberate act of social distinction, or the desire to set themselves off from the rest of society by their wealth, their appreciation of technology, and their pursuit of modernity. However, il is also the fruit of th~ir pursuit of related values such as cleanliness and order. The Arpels seek to control their world and order it to their liking, but in doing so miss out on the pleasure inherent in a disorderly life lived in community with others.

Tati uses two sequential scenes of food production and consumption to illustrate ~e emotional poverty of the clean and efficient world of the 1950s kitchen. In the first. durmg their Saturday romp through the old town, Gerard begs his uncle for money to join so.me of the local boys in buying crullers from a earl in a junk-filled meadow by some railroad lracks. The vendor cooks his pastries over a smoky charcoal grill, handling the dough and condiments with blackened hands, which no amount of wiping on his smudged apron seems Lo clean. While cooking, he directs a constant cant toward the boys - "There you go boys, look how good that is, there you go ... " - and honors their requests for extra jam and sugar with a liberal smear of the first and a whole handful of the latter.7 While. the b~ys devour their sticky treats, they sit together on a dusty hill and make a game of distracting passers-by with a loud whistle in an attempt Lo make them run into a lamp pole. The preparation may be dirty, Tati suggests, but the food is good (the boys go back for a second helping), the meal convivial, and the entertainment lop-notch. .

We see the counter-example in the very next scene, when Gerard and ~is uncle return chez Arpel. Aller vigorously vacuuming the dirty boy, Mme. Arpel escorts htm lo the 68

Mon Oncle

kitchen for supper. Her kitchen is as clean as the charcoal grill was dirty, and her metal tongs, blue rubber gloves, and spotless while coal-dress suggest cooking is a medical, rather than a culinary procedure. She "soft-boils" an egg by holding il in front of an electric light controlled by several of the kitchen's innumerable dials, and the bread she serves with it comes wrapped in plastic film. Before serving Gerard, she wheels a set of metal canisters and hoses to the table, pulls oul what looks like an airbrush nozzle, and liberally sprays his plate, cup, and silverware. She does not speak to Gerard once she has him seated at the table, much less ask him how he wants his egg and toast or even if he wants his egg and toast And he makes no requests. After Mme. Arpel leaves the room, we hear the sound of children's laughter coming in through the window. Gerard l-urns lo listen, sighs, and turns back, and the scene closes on him alone with his sterile, yet uneaten meal. With this scene, Tati calls the value of modern kitchen gadgets into question, for they add nothing to the quality of a meal and in fact seem lo detract from il, since Gerard has no appetite for his egg and toast, despite its innovative preparation. In using these gadgets lo pursue a perfection defined by order and cleanliness, Madame Arpel and suburbanites like her completely overlook things lhal make a meal enjoyable, such as flavor or camaraderie.

Tati further underscores the relationship between consumption and community in a series of interlaced scenes comparing the Arpels' evening out in celebration of their anniversary with Gerard's simultaneous adventures with his baby-sitter, Uncle HuloL Even when the Arpels go out, they remain ensconced in their own private world. We first see them in the car discussing restaurant options, then we see a di stant shot of the exterior of the restaurant they have chosen, where a small, pitiful looking doorman stands alon e beneath a neon sign amid a sea of parked cars, watching an automatic door open and close.

There is scarcely more interaction in the interior of Lhe resta uranl, for the Arpels, like the other couples in the restaurant, sit at isolated tables drinking champagne and talking lo one another while musicians play. The only moment of social connection Lhal we see occurs when the violinist approaches the Arpels' table, prompting monsieur Lo hold up a bank note, which the violinist deftly palms. For a few moments Lhe sounds of paper being crushed competes with the violin music, as he stashes the lip away. Even though this evening out takes the Arpels outside their suburban fortress, i l still expresses and is shaped by all of the values that mark their domestic live - it is planned, private and bu ill around elements of class distinction and displays of wealth.

By contrast, the intermixed scenes of Hulot's evening oul with Gerard highlight the spontaneity and sociability characteristic of consumption in the cenlre ville. While Hulol also takes Gerard "out to eat'' (or at least to drink), they go lo neighborhood cafe, where neighborly interaction, rather than discrete dining, is Lhe order of the day. Such interaction apparently has its risks, for al one point Hulot and a young chap come to blows in th e courtyard over a misunderstanding. Yel Tali suggests lhal one should nol Lake these ri sks too seriously. Hulot swings at his adversary, but misses and punches an elderly gentleman instead. Everyone stops to help this man up and bundle him into the cafe, and when we see them leaving the cafe in the next scene, the former combatants are now challing amicably and everyone rides home together in a horse-drawn wagon, singing songs. Hulol's evening in the cafe is serendipitous and spontaneous, and suggests lhal cafe culture ultimately unites rather than divides. Moreover, in this world buyers and sellers mingle socially, and

69

Spohrer not all inleraclion need be commercial. The wagoneer, for example, goes into the cafe with lhe other bystanders lo see about the old man, lets young Gerard take the reins on the drive home, and refuses Hulot's offer Lo pay for the ride. judging by Mon Oncle, Tati believed that the destructive elements of the advanced consumer capitalist society developing in postwar France were neither consumption itself nor the new goods or technologies on the market, but rather the practices they enabled and the new values thal consumers expressed in choosing them. Some of the differences between the two quartiers are structural, stemming from differences in architecture, urban planning, and the dominant forms of transportation engendered by the socio-economic changes sweeping France in the 1950s. Here Tati's criticism of the newer suburbs echoed those of his more intellectual contemporaries and are in turn echoed by present-day advocates of "new urbanism," who seek to revitalize cities and rebuild neighborhood communities by returning lo the denser, more pedestrian-friendly plans of older urban centers. In the centre ville, apartment housing, the mingling of residential and retail space, and pedestrian-scaled streets all create opportunities for residents lo routinely and yet serendipitously interact., opportunities lhal are missing in the Arpels' suburb dominated by single-family housing and automobiles.

However, although Tali shared his contemporaries' interest in exposing the logic and power structures inherent in modern capitalist consumer societies, the consumers in Mon Oncle are nol the si mplistic products of a particular environment or economic system.

In fact., the environments or economic systems in which they are embedded reflect their values as consumers as well as construct them. As Tati envisioned it, the older part of town was a more pleasant place to live, in large part because its residents reinforced community through public, neighborly acts of buying, selling, and consuming. In the newer suburbs, on lhe other hand, consumer preference for private, planned, and ordered consumption degraded social life and destroyed community. The pursuit of such values became an obsessive search for perfection (perfectly sterile, no leaf out of place) and distinction (the most modern fioorplan, the latest car, the ability lo appreciate both). As markers of perfection and distinction, consumer goods became ends in themselves, rather than occasions lo form and strengthen personal relationships.

Watching Mon Oncle, il is clear that il is not enough lo simply recognize and critique lhe biases of particular technologies or economic systems. Nor can one necessarily recreate the convivial society of the centre ville simply by recreating physical elements of nineteenth-century urban space, as theories of "new urbanism" might have us believe. In order Lo create and sustain community, Tali suggests, consumers must also actively adopt values and practices that foster spontaneous, neighborly interaction across socio-economic lines.

Jennifer Spohrer is an assistant professor of history at Bryn Mawr College. She received her PhD in modern Western European history from Columbia University in 2008, and holds an MPhil and MA in history from Columbia and a BA in Plan II Liberal Arts from the University of Texas al Austin. Her research inleresls include twentieth-century international and comparative European history, media history, consumer culture and economies, and the history of technology. She is currently writing a book on the international commercial

70

Mon Oncle

broadcasting station, Radio Luxembourg, and the role lhal opposition Lo lhal station played in the growth of European national public broadcasting monopolies from 1930 Lo the 1950s.

Notes 1 Barthes' key work In this vein was bookended by Mythologies (Parts: Editions du Seull, 1957) and Systeme de la mode (Paris: Editions du Seull, 1967). For a helpful English-language collection of essays Illustrating the evolution ofBarthes' thinking In this period, see The Language of Fashion, trans. Andy Stafford (Oxford, UK:

Berg, 2006).

Lefebvre did not address the social, economic, and cultural changes brought about by growth and economic modernization until 1958, In a long preface appended to the second edition of the first volume, and then again In the second volume, published In 1961. See Michel Trebltsch, Preface to Henri l..efebvre, Critique ofEveryday Life, vol. 1 (London: Verso, 1991).

3 Mon Oncle was also Tati's most commercially successful and critically acclaimed film, winning the Special Jury Prize at Cannes (equivalent to today's Grand Prize, or second place after the Palme d'Or) and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

4 On comparisons between Tati and Chaplin, see Michel Ch Ion, The Films ofJacques Tad, trans. Monique Vlf\as, Patrick Williamson, and Antonio d'AJfonso (Toronto: Guernlca, 1997),16, 29, 41-42 and Bellos, 169-170, 177¡ 178. s For an analytical descriptions of the scenes, characters, and locales see Francis Ramirez and Christian Rolot, Mon Oncle ((Paris]: Editions Nathan, 1993).

6 On cars, see Hilliker, 67-70. ' For the entire cant, see Chlon, 62.

2

Works Cited Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957. _. Systeme de la mode. Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1967. _. The Lan9uage of Fashion. Translated by Andy Stafford. Oxford, UK: Berg, 2006.

Hellos, David. Jacques Ta ti: His Life and Work. London: Harvill Press, 1999.

Bonvalet, Catherine and Eva Lelievre. "Mobilile en France el a Paris depuis 1945: bilan residentiel d'une generation." Population 44 (1989): 531 -559.

Chion, Michel. The Films ofjacques Ta ti. Translated by Monique Vinas, Patrick Williamson, and Antonio d'Alfonso. Toronto: Guernica, 1997.

Fawell, john. "Sound and Silence: Image and Invisibility in Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle."

Literature/Film Quarterly 18 (1990): 221-229.

Hilliker, Lee. "Hulol vs. Lhe 1950s: Tali, Technology and Media lion." journal of Popular Culture 32 (1998): 59-78.

Lefebvre, Henri. Critique of Everyday Life. 3 vols. Translated by john Moore and Gregory Elliot. London: Verso, 1991-2008.

Morin, Edgar. Commune en France: la metamorphose de Plodemet Paris: Fayard, 1967.

Published in English as The Red and the White: Reporlfrom a French Village.

Translaled by A. M. Sheridan-Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1970.

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Ramirez, Francis and Christian RoloL Mon Oncle. [Paris]: Editions Nathan, 1993.

Ross, Kristin. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reorderin9 of French Cu/lure.

Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Smith, Douglas. "'Le temps du plastique': The Critique of Synthetic Materials in 1950s France." Modern & Contemporary France 15 (2007): 135-151.

Trebitsch, Michel. Preface Lo Henri Lefebvre, Critique of Everyday Life. Vol. 1. London: Verso, 1991.

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Laura Beltz lmaoka

Consuming and Maintaining Difference: American Fans Resisting the Globalization of Japanese Popular Culture I'm r eally beginning to dislike Japanese swff on a whole ...

It's constantly In my face â&#x20AC;˘..everywhere I go. I have committed thousands of dollars to Japanese stuff and now I feel a bltslllpld for doing so. So many people arc Into anlml' It's unreal ...a nd now the same Is going to happen with )rock, It's sickening. WhJtsaddens me the most ls that I've been Into this for well over eight years .md now <'V<'ryonc will do It. and do It better than I ever could.

-American fan ofjapJnesc populJr culture, 2006'

MonLhly, massive convention halls in Lhe Uniled SLales fill wilh middle-class tweens, Leens and young adulls, who congregate to spend Lheir weekend socializing, cosplaying (coslume play)2, and consuming imported Japanese goods from numerous vendors. Over the lasl decade, aLLendance al the increasing number of nationwide conventions devoted lo Japanese animation has grown exponentially. The numbers reflect th e steady increase of sales in anime and mango (Japanese comics) in the United States Lhat coincides with the heightened global exchange and inleresl in japan's contemporary popular culture, specifically in Lhe sectors of animation, fashion, music and art. 3 More and more anime is being broadcast on American television, whole sections devoted Lo manga have appeared in mega bookstores, devotees of golhic Lolita fashion are donning their Japanese imported rufOes on American boulevards, and Japanese music is slowly starling Lo gain an audience outside of Lhe anime fan community as more musicians release albums abroad and embark on U.S.

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Imaoka

headlining tours. This has resulted in a growing number of subcultural groups whose adopted style, interests, and collected paraphernalia propel Lheir identity. The anthropological examination of youth consumption and specifically its relevance to globalization and cultural identity has Lhe potential to advance social theory. It also positions American youth, who are traditionally seen as provincial and inward looking, alongside a growing network of urban youth who are "drawn into the circle of 'global popular culture' in search of their identity and a different future for their generation" (Siriyuvasak 1).

Japanese popular culture's appropriation by and popularization in the American mass media has made its products more readily accessible and culturally readable, thus contributing to the growlh in consumers. However, this blanching of the exotic has tested fa n loyalty and effectively changed the dynamics and demographic landscape of fan co mmunities. Fans' ability to construct an identity as different is being challenged by po pularized notions of Japanese "cool" and negative connotations of Japanese "otaku" (fanatic connoisseur) 4 that have infiltrated the American media. Internet forum boards and online journals, bolh places where fans openly express their opinions and make connections based on Lheir interests, have become sites for fans Lo network resistance against Lhe globalization of Japanese popular culture. Many fans are now boycotting Lhe same items that form the basis of their identity. This paper seeks to examine resistance to the globalization or "Americanization" of Japanese popular culture wilhin the United States anime and Japanese rock music fandoms. While Lhese movements express a constant struggle between fans and industrialized official culture (Fiske 4 7), Lhe global dimensions and cultural implications offer insight into the social imagination of youth in a changing global consumer landscape.

THE VERY FAR EAST

Today, Lhe global landscape is littered wilh images and information that overlap and disconnect from producer Lo consumer and Lhe mass media's symbolic, political and ideological dimensions allows the messages it conveys to mean diverse things lo different people al different Limes and to be shaped, re-worked, and re-formulated over time.

Furlhermore, traditional thinking about "areas," driven by certain conceptions of geography, civilization, and cultural coherence, are becoming obsolete as cultural expressions are predominanlly mediated by electronic communication networks (J\ppadurai; Castells; Gupta and Ferguson; Gille and Riain; Martinez). When consumption is "one of Lhe chief ways through which identity is established and maintained and through which il is represented to others" (Clammer 6), how is space and identification defined when studying cultural flows? Fan consumption of foreign popular culture _an~ knowledge has Lhe potential to highlight Lhe social construction of global space and its influence on local identity making. Fans differ from general consumers in Lhe sense that fans consume to intensify Lheir identity, utilizing the appropriated information to network and define Lhemselves against olhers (Fiske). In Lhe case of foreign product consu_mpti?n, f~ns are acquiring foreign cultural knowledge that can be used to constru~t an 1den~ty d~ffe~ent from mainstream society. Space becomes a socially constructed ob1ect of the 1magmat1on, and, by understanding how social aclors engage in place-making by conflating definitions

74

Japanese Pop Culture of local, national, and global scales, researchers can lhen begin lo understand lhese constructed identities.

Japanese media offers American youlh a chance Lo explore a "parallel modernity," while providing an outlet to reflect on their own culture. White Arjun Appadurai (1996) uses the term ''alternate modernities" lo link media flows wilh lhe movement of people, Lhe experience of parallel modernities is not linked with the needs of relocated populations.

Instead, the term was constructed by Brian Larkin (1997) Lo describe a populace who participates in the imagined realities of other cultures as part of their daily lives. The concept of imagination offers insight in lo Lhe "complicated ide nlificalions of audiences and cultural forms that cross expected racial, cultural and national lines" (Larkin 410). For American fans, the recognition of Japanese cultural products as "Japanese" is paramount because the connection of place, linking them lo a real japan, is a necessary means of identity construction. According Lo Anne Allison (2006), "lhe ]-craze is bolh 'Eastern' and not, a globalized fantasy whose intermixture of Lhe foreign and familiar is not localizabl e in/lo any one place" (16). However, she goes on lo say that "equally important is knowing that this all comes from a real place: from a japan that actually exists" (16). While youth are constructing lheir identities by appropriating products of Japanese popular culture, they are also consciously envisioning an imaginary landscape of japan. It is this "Japan," a complex, imagined "parallel modernity" formed through centuries of East-West discourse (Moeran 1-2) that empowers fan identification. However, the concepts surrounding Japanese popular culture are nol exclusively owned by fans and must conslanlly be redefined. Fan resistance movements display youth's social engagement in place-making through consumption practices and the malleability of global imaginaries for the purposes of identity construction.

THE ANIME PURIST Resistance movements that argue against Lhe globalization of Japanese popular culture can define this socially constructed space as fans lry to maintain the producL's relevance Lo their identity as it is mass produced, popularized and Americanized into mainstream culture. The "constant struggle between fans and lhe industry, in which the industry attempts Lo incorporate the tastes of the fans, and lhe fans Lo 'excorporate' lhe products of the industry" (Fiske 47) takes on new cultural dimensions in global exchange.

Japanese animation and other foreign media products are susceptible Lo processes of "global localization" or "glocalization," which refers lo the process of adapting a global product for a specific markeL This is a global market strategy employed by such corporations as Sony, which does not seek Lo impose a standard image, but instead tailors to the demands of local markets. Before anime series are released on American television, their scripts need to be translated from Japanese Lo English, dialogue has Lo be adjusted Lo fit accepted cultural norms, scenes are censored or cul accordingly, and background musi c and sound effects are altered lo appeal lo Lhe local audience. Translations of these products are influenced by sociolinguistic and cultural differences between japan and the United States, as well as by political, economic and historical discourses that circulate between Japan and the Wests For example, cartoons are often delegated as children's entertainment in the United States (Napier 245), Lhus many anime series which may appeal lo a broader Japanese audience are heavily censored for America's young. Conscious of these changes and marketing strategies, many fans are concerned with anime being misunderstood and

75

Imaoka devalued; Lhus Lhey fight Lo uphold lhe media's "aulhenlicity." Authenticity and the argument of "complexity" and "subtlety" of fan objects are often used as criteria for discrimination by fans (Fiske 36). American fans of Japanese popular culture, however, quantify Lhis wilh a belief that Japanese media captures an aesthetic, expressive, or spiritual sensibility deeply linked lo what is believed Lo be culturally unique about Japan and its people (Allison 20). It is this ideologically defined difference from American media and culture through which fans can legitimate Lheir personal investment (Grossberg 60); an investment which many feel is threatened by globalization.

According Lo a self-defined "grassroots organization" called Animation Liberation, "United States Imperialism " is polluting the intent of anime and manga by censoring, du bbing and over selling iL6 Members believe Japanese media is an art form and not a commodity. Through forum discussion boards, member-written essays, and organized convention panels, members ask fans to boycott large corporations Lhat are monopolizing its distribution. Their hopes of initialing a countercultural movement where individuals, not corporations, have representational influence, symbolizes the lack of control fans feel over how their interests are marketed. Animation Liberation's vocalized discontent with American consumer culture echoes the opinions of larger segments of Lhe fandom Lhat view their consumption of Japanese popular culture as a better alternative. According to those surveyed on two popular online anime forums (Anime Nation and Anime Boards), "the quality and content of anime is better, more diverse, and more mature than that of typical American cartoons;" they prefer "Lhe originality, the deep and complex plots and animation detail compared Lo American cartoons and Hollywood movies;" and argue that "anime covers a lot of genres and subject matter not found elsewhere." This celebrated "olherness" of anime oflen expands, however, into a belief that American media has beco me so saturated by mediocre talent Lhat it can no longer sland up lo Japanese forms.

The unique quality and variation of Japanese media is beyond acceptance or understanding, making the Japanese crealors more innovative and open to the unusual.

Those who prefer their anime sub tilled instead of dubbed, heavily criticize English voice aclors for lacking the skills of Japanese voice actors who, according to fans, _are more emotionally connected and aware of lhe media's value. According lo one male amme fa~ at the 2006 Anime Expo in Southern California, "Japanese seiyuu (voice actors) do a b~tter JOb of being the characters Lhey portray, while American voice .actors al~ays. sound ~1ke the~ are just reading a scripl; Japanese seiyuu put far more emotion and pnde mto their work Moreover it is a lack of a relationship with "mass-produced" American popular culture that factors i~lo Lhe belief of having discovered something more "real" or "authentic" in Japanese popular cullure. Fans are rejecting a heavily commercialized media in favor of whal they see as a purer expression of culture.

THE SPECIALIZED FAN As a "parallel modernity," Japanese media musl embody a natural, un~int~d i~eal, opposite an American corporate-run, capitalist-driven media industry. It â&#x20AC;˘.s this _gt~en difTerence between the two industries and cultures thal is necessary for fan disassociation from others. Bul as anime attracts more fans, internally the fandom is dividing. While some wear "Otaku pride" on their l-shirts, others are feeling anxious about a negative stereotype of otaku circulating in Lhe American press and want to distance the~selves from .new fans.

Even Animation Liberation suggests supporting smaller, local amme convenl1ons over

76

Japanese Pop Culture large-scale, established ones. Many fans have broadened their i nlerests outside of anime and manga by studying Japanese and seeking more knowledge of Japanese society. They factor this into future life endeavors as they dream of living in Japan, aspiring lo become manga artists, video game designers, rock musicians, and even sta nd-up comedians. For them, Japan has become the land of opportunity outside of the broken American dream.

Fans embrace Japanese media's "cultural odor," that for them has become a "cultural fragrance" or a symbolic image of the country of origin (Iwabuchi 27). These fans nol only establish an identity against mainstream American society, but also against other fans as they filter their interests and relate their idenlity lo less globally-recognized forms of Japanese media.

One such media Lo gain attention by many American fans is Japanese popular music, which rode on the coattails of anime soundtracks and fan's already inherent interest in the Japanese language. Fans immediately connected Lo its bubblegum lyrics and beat., colorful costumes and stage personalities, and its female Japanese singers often showcasing their kawaisa (cuteness). More interesting perhaps is a less-mainstream genre of Japanese musi c called bijuaru kei, or "visual type" rock music, which is aLLracling a large number of foreign female devotees. Musicians of the bijuaru kei genre, known as ")rock" Lo foreign fans, focu s energy on their appearance as well as music by utilizing outrageous costumes, makeup, stylized hair, and androgynous stage play Lo stimulate their audience. While, in the United States, the trend for glam rock and associated new wave artists shifted in the early 1990s due Lo the advent of grunge, in japan, visual bands continued Lo evolve, garnering mainstream appeal and reflecting the growing trends in male beauty aesthetics. Bijuaru kei musicians appear Lo have stepped out of the pages of girls' manga onto Lhe music stage,7 explaining the initial attraction of many female anime fans.a Though no longer in japan's limelight, many underground bands are being invited Lo perform al anime conventions in the United States and accepting offers from American record labels Lo officially release their albums overseas.

Similar Lo anime fans who promo Le the difTerence and preferred style of anime over American media. Fans surveyed online (Baslu ]rock Forum) describe it as "innovative," "original," "diverse," and superior Lo current American or Western music. The nature of the genre, with staged androgyny and beautiful men, also appea rs to rebel against traditional Western conventions. Many fans interchange the fantasy of stage performance and what Laura Miller calls "Japanese masculine beauty'' (152), for a construed reality of freer Japanese social practice, identifying it as an ideal alternative Lo American homophobic society. Like their anime brethren, many )rock fans also lack a relationship with their country's mainstream popular culture. One female Leen describes her preference for )rock as follows: I hate what's popular in our country right now. I can't stand it. Rap : partying, getting women, drugs, cars, money ... Rock: everyo ne is just the sa me, yeah, som etim es catchy, but the lyrics are completely s hallow ... With Jrock, I know th ey're not s inging about stupid stuff like that.

Access to official and unofficial material circulated and translated by an extensive digital network allows fans to acquire special information that goes beyond knowing the stage names of each musician Lo identifying their blood type, favorite food, favorite brand of 77

Imaoka cigarettes, as well as their personality. While the "authenticity myth" allows fans ~o identify with artists who are physically and culturally distant (Fiske 36; Stevens 61-2), it has also factored into the belief that Japanese musicians are more personally invested in producing their own material, as Japanese voice actors are to anime. One fan said she feels "a genuine connection with each band member. They're so human and their personalities are so believable and completely unmanufactured like many popular English speaking bands."

Josephine Yun, a Jrock fan and author of the first English language report on rock acts in Japan, jrock, Inc. (2005), explains in an interview for the San Francisco Chronicle that "wi~ Japanese musicians, you see them goofing around in their off-hours, kicking each other m the butt If you ask them their favorite food, they'll tell you, and it'll be hamburgers, or whatever. Something normal... In japan, they recognize that entertainers are normal people who just happen Lo have an extraordinary job" (as quoted by Yang). This commodification of the human persona provides a real emotional connection for fans. It fills a cultural lack. provides social prestige, self-esteem (Fiske 33), and ofTers a sense of knowing and belonging to another, albeit imagined, culture. Many fans are using this connection as an outlet Lo express grievances with American capitalist society.

While jrock has yet Lo reach the same mainstream recognition as anime, it has nol stopped many fans from worrying about its future distribution. In 2006, a small group of America n jrock fans named Visual Kaisen put together an online petition "to keep )rock out of America." Developed in response to negative press surrounding the Japanese rock band Dir en grey'~ headlining tour of Lhe United Stales, Visual Kaisen petitioned lo protect Japanese musicians and their music from the American mainstream. Their concern was how the press related Lhe band's surprising underground support to Lhe same t:end factory that made anime popular; calling it a passing fad or flavor of the month without much praise for Lhe band's music (Burke; Stingley; Tilus). Part of Visual Kaisen's petition to the American Media reads as follows: )rock is not meant for the American masses, who will only destroy the delicate art of the music. The population of America is one who, time and time again, has taken original, beautiful things and JiteraJly destroyed them, to make a watered-down, disgusting, mass-produced imitation of its original inspiration. They create stereotypes, identity problems, and a shallow, unoriginal youth that is so used to following trends that they forget how to think for themselvcs. 10

While the petition was short-lived as fans questioned its effectiveness, Lhe em~tions_ ech~ a larger undercurrent of fan opinions. What surfaces is an unco~fortab!e r~lationship with "Westernization," and a desire to be situated above it by consuming against it For Lhe fan who is quoted al the beginning of this paper, her greatest fear was realized when Dir en 9rey L-shirls started being sold at Lhe trendy al~ernative n:1all store Ho; Topic, which already carries anime related goods. "Somehow, I don t feel spe~ial anymore, she remarked while wailing in line Lo see Dir en grey's first U.S. live al the W1ltern Theater in Los Angeles. Al the core of this identity crisis is a fear o: being mista~.en as "one of those faceless fangirl anime kids because I'm sporting something Japanese..Japanese P?pular culture's accessibility has changed Lhe experience of buying merchandise fr~m bemg an exotic ''adventure'' of going to a Japanese ethnic enclave in large cities, to wal~ng down the demarcated aisle in the local Sam Goodie or Best Buy. For her, Lhe nostalgia of the days

78

Japanese Pop Culture when Japanese popular culture "used lo be an expression of who a person is" has changed into something "petty," thus losing its relevance for youlh lrying lo differenliale Lh emselves from mainstream society.

NEW YOUTH COSMOPOLITANISM Products carry with them cultural codes and today "culture" and especially "cultural difference" have become acceptable products for consumplion in conlemporary society (Goldstein-Gidoni 161). While the globalization of Japanese cultural products confers upon Japan a new "soft power'' to inspire lhe dreams and desires of olhers by projecling images about its culture that are broadly appealing (Allison 17), these images compacl with Lhose already presenl in lhe Wes l's imagination. Japanese popular cul lure is produced in Japan, globally distributed, locally marketed, and personally consumed by foreign fans. As social actors, fans are "living lhe global" while being grounded in lhe local (Gille and Riain 271), and it is this dialogue between flows of ideas, products and imaginalion lhal conslrucLc; the global world.

While many youlh are initially drawn Lo Lhe producl by Japanese "cool" markeling, it is by connecling their idenlity lo lhe cullure of origin, an imagined "parallel modernity," that signifies their status as fans. For fans lhat regret and lry Lo resist lhe globalization of Japanese popular cullure, lhe heighlened marketing of Japanese "cool" is lhreatening and has resulted in the "Americanization" and devaluation of the products as culturally Japanese. The object's potency as a unique expression of identity is lost Lo mass culture. Fan opinions and viewpoints, such as lhe idealization of Japan and Japanese popular culture, highlightyoulh's discontent wilh American capitalism and a conlinued Western imagining of "Japan" and its people. As fans seek to conLTol lheir identity by resisting globalizalion, they are also ironically parlicipating in its process. Agency remains, however, in the form of imagination as fans interpret and rework "Japan" in lo their social landscape.

The everyday praclices of youth offer insight inlo future consumptio n as American youlh may be forming the basis of a new type of cosmopolitanism lhal requires searching beyond the boundaries of the nation-s tale for alternative elements Lo redefine in order to define themselves. Fantasy is a global social practice and Lhe United Slates is only one node of a complex transnational construction of imaginary landscapes (Appadurai 31). IL is questionable whelher American marketing can adjust Lo suit lhis new global oulreach of its young consumers who continually long for something different Cultural difference also remains a potent factor in consuming desires. Rather lhan contribuling Lo the dismanlling of problematic geographical or geocultural categories of East and West, these new transnational networks of popular cullure reinforce their hold over our ability lo imagine a global space (Yoshimoto 54), and notions of Lhe "Other," in opposition to a "Self," are maintained in an increasingly globalized world.

Laura Beltz Imaoka holds an M.A. in Anthropology from California Slate University, North ridge, and will be continuing her doctoral studies in the Department of Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, in fall 2010. She has praclical experience in arL conservation and recently spent two years in Tokyo assisting international students al Temple University, Japan Campus. Her research interests are globalization, material culture, and the po lilies of representation.

79

Imaoka Notes fan quotations throughout this paper are from Interviews and surveys conducted in 2006; See Laura B. Beltz, "Consuming & Creating Difference: The Underground Anlme and Jrock Movement among American Youth" (MA thesis, California State University, Northridge, 2007).

2 Cosplay is short for "costume play;" many fans dress up as their favorite character while attending conventions.

3 Tsutomu Suglura, the director of the Marubeni Research Institute, figured that Japan's cultural exports which include music, books, magazines, films, handicrafts, collectibles, patent royalties, and performances amounted to $15 billion In 2002, which Is up from $5 billion in 1992.

4 An otaku, a Japanese type of social misfit, translates roughly into "nerd" or "fanatic connoisseur" of items Including, but not limited to, anlme and manga. In Japan, otaku exhibit anti-social behavior that centers on consumption. The import of anlme in the United States has garnered otaku attention in the media. According to Kolchi twabuchi, ("How "Japanese" is Pok~monr In Plkachu's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokdmon, ed Joseph Tobin rourham & London: Duke University Press, 2004], 53-79), the media's commentary Is coupled w ith anti-Japan sentiment showing that "the fear in the West is of contamination and contagion: Importing Japanese ;mime and computer games will turn Western youth into otaku" (59). Many American funs arc often unaware of the negative connotations of otaku in Japan and adopt the term with a sense of p1~de In their community. s According to Hlrofuml Katsuno and Jeffrey Maret, ("Localizing the Pok~mon TV series for the American market.¡ in Plkachu 's Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokdmon, ed. Joseph Tobin [Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2004], 80-107), who personally Investigated the American modification of the first fifty episodes of Pokdmon, "these shared discourses sometimes serve to reinforce racist paradigms that continue to flow within and between Japan and Euro-America" (2006, 84). The Pokemon series underwent an "aggressive Anglophone-centric process of localization," going beyond the removal of Japanese script from the background scenes to ch<lnglng dialogue and meaning; however, "even In this translation the series retflins a certain Japanese aesthetic and cultural odor" (2004, 104). " Read more about Animation ll/Jeradon's fight <lt their Web page: http://www.animationliberation.com/. ?According to L.1ura Miller (Beauty Up: Exploring ContemporaryJapanese Body Aest/ledcs (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of Califomla Press, 2006], 152 ), male beauty trends among young Japanese men, such as eyebrow shaping, skin care, and a heightened concern of their stitus as aesthetic objects for women, represents a "shift to beautification as a component of masculinity;" it also symbolizes a consumption-driven Identity that rejects their father's mode of masculinity; a masculinity that was deerotldzed In the corporate culture of the post-war period (2006, 126-127). Bljuaru kei can be seen as a heightened display of this consumption driven beauty interest, having Identical roots In cultural production as gh'ls' culture, especially blsllonen manga (comics featuring beautiful young men). Several Japanese male musicians appear to h:we stepped out of the pnges of girls' manga onto the music stage, which Miller dubs as "living manifestations of readers' fantasy men" (2006, 152). e 1n my 2006 study, female anime fans accounted for half of my respondents; while Jrock fans were 85% female.

9 Dir en grey has had an auspicious career since their formation in 1997; their style and music has gone through many stages of evolution and while having Influenced bljuaru kai, they no longer consider themselves under that genre. They have been one of the few Jrock bands to respond to a growing Interest worldwide. In 2004, the band created a "Special Offer" program for overseas fans to set up travel to Japan while providing tickets for them to go to a live. Also In 2004, Dir en grey's official website became bilingual, with an English section allowing access to news, events, fanmall, and forum rights unlike before. Dir en grey's first overseas endeavor was In Europe, playing nt several rock festivals in Berlin (Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park) in May and June of 2005. They continued with a show in Paris and later Belgium. Since their first headlining tour of the United States in 2006, they have toured with the American hard rock bnnd Korn, as a featured band at the second tncamatlon of the Family Values Tour, and then retoured the states adding numerous cities to their ticket. They are one of the few Jrock bands to focus on promoting to a mainstream Ame1ican audience outside the anlme convention arena.

1 The

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Japanese Pop Culture

10

Although only garnering 87 signatures, the petition sparked fan discussion across the Internet database from large forums to Individual biogs, as fans questioned the fate of Dir en grey and Jrock In America; To view Visual Kalsen's Online Petition, go to http://www.PetitlonOnllne.com/vkalsen/petition.honl. Their Web page can also be viewed here, http://www.vtsualkalsen.2truth.com/.

Works Cited Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at large. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Allison, Anne. "The Japan Fad in Global Youth Culture and Millennial Capitalism," Mechademia 1(2006):11-21.

Burk, Greg. "Japanese Metal (It's Aaaall Fuuucked Uuuppp!)." LA Week016 Apr. 2006: Live in L.A. Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford & Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 1996.

Clammer, John. Contemporary Urban japan: A Sociology of Consumption. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Limited, 1997.

Fiske, John. "The Cultural Economy of Fandom." The Adoring Audience: Fan Cu/lure and Popular Media. Ed. Lisa A. Lewis. London: Routledge, 1992: 30-49.

Gille, Zsuzsa, and Sean 6 Riain. "Global Ethnography," Annual Review ofSociology 28 (2002) : 271-95.

Grossberg, Lawrence. "Is There a Fan in Lhe House?: The AITective Sensibility of Fandom."

The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media. Ed. Lisa A. Lewis. London : Routledge, 1992: 50-68.

Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. "Beyond 'Culture': Space, Id entity, and the Politics of Difference." The Anthropology of Globalization. Eds. Jonathan X. Inda and Rena lo Rosaldo. Oxford and Malden: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 1997: 65-79.

Iwabuchi, Koichi. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnalionalism.

Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.

Larkin, Brian. "Indian films and Nigerian Lovers: Media and Lhe Creation of Parallel Modernities," Africa 3 (1997): 406-40.

Martinez, Dolores P. "Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures." The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries, and Global Cultures. Ed. Dolores P. Martinez. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998: 1 -18.

Moeran, Brian. "Introduction: Rapt Discourses: Anthropology, Japanism and japan " Unwrapping japan: Society and Culture in Anthropological Perspective. Ed. Eyal BenAri, Brian Moeran, and James Valentine. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990: 1-17.

Miller, Laura. Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 2006.

Napier, Susan. Anime from Akira lo Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Ofra Goldstein-Gidoni. "The Production and Consumption of 'Japa nese Cul lure' in lhe Global Cultural Market,"journal of Consumer Culture 5 (2005): 155-79.

Siriyuvasak, UbonraL "Popular Culture a nd Youth consumption: Modernity, Identity and Social Transformation." Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of

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Japanese TV Dramas. Ed. Koichi lwabuchi. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004: 177-202.

Stevens, Carolyn. "Buying Intimacy: Proximity and Exchange al a Japanese Rock Concert."

Fanning the Flames: Fans and Consumer Culture in Contemporary japan. Ed. William Kelly. Albany: Stale University of New York Press, 2004: 59-78.

Stingley, Mick. "Dir en grey." The Hollywood Reporter 23 Mar. 2006.

Tilus, Christa. "Underground Support Brings Dir en grey lo ForefronL" Billboard 17 Apr. 2006.

Yang, Jeff. "ASIAN POP Hello Kilty! Rock! Rock!" San Francisco Chronicle 8 Sept 2005: EntertainmenL Yos himoto, Milsuhiro. "Reexamining lhe East and lhe West: Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, 'OrienLalism,' and Popular Culture." Multiple Modernities: Cinemas and Popular Media in Transcultural EaslAsia. Ed. jenny Kwok Wah Lau. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003: 53-75.

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Andrew Battista

After the Garden is Gone: Megachurches, Pastoral, and Theologies of Consumption I werit to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built In the midst, Where I used co play on the green.

- William Blake, "The Garden of Love"

This pasl April I visiled Soulhland Christian Church in Lexinglon, KY, and was inviled Lo allend a Poor Man's AfterTax Dinner. Soulhland, localed on a verdanl 115-acre plot in Lhe rapidly disappearing farmland between Lexinglon and Jessamine County, hosled a catered meal and a performance by Lhe Dale Adams Band. Southland's website promoted the evening by asking, "Did you have Lo pay when you filed taxes? This monlh's Galhering is designed to help you to forget your IRS woes."1 The Afler-Tax Dinner, il seems, was meant Lo console members of Soulhland's flock, whose wallelS ached after filing for lhe April 15th deadline. And, assuming Lhal the lalemodel luxury SUVs in Lhe church parking loLs correspond lo lhe financial wherewilhal of Soulhland's members, one might also assume lhal the dinner was an unqualified success, a welcome reprieve for Lhose worshipper-consumers who belong Lo the brackel most Laxed afler having rendered Lheir money unlo Caesar.

Soulhland is Lexington's largest megachurch. With al least 8,000 people allending each week and an operaling budgel sizable enough Lo sustain a staff of over eighly people, Soulhland exceeds most U.S. congregations in Lerms of financial resources and social clout. 2 The

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Battista church is similar Lo many olher garganluan worship cenlers, in that it claims Lo welcome diversity but is comprised mainly of a white, educated, middle-class core. According to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, which has provided Lhe mosl thorough research aboul the megachurch movemenl available thus far, megachurch members are "more affiuenl on average Lhan churchgoers of lhe nation as a whole." 3 Over one-fourth of megachurch allendees have a household income of over $100,000, and nearly two-thirds make al least $50,000.4 Soulhland, a massive estate that many Lexington residents pejoratively refer to as "Six Flags over Jesus," is one example of a trend where evangelic~!

Christians abandon modestly sized Mainline Proleslanl congregations, often located m downlown areas, and inslead attend large-scale, non-denominational worship and entertainment venues that occupy expansive suburban and exurban properties. Since the early 1990s, scholarly and popular critics note that megachurches have proliferated by altracting sojourners who are disgruntled wilh Mainline Protestantism and its "irrelevant" rituals, and they have also burgeoned by enticing a large cohort of people who are new to organized and inslilulionalized religion. 5 Megachurches have been successful because they convince such spiritual nomads to join a new fold, where they can embark on a chic, Christian jou mey and chat about it over coffee in Lhe church bistro. Like olher churches Lhal assume the big-box retail design, Southland overwhelms people who attend wilh hip worship music and opportunities lo purchase books, L-shirts, and similar Christian-themed kitsch. More importantly, communities like Southland forgo lhe conventional sermonic form and instead peddle biblical aphorisms thal can be digesled via PowerPoinl slides and YouTube clips.

Megachurches call lheir members "users" (or "seekers") because market research has shown Lhal "laity" or "congregalion" suggest a stodgy, outdated image that alienates the target churchgoer. To offer a more enlicing product, megachur~hes also ri~ Lheir sanctuaries of traditional Chrislian iconography, such as crosses, stamed glass windows, and the Bible, because lhe same market research reveals lhal lh ese symbols make many churchgoers uncomfortable. Megachurches' atlention to consumer p~e~erence parl_ays into a theology of consumption that informs almost every aspect of the spmtual educa_tion they offer.6 Because megachurches have been so prolific, lhey spearhead a consumptive ethos thal has infiltrated even the smallest congregations in the U.S., due in large part to successful media produclS. This growlh has, in turn, reinforced evangelical Christianity's uncritical adaptation of capitalism as a model for spiritual development To those who see megachurches as symptomatic of a flawed Christianity, m_a~ket~ minded churc~ gro'-:th confounds one of the religion's oldesl polarities: the task of hvmg m the world while trying nol Lo conform Lo its ways. Megachurches offer a religious experience that appears to absolve this tension. Perpetualing an apparent contradiction, megachurches encourage their members Lo rejecl "things of lhe world" even while lhey stake out spiritual identities by purchasing such things. Megachurches seek Lo win lhe lost and wow the consumer simultaneously.

Allhough sociologists and cultural critics who are skeptical of megachurches condemn the synergy of missionary fervor and capitalist ideology,_they oft~n balk ~hen the moment arrives to articulale exaclly what makes these evangehcal empires socially and doctrinally reprehensible. For example, consider Omri Elisha, who expresses a c?mmonlyheld sentiment lhal "(e]ven people who do not believe in Christ the Redeemer still..~a~t to believe in a Chrisl lhat Lhrows a fil when money-changers show up al the temple. Ehsha

84

After the Garden is Gone seems to suggest that the ethical framework Christianity offers is salvageable only if it opposes the evils of capital economy. He is one among many who discredits evangelical capitalism with the conviction that Jesus-who says il is harder for a wealthy person lo enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle- would not condone exploitative industries, like usury on sacred worship space. 8 The intuition that Jesus would chide a faith undergirded by capitalism may be correct, and it is probable that Jesus would disparage megachurches- not-for-profit conglomerates that comprise a $7.2 billion industry in the United States and exploit their tax-exempt status to build material empi res and propagate a right-wing agenda.9 However, this interpretation of Jesus cleansing the temple explains the perniciousness of evangelical capitalism only in part.

The seeming incompatibility between Christianity and the marketplace is just one aspect of a recurring pattern whereby megachurches implement theologies infused with capitalist ideology to uphold the upper-middle class status quo. Evangelicals themselves have long since resolved the quandary of intertwining the sa nctuary with the market whil e following a figure, Jesus, who teaches that such uneasy collaboration with earthy systems contradicts the critical worldview that New Testament writers painstakingly develop. And, of course, megachurch leaders fully realize how fluid the slippage is between evangelism and entrepreneurialism, and most freely admit that evangelism is marketing, and marketing is evangelism. After all, if churches are "pushing a high-concept product [like] eternal life," why should they separate these categories7 10 In the minds of most evangelicals, the clarion call Lo recruit members and expand the church does not bespeak bad-faith corporate entrepreneurialism; rather, it implements in a literal way the ultimate marketing campaign: Jesus' Great Commission lo make disciples of all nations.11 Indeed, most megachurches appropriate capitalism flagrantly and already see the parallels between the church and the market as being obvious. Take, for insta nce, Ted Haggard, the former and now recovering (or is it recovered?) homosexual pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO. Haggard argues "that for Christianity lo prosper in the fre e market, il needs more than 'moral values'- it needs consumer value." 12 Or, consider John Jackson, pastor of Carson Valley Christian Center in Minden, NV, a spiritual leader who refers lo himself as a "PastorPreneur."13 And then there's Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL, the first thoroughly market-driven megachurch. Willow Creek seeks out MBA-credentialed men (in lieu of those with a theological or mi nislerial education) lo hold church leadership positions. The church, adept al branding the spiritual experience il provides, has launched a marketing arm Lhal offers consultations, workshops, and seminars for smaller congregations that seek to deliver similar programming. Willow Creek's media raise additional revenue and leach other pastors how Lo become business-savvy leaders who can replicate the parent church's stratagem and grow their own smaller churches accordingly.

To be sure, megachurches have infiltrated the literal and figurative landscape of U.S. evangelical Christianity because they provide good customer service (and the customer is, they say, always right). However, it's not just market-based Lh eology that drives the success of megachurches. I suspect that a second key impulse that drive s megachurches is the Christian affinity for sheep and shepherds, or, staled less glibly, ils inculcation of pastoral ideology. Jeff Sharlel suggests that megachurches proliferate by offering a faith community whose main selling point is a lack of conflict In his mind, megachurches cater lo a religious faction that replicates a fundamental mystification, a retreat Lo a nonexistent Golden Age of

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Battista harmony.11 Sharlel interprets contemporary evangelicalism as a culture that expresses theodicy, or a quest to understa nd the presence of evil in the world, in terms of geographic locale. Christians remove themselves from the complexity of urban life, where evil runs rampant, and retreat Lo the safety and still waters of suburbia, a journey they believe bolsters their spiritual health. This movement, given credence by market-based ideologies, generates a new brand of Christianity imbued with the seductions of _the literary pastor:!.

Pastoral literature, originally poems in which shepherd speakers rest m stales of receptive leisure and reflect idealistically on their experience with nature, has, according to Terry GifTord, exfolialed into a trope versatile enough "to both contain and appear to evade tensions and contradictions- between country and city, art and nature, the human and the non-hu man, [and) our social and inner selves." 15 The pastoral impulse elucidates many evangelicals' fear of confusing and spiritually volatile urban environ.ments. The exu~ban location of most megachurches, their architectural fea tu res, and their landscape designs reinforce consumer sovereignty while lulling Christians into a bucolic idyll, in which they cannot recognize their complicity in social inequality. . .

This essay argues that pastoral ideology, which has informed the Amencan literary and cultural tradition si nce al least the Puritans, should be considered in tandem with capitalism as the contemporary evangelica l megachurch movement's chief ideological framework. As megachurch members leave the city and retreat lo the country, they participate in the fantasy that they can fl ee complexity and ab solve themselves from the co nfrontational, oppositional ethic of the Kingdom of God that informed early Christianity.

In what follows, I will explain how narratives of the marketplace function to develop a pasloral-megachurch-Christian worldview, where spiritual seekers can choose lo embrace a faith th at refuses to rob them of their comfort The capitalism that megachurches appropriate fosters the illusion that economic growth can create efficient ways of spreading Jesus' gospel, which allegedly provides a raison d'~tre for accumulating wealth and expanding properly. In reality, the capitalist theologies that megachurches espouse enable the wealthy elite- and those who support them by acting as spiritual consumersto practice religion in a way that damages rural landscapes ecologically and upholds uppermiddle class advantage.

Narratives of the Marketplace As Willow Creek's marketing model would indicate, megachurches perpetuate by advancing consumption-based theologies that emphasize their survival skills ..or the ma~y shibboleths thal evangelicalism embraces, few appear as clearly as econo~1c ~~d social Darwinism. Megachurch pastors often attribute their growth not to the Lords Sp1nl, as ~ne might assume, but instead lo their church's ability to outwit, outlast, and survive competition. Multiple church histories indicate that "successful meg~church leaders ada~t to demographic and social change; they target potential wors~1pers based on their lifestyles; and they use multiple communication channels Lo deltv:r message~ that are relevant Lo people's lives." t 6 Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Ch~:ch m Hous~on, interprets his church's growth as a natural consequence of its adaptab1hty. Accordmg Lo Osteen, "[o)ther churches have not kept up, and they lose people by not changing with the ti~es." 1 7 Rodney Stark, a sociologist who applies Adam Smith's "invisible h~nd" pa:a~1gm to institutional religion, has anatomized the resonance betwe:~ economic Darwtmsm and faith communities. According lo Stark. the cutthroat spmtual market, where many

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After the Garden is Gone doctrinal perspectives vie for people's allegiances, winnows away churches thal are nol fil to survive: "competition among religious organizations in any society stimulates effort, thus increasing the overall level of religious commitment and causing the demise of faiths lacking sufficient market appeal." 18 Nol surprisingly, then, megachurches oflen sing their own praises Lo the cadence of an inspirational Horatio Alger-style melody. Megachurches in this instance resemble corporations that recount their ascendance through tales of meager beginnings, cramped spaces, and sparse attendance-all hardships overcome en route to plush auditoriums and influential cable television ministries. Southland, for instance, boasts that it grew out of "a vision [ ...] One hundred and seventy-two people attended the first service on July 8, 1956.

Nearly five decades later, [it averages] over 8,000 in allendance." 19 Following a similar vein, Lake Forest, CA's Saddleback Church represents its success on its website both in prose form and with a "quick facts" format: Year the Church Began: 1980 Founded by: Rick and Kay Warren Size of first Bible study: 7 people Average attendance today: 20,000+ New Believers baptized in past 10 years: 12,000 Church campus: 120 acres 20 As the Saddleback story goes, Warren, "fresh out of seminary," len Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas with his wife and all his possessions, which fit "on the back of a U-haul truck," and went to California to start a church.21 Whal began as a small Bible study, held in Warren's modest apartmenl, evolved into "one of the mosl exciting journeys of growth that any church has experienced in American history."22 Finally, there's the largest congregation in the U.S., Osleen's Lakewood Church, which boasts a story that may trump other megachurch hisloriographies in its pomp.

According to Lakewood's website, "[the church's] origins were humble. In facl, the first meeling of Lakewood Church was held in a converted feed store on the outskirts of Houston."23 Today, Lakewood meets in the refurbished 16,000-seat Compaq Center, form er home of the NBA's Houston Rockets. (One wonders if Lakewood's historical narrative alludes to Christ's own humble beginnings in a barn, which, according to the gospel account, still housed liveslock at the time of his birlh) . These rags-Lo-riches la les are important to megachurches because they form their identities and innuence their theological visions. The narratives pass off American Dream opulence as the inevitable teleology for the thriving, God-seeking church, and once megach urch -goers sense that their spiritual plight corresponds with the principles that dictate capital economy, they envisage their continued participation in that economy as an expression of Christian faith.

Markel theology allows megachurch paslors like Rick Warren, for example, to insisl on the one hand that Christianity's "goal is not to turn the church into a business," while on the other hand lo acknowledge that his church's stalus as an evangelical powerhouse stems directly from its implementation of business stralegies.2 4 The success Warren has enjoyed suggests that he is not only a corporate visionary, bul also one of evangelicalism's mosl charismatic figureheads. For this reason President-elect Barack Obama asked him lo deliver the invocation al his January, 2009 inauguration. In addition lo commanding the

87

Battista allegiance of large congregations, Warren is like many megachurch pastors in that he reaches millions of other evangelicals through sundry media enterprises. 25 The presence of Warren and other megachurch leaders presents a salient modem example of the "routinization of charisma," a phenomenon, Max Weber suggests, that ultimately enables "the continuously effective routines of workaday life" to infiltrate organized religion. 26 With a powerful yet unimposing personality, the charismatic megachurch leader, Weber's version of a creative genius and entrepreneur, helps followers to transcend the strictures of boredom and eventually become participants in bureaucratic order.

"The Lord is my Shepherd": Evangelicalism and Pastoral It is a commonplace to speak of a faith community as a "fold," a charismatic presence like Warren as a "shepherd" or "pastor" (which comes from the Latin word for "shepherd"), and a congregation as a "nock." These metaphors cast religious experience in terms of the pastoral motif, which can be traced back to the Old Testament's most famous poem, the twenty-third Psalm. In that well-known verse, the analogy of God as a good shepherd who leads his sheep beside still waters culminates with the promise of radical equality, where every person receives the chance lo "dwell in the house of the Lord" forever. 27 Pastoral literature provides a way Lo Lalk about spiritual, social, and ethical relationships between humans, God, and nature. Pastoral not only elicits a sentimental yearning for repose in nature, but also seeks to create a utopian ideal in which the threat of loss dissipates into a serene union with the nalural world. William Empson argues in Some Versions of Pastoral (1935), his still-innuential study, that the pastoral fundamentally reduces the complex to the simple.28 According lo Empson, the "essential trick of the old pastoral, which was felt to imply a beautiful relalionship between the rich and the poor, was to make simple people express slrong feelings.''29 In lhis way, the pastoral appeals to emotion-which is central to the evangelical experience-as a way of establishing stable community and finding salvation. Under the pastoral rubric, this quest for stability develops to become a way that people think they can evade the aclual and biller contradictions of the present 30 I believe thal megachurches adopt a pastoral aesthetic (theologically, geographically, and archileclurally) because the predilection of contemporary eva ngelicalism is to recoil from societal problems, specifically patterns of injustice.

Pastoral often works according lo a problematic logic of retreat, as ecocrit:ic Lawrence Buell has pointed ouL Synthesizing the pastoral impulse in American literature and culture, Buell argues Lhal lhe trope ''cannot be pinned to a s_ingle ideologica~ posi .~io n. " 31 H_is example, a close reading of an essay by Henry Davtd Thoreau, entitled Slavery m Massachusetts," affords Buell the opportunity to show how pastoral thinking can lull people into a mindset where they shirk their duty to be socially engaged. Buell demonstrates how Thoreau, amidst a screed against slavery, complains that the mere thought of the United States spoils his walk through a patch of white water lilies. For Thoreau, the while water lily is a symbol of purity, yet he writes, "I shall not soon despair of the world for [lhis nower], notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice and want of principle of Northern men."32 It would seem that Thoreau's reflecti~n on the lilies_evinces a desire to retreat to a "simplified green world," where he doesn t have to thmk about difficu ll problems (in lhis case, lhe perpeluation of slavery). .

However, Buell points out that "[e]ven at its most culpable-the moment _of willful retrea l from social and political responsibility-[pastoralj may be more straleg1zed than 88

After the Garden is Gone mystified."33 Thoreau's dismay that thoughts of injustice would sully his saunter by the lilies might seem befitting of pastoral's fundamental escapism, but it's possible, Buell argues, that Thoreau's turn to the lilies is a self-conscious rhetorical strategy for "exposing public consensus as repressive and arbitrary."34 Thoreau's remark can be read as a wry commentary on how indefensible it is to sequester oneself from society and escape lo nature. Just as the pastoral provides contemporary evangelicalism with the framework to resolve apparent contradictions and retreat lo a realm of green bliss, so loo does its metaphorical and rhetorical framework allow for pastoral critics to exercise its impulses as a method of critique. For an example, one needs to look no further than William Blake's "The Garden of Love," a simplistic rhyme that indicts religion for its hypocrisy (see the epigraph). Its fundamental pathos is lament, for the loss of a literal landscape and a spiritual purity, both of which, in his mind, have been deslToyed by the literal and symbolic structures of institutionalized religion.

Megachurches do not reenact the pastoral's fundamental movement from the city to the country simply because they like Lo build on cheap, spacious plots of land. Rather, the megachurch pastoral retreat seems to ameliorate for many evangelicals the confusion of living in a fallen world. John N. Vaughn, a consultant who offers his services lo aspiring church pastors, lauds megachurches for their ability lo identify spiritual warfare in urban areas, distance themselves from such strife, and worship in a safe, serene locale. As Vaughn sees it, megachurches remain inaccessible lo "gang members [and other] power groups [who] usually know that it is best to keep a respectable distance from worship centers, where the power of God is obviously present."35 Megachurch members, warriors in a metaphorical battle between Satan and the Children of God, are especially aware of spiritual attack, so it's no surprise that they prefer to live, shop, and worship, as far away from demonic city centers as possible. While working on assign menl in Colorado Springs, Jeff Sharlet asked New Life Church members if they could recommend any restauranL~ in the city, only to find that Whenever I asked where to eat, they would warn me away from downtown's neat little grid of cafes and ethnic joints. Slick to the Academy, they'd tell me, referring to the vein of superstores and prepackaged ealeries-P .F. Chang's, California Pizza Kitchen, el al.-that bypasses the city. Downtown, they said, is "confusing."36 The "confusion" megachurch members seek to avoid, spiritual and social, reinforces evangelicalism's ability lo seek repose beside the still waters of social affluence and avoid confronting scenes of inequality. Of course, megachurches also develop in the suburbs and exurbs to establish and reinforce class boundaries. Outside the reach of public transportation routes, megachurches effectively make il difficult for economically underprivileged people-especially those who do not own a car-to attend.

Having retreated from the city, megachurches make "choices regarding location and treatment of exterior grounds [that] indicate how that congregation conceptualizes the relationship between themselves and the rest of society."37 Often congregations distance themselves from society by constructing ornate landscapes and expansive seas of concrete parking lots, which surround megachurches and provide a buffer between the sanctity of its facilities and the troublesome, sinful outside world. Many other megachurches, such as

89

Battista Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, TN, and Willow Creek, install lakes that accentuate the separation between their congregation and society. In these instances, natura! elements (trees, fields, and streams) are literally used lo facili~le pasL~ral ~sca~1sm . The Saddleback Church also prides itself on its landscape, which we might 1magme to be a perverse application of the m id-1990s bohemian bourgeois ethos. 38 According to Rick Warren, Saddleback attempts to provide a naturalist church experience that connects worshippers with God's creation. Warren told a news reporter that "People _always say they feel closer to God in nature. When God made Adam and Eve, he put them m ~garden, not a skyscraper."39 Saddleback has a large glass window that allo~s for worshippers_ to soak in the Southern California sky while listening to sermons. Architectural features hke this intend to unify churchgoers with nature while still keeping them safely secluded from si n and contamination.

If megachurch exteriors take worshippers back to nature, c~ur~h in teri.ors seeks to amplify culture, and the individual sovereignty that accompanies 1t Herem rests yet another central paradox: megachurches encapsulate both the simplicity o~ the past~ral ideal and the complexity of the marketplace. Large, spacious sanctuanes, oversized atriums, sprawling food courts, a nd open concourses-all megachurch staples-r~inforce a consumer-driven sense of sovereignty. The glut of space that megachurches provtde allows congregants to "maintain control over [their] peram~ulati~ns and decisions::¡ thus contributing to the illusion of choice that echoes the ways 1~ which mos~ members accept or reject theology as [they] see fit."40 Megachurch landscaping and arch1le.cture, bo~ nolso-subtle appeals to the human pastoral affinity, allow its users to fellowship, worship, and commune with the divine on their terms, and without conflict.

Render Unto Caesar

The anecdote with which I began this essay, Southland's "After-Tax Dinner," indicates that megachurch members pay tribute in good faith that their obedience to governmental authority is an expression of their godliness. As taxpa~ers and members of the middle class, they are like most Americans, people who, according to Scott Thumma and Dave Travis, "have not only grown accustomed to large organizations, but they have even had their characters and tastes shaped by them." 41 Thus, the support of governmental authority by paying taxes is a corollary of megachurch theolo~, wh~ch, I have demonstrated is shaped by people who understand that the benefits 1mpenal economy affords is th~ bread and butler of megachurch growth. Unequivocally, megachurch Christians avoid conflict with the slate, even though this tension remains at the heart of the ethic Jesus expresses in the Synoptic Gospels. Such adherence to esta~lished autho~itie_s, I imagine, stems from the way megachurch evangelicals. read the g~spels. famo~s med1~tion on paying taxes, Jesus' verbal exchange with the Pharisees. In this pencop_e, the Pha~sees approach Jesus while he is teaching to a crowd and attempt to trap him by posing a politically loaded question. The Pharisees proclaim: Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and show deference to no one; f~r you do not regard people with partiality, but teach the way of God m accordance with truth. ls il lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

Should we pay them, or should we not? 42 90

After the Garden is Gone If Jesus answers that it is lawful to pay truces, he will offend his Jewish followers, who abhor Roman imperial oppression and see submission to earthly authorities as untenable.

However, if Jesus advocates nonpayment of Laxes, he provides the Pharisees with reason lo hand him over as an insurrect to the Roman stale. Instead of answering the Pharisees, Jesus retorts with an order and then another question: "Bring me a denarius and let me see iL" And they brought one. Then he said to them, 'Whose head is on this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Jesus said Lo them, "Give lo the emperor [or Caesar] all things that are the emperor's, and to God, the things that are God's."43 Jesus, by asking the Pharisees' to produce a coin from their own pockets, forces their hand in the argument and exposes their own hypocritical collaboration with the Roman establishment Furthermore, by baiting the Pharisees to admit that they carry in their pockets a graven image of another god-Caesar Augustus- Jesus establishes thal their idolatry is untenable, given their Jewish piety.44 Jesus' answer lo Lhe Pharisees, really a non-answer, diffuses a highly charged silualion. As most biblical scholars note, in lhis account Jesus does not affirm complicit participation with an earthly kingdom. Rather, he "shows an atlilude of critical distancing vis-a-vis civil aulhority." 45 Jes us, like other moments in the gospels, in no way advocates supporting the Roman Empire. Instead, his answer establishes an attitude of conflict, one that necessarily opposes earthy systems of imperial dominance in favor of allegiance to the Kingdom of God .

Given the pastoral impulse that guides megachurches, specifically their tendency Lo absolve conflict of any kind, il should come as no surprise Lha l megachurches revise Jesus' inleraclion with the Pharisees in lhis passage. The moslglaring instance of this taking place is the Saddleback Church's PurposeDriven ministry education arm, which produces curricula, pre-authored sermons, and Bible study oullines Lhal ministers can use in their own churches. One such lecture in PurposeDriven's Matthew and Friends Leadership Training Program offers a tellingly conservative explication of Jesus' conversation with the Pharisees: God wants us lo obey others He puts in authority over us - God wants me lo obey MY EMPLOYERS and MY GOVERNMENT. Jesus obeyed lhe rulers of His lime. When lhe religious leaders of the day wanted lo know whal Jesus thought about paying taxes lo an oppressive governm ent, Jesus said - Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and lo God what is God's. (Mallhew 22 :21b) (NIV) Jesus understood that earthly authority is just a temporary picture of eternal authority, so Jesus taught us Lo obey even fl awed leaders now so we can understand how to obey the Perfect Leader, later. The Bible says -

Everyone must submit lo the 9overnin9 authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God. (Romans 13:1)46 One doesn't need a vivid imagination to see lhe agenda of lhis reading, especially its instruction to "obey even flawed leaders now" (could this mean Lhe Bush or Obama administrations?). Saddleback's PurposeDriven ministry presents free-association exegesis, amalgamates Bible passages from different conlexls (note the linkage between Matthew

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Battista and Paul), and builds a pastiche of English Bible translations and paraphrases in such a way that hijacks the "Render Unto Caesar" passage to make it mean exactly what it never could have meanL One wonders if megachurches can sustain the constant process of adaptability, cha nge, and meeting the consumer's needs without themselves becoming an outdated blip on the U.S. spiritual radar screen. Consumer-driven doctrine might eventually relegate megachurches an ineffectual religious experience, an insiders-only meeting for believe~s that has no lasting effect on the society from which it seeks to escape. When he wrote his "Letter From Birmingham Jail" in 1963, Dr. Marlin Luther King, Jr. chastised the church for turning a blind eye toward social injustice. King said, "[i]f today's c~u.rch doe~ not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its ~uthenl1c1ty, .forfe1l the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth cenlury."47 While large churches did exist when King wrote, he could not possibly have imagined the full -extent of today's technology-laden, ~ltra-lands:aped exu rban megachurches, which now wield a disproportionate amount of influence in. the United States evangelical milieu, yet bear little resemblance to how the Gospel wnters represent Jesus.

Andrew Battista is a graduate student in English Literature at the U.niversity of Kentucky.

He is completing a dissertation that examines the cultural function of Old Testament holiness in early modern English literature and culture. He teaches both the Old Testament and the New Testament as Literature.

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Notes "SCC - Southland Christian Church." Southland Christian Church. 10 Apr. 2007. <http://www.southlandchristian.org>.

2 According to Dan Wakefield, megachurches are those congregations that have 3,500 attendees each week See The Hijacking ofjesus: How die Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Violence and Hate (New York: Nation Books, 2006), p. 111.

3 Thum ma, Scott and Warren Bird, "Not Who You Think They Are: The Real Story of People Who Attend America's Megachurches," Hartford Institute for Religion Research, p. 4. 15 December, 2009. <http://hirr.hartsem.edu/megachurch/National%20Survey%20of%20Megachurch%20Attenders%20· final.pdf>. For additional market research on megachurches, see Thumma, Scott and Dave Travis, Beyond Megachurch Myths: What We Can Learn From America's Largest Churches (San Francisco: jossey-Bass, 2007).

4 lbid.

5 For the cultural context of this trend, see Wuthnow, Robert, After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty· and Thirty-somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007), Hadaway, C. Kirk and Penny Long Marler, "Growth and Decline In the Mainline," In Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, and New Directions, Charles H. Lippy, ed. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006), p. 1-24, and Bottum, Joseph, "The Death of Protestant America: A Political Theory of the Mainline Protestant," First 111lngs (August/September 2008) . 14 May, 2009. <http://www.ftrstthlngs.com/artlcle/2008/08/00l·thc·dcath·of·protcst:lnt·amcrica·a· political-theory-of-the-protestant-malnllne-19>.

6 Clapp, Rodney, Border Crossings: Christian Trespasses on Popular Culture and Pub/fc Affairs (Grand Rapids, Ml: Brazos Press, 2000), p. 126-56.

7 Elisha, Omri, "God Is In the Retails Why Does Evangelical Chri s tian Caplelllsm Seem So Strange to the Rest of the World?" The Revealer, 5 Dec. 2004. 10 April 2007, <http://www.therevealer.org/archlves/maln_story 001321.php>.

8 Matthew 19:24. All Scripture citations, unless otherwise noted, arc taken from Coogan, Michael D., ed Til e New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apociypha. New Revised Standard Vers ion, (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001 ).

9 Sosnlk, Doug, Matthew J. Dowd, and Ron Fourier, Applebee's America: How Successful Business and Political Leaders Connect with the New American Community, (New York: Simon & Schus ter, 2006), p. 94.

10 Ibid., p. 99.

11 Matthew28:19 .

12 Sharlet, "Soldiers of Christ Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch with Pastor Ted Haggard," Harper's Magazine, 310.1860 (2005), p. 47 .

13 Sosnlck, Dowd, and Fornier, Applebee's America, p. 99.

14 Sharl et, Jeff, "Soldiers of Christ," p. 50. ts Gifford, Terry, Pastoral (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 11 .

16 Sosnlk, Dowd, and Fornier, Applebee's America, p.95, emphasis added.

17 Symonds, William C., Brian Grow, and John Cady, "Earthly Empires: How Evangelical Churches arc Borrowing from the Business Playbook," Business Week. 3934 (2005).

18 Stark, Rodney, "Economics of Religion," In The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, Robert Alan Segal, ed., (London: Blackwell, 2006), p. 50.

19 "SCC - About Us." Southland Christian Church. 10 Apr. 2007. <http://www.southlandchristlan.org>.

20 "Saddleback In the Press." Saddleback Church. 10 Apr. 2007 <http://www.saddleback.com/flash/press.html> .

21 "Saddleback Internet Campus." 12 May, 2009 <http:I/www.saddleback.com/1 n tern etcampus/a bou tus/ sa dd lebackch u rch/1 ndex .html>.

22 Ibid.

23 "Lakewood Church: Our History." Lal<ewood Church 14 Apr. 2007 <http: I /www .lakcwood.cc/sl tc/ Page Server?pagenamc=LCH o u rh !story>.

24 Symonds, Grow, and Cady, "Earthly Empires."

25 Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, the fastest-selling nonfiction book ever, has sold over 23 million copies since 2002 . Publishers have marketed the book by encouraging churches to purchase mass quantities and complete a numerologlcally significant "40 Days of Purpose study." l

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Battista

26 Weber,

Max, Max Weber: Essays In Sociology. C. Wright Mills and H.H. Gerth, trans. (London: Routledge, 1999), p. 54.

21 Psalm 23:6. ze Empson, Wllllam, Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935), p. 9.

2'1 Ibid., p. 11.

30 Wllllams, Raymond, The Counay and die City (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973), p. 60.

J1 Buell, Lawrence, The Environmental /maglnadon: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and die Formation of the American Canon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995), p. 44.

32 Ibid., p. 37.

33 Ibid., p. 44.

34 Ibid., p. 40.

Js Vaughn, John N. Megachurches & America's Cfdes: How Churches Grow (Grand Rapids, Ml: Baker Books, 1993), p. 111.

36 Ibid., p. 49.

37 Kil de, Jeanne Halgren, "Reading Megachurches: Investigating the Religious and Cultural Work of Church Architecture," In American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces. Louis P. Nelson, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006), p. 238.

10 See Brooks, David , Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1999).

J9 Loveland, Anne C and Otis B. Wheeler, From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History (Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P), p 150.

40 Kllde, "Reading Megachurches," p 241.

41Thumma, Scott and Dave Travis, Beyond Megachurch Myths, p. 14.

42 Mark12:14·15.

43 Mark 12:15· 17 44 For Insight on the extent to which Rome asserted the divinity of Its political rulers, specifically the emperor, sec Crossi'ln, J.O. "Roman Imperial Thcology,M In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. Richard Hors ley, ed. 59-74 . (Louisville, Westminster john Knox, 2008).

45 Monera, Arnold T., "The Ch11stlan's Relationship to the State According to Conformity or Non-conformity," Asia journal of Theology, 19.1 (2005), p. 117 ·18.

4<t "Purpose Driven Church Changing Lives on Purpose." PurposeDrlven. 11 Apr. 2007 <http:/ /www.purposed rt vcn .com/ en US /In tcrnational/South+Asla/Matthew+and +Friends+ Leadership+Tra I nlng.htm> 47 King, "Letter From Birmingham jail" Wiiy We Can 't Waft (New York: Signet Classics, 2000), p. 80.

Works Cited

Blake, William. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. David V. Erdman, ed. New York: Random House, 1982.

Bottum, Joseph, "The Death of Protest.ant America: A Political Theory of the Mainline Protestant," First Things (August/September 2008). 14 May, 2009. <http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/08/001-the-death-of-protestantamerica-a-poli lical-Lheory-of-the-protest.an t-mainli ne-19>.

Brooks, David. Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.

Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of the American Canon. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995. .

Clapp, Rodney. Border Crossings: Christian Trespasses on Popular Culture and Pu bite Affairs. Grand Rapids, Ml: Brazos Press, 2000.

Coogan, Michael D., ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. New 94

After the Garden is Gone

Revised Standard Version. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001.

Crossan, J.D. "Roman Imperial Theology." In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. Richard Horsley, ed. 59-74. (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2008).

Elisha, Omri. "God is in lhe Retails: Why Does Evangelical Christian Capitalism Seem So Strange to the Rest of the World?" The Revealer. 5 Dec. 2004. 10 April 2007. <http://www.lherevealer.org/archives/main_slory_001321.php>.

Empson, William. Some Versions of Pastoral. London: Chatto & Windus, 1935.

Gifford, Terry. Pastoral. London: Routledge, 1999.

Hadaway, C. Kirk and Penny Long Marler. "Growth and Decline in the Mainline." In Faith in America: Changes, Challenges, and New Directions, Charles H. Lippy, ed. 1-24.

Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006.

Kilde, Jeanne Halgren. "Reading Megachurches: Investigating the Religious and Cultural Work of Church Architecture." In American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces. Louis P. Nelson, ed. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2006.

King, Jr., Martin Luther. "Letter From Birmingham jail." Why We Can't WaiL New York: Signet Classics, 2000.

Loveland, Anne C. and Otis B. Wheeler. From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History. Columbia, MO: U of Missouri P, 2003.

Monera, Arnold T. "The Christian's Relationship lo the Stale According Lo Conformity or Non-conformity." Asia journal of Theology. 19.1 (2005) : 106-142.

"Purpose Driven Church - Changing Lives on Purpose." PurposeDriven. 11 Apr. 2007 <http://www.purposedriven.com/enUS/lnlernationalfSoulh+Asia/Mallhew+and+ Friends+Leadership+Training.htrn>.

"SCC - About Us." Southland Christian Church. 10 Apr. 2007. <http://www.southlandchristian.org>.

"SCC - Southland Christian Church." Southland Christian Church. 10 Apr. 2007. <hUi>://www.soulhlandchristian.org>.

Sharlet, Jeff. "Soldiers of Christ: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch with Pastor Ted Haggard." Harper's Magazine. 310.1860 (2005): 41-54.

Sosnik, Doug, Matthew J. Dowd, and Ron Fourier. Applebee's America: How Successful Business and Political Leaders Connect with the New American Community.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Stark, Rodney. "Economics of Religion." The Blackwell Companion to the Study of Religion, Robert Alan Segal, ed. 47-67. London: Blackwell, 2006.

Symonds, William C., Brian Grow, and John Cady. "Earthly Empires: How Evangelical Churches are Borrowing from the Business Playbook." Business Week 3934 (2005) : 78-88.

Thumma, Scott and Warren Bird, "Nol Who You Think They Are: The Real Story of People Who Attend America's Megachurches," Hartford lnslilule for Religion Research. 15 December, 2009. <http://hirr.harLsem.edu/megachurch/Nalional%20Survey%20of%20Megachurch %20Attenders%20-final.pdf>.

Thumma, Scott and Dave Travis, Beyond Megachurch Myths: Whal We Can Learn From America's Largest Churches. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.

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Battista

Vaughn, John N. Me9achurches & America's Cities: How Churches Grow. Grand Rapids, Ml : Baker Books, 1993.

Warren, Rick. The Purpose Driven Life. Grand Rapids, Ml: Zondervan, 2002.

Weber, Max. Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. C. Wright Mills and H. H. Gerth, Trans.

London: Roulledge, 1999.

Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1973.

Wulhnow, RoberL After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-somethings Are Shaping the Future ofAmerican Religion. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007.

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Rick Dolphijn

Care, Cure and Control: A Politics of Dietetics Part 1.

Introducing Dietetics: Historicism, Cultural Relativism a nd Power Let us sta r t with a n example from Lo the everyday life.

According infomercials of the Voedingscenlrum (The Netherlands Nulrilion Cenler), a foundation supported by the Dutch government lo give information abou t food on a scientific basis (in many ways similar lo the Food and Nutrition Information Center as it exis ts in the U.S.A.), the dietetic rules by which one ought lo live one's life, are crystal clear.

Men have lo consume 2500 Kcal a day, while women need 2000. Everyone shou ld eat two pieces of fru it and two ounces of vegetab les each day. Children and elderly people sho uld drink cow's mil k as the calcium makes thei r bones stronge r. Everyone should try lo reduce the intake of saturated fat Although dietary rules like these are phrased in a way that allows litUe discussion on what the ideal diet is about, the rules for good eati ng as set up by th e Voedingscenlrum are no doubt dispu table. Actually, in public opi nion, their laws are not uncommonly called into question. The center 's strategies raised al least a few eyebrows, recenUy, when they replaced ch eese with tofu in thei r ideal dieL Unfortuna tely, th e cri tics' rather conservative focus on the in Du tch impor tance of cheese gastronomi c tra dition histori cally tended Lo obsc ure much more important questions abou t how the 97

Dolphijn Voedingscenlrum comes Lo its definitions of a good dieL In public discourse, by and large, these much more fundamental questions about the premises upon which the Voedingscenlrum bases its assumptions, remain largely unasked. In response to this campaign, there was no analysis -let alone any with a scholarly perspective- interested in the normative and philosophical grounds upon which the dietary rules proposed were fo unded.

The example of the Voedingscenlrum is just one of the many cases showing that in our time there seems lo be a remarkable consensus on what consuming healthy food is all about Of course there is some discussion regarding dietary rules within dietetic circles, which explains why the advices of institutions like the Voedingscentrum change quite radically every few years. Yet they can easily be explained as consequential to the developments in nutrition science and related disciplines. The idea that cheese, for instance, is now considered 'Loo fat' and thus not good for us, is solely based upon ideas that find their basis in nutritional science. Similarly, it is nutritional science that tells us that vegetables contain the vitamins crucial for every human being lo lead a 'healthy life'.

Thus when organizations such as the Voedingscentrum (or the Food and Nutrition Information Center) change th eir policy, il is not because they are informed or inspired by different ideas on how the body works, by how food might taste better (and thus give people more joy) or by how new ingredients might enrich our lives. Instead, their dietetic advice always follows nutritional science; a discipline which started its triumphal march in the footprints of modern science, or more precisely biomedical theory - with chemists like Justus Liebig, and which has grown progressively powerful ever since (see Liebig 1977 but also Beneke 1852 and Atwater 1899).

Keeping in mind that il is only since the latter part of the 19th century that its theor ies got accepted within academia, il is remarkable (lo say the least) tha t nutritional science has, al least al an institutional level, overcoded the existing dietetic traditions in Europe and America. Furthermore, as il has been expanding its territory ever since, it seems even more remarkable that in our limes, nutriti onal science dominates practically all institutionalized dietetic theories throughout the world (for various discussions on this issue, see Kamminga and Cunningham 1995). By 1978, the World Health Organization was already discussing so-called 'traditional medicine', using this one term Lo define practically all medical thinking except biomedicine. Although their goal was to raise interest in what these Other traditions could do, the WHO's cartography confirmed once and for all the hegemony of biomedical theory. IL was stated: On the basis of a community's or a country's culture, history and beliefs, lTaditional medici ne came into being long before the development and spread of western medicine Lhal originated in Europe after the development of modem science and technology. The knowledge of tradi tional medicine is often passed on verbally from generation lo generation. Nevertheless, in some cases a sophisticated theory and system is involved (WHO 1978).

Doesn't this quote tell us that traditional medicine should not be taken seriously unless its remedies can be translated in to the logic of Western biomedical thinki ng (and thus be given the predicate 'healthy')? Doesn't the WHO here promote, unqu estioningly, the superiority of biomedica l thinking just as today's dietetic advices (e.g., by the 98

Care, Cure and Control Voedingscentrum) would nol da re Lo quesli on Lhe biom edical ideas? The WH O reporl attempts to develop a cultural a nd historical reading of the 'mino r' medical trad itions, and concludes that the melhodology a nd the norm alivity Lhal comes wilh biomed icine increasingly endangers 'local' practices. The report triggers questions concern ed with how biomedicine, and thus nutritional scie nce and Lh e di elelic ideals Lhal come with it, have become so superior.

An obvious expla nati on of its success, perhaps also underwritten by Lhe WHO, would be the clai m that nutritional science has shown itself to simply 'work better'. Of course there are ma ny w ays Lo criti qu e lh is statement from a dietetic perspective (it would not be a problem to fi nd 'better working' alternatives in olher traditions), but this will not be the goal of Lhis arlicle. Ou r interests extend lo Lh e cultura l, histo rical a nd, in the end, political powers enveloped in lh e cur rent rule of biomedical thinking. In olher words, w e have difficul ty accepling the idea Lhal even if Lh ese biomedical solulions make so much sense, it is still hard to believe that this only would cause them to overcode traditions that have been s uccessful a nd va lua ble to peoples for Lhousands of years in such a sho rl period of time. Ayurvedic dietelic lhinking, for instance, presumably expressing the oldest dieteti c ideas in the world, used to be of gr eat value lo Lhe peoples from Soulh Asia. Today only traces of its visions can be found in how these peoples live their lives. Within Lhe hospital s, media accounts, a nd governm ent policies in this parl of the world, Ayurvedic Lheory has no t disappeared, but seems to exist only under the guardianship of biomedical theory: pati ents today dema nd biomedicine, even from the lradilional hea lers, as Burghardl claims (19 91: 293). Ayurvedic th ought is not simply overruled, but il is all owed to grow on ly according to biomedi cal strategies.

Traditional Chinese Medi ci ne, a nothe r imp ressive body of knowledge w ith a longlasting and s uccessful h is tory, seems to be und er great pressure La day, as eve n in lh e cilies in its Western ou tski rts, hospitals a re in cr eas ingly orga nized according to the "Western" di etetic principles, as they a re know n there. As in Soulh Asia, Lhe tradi tional ideas on diete tics have not disappeared, a nd they a re actually much mo re ali ve also w ilhin th e Chin ese m edi cal profess ion tha n one w ould th ink, especially in the PRC (see Furth 1999: 4).

The Governme nt has actually s pearheaded effor ts lo "modernize" Trad ilional Chinese Medicine sin ce 1950. Bul simila r lo what has ha ppe ned in Lhe Indi an subco nlinenl, traditional di etetics in mai nland China is also in creasingly reorga nized according lo the par ameters of biomedical theory. It is s till the r e, and it is s lill bein g developed, bul, again, thi s developme nt depends on the legiti mization of lra dilional Chinese Medicine by nutritional science (see for instance Dolphijn 2004).

So, aga in, what caused this domina nce of nulrilional science as we expe rien ce it in the world today? A quick g lance at th e recent history of J\y urve di c (a nd Una ni) medicin e shows us that its downfall happened inversely proporliona l Lo Lhe rise of Britis h imperial power (see Bala 1991). Pa rti cularly the Britis h adminis tra tive system, which ra pidly spread its control over the Indian subconline nl at Lhe e nd of Lhe 19 th cenlu ry a nd reorganized practically all aspects of its everyday life (not least those practices concerning cons umption, as I argued elsewhere (Dolphijn 2006)), should be r egarded as res ponsible for the cultural s tru ctures through which the J\yurvedic principles w ere increas ingly ma rginalized. In China it w as only since Lhe libe ralizalions lh al slarled in 1980s (with the coming of Deng Zhao-Ping and as a conseque nce of th e protes Lc; a t Lhe Tia n-An -Men squ are in 1989), tha t th e fall of lradilional di eteli cs seems Lo ha ve acceleraled. Sin ce lhen, in close 99

Dolphijn relalio n lo the many other social and cultural changes that have swep t the country, the systems of dietelics seem Lo have been devoured by biomedical dietetic theories. Of course this cannot be found in government reports, but it can be seen in all of China's major urban centers where Western' hospitals get more government support, have more clients, and occupy better buildings lhan hospitals practicing traditional medicine (see f.i. Zhang 2007: 13). Particularly in terms of dietetics, China proves itself to be an interesting example of postcolonial powers; it suggests that cultures are not contested by globalization but rather absorbed by them, as their codes are somehow forced to function according to these meta codes that force them not so much to adopt the content bu t rather the strategies that make it work The downfall of these two once powerful dietetic regimes, especially in relation to the firm ness with which biomedical rule (through our example of the Voedingscentrum) affirms its posilion, calls for a close study of link between dietetics and the political. It brings into question, and lhis will turn out a very important part of the argument to come, the idea that the rise of nutrilional science and Lhe concurren l downfall of 'regional' dietetic traditions in the world today are somehow linked to the rise of (post)colonial powers, or even more generally, Lo the polilical regimes (which does not only refer to Stale apparatuses) that are in the position of articulating the strat egies according to which the socio-cultural functions. We introduced the dietetic principles from nutritional science (as it developed mainly in Europe), J\yurvedic thought and traditional Chinese Medicine, and it is the dominant streams of these three traditions Lhal we, later in this article, try to conceptualize into two different forms of politics: a total and a general dietetics. Of course we coul d have chosen olher traditions ins lead of Lhe Ayurvedic and Chinese ones, but since the argu ment to be made tells us something about the strategies a nd tactics of dietetic thinki ng in a very abslracl sense, I chose to examine the most successful and widespread dietetic traditions known. The argument to be made, however, covers so much ground that the le ngth of this arlicle does not allow me to discuss Lhese important and immensely co mpl ex Lradilions in any detail. Let us Lherefore call it a speculalive undertaking we start here which aims at understanding the (body) politics of dietetics only in its most rude di mensionality. For more detailed information on the precise nature of the traditions discussed, I hope lhal the references, which include some of Lhe most canonical works in the fi eld of dietetic research, fill in the gaps and thus su pport the claims made.

In lilerature, this idea that new (or newly imposed) political structures can indeed have g reat influence o n th e changing of dietetic regimes a round the world, connects to the way scholars like George Rosen and Michel Foucault have been d iscussing the rise of the mode rn nati on state, and the influence it had on medical though t in the West Both stressed tha t th e Western stale, in performi ng its totalizing power, used mode rn medical scien ce and its new dietetic principles as a biopolitical strategy or, in other wor ds, a tool of the dominant power stru cture to control life (see Foucault 2007: 120, 367). Foucault explicitly m entions dietetics as a m eans to gain control, to govern one's own body a nd other bodies: Befor e it acquires its specifically political meaning in the sixteenth century, we can see lhal 'Lo govern,' covers a very wide semanlic domain in which it 100

Care, Cure and Control refers to movement in space, material subsistence, diet, the care given Lo an individual and the health one can assure him, and also to the exercise of command, of a constant. zealous, active and always benevolent prescriptive activity. It refers to the control one may exercise over oneself and others, over someone's body, soul, and behavior.... Anyway, one thing clearly emerges through all these meanings, which is that one never governs a state, a territory or a political structure. Those whom one governs are people, individuals, or groups (2007 : 122).

It is thus that in the 19th century the nutritional dietetic principles, as they replaced the old dietetic ideas in the Western world, were deployed by the new dominant sovereignty as a tool for power. This first of all meant that the stale was installed with the help of nutritional dietetic principles, but also that the imp Iementation of these principles was hastened by its connection Lo the stale, making these principles capable of conquering the West so rapidly. Perhaps, in more recent limes, similar political strategies are al work in South and East Asia, as there Loo, colonial and poslcolonial powers (the difTerence between them is, of course, nol easy to delineate) deploy dietetics in order Lo control, in order to striate and to organize peoples according lo their new political realities. IL would not be a big surprise then that here Loo, the rapid spread of n ulritional science benefiLLed from its close relation with sovereignty.

Nutritional science, the name given to dietetics as incorporated by modern medical science, was obviously not the only tool for this new form of sovereignty. Michel Foucault stresses that: "Medical supervision ... is inseparable from a whole series of other controls: the military control over the deserters, the fiscal control over commodities, administrative control over remedies, rations, disappearances, cures, deaths, simulaLions" (Foucaull 1995: 144). Dietetics is only one of the ways to organize desire into a uniform, quantifiable whole, in harmony with the other tools of control and thus co-employed lo organize large groups of people. The nation stale in the West, and the colonial and poslcolonial powers in the East, were therefore not simply imposed on the peoples they were about lo control but came into being with the organization of a manifold of these 'positive domains of knowledge', like dietetics, in the way they resonated with one another (with the way one domain moves according to the other). The new political slruclu res were not caused by an origin (a sovereign), a cause or a series of causes, but came about as a "magical capture" as Deleuze and Guattari call it (1987:427), a unity of composition that makes all the different elements function as a totality, a kind of integrated systematics of control, a securile, as Foucault (2007) calls it, in which the difTerenl domains of knowledge (like dietetics) play their part Nutritional science or dietetics in general, should be considered a very important part of these harmonized bodies of knowledge, as Zola already staled in 1972. Rosen, famous for his research on nineteenth-century concepts like 'public health', also agrees when concluding: "The protection and promotion of the health and welfare of its citizens is considered Lo be one of the most important functions of the modern stale" (1985: 17). IL is therefore that, as Turner noted: "Dietetics was subsequently used to improve the efficiency of the military, and Lo make the management of prisons more rational" (2008:6). IL is no coincidence that Rosen shows particular interest in this concept of public health, as here nutritional science manifests a very particular form of dietetics. Nutritional science 101

Dolphijn travelling under the name of "public health'' is not interested in the functioning or wellbeing of an individual person. Rather it looks at optimizing the performativity of a large number of people (for instance lhe inhabitants of a country) and consequently prefers a quantitative over a qualitative analysis. Nutritional science.is indeed bio-medicin: i~ ~at it is employed Lo control lhe lives of subjects, a tool m the process of d1sc1plmary normalization. Biomedicine or "public health" performs this new sovereign power through medicine as a regulatory regime.

Foucault very much agrees with Rosen and stresses that in spite of its individualistic reputation, modern medicine focuses actually much more on creating a certain technology of the social body compared to how medicine worked in pre-modern times. And it is the Christian notion of the shepherd (pastoral power as Foucault calls it elsewhere (2000a)) that allows modern power to operate on an individual basis in order to establish a social whole. ln contrast, the antique ideas of dietetics (he specifically mentions the Greeks and the Egyptians) functioned much more on a personal basis. In a fascinating article entitled The Birth of Social Med icine, Foucault discerns three stages in lhe recent history of modern medicine. First il presented itself as State Medicine, as it was considered a tool to fortify the power of the nation slate (and designed accordingly). Then it became Urban Medicine, a tool Lo fortify lhe unity of the city. Lastly, and most importantly, it became Labor Force Medicine, turning medicine and the dietetic principles it included into a ~apilalist to?l (2000b : 134-156). Executed by the doctor, whose task it is to sculpt and repair the organic machinery of the subjects, Lo execute the will of the sovereign by taking 'a~tion upon a:~on ' as Foucault so oft.en calls it, society was reterrilorialized according to their new definitions of normality (be il according Lo the Stale, lhe city or Lo capitalism) with the help, not in lhe least place, of medicine and dietetics. 1 â&#x20AC;˘ The ways in which modem medicine functions as an integral part of the c~erc1on. of the modern State, as described by Foucault above, seems to fit the ways m which nutritional science has overcoded the Ayurvedic dietetic principles and philosophical ideas that dominated India for such a long lime (see Lasron 1992). Throughout his book entitled Public Health in British India Mark Harrison keeps giving us examples of how ideas about hygiene and health were of the greatest importance to British rule. At the same time he shows us that this would not apply to the Indian reading of these concepts: "The administraLion never officially recognized unani, ayurveda, or the increasingly popular strain of homeopathic medicine that had taken root in Bengal, as 'scientific systems' on a par with western medicine" (1994:17). It is just one of the examples in which the British imperial regime, in its efforts to subject the South Asian subcon.tinent to its will, made ~se of medical as much as military personnel in order Lo enforce its power upon the Indian people. (Burke had already shown that medical but especially ideas about hygiene had been of great importance in the British conquering of Zimbabwe (see ~ur~e 1996). .

Similarly, the multiplicity of institutions that create global cap1tahsm, or Empire, as Hardt and Negri (2000) in their activist rereading of Foucault, conceptualize it, ~ight very well be responsible for the way biomedical ideas and nutritiona l dietary principles make headway in China today, rewriting the principles of traditional Chinese Medicin~ accordi~g to new definitions of healthiness, of the normal body and of a profitable society. Sche1d argues thal, "almost without exception conlempo_rary scholar-p~ysic~ans refract Chinese medicine through lhe lens of modernism, even 1f that modernism 1s reflected through Maoism, Deng Xiaoping thought, and other particularly Chinese prisms." Further, these 102

Care, Cure and Control "imported Enlightenment models of the concurrent progress of knowledge and lime dominate their internal histories of medicine" (2002: 21). Referring lo the writings of important reformers in medical theory such as Ren Yingqui, Xie Guan and Qin Bowei, Scheid even claims that it was already with the first gulf of modernization (with the end of the Qing dynasty) that TCM was slowly but steadily being overcoded when he continues: "The same models inform the standardization (guifanhua) and sifting of the national medical heritage (zhengli zuguo yixue yichan) in progress since the 1920" (idem.).

The politics of medicine and dietetics in Foucault's (and Rosen's) dislinclion of social and individual medicine, as we discussed it up until here, seems lo coincide with the opposition between modern dielelic principles of nulrilional science and the dielelic principles that preceded it J\dding a cultural relativist line of argument lo this historical analysis, we only briefly opposed this modern dielelics against the dominant lines in the Ayurvedic tradition and in traditional Chinese Medicine. Later, more allenlion will be given lo the HippocraUc/Galenic dietetics thal dominated Europe unlit the coming of modern medicine. Especially the Greek tradition will be given much atlenlion. Most of all because il is wilhoul a doubt the best documented of the ancient histories, and is thus able lo show us that the philosophical discussions as they look place in Attica in the fourth century B.C. once again prove themselves to be a microcosm of advanced thinking, and in our inleresl, also of dietetic thinking. The third reason for paying much attention lo the Greeks is because it allows us to rethink Foucault:'s extensive and important analysis of this period in dietetic thinking and thus lo rewrite his argumenL This rewriting of Foucault mainly comes down lo releasing poli lies from the historicist analysis in which il is captured in his writings as it is in so many other schol arly work on dietetics. Similarly, by performing a parallel analysis of both Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medical thinking, this politics of dietetics is also released from its cultural relativist framework, lhe other tradition within which dietetics has been considered of importance. This then comes down lo a rewriting which is not critical bul on the contrary, radically affirmative in its pushing of these scholarly perspectives Lo the extreme. It proposes a pure politics of dietetics, an emphasis on the strategies and laclics of control, which is by all means faithful Lo Foucault's ideas of governance as we discussed them before. It is interested in the governing of the self and in the governing of others. Bul it sees no reason to read these political processes in a temporal relative chronology. Nor does il see how these processes could be subjected Lo a cultural relativism. On the contrary, as will be discussed in the final part of this article, il shows how ideas of space and time are actually consequential lo politics. This, in the end, allows us to co nceptualize two different types of force or power, showing that the differences in dietetic thinking, whether th ey express themselves by means of a history or a cultural relativism, are first of all of a political nature.

Part 2. The Politics of Dietetics in Greece and Some Parallels with Ayurveda and TCM In Foucault's History of Sexuality: The Use of Pleasure (Part 2) (1990), the Greek concept of dietetics plays an important role beca use in a ncient Greece the aphrodesia, sexual practices, were considered Lo be a part of one's diet. Next to for instance getti ng 103

Dolphijn massages and taking baths, the aphrodesia played an important role in both the gymnasion and the ponos - the systematic practices and the general everyday activities- that were valued of equal importance lo the wellness of body and mind as the foods and the drinks we consume. In order improve one's physiological condition, to stay in good health and to improve il, the Greeks practiced a double methodology. On the one hand they claimed that one should pay close attention to one's energy intake, to the way in which consumables but also non -material phenomena function with the body and to how they fit the needs of the body. On the other hand, the body should be trained to handle these products and to actively respond and adapt to the forces from the outside. (Throwing up, also regularly prescribed in those days, might be located where the two axis meet). Together these two opposing forces gave form to what was named diaita, the way of life. Indeed a concept that covered practically all means of sustaining life.

According lo Hippocrates, known lo be the father Western Medicine, the two forces of dietetics should be seen as the tools useful for balancing the four bodily liquids. But as these liquids each expressed a relation between the inside and the outside of the human microcosm, we could also say thal they were four methods in order to balance the inside and the outside of the human body: dietetics, in his view, was about adaptation and anticipation, about experimenting and experiencing what life was all about It was about finding the jusl parl (aisa), the natural way for the human being to live in harmony with what surrounds him. Dietetics was a way to constitute a subject that gave the right, necessary and sufficient allenlion lo the human body and soul. Dietetics, and especially this search for balance, for the right amount at the right time, lead to a constant moderation and self mastery as Coveney puts il (2000: 33). This then leads lo what Foucault considered a complete arl of living (1990 : 99).

As it was so much an aesthetic or creative activity, dietetics -in pre-Socratic timeswas spared from universalist claims. Very much in contrast with the example (of the Voedingscentrum) with which this article starts, advice was nol a judgment defining one food product as healthy and the other as unhealthy, nor did the advices given claim that in order lo stay in shape one had Lo do wrestling or to have an active libido. Dietetics, in those writings, did nol work with fixed rules. It did not express a morality that split the world of consumables in lo right and wrong. Instead, dielelics encompassed a continuous search for what was good to the body, for those practices and consumables that could benefit the body. "Dielelics rela led lo the daily con duel of everyday life, a mode of living", as Coveney concluded (2000: 32). It was an ongoing search that followed the flows of life rather than defined them.

Even Socrates, when quoted by Xenophon (1959), stresses the importance of observing and recording what benefits the body and argues that, in doing so, one can find the besl way lo stay healthy. He even adds thal if you take care of yourself this way, il will be difficult lo find a doctor who knows better what will be good for you. Observing and recording whal is good lo the body is thus necessary for every individual, since it is thus that man (Hippocrates sadly talks only of (free) man) can master himself and his environment and avoids getting ill. This way man can keep the body from fa lling into disharmony whether with forces within the self or with forces outside it.

In practice this meant that one had to find a balance between food, drink, and daily activities and exercises. One was to find the right way to live one's life according to one's individual circumstances (the principle of pantra metra) . In order to do so, dietetics taught 104

Care, Cure and Control us about the cycles of lhe days, of the seasons, and of life in general. Also, il taught us the tactics of warming up and cooling down, of moistening and dehydrating, about gaining weight and losing it IL did all lhis wilhoul introducing universalisl claims. In pre-Socratic thought (which might be said to include Xenophon's version of Socrates), the learned did not invent rules of permission and prohibition, imposing whal they considered Lo be a good dietary regimen, as we already mentioned above. If we read Hippocrates closely, we see that there should not even be a hierarchy between lhe doctor and lhe patient in lhe sense that the former should have any power over the latter, informing the latter on what a good diet is all about It was only because the doctor has developed a general inleresl in knowing and recognizing human nature and has studied the principles Lhat guide the body, that he might be capable of fathoming how the patient can be besl served. Bul il is only in knowing t he patient, in listening, touching and feeling him and Lhus learning aboul how Lhis particular patient has created his life, lhal Lhe doctor can ta clically intervene in these bodily imbalances. Rather than being armed wilh a universal medical knowledge, the medical doctor is trained Lo follow Lhe strategies of life and learns how Lo rebalance them.

The doctor is thus nol an authoritative figure (he who knows), bul an inquisitive one (he who searches).

Hippocrates and his contemporaries kepl insisting on Lhe inqui sitive basis of dietetics. In his own writings, Hippocrates oflen stressed Lhal medical science was Lo be seen as a consequence of dietetics and not the other way around. Medical science might be more elaborate in its ideas on how Lo restore Lhe balances of the human body, bul il should nevertheless always keep Lhe diel (in its classical definition) as its essential preoccupation, since dietetics, Hippocrates insists, is Lhe mosl fundamental and original search for whal life is all about Or, as Magner puts il: "In a fundamental sense, dielelics was the basis of Lhe art of healing ... thus, Lhe firsl cook was the first physician. From such crude beginnings, the craft of medicine developed as people empirically discovered which diets and regimens were appropriate in sickness and in health" (1992: 68-9).

As so often, il is with Plato, the least classic of Lhe classic thinkers, thal things starl changing. With Plato, dielelics is still considered an art of 1iving, bul il gets subordinated Lo a general 'aesthetics of existence', as Foucault pul il (1990: 89), which in facl means Lhal il should serve the so ul only. A remarkable statement flally opposed lo the Hippocratic and even to the then very influential Pythagorean ideas on dielelics Lhal considered Lhe mind and the body different in their form and in their relation to the world, but equally important and certainly nol in a power relation Lo one another. Pythagoras' influential ideas on dietetics are now often reduced to hi s vegetarianism, which wa s not so much a choice on humanitarian grounds as one m ight lhink Laday. Adams rightfully notices Lhal his choice not to injure innocent na ture was mu ch more a mental and spiritual consequence of his whole philosophy (see Adams 2003: 7-8). In Pythagorean thought then there is healing music that gets you back on your feet, and likewise Lh ere are foods, drinks, daily routine and (sexual) exercises thal look after the soul (see for instance Veatch 1989: 11). Thal however does not mean that the rex cogitans an d the rex extensa in a Pythagorean sense should be considered strictly separate phenomena capable of relating to one ano ther in terms of domination and submission. Even in Roman limes these ideas where still taken very seriously. An important Roman Neo-Plalonisl Pythagorean scholar like Porphyries 105

Dolphijn (from Tyre or Lhe Phoenician) stresses that there is no difference in character between the face and the soul, i.e. what affects the body equally affects the soul and the other way around (see Kleffner 1896), a thought that definitely undermines Plato's hegemony in Roman times. Porphyries follows Pythagoras when he pleas not to kill animals for . consumption, a claim contrary lo Plato's and Christian philosophy.

This minor dietetic tradition also surfaces in Xenophon's Socrates who still agrees with the Pythagoreans as he stresses that a bad physical condition brings oblivion, discouragement, bad temper and madness, so much that acquired knowledge can ~ven be chased from the soul (1959:12). For with Plato, this kind of equality between the mmd and the body is out of question. Plato's Socrates, as staged in the Republic, claims that the reasonable man is in search for education along the paths of the muses and sees no benefit in devoting much of his time to his physical condition and training: "The only studies he will value will be those that form his mind and character accordingly'' (1955: 591c). A reasonable man is nol interested in his health, his fitness or beauty, just as he should not be affected " ... by popular ideas of happiness and make endless troubles for himself by piling up a fortune" (1955: 591d). A reasonable man has higher goals. . .

In line with thal, Plato's thinking aboul dielelics shows a second ma1or change m respect to the other greal minds of antiquity like the abovementioned P~agoras. Aside from placing dietetics under the authority of the mind, and thus under rational contr~~ he also subjects il Lo the rule of Lhe doctor who, accordingly, was given a very cen tral positi?n.

Wilh Hippocrates Lhe doctor is first of all inleresled in followi~g th~ ever-chan?mg slralegies of the human body and mind, and searching for the ways m which the.relations between man an d nature ca n be improved (see also Capelle 1922: 262). With Plato, however, the doctor is being given authority, his actions turning more rigid and true. The doctor has still learned his profession from nature, as with Hippocrates and the Pythagoreans, but nol beca use he is interested in dietetics or in the works of nature. This lime, the doctor starts a well-focused sea rch for the origin of the disease that needs to be cured. The dieticia n who was interes ted in learning the art of living has metamorphosed into the doctor who knows how to kill a disease. Interestingly enough, Plato adds to this Lhal there should be a difference between doctors for free men and doctors for slaves. On Lhe one end, the free patient is studied by the free doctor who searches for the ?rigin of the disease and its nature. Then, aft.er talking to the patient and his friends, he discovers the disease and gives Lhe palienl instructions on how lo kill it The fre: d~ctor n:ver prescribes a patient something without convincing him of the accuracy of his diagnosis. On the other end, the slave is treated by the slave doctor who trusts his experience and pretends to know everything Lhere is Lo know: "Conceited like a potentate he moves on to the n~xt patient This way he lightens the care of the master for his ill slaves" (1970: 720cd). D~spite the obvious qualilalive difference between these two positions, ~hal u~ites them. i.n the end is very provocative, especially compared to the way other classic~! thinkers enVls_ioned the position of the doctor. For whether treating a slave or a free patient, the doctor m the eyes of Plato, is in the end, the one who knows what is right, who rules. the body of the palienl. The doctor is the one who Lelis you how to lead your l 1fe, whether by argumentation or by dictating it This Platonist position is indeed ~ery different fro~ the ones described by Hippocrates and the Pythagoreans who systematically refuse ~ny kind of hierarchy, who turn down any kind of fixed solution, and who, in the end, even discount the idea that a disease has an origin that can be attacked.

106

Care, Cure and Control Next to the Republic and the Laws, there are seve ral passages in th e work of Pla to in which he addresses medicine, the body, th e good di et and ideas on what good foo d is.

Famous are firstly his Timaeus (2009) in whi ch a lengthy passage reveals his general disinterest in the body and mainly states that the search for knowledge demands a certain modesty in terms of food and drink (see Taylor (1928) for a thorough analys is of this dialogue and its ideas on dietetics). In many ways the Tima eus repeats th e fi rst par t of the argument already made in the Republic. Secondly ther e is th e Phaedrus (for instance 2007: 268c) in which he also talks of the importance of the doctor, which comes down lo the second part of the argument we just discussed. In sum, il makes good sense lo conclude that although discussed throughout his work. Plato primar ily develops his id eas on dietetics in his two major books on stale politics (the Republic and the Laws). The case above (on the two different kinds of doctors) comes from the la ller, and not surprisingly, the difference between the two kind s of doctors is mad e fo r a g ood r eason, as, for Plato, the doctor is in fa ct a metaphor for th e rul er who is sup posed to t ake goo d ca re of his peop le. In the end, Plato uses the exampl e of the tw o doctors in ord er to show th e simil ari ty between the way a person and a society are both subjected to laws, and should therefore both be governed. Of course, he argues that the good rul er should not s uppress his subjects the way master dominates his slave. The good rul er should not be a pote ntate who merely informs people of decisions being made, but, rather, should explain why the laws have Lo be made, and why they follow the course of nature. The good r uler, li ke Lhe good doctor - in Plato's terms- should convince Lhe commoner of th e laws he is subjected Lo and according Lo whi ch he should live his life. The good ruler like the good doctor is perhaps like the shepherd, an image Foucault links Lo modern form s of sovereignty. We al ready claimed Lhal Plato was the least classic of the classic thinkers, a t least in term s of dieteti cs. Perhaps we can add that Plato's theories functioned as Lhe seeds of what turn ed ou l to be moderni sm in terms of power.

Plato's ideas were rewrillen by (Neo)Platonis m; nol only in te rms of Lhe dom inant philosophy but also in terms of dietetics (though the writings of Pythagoras remained (for instance through the work of lamblichus) quite popular al least in Roman tim e).

Christianity and the Roman imperialist state furth er developed the ideas on di etetics and the body as formulated by Plato and spread them throughout the Christia n and Roman world. We hin ted at thi s above but il is important lo st ress th at Christianity adopted th e idea that the body is subjected Lo the mind, and thus, th al th e food one eats is mu ch less important than the ideas one consumes and produces. In Lhe Gosp els of Matthew this is well summarized: "No one is defiled by what goes into his mouth; only by what comes oul of it" (Matthew 15:11). The only kind of reference mad e Lo the di el, as for instan ce done by Paul in the First Letter lo Lhe Christians of Corinth, is actua lly in order to stress that d es pi te some rather ambiguous early Christian texts, Christianity does not consider any food or drink unclean in itself (contrary actually to a ll other great r eligions in the world). (Nole also that Christ himself claimed that diet can never make a per son unclean (see Ma tthew 15: 1-21)).

Within the Roman Empire, both Hippocrates' and Plato's dielelic ideas were echoed within the work of the most influential medic philosopher of /\n tiquity: Galen of Pergamum.

Galen did copy the Hippocratic humoral theories, but added lo them thal humoral imbalances could be located within particular organs as well as in the body as a whol e. The reason for that was that Galen, in conlrasl lo Hippocrates, did not take dietetics Lo be the 107

Dolphij n basis of his medical th eories, but, rather, anatomy. The was an impor tant shift in perspective from a focus on the dynamics of dietetics to more fixed notions of human anatomy. This p roved lo be a crucial step that changed the enti re character of the discipline, turning it from a dynamic study of human intake and output into a static study of the human body. Galen's ideas gave way to the mechanistic and uniform ideas of the human body as presented with the Renaissance, that indeed are far removed from how Hippocrates envisioned his profession.

This em phasis on the static led Galen to further develop Plato's emphasis on the authori ty of the doctor. Of course, the author ity of the doctor was only widened, as his goal is no longer to study dietetics (in the classical definition) and follow how the individual has created his life. On the contrary, the doctor is the one w ho knows the anatomy of the universal human body. He interprets the syndrome according to h is knowledge of th e body and prescribes medicine tha t ought Lo kill these local humoral imb~lan ces. Ga~e~ (als.o through the writings of Oribasius who played an important role m ~opulanzmg h~s theories) thus completes Plato's political rer eading of Hippocrates by turn ing the dynamic and general Hippocratic dietetics into an ontological and localizationist discipline.

The Ga lenic tum is so important that, even in etymology, its traces can be found. For whereas the Greek concept of diaita makes reference to 'lifestyle', 'way of life' and 'means of sustaining life', the Lalin concept of diateta refers lo the r ules of life as defined by_ the docto r which seems minor but is in fact summarizes a crucial difference between anc1ent Greek and ' Roman' thinking, as Foucault would call it (for a lengthy discussion of ~is difference, see Clark 2004). The success of Galen's revolutions is und isputed. Yet agam, without questioning the quality of his claims, il stands out that the ri sing of his star happened pa rallel Lo the expansion of the Roman Empire thr ougho ut Europe and the Mediterranean. An d il is important to notice that it is within this territory (Europe and North /\frica) that Galen remained the maj or dietetic reference up. until the ~ightee~th century when the new modern sciences, and new id ~as about ~yg1ene ca~e .mto . bemg (though impor tant medical scholars like Boerhaave still emphasized G~le~ s dietetic and humoral theories (Boerhaave 1975)). It is probably also worth m entiom~g that Galen himself was employed by several Roman emperors including Marcus Aurehus. Of cou~se we cannot discard his impor tant intellectual wor k. Galen was, without any doubt, a _prolific and revolutionary wr iter (he has upwards of 300 kn own works). His work was c??ied and translated often, notably by ..,Hunain ibn lshaq (also known as al-l badt or Johanmtiu~) ~ho prepared and translated ma ny of his works in Arabi~ and ~yr_iac (see Hunam 1bn Ishaq/Joha nnitius 14 76). But the relation .betwe~n the n se of h ~s ideas and that of th e Roman Empire is also one that needs attention. We ll get back to th is later .

1

As opposed Lo the way in w hich dietetics in the West was moving _further and further from the Hippocratic Oath and increasingly closer to (N ~o-) Platonic L~~s, th.e Chinese dietetic tradition is ofi.en (implicitly) believed to have remained as natu~ltstic.as _it started, uninfluenced by domina nt power structures or other po_litical_ strate~i~s :'1thm which il fun ctioned over the years. This, by all accounts, On entahs t posi_n om ng ?f traditional Chinese thinking fo llows a very old line of thou.g~ t, which ~ould be said to be?1n with the (unpublished) wri tings (es pecially his Medi cus S1mcus) of Michael Boym, a Polish 108

Care, Cure and Control Jesuit missionary who wrote on Chinese medicine and drugs in the mid-seventeenth century (Chabrie 1933). This approach was dominant in (or al least politically informed) all the writings of the Jesuit missionaries, as we can also read Lhis for instance in Leibniz's (2006) famous letter on Chinese naturalist theology (where he responded to two Jesuit tractates). It followed the overall idea that Chinese thinking was naturalist, which remained largely accepted until, at least, the middle of the 20th century.

TCM's presumed naturalism would seem to place it closer Lo Hippocrates than to Galen and what followed in Western medicine. TCM has never, or so this line of thinking would suggest, appointed the doctor as the ruler of the body nor has it replaced dietetics by anatomical principles. This is easily explained that anatomy was very much agains t Confucianism. Confucius himself quoted the Classic of Filial Piety in his Analects: "One's body, hair and skin are a gift from one's parents - do not dare to allow them Lo be harmed" (Confucius 2003: 79). Chinese (medical) thinking has always stayed loyal to this Confucian idea that the whole body was sacred and demanded il Lo remain intact throughout life, but also in death, since il was important Lo present oneself Lo one's ancestors as a whole). In China, at least up until recently, this meant for instance that the traditional doctor was Lo be paid not when he 'cured' a patient, but when he kept him in balance, i.e., when he did not get ill. From this perspective, the doctor assisted hi s client in finding the best possible diet (consisting of consumables and of activities) in order Lo allow the person Lo live his or her life in as balanced a manner as possible.

Chinese medical practices might seem more naturalistic than Western ones (al least from our perspective), but they Loo have always been under the influence of power structures, of a new sovereignty that deployed dietetics as a means of political strategy (if only because even Confucius was always employed by a nd in searc h of a good patron, as Lloyd shows 2002:134) . From the early Taoist so urces and the writings of Lhe Yellow Emperor all the way Lo the medical and dietetic practices as noted by Joseph Needham (Needham a.o. 2000) in the early twentieth century, traditional Chinese Medicine too wa s entangled in dominant political s tructures that used dietetics Lo expand its power. In facL, scholars like Sivin show that specific principles of classification through which ethica l and medical norms and normalities are created have always a lready been parl of TCM and iLc; dietetic ideas.

Throughout the long and complex history of the concepts of yin -yang and of wu ch'ang (the five constants) - the ideas that form the basis of the traditional Chinese Medical system - Sivin shows that these concepts underwent a strong formalization together with the economical and political expansion of the Chinese st.ale from Lhe third century 8 .C. Lo the first century AD .. During that lime, both yin-yang and wu ch'ang formed the principles of classification through which diets were compared, turning the early pe rso nal and holistic principles into social theories and general norms on how Lo maintain balance through diet Developed main ly from Confucian Leaching as il took place under Imperial patronage, the new doctors made fewer and fewer references Lo Lhe study of nature, as was (believed to be) commonly practiced in earlier days (see also Lloyd and Sivin 2004). Similar Lo the developments in European dielelic thinking, in TCM Loo, dietetics more and more consisted of specific formulas on Lhe basis of which a strict diet was measured. IL was a dietetics Lhal definitely moved away from the ancient naturalistic and holistic practices, by forming an apparatus that was again ontological and localizationist, though much more based on a characterization of movements rather than the search for absolutes Lhal became 109

Dolphijn so important for Western thoughL Nevertheless, the formalizations in China do show interesting parallels with what happened in the West Sivin even claims Lhal this young Chinese slate was aiming at the creation of what would later be regarded a system of 'public hea lth,' and he argues that "... several attempts at a single stale ideology included this doctrine of cosmological harmony [yin-yang and wuchang, r.d.] and other equally adaptable currents of thought" (Sivin 1995: IV, 6).

Consequently, he continues, "by the end of the first century, yin and yang were not forces, and wu ch'ang were not elements. They were rather sets of qualifiers used to describe the two or five aspects of ch'I ['energy', 'breath' or 'life in general', r .d.] ... As the sciences evolved from roughly the first century on, this approach to thinking about natural and social phenomena became usual although never standardized to the point that it could be ca lled a paradigm"(Sivin 1995: IV, 7).

In the history of Ayurvedic dietetics, similar developments have taken place. For although the study of the wisdom of life (veda means "wisdom", and ayus is "life") is more filled with riddles and gaps than the history of Chinese medicine, here too, (contrary Lo Leslie 1976) we find a strong connection between the dominant power structures and the formalization of dietetics. Like with t raditional Chinese Medicine, this tradition would seem closer Lo Hippocrates than Galen, though this time because Ayurvedic dietetics also starts with dynamic humoral theories (common in Hippocrates and rejected by Galen). But it can be no coincidence that the most influential treatise found in Ayurvedic dietetics (and herbal medicine), the Carakasamhita (Caraka 1941) - that contains the thoughts of the old Agnivesa Tantra extensively revised by Caraka - was most likely produced around the first century A.O. under the rule of King Kaniska, the most powerful king of the K~sha~ dynasty.2 Together with the rapid political and economical growth of the state, Wlth cultur:11 zenith in the northern part of the Indian peninsula, the school of Caraka became influential from Java to Afghanistan, in such a drastic way that Kutumbiah concludes, whatever happened after Caraka in Ayurvedic medical thought can be regarded nothing more than an imitation and abstraction of Caraka's methods (1967).

The Carakasamhit.a proposes a set of dietary norms (the vidhi) that, in their attempt to regulate the balance between the body and the outside world, set up partic~ar principles of classification according Lo which diets are compared. It produces a _n orma~ve system, or indeed a "vigorous scientific tradition" (Larson 1993: 105) on the basis of which nature was classified into three formal categories, which could apply to people but also to food: sattvic is equal Lo cold, rajasic Lo hot and t.amasic Lo poisonous. In terms of people this would translate in lo - respectively- a quiet person, a tempered person and a mean person.

In terms of food one shou ld think bland food as saltvic, meal as rajasic and garlic as tamasic.3 Over time this threefold dietetic stratification thus transformed into a radically normative stoic ethlcs and social structure. Especially since the diet became increasingly interwoven with the caste system where, for example, relationships became e~tablished between a rajasic diet and members of the castes that had Lo perform heavy physical labor, or a sattvic diet and members of the castes that performed administrative functions. The Ayurvedic dietary rules and regulations, in the end, turned out t~ be one _of the most important tools for organizing the caste system, a means for controlhng the mmor casts by the dominant Brahmin and Baniya castes but also within the particular casts as a means to create consistency (Dolphijn 2006). The Ayurvedic ideas turned into what can best be

t:S

110

Care, Cure and Control described as an extremely exten sive yet we11 organized dietary system used lo (re)create and main tain social and cultural order (see also Metcalf a.o. 2001: 139).

Earlier, Fouca ult showed us that whenever dietetics was deployed in a dominant poli ticaJ structure, its power was p racticed through a series of formal and material bodies of knowledge that produced this domina nt fo rm of control with in society in the way they resonated with one another. Rethinking th e histories and cultures mentioned above suggests that th e ways in w hich di etetics in East and in So uth Asia were connected Lo the up coming State forms is not a ll that di ffe rent fro m what happened in the WesL Here Loo dietetics was used to govern. And here too, dietetics was among the mu ltiple tools that w ere used in ord er to establish the s overeign. We cannot cons id er the Ayurvedic theories of life without including the th oughts fo und in the four original Veda's and in Vedic astrology Qyotish-inner light). We cannot th in k of trad itional Chinese Medicine without including the thoughts found in 1-Ching. 4 We cannot consider the biomedical theories with which we star ted our argumen t w ithout recognizing its formal re lation to anatomy, mechanics, physics, and even economics because these sciences of the En lightenment all ca rry similar pri nciples of composition, exemplified by the steam engine. The image here is of a machine that can be stopped a nd repaired, a mechanism lhal is believed lo function withou t having a relation to any environm ent at all, having errors that can be isolated. In conclusion, Sivin's sta tement that the most importan t Chinese ideas on the diet were "... simultaneously political, moral and naturalistic" (1995: 29) tells us something about how all major di eteti cs are composed.

Part 3. A Total versus a General Dietetics Instead of und erstanding dietetics in terms of its cultural (spatial) situation or in terms of its historical (temporal) developmen t as th ese two tra ditions have been dom inati ng academi c interest in dietetics fo r a long Lime, we n ow p ropose reading dietetics from its poli tica l (strategic) organization. This means Lhal from here, we do not sta r t conceptualizi ng dietetics from a n Ayurved ic, Chinese and Western tradition (as informed by a cultural relativism), nor from a pre-modern/a nti que a nd mo dern developmen t (as informed by a temporal relative chronology). Instead we sugges t a dietetic conceptualization into a total and a general di etetics. 'Total' and 'general' a re tw o co ncepts tha t Fouca ult himself used in ord er to read two different types of histor iography (1972: 9 and following) (rereading Braudel, who worked with Lhem first in his 1950 inaugura l le~o n (1980)). Yet in order to rephrase th em politically, lo co nnect th em lo thi s dietetic ideal of an aestheti cs of existence, we propose lo read the two concepts in how th ey rela te Lo the two types of vitalism Deleuze and Guattari mentio n in their co n clusion of Wh al is Philosophy?, thus as either: " ... th a t of a n idea that ac ts but is not - that acts therefore only from the point of view of an external cerebral kn owledge ...; or that of a fo rce Lh aL is bu t does not act - Lha l is therefore a pure internal awareness" (199 5: 213). Foucault, in his fi nal works, also struggled with a similar vilalisL pr oblematic as hi s aesthetics of existence clearly included a notion of power (the first prin ciple) yet cl early works with th e in ternal awareness (the second principle). Following the cultural relati vist and the histori cist analyses above, we now sel ou rselves to a rewriting of th ese much more stati c organizations into a dynami c exploration implementin g th e to tal and genera l and how they allow us Lo conceptualize di etetics.

111

Dolphijn First of all we should emphasize that the cultural relativist stratification into Western, Ayurvedic and Chinese dietetics makes good sense as indeed these three traditions seem strongly entangled within other territorial cartographies that in their coexistence showed some evolution in their particular processes of unification (or the par ticular magical capture that has Lotalized the different political apparatuses into one organ ism, one 'nation' for instance). On the other hand, since the political creation of these social and cultural bodies shows remarkable similarities in their development:. similarities that are not unique to particular territories but rather tell us something about the processes of territorialization in all three cases, an emphasis on the political strategies actualized reveals the forces at play in these traditions. The three traditions discussed no doubt differ a lot in how they have changed over time, but in aU three cases, dietetics develops from a dynamic and general movement towards an ontological and locaJizationist perspective.s All cases show a development in which dietetics is no longer the aesthetics of existence, the general search for well-being with which it started (which can be found with lhe Greeks, as Foucault noted, but also within early Ayurvedic and Chinese sources).

Instead dietetics is more and more put into action as part of a totalizing system of tools, a (primitive) biopolilics that implements dietetic principles as a means for control. Foucault claimed that: "Hippocrates applied himself only Lo observation and despised all systems" (1975: 107), and this is exactly why Hippocrates, but also the early Ayurvedic and Taoist dietetic Lheoristss, performs a very different form of dietetics; a dietetics which does not interpret bul follows, a general dietetics. Or as Deleuze and Gualtari wou ld have verbalized it. "One [that] does not go ... by deduction from a stable essence to the properties deriving from il, but rather from a problem Lo the accidents that condition and resolve il" (Deleuze and GuaLtari 1987: 362).

Secondly, the historical stratification into pre-modern and modern dietetics also makes good sense because the modern dietetic ideas of Liebig and his successors are radically different in their approach and in their social and culturaJ consequences compared lo the traditions they overcoded. We cannot stress enough that also in the West. in the 18th century, dietetics was still a concept that was interested in the whole way of life (for a lengthy discussion of dietetics in 18th century Europe, see Tobin 2001: 113-120). But laking into accoun t the new political reality and most of all the coming of the bureaucratic nation-stale in the nineteenth century, il might very well be possible that this new tota lizing articulation of dietetics is different because of the new type of sovereignty in which iL became operational. Dietetics became part of a manifold system of (scientific) institu tions and practices, and il is with the way these various parts resonated with one another, that a n ew political system emerged. This new sovereignty was not the causal en d Lo ils meta morphoses, bu t was released alongside the institutional an d practical forces.

Whal this says is that next Lo the historical developments that have obviously changed the way di etetic systems function, the political strategies active alongside it (that cannot be reduced Lo a li near Lemporality) were most successful in formalizing dietetics radica11y.

Also it might be questioned whether this break in history (between pre-modern and modern dietetics) was indeed as radical as Foucault (or Canguil hem 1991) makes us believe. A localizatio nisLand ontological perspective had already been firm ly instituted in Galen's revision of Hippocratic dietetics, and, in milder forms, within Caraka's Ayurvedic revolutions and w ithin the institutionalizations of the Chinese princip les under imperial Confu cianisL patronage th at developed d uring the third century B.C. to the first century AD. 112

Care, Cure and Control Though it should be noliced tha t des pite their em beddedness in a totalizing sovereign machinery, both Ayurvedi c and TCM remained rather dynamic. In Ayurvedic thought, the hum oral theories, for instance, never tu rn ed localizalionisl wh ile, as hinted al above, the traditional Chinese doctor is still a skeptic a bout all interpr etation.

It might seem now, that in the way we introduced a total and a general dietetics, a c~ ronology and thus a historical (linear) theory seems inevitable, since in all the examples gwen a bove, a general way of thinki ng about the diet is succeeded by a total dielelics. But this is somewhat misleadin g. Mostly because this is the consequence of the most abstract poin t of departure we had Lo take, meaning the ways in which the dominant systems in dietetic thinkin g are studi ed in acad emia today (historically and culturally) and how it is discussed (implicitly) for instance by the WHO. By studying these Lradilio ns (not as a whole but in terms of how and in what form they became domi nant and powerful) the argument developed here intended lo show a major polilics at work in a ll of them, a polilics that has been referred lo only as a seri es of st1alegies within lime and space. Our analysis has sho wn the independence a nd th e great power of this politics. Fu rther analysis will reveal a politics even more independ ent fro m lime an d space, in other words, il will show us that within the (re-aclive) total di elelics, a new general idea pops up, followed agai n by a totalizing stra tegy, ad infinitum. But let us lift this argumen l lo pure abstraclion: A total d iele~cs ~s n ~cessarily res ~onding Lo a general one as it only realizes itself by delim iling and distributing the potentials r eleased by a general dielelics. Yet this is on ly revealed in analysis: pragmalics only shows th em tumbling into one another, out of one another. A total and a general dietetics always travel side by side, necessarily invoke one another.

They ~re of a completely different nature bu t nevertheless always already grow together, and still keep perform ing a very different politics.

A Lolal di elelics does perform a(n) (linea r) evolulion, and, t h us, il claims a parlicular change. ove~ a period of tim e. A general dietelics has no evolut ion, and thus no history. A tota l d1etel1 cs also creates a territory, an empire that coincides with the frontie r of the domina n~ s o ven~ i gnty. IL performs its un ity. A general d ietetics d rifls, pops up an d goes away agam. ft mi ght th erefore seem diffi cult to incl ude a gene ral dietelics in to historical or cultural relativist readings of di etelics, since such readin gs seem to prefer a total dietelic regime, although Braudel's previously menlion ed inaugural lecture, in 1950 a lready, was radically critiquing precisely this idea in historiography (see Braudel 1 980). Our idea following Braudel, Foucault, Deleuze and Gua lLari- is that one always find s out th at th ese temporal and spatial readings are no t spa red from ge neral influences. On the contrary, any total di etetic history or tra dition is speckl ed wi th general d ielelic even ts so much that in the e nd they almost seem lo consume it (similar to how its holes in the end co mpletely consum e Sierpensky's ca rpel in mathematics). General di etelics a re singular eve nts that cannot ~e stringed into a chronological tempora lily or a territor ial spatiality, yel they keep on popping up in the major histories and cul t ures so abstract yet fa miliar to us.

The g ~n eral dietetic even ts tha t intervene in a total history are openings crea ted, able to constitute a new search for the aesth eti cs of existence . Ayurvedic di etetics, for instance, (in their focus on the substances, qualilies, and actions that can be lifeenhancing), in spite of its progressive na rra tive, kept stressing the need for an imminen t sensitivity (called the Trividh Pariksha) in which all senses a nd sense organs of th e medic (except the mouth) should be opened up and serve lo find th e imbala nces of th e sick by all means (Kulumbiah 1967). In TCM Loo, the dominant Chinese die tetic th eorems have 113

Dolphijn repeatedly been rejected by, for instance Zhang Zhongjing (150-219 AD.), known as the 'Saint of Medicine', who stresses the dangers of theoretical formalization. He states: "It seems to me that physicians nowadays fail to look into medical 'science' and improve their medical skills. Instead, following the same way as their ancestors in practice and adhering to the old therapies, these physicians examine patients and listen to their complaints, and all of them give basis for their treatment ... So this is the so-called 1ooking at a leopard through a bamboo tube.' A practice like this would certainJy make it difficult to discriminate between life and death" (Huang 1995: 6-7). In Western thought. lastly, there have been many scholars that have searched fo r the loopholes in the sovereign's net, warding off or at least questioning any kind of govern mentality. Most well known perhaps is Friedrich HofTmann (1660-1742), whose iatromechanical model of medicine follows Galen (and Descartes), yet in introducing Leibniz, attempts to give it back the dynamics that could not be found in so many of the theoretic exposilions of his time (see Lonie 1983).

This whimsical and impalpable nature that keeps breaking open a totalizing lradilion is exactly what 'general dietetics' is all about Nol that it is by nature a tradition of resistance, but il is indifferent to the organization of every structure or strategy. Again we turn lo Deleuze and Gualtari Lo learn the true nature of this type of dietetics: "Their semiotic is nonsignifying, nonsubjective, essentially collective, polyvocal, and corporeal, playi ng on diverse forms and substances" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 175). It is non cumulative and non-complementary, non-spatial and non-temporal. At the same time it is most real and aesthetic in its existence. General dietetic thoughts have always wandered about slipping into all kinds of practices, inspiring many minor thinkers throughout space and lime. In a way, thus forming an 'own' tradition, but this lime a non-linear, fragmentary one.

fl has been said that in our days, at the start of the 21st century, to which we now return, dietetic regimes are dramatically changing both their appearance and the way in which they praclice their control (an argument mainly put forwa rd by Rose 2007, but also in Ell io t 1999, 2003 and Healy 2004) . It is true that the opening statement in the field of dietetics and power, Foucault's the Birth of the Clinic, was published in France already in 1963, and, as we now live almost half a century later, one might think that things have changed since then. As Foucault's arguments are also of great impor ta nce to the ideas of a total and a general dietetics, as conceptualized above, this would lead us to conclude that the proposed opposilion might not live up lo the dietetic developments of today. Yet, as will be discussed in what follows, though scholars like Rose definitely notice important cha nges, these changes do not question the difference between gen eral and total dietetics.

On the contrary, they confirm their radical difference and prove their usefulness.

The most important change that occurred with respect to dietetic thinking concerns the state of contemporary biomedical theory and nutritional science. For there is little doubt lhal the biotech century we have now entered will be the age in w hich new medical ideas will redefin e th e concept of life like never before. The coming of genomics and reproduclive techn iqu es will likely not only change our ideas abo ut diseases and the function ing of th e hospitals and other institutions, but also t he discourses in which they are embedded. As pa rt of a series of controls that actively reshape every part of life, the era of 114

Care, Cure and Control biotechnology comes with new institutions and praclices and mighl very well inlroduce us to new forms of power.

In terms of the diet then, the biolech age is famous for modifying foods, for the rise of food supplements including probiotics (for instance lactic acid bacteria (see Shetty a.o.

2006: 1844)) and the inlroduction of functional foods or smarl foods . Especially food supplements and functional foods claim to cross the boundary between food and medicine so important to total dieletics theory (as discussed above). Bu l simply introducing a clearly definable pharmacological element into a food stuff (for instance Omega 3 fatty acids inlo margarine), also has nothing Lo do wilh the general dielelic perspeclive according lo which all consumables can function as medicine depending on lheir use. IL has lillle to do with the experimental and naive stance Laken by the general perspeclive as conceplualized above.

Nikolas Rose claims that molecular genomics has the potenlial lo strip the " ... lissues, proleins, molecules and drugs of Lheir specific affinilies - lo a disease, lo an organ, Lo an individual, to a species - and enables Lhem Lo be regarded, in many respecLc;, as manipulable and lransferable elements or units, which can be delocalized - moved from place to place, from organism Lo organism from disease Lo disease, from person lo person" (2007: 15). But what does Lhis change?

Molecular biopolitics, as Rose refers lo il, is no doubl a major revolution in biomedical theory as il has refined its slralegies enormously. Perhaps il even creales a new form of social medicine, adding a fourth late capitalisl strategy to Foucault"'s historiography (see 2000b: 134-156). But Lhe dynamism it proposes in Lhe quote above is by all means organized and thus limited by particular qualilies Lh at are sli ll ascribed Lo parlicular elements. In other words, diseases are still anatomically located (following Galen) and even more so than before, Lhe doctor, the pharmaceutical industry and now also the food industry (as they provide us more and more with food sup plemenls and functional foods) are the ones who claim to know how we oughl lo live our lives (following Plato) . Also the idea, implicit in Rose, that Lhese new forms of medicalion question Lh e very strict line between Lhe normal and Lhe palhological as established by biomedical theory before is questionable. Of course food supplements and funclional foods are developed to prevent illnesses from taking place, which is claimed Lo be 'new' to modern medicine, but as they give us a very clear indication of whal they are good for (they lower your cholesterol for instance) they merely redefine the relation between the normal and the pathological, for instance by insinuating that the person with a high cholesterol level is already ill (Lo which heart failure and high blood pressure are consequential). Food supplements or functional foods or any other contemporary mix between food and medicine do not queslio n the opposition between the normal and the palhological itself (which a general di elelics is pursuing).

Yet as lhese new political slrategies malerialize Lhemselves in the form of consumables, thus creating new paths of control, strialing Lhe realm of Lhe e dible, an interesting thing happens. Once again a history is in change. Once again a slate apparatus territorializes itself with the organizing of institutions and practices. In the case of th e VoedingscenLrum wilh which we sLarled this article, il is indeed the nalional instilulion which practices control. But in more and more cases today other powers (a neo-liberal machine, a capitalist Empire) delimit and distribute Lhe healthy poLenlials confronted wilh, often even in contradiction wilh government control (that is why a growing numb er of laws are being developed against Lhe biotechnological revolulions). Yet in the stapling of 115

Dolphijn Lhese dietelic regimes and in the inevitable intermingling or entangling of their territories, an endless amount of options arise. Thus it increasingly happens that not only the biomedical genetically modified (for instance cys genetics, which restrains from the inlroduction of alien material) somehow connect to the ideas of ecological wellbeing, but also Lhe allopathic theorems, which have long been considered opposed to Ayurvedic thinking, increasingly melt into one another with pharmaceutical brands like Himalaya and Ozone. In opening up all of these spaces, control does not just multiply the series of cures it proposes: it offers us an askesis at the same time, as Foucault would phrase it, it increases the need for an active crealion of the self. The creation of a style which has nothing to do wilh the Christian (sociological) identity one finds in modernity (from Kant to Bourdieu) but rather presents Lhe idea of a work of the self on the self, as Veyne seems to name it (1993:7). The biotechnological revolutions of the 21st century do not neutralize the relation between the tolal and Lhe general simply because there is no relation. Another way of putting it is to say that any new dietetic regime (like molecular biotechnology), in the progress it proposes, disqualifies itself from an insight into generality, in lo a dynamic and naive dietetics, while, at Lhe same time, creating an infinite amount of ways for the general to Lake place. We cannot but conclude that a Lola! and a general dietetics and the different non-chronological and non -territorial succession they always already set in motion, remain at work. Also in our limes they keep on enveloping one another, they continue to allow each other to take place. The theorematic totality and the problematic generality always already enfold one anolher.

Dr. Rick Dolphijn is an assistant professor of Humanities, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Dolphijn has published widely on food studies, architecture, feminism, and the thoughts of Gilles Deleuze. He has published in the journals Angelaki, Gastronomica and Women: a Cultural review. In 2004 he published "Foodscapes; towards a Deleuzian Ethics of Consumption." AL the moment he is finishing two manuscripts, "New Materialism" (with Dr. Iris van der Tuin) and "Aesthetic vitalism."

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Notes Rosen refers to this concept of normalization as 'social medicine', which he considers different from thal of Lhe concepl of 'medical police' which comes close Lo Foucault's terminology (Rosen 1974). Social medicine is a technique he sees emerging wilh Lhe coming of the modern Slate referring to Thomas Jefferson who claimed Lhal sick populations were the product of sick political systems. Jefferson embodies Lhe ideas of progress in his conclusion thal despolism produces disease whereas democracy produces liberated health (Rosen 1952: 32-44). z It should be noted thal Lhe whole of Ayurvedic lhought is actually based on two writings: the Carakasamhita, which focuses on herbal theories, and the Susrulasamhila, which focuses on surgery. But since surgery is not addressed here, lh e Susrulasamhila will nol be discussed.

3 Actually, the idea thal one should prefer saltvic food is a lready presenled in the Bhagawad Gita. There, we can already find a strong moral (and political) dimension regarding food; it states that tasty, rich, and subslanlial food (sattvic) is loved by Lhe man of goodness; pungent, sour, salty, very hot., sharp, astringent.., and healed foods (rajasic) are loved by the man of passion as they cause pain, misery, and sickness; spoiled, its taste lost, putrid and slale, leavings and fillh (Lamasic) are loved by a man of darkness (Edgerlon 1972: XVII, 22). Its obvious normative ethics become even clearer when Lhe Git.a adds to Lhis: "Which wise man would ever wish to be intoxicaled Lo an exlenl which is as frighlful as insanity, even as no traveller will select a road which lead s lo an unhappy end and which is beset with many troubles?" (quoled in Chattopadhyaya 1978: 3 93). Nevertheless the absolute stratification often found in dietary prescriptions in South Asia today cannol be found in the Git.a. For instance when Lalking of wine, il warns againsl consuming il in an improper manner. But wine - or alcohol- is not by definition bad for one's health, as we can read it: "Wine, taken in proper manner soon gives exhilaration, courage, delight, slrength, health, great manliness and joyous intoxication" (idem 394).

4 The noled T'ang Dynasty medic, Sun Simao (581-682 A.O.), claimed "If you do not study I Ching, you cannot understand medicine al all" (Tsuei 1992: 21). s The choice of these four terms has been heavily inspired by Lh e work of Georges Canguilhem. In his The Normal and the Pathological, he makes a distinction between Hippocratic writing which "offers a conceplion of disease which is no longer ontological, but dynamic, no longer locationist, but totalizing.(1991: 40)" The only conceptual change being made here is that, inspired by Canguilhem's student, Michel Foucault.., I have replaced 'total' by 'general'. Of course, taking into account the argument being made here, this is by all means a crucial change, though this does not mean thal I critique Canguilhem. In fact, my conceptualization of 'general' comes very close to his conceptualization of 'Lota!' dietetics.

1

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Zhang, Yanhua (2007) Transforming Emotions with Chinese Medicin~: an Ethnograpluc Account from Contemporary China. Albany, NY: State Universi.t y of Ne.w York Press Zola, IK (1972) Medicine as an Institution of Social Control. Socio/091cal Review 20, 4 , 48 7 504.

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Much Ado about Mutton Interview with Drs. Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington Conducted by Rebecca Lane and Christine SmJth 4Aprll 2009

dC: The topic of our next issue is "Consuming Cultures." What do you think Lhal term means? How ck> you interpret it? It can be taken a number of different ways. How ck> you study consuming cu ltures within your work?

Frederick Errington: ll's a very general term. IL is about how consumption creates identities; il is about recognizing relationships of power and asymmetry through following commodity chains. How things get from place lo place reveals a lol about how important interactions in lhe world are structured around material items, and by au.ending to those itemswho produces Lhem and who consumes them - you can understand a very, very major component of contemporary globalism. Various people in anthropology are saying thal the commodity's back, and there's a lol of focus on consumption and production. So, in certain ways, it's a delightfully broad term, one that does focus au.ention on a major aspect of globalization, which is how material objects, ideas, styles and so forth gel around and bring people into a whole range of relationships. IL may be Lh al in pursuing commodity chains, anthropologists end up knowing a bl less about the particulars of this process than anyone along lhe various points on the chain, bul, overall we probably learn more about the whole process Lhan any single actor does, as we look at Lhe whole chain. What we do is try to reveal connections and asymmetries.

Deborah Gewertz is a G Henry Whitcomb Professor ofAnthropology in the Department ofAnthropology-Sociology at Amherst College. Frederick Errington is a Distinguished Professor ofAnthropolo9y, Emeritus, at Trinity College. Together in their book, Cheap Meat: Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands. they explore the controversy caused by the sale and vast consumplion offatty cuts oflamb in Tonga, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.

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dC: And you, Dr. Gewertz?

Deborah Gewertz.: All of the above. We're obviously working on a product which is consumed, and on Lhe simplest leveL consuming cultures for us means eating things that other people produce elsewhere. That's the bottom line. It has been, as Fred said, a significant inleresl in anthropology for the last while lo trace commodity chains. Many people in so many other fie~ have argued that capitalism has triumphed, and we are all going to become homogenized Bul what anthropologists have discovered is the way in which products are "qualified" and "requalified" The tenn qualification comes from the work of the French social theorist, Michel Callon, and his colleagues; when they look at products moving, they look al the ways in which the products get reconfigured and utilized within the local sociocultural context, and that lead.5 lots of folks lo speak about a process called "glocalization": it's nol jusl globalism, it's globally flowing products which then become bcally instantiated, and lo understand the process of globalization you have to recognize that it's really the process of glocalization. Part of it is telling a commodity story, doing a commodity biography, which is, in fact, what we're cbing with these lamb flaps. The story reveals a huge amount aboul the nature of international relationships. As Fred said, the story of this commodity, as il fbws from place Lo place, is one Lhal most people engaged in production, distribution, and consumption of it know parts of. But it's our job as anthropobgists Lo tell il more completely than anyone along Lhe chain can tell it So, bottom line, people are consuming lamb flaps and we're interested Some people have said that they are bad products, that they are faU.y products, that, perhaps, make people fat. So they're of interest precisely because they are so contested The whole chain is contested, and contains within it a history of con Les led social and political relations hips. Lamb flaps help us reveaL they help us see these relationships.

FE: There are all sorts of things obviously that move around and get consumed But, I think Lhal some foodstuffs in particular are especially interesting because Lhey are consumed in an intimate way, so a number of the issues about health and quality become acute. When an object is faulty in particular ways and we consume it, Lhen it becomes a matter of really pretty direct concern. So, consuming something contaminated with salmonella means getting sick immediately.

DG: This raises th e concern with trust. You may not be familiar with Anlhony Giddens, who writes about how modernity is a context in which people have to accept into their lives products of which they really have no intimate understanding. The products arrive from somewhere. You don't know from where they are arriving. You don't even know what they are, necessarily. And yet you have Lo make them your own. Part of that process is trusting these products that are coming into our lives, products which we have n.ot ourselv~s produced We have nol grown them in our gardens. We have only some vague idea of who s made them, somewhere else. As anthropologists, we're interested in what happens when trust breaks down. When people say, "Oh my god, what are we taking inlo lives - into ourselves?" The story of lamb flaps is the story of both trust and trust breaking down. So let's leave it al that because we can go on and on and you'll never get to your second question.

ou:

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Much Aoo about Mutton dC: Well that was actually another one of our questions, because KFC comes up. KFC-and other fast food-is also consumed in the Pacific Islands, bul il isn'l questioned as much as lamb flaps. Why are these branded foods not as scrutinized?

FE: The branded food parl is interesting, because companies will go lo enormous efforts lo protect their brand, which also gives consumers some leverage. If consumers can act in such a way to .~val~e a brand, then c?mpanies have lo take notice. We talked about boycotts and buycotts, and if those are effective at al~ I think it is only when they concern items that are branded You can gel Coke's attention if you broackasl the fact that labor re.L:itions around Coke plants in Colombia may be affected by violence, or union organizers may be murdered, and then you can stage die-i ns. There's a wonderful picture in Robert Foster's book about gbbalization. The picture shows the CEO of Coke speaking al Yale, and there's a bunch of students lying on lhe floor in fronl of his podium as if dead, wilh great spots of blood on their t-shirts.

11

DG: And the CEO ooesn'l like that because he wants lo protect the Coke brand, which is ~orth 65 billion dollars. It's worth much more than the product. But lamb flaps are a different story. They're stigmatized, and by that we mean people know that those producing them d~ not eat_ them. Th.ey eschew them, feed them lo their oogs. And the people co~summg th~m m the Pacific Islands feel terribly ambivalent about wanting, liking, and eati~g that wh1~h they know the producers will not themselves eat. So, by taking inlo their bod1:s that which other people eschew as being not good enough- eating waste products commg from elsewhere-they suspect they are being rendered somehow second rate. They '.eel very ambivalently about liking these products. And yet lhe ambivalence, of course, inv~lves the fact lhal ~:y're tasty, lhey're filling, and they're cheap. You can feed a large family very ~ell by b01hng them up with tubers or rice. People do enjoy them. There is greasy repletion, bul they also know that "others elsewhere" are nol eating them. And they know ~a~ the "others elsewhere" are people with power, people who had been the colonial forces; it is th~se people who are sending whal is deemed lo be an inferior product Lo the formally cobmzed Now KFC, in contrast, is not only a branded product, bul it's a branded product which both while people and brown people eat, and everyone knows that.

FE: Wi~ thes~ b~anded international products, you're plugging inlo an imagined com~um.ty, which_ is a wor~wide community of KFC eaters, and that's enhancing. It certainly is enhanc1~g for Pacific Islanders, because they can imagine they are like people all ?ver the ~orld by virtue of the fact that they are consuming this product and appreciating 1~ But with lamb flaps, they are establishing themselves as a kind of niche-a discredited niche, a niche of inequality. ?G: So there~~ a continuum of lh~ee different kinds of products thal are potentially "bad" Bad, bad, ,bad ~ally foods Lhal are implicated in ill health. On one end, there is the KFC and McDonak:l s, which we_prob~bly sh~uldn't eat, but which everybody- almost everybodyea~. There are class d1mens1ons which we can gel in Lo about who's likely lo eat them. Bul, white people and brown people, people in Australia and New Zealand, people on the Pacific Islands, all of these pe?ple eat the likes of KFC and McDonak:l's, and so it's equalizing- we' re all part of a community of fast food eaters. We are eating modern foods. I might mention

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Gewertz and Errington Lhal, if we study the way McDonak:l 's is utilized in places like East Asia, we'll discover this it's really rather high class food there. And so there's no problem. These foods are not racialized; nol stigmatized Then, on the other end of the continuum, there are foods that are bad for you like Jardo in Italy, which is really pig fat Or like chitlins in the United States, and in the Pacific Islands, foods like povi masima, which is brined beef. It's salted, fatty, brisket of beef. Foods like lardo and povi masima are probably bad for people; they're fatty.

But they have become transformed into a highly valued ethnic food - a food that marks "us" as a group. We are chitlin eaters or we are lardo eaters or we are povi masima eaters. It's part of our culture. And so value is added to those kinds of foods. And then there are flaps.

And flaps are smack-dab in the middle of the scale. They have none of the value of foods that have been made indigenous, and they have none of the value of these universal branded foods. They're fundament.ally ambiguous; they have an ambiguous materiality, and because of that they take all of the flack over international relationships, which KFC ooesn't take.

When those who colonize us also eat this stuff it has no negative symbolic salience. And laroo and povi masima have a very different sel of symbolic dimensions, having to oo with profound cultural identity. So if you want to make statements about being dumped on, which is having things dumped on you and being dumped on by people who should oo better and know belier, KFC is not going lo work And laroo and povi massima aren't going to work because they define who we are; we're actually choosing lo identify ourselves with them.

We know they may be bad for us, but they are part of who we've become.

FE: These have become reposilories of cultural value. Something like povi masima is served al funerals, on special occasions. It's been qualified, lo use Calbn's term. There may be recognition that this food isn't good for you physically, but there's a general sense that it may be very good socially, because it is essential Lo creating ties of connection with community, ties which are valued and positive. And flaps really don't have that. dC: Do you think lamb flaps couk:l ever have that value?

DG: WelL we see it happening in Papua New Guinea a bit Not in Tonga, not in Fiji. But we see Lhal Papua New Guineans are beginning to say sentences like, 'We are the flap eaters."

It's a complex sentence to say, thougn, because flaps have only been relatively recently introduced They were not for sale there until the 1970s, so there hasn't been very much time for them to gel qualified and requalified And, again, there is the degree to which lamb flaps have now become quite politicized People know that they are other people's off-cuts, other people's waste products. It's in the news. This makes it hard for Papua New Guineans Lo make them their own, but we do see il happening a bit. dC: I want lo go back Lo just how this becomes a waste product What makes it a waste product for the New Zealanders and Australians? Is its materiality, where it comes from on a lamb?

DG: !L's a belly of a sheep or belly of a Jamb- one or the other, depending on the age of the animal. New Zealand has a small population and it raises as many sheep as Australia. And Lhus il has no large domestic market for most of its sheep. New Zealand used lo be considered the overseas farm of England England bought most of New Zealand's sheep. The

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Much Ach about Mutton English bought them in carcasses, frozen carcasses-the whole history of the freezing and getting big boats of frozen carcasses lo England is very interesting. And then they would process the carcasses in England At that point they would take the bellies, which were the fatty parts, and they would make sausages, or they would render them and use them in pet food You might have noticed when you open up your bag of chg food and you smell a kind of rancid smell; that's fat that's been rendered and ac:k:led But then England joined the European Union and, as part of joining the European Union, England had lo impose new trade relationships upon its trading partners. In the case of New Zealand, it gave a quota. It said we will buy from you. We guarantee you that we will buy 2 26 thousand Lons of sheep meat from you each year. And that was generous. Australia got a much smaller quota. That has to do with relationships between Australia and Britain and New Zealand and Britain. All part of the story, as you can see - all part of the complex inlemalional relationships that get revealed when you tell the story of sheep bellies. New Zealand realized al that point that, if they were limited to 226 thousand Lons, they should send 226 thousand Lons of high quality, expensive cuts lo England And that's when they began not only to slaughter sheep in New Zealand, but to butcher sheep there before exporL They would no longer just sell the carcasses, the whole things. So, New Zealand began butchering and sending 226 thousand tons of legs and Joins, the cuts that bring a premium price. Thal left New Zealand with all of the cuts of low value, and amongst the bwesl value cuts of the sheep were the bellies, because they were the fattiest. Freezers were clogged, and at one point New Zealand contemplated taking all of these bw value cuts and puWng them on ships and parking the ships in Antarctica- literally keeping them in Antarctica. What to ch with these cuts that were cbgging the freezers? And so people began lo bok for markets elsewhere. Markets they had never utilized before. Again, we're talking the '70s, which is not so long ago. They began boking for markets, and of course an obvious market for these low value cuts was the Pacific Islands, where people don't have much money. The Pacific Islands, where New Zealand and Australia have ties and where the economies were beginning Lo take off.

Certainly in Papua New Guinea, indigenous people were beginning lo earn money through the sale of coffee, which was expanding. Roads were being cons trucled and traders said, "WetL let's give this a try. Let's try to sell these low value cuts, these fatty cuts, to the Pacific Islands, where people perhaps can enjoy them. And then we can make some money.'' They had to find a market some place for these flaps and there were a lot of them. A sheep belly is about 9- 12 percent of the carcass, and about 3-5 per cent of the value of the s heep. The meat business is highly competitive, and you actually have to sell everything-every bit of the beast if you're going to break even. Now, that's what the traders tell you. We Lend to think that they're right FE: One of the key aspects about meat is that is has Lo stay frozen. You can't just put it in a warehouse someplace. It takes freezer space, so it's expensive. You really oo need to move it So there's a certain imperative, not only to realize as much value as you can in lhe carcass, but lo clear the way for more meal. So traders really oo feel a kind of pressure on them to move it out DG: We worked wilh scientists who are trying to add value lo lamb flaps. Huge efforts. They tell us that they can't use them in fast foods. They can't use lamb the way you can use chicken bits Lo make nuggets. If you tried Lo, you would gel greasy globule things that just

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Gewertz and Errington won't fry up like chicken will And many people don't like the aftertaste of lamb. I happen to love the aftertaste of lamb. But many people clon't, and so there's not that much of a market You just can't transform flaps the way you can transform chicken bits into other kinds of appealing things. dC: If you could transform them would they lose their stigma? Could you make them into a different product, one that was more valued?

FE: Chicken McNuggets -- there's really no telling which part of the chicken that comes from. And I think it's actually from mechanically processed meat, which is bones and scraps pushed against a screen; a slurry comes out, which is reconstituted and molded, and with that kind of processing, then, where the nugget came from is completely lost So, if Iamb flaps could be used in that way, I think they would be destigmatized They would be part of this currency of worldwide fast food, and the purveyors of flaps would dearly love for that to happen. It would make their life much easier and presumably return them higher profit But right now it's such an identifiable piece of meat, and you can see it's a lot of fat and a rather little meal. It's not hard telling where it comes from. It is what it is. And there is a certain honesty about thaL There are no particular secrets. Bu l, it is without a cloubt an extremely fatty cut of meat, which is why the Australian and New Zealanders, who have become slightly health conscious, don't want to touch this cut It's just too much for them.

They would rather have cuts which al least look better. Nol necessarily terribly lean cuts, but ones less extreme than this one. dC: Where cloes the trust issue come in with lamb flaps? It seems like they are so raw, just directly from the animal... So is there a trust issue there?

FE: I clon't think there is necessarily the kind of trust issue we've been talking about earlier.

There is the issue of asymmetry, though, and that's even, I think, more powerful You clon't need lo worry if the meat has microbes or not, which may be hard to find out All you know, and it's a very simple message, is that this is a product some people repudiate and other people eaL When il comes out of New Zealand and Australia, I don't think there are concerns as to whether this has been processed properly, or if it's filled with ac:k:litives. It's all grass fed It's a healthy product, except for the fact that il is a very, very fa~ product And since it's too fatty for the producers to eat, the stigma is just up front The issues are simply ones of relative power and affluence. dC: You talked earlier about glocalization, and here we're interested in Papua New Guinea. It seems from the book that there was a reliance on pigs primarily for social functions. They were part of the cu lture. But as these lamb flaps are coming in, could you speak to ho~ that is sort of changing dynamics? How are these functions being carried out? Or what kin~ of new spaces are being created, for example, in the market places, now that women are selhng pieces of lamb flap? Could you speak about those changes?

DG: We said earlier that, in Papua New Guinea, we see flaps being qualified in ways that they clon't seem to be in Tonga and in Fiji; this is lo say Papua New Guineans are b~ginni.ng to make flaps their own, and incorporating them into important aspects of their socio126

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cultural lives, into most major ritual exchanges. And the highland region of Papua New Guinea has been famous for its vast ritual exchanges of pigs. Thousands of pigs would be brought and exchanged: different social groups would be articulated, marriages would be formalized Pigs were very important In fact there is a movie, about a Papua New Guinean with a PhD. It's called The Man with No Pigs. He was a PhD, bul he has no pigs! So he has no value when he goes back to his village. Now, a significant number of people are like the man with no pigs: they live in cities; they're doctors or lawyers; they're involved in modern life.

Also, there are people who are not necessarily well-educated who are attracted to towns.

Most all of these ch want Lo maintain ties to their villages of origin, and Lhey want lo do Lhal for various reasons. One, because they do identify themselves as being located. They have a cultural group. Papua New Guinea is incredibly diverse- there are 800 different languages there. Everybody is from somewhere and many try to maintain Lhose lies. They are very important Lo Lhem even if Lhey chn'L live Lhere anymore, and even if Lhey chn'L wanl lo live there anymore. They want lo maintain ties, parlly for identity issues and partly because land is becoming somewhat valuable-Lhey chn'l wanl lo be disconnected from Lheir own land in case it becomes developed in commercial ways. So they want to maintain these relationships, bul Lhey chn'l have pigs. They ch have money, some money, lo maintain relationships through exchange, and that's how sociality is achieved It's Lhrough Lhe giving and receiving gifts. One of the ways Lhey are now doing Lhis is by going Lo ceremonies and bringing -- or sending, if they don't go themselves -- cartons of lamb flaps. Cartons of lamb flaps are not as good as pigs. There's no chubl about il, and sometimes Lhey'll take money and they'll buy pigs. Not pigs that they've grown Lhemselves, bul pigs Lhat Lhey've purchased But lamb flaps are beginning lo work as a provisional substitute for pigs, al least as a sign that the relationship is important In acklition, Lhere are all sorts of new relationships Lhal are being established in Papua New Guinea Lhal have Lo be maintained relationships through church groups or sports teams. And people living in Lawns will utilize flaps and have picnics, and Lhis is how we firsl became involved with flaps. When we were working on a sugar plantation, we would go Lo church with people every Sunday. We were very promiscuous church goers -- we wenl Lo a diITerenL church every Sunday. We would make our way along this whole circle of churches and we gol to know a lot of people. We would go to their picnics and we would say, "Whal could we bring?" And they would say, "Bring us flaps." J\t the mini supermarket, we'd see flaps and we had no idea whal they were and we'd buy Lhem and we'd bring Lhem. That's how we got interested in flaps. So flaps are important or beginning to become important in Papua New Guinea, mosUy for urban dwellers who wanl Lo maintain relationships with their villages of origin. And, Lhey are important in new kinds of urban-based social relationships. People have begun to say, "We}L you know they can't take flaps away from us, because they've become parl of our culture." Although they will say at the same lime, "Oh, but flaps are waste products and the off-cuts that while people eschew. Pigs are much bell.er." So there's ambivalence all around Flaps have become significant, but significant with ambivalence. dC: Can you clarify where Lhe hubbub over flaps came from? Was il the Pacific Islanders realizing that they are waste products? Or was it more of a hea llh issue coming from people who don't eat Lhem, saying this meal is making you people faL? DG: It was bolh. Epidemiologists, nutritionists know- everyone knows- there's a global

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Gewertz and Errington obesity problem. The problems of obesity are hypertension and diabetes ~nd cardiov~scular diseases of all kinds. J\ global problem of lifestyle diseases. And the thing about lifestyle diseases is ostensibly they can be cured if you change your lifestyle-if you can alter your !ifestyle, then the diseases go away. Again this is a worldwide problem. More poor ~eople suffer from lifestyle diseases Lhan affluent others. More people suffer !1"om them m ~e United States who are living in poor circumstances and urban contexts. Diabetes type two is out of sight in New York City. Soil's a global problem Lhat people have been.working on, an_d people have been aware of it in the Pacific Islands too, aware that theres been a drastic change in lifestyle, certainly since World War II, if not more recently. People ~ove to the cities, people slop agricultural labor. They start becoming dependent upon buymg pro~ucts that are imported from first world countries. There's been a change in where people hve, a change in Lhe way people work, a change in the_ way people e~t ~nd all of that has cau~ed, or al least has been implicated in, a real change m the heallh situations of people worldwide.

In Lhe Pacific Islands, flaps are only one part of this story. Again, it's a complex story of international relations. This whole complexity becomes localed in Lhe "flap about flaps."

Because flaps look fatty. And when eaten too much, they are not healthy. So they beco~e the focus for all of the debates swirling around In fact, if flaps were banned from the Pacific Islands today, if there were no more flaps in the world, the health of Pacifi~ Islanders probably would nol drastically improve. It might improve a litUe - though ther~ is~ debale about Lhat There are other products that are far more implicated in these homble _lifestyles diseases. Dependence on sugar, sodas, white bread, jams, processed foods of all kinds. But none of Lhese bear the brunt of the debate, partly because, as we've said, white people eat them too. White people also are getting sick from their lifestyles. Bulin the Pacific Islands, the debate is focused on flaps because they are stigmatized food dC: You also bring up choice; that in New Zealand and Australia, the meat ~ders say, "It's their choice if they eal Lhis." There's Lhis acknowledgment Lhal they are bei_n~ du~ped o~, but they're choosing lo eal iL Can you talk a little bit more about that? Is 1~ 1mphcat~d m sorl of neoliberal theories aboul choice and the individual being responsible for his or herself?

FE: WelL the traders just oon't want to be involved in this issue, and I'm not sure i~¡~ fair ~o Lhem Lo force their involvemenL They say Lhey have a living to make. The~ .are ~vmg fa!r value of a product which is healthful It's healthful in terms of the fact.that its sanitary. Its nol really poisonous; it's nol adulleraled. The animal is treated q~1te ~~~anely. There aren't really many issues concerning animal welfare. The trader~ i:ttmk its JU~~ a narrow issue. You wanl it; you want to pay for iL just a strictly economic issue_. But_ t~ s not, a_n,d they think il's unfortunate that they are being unfairly challenged for their position, and its a free market position. And on Lhe receiving side, it's more complex. Currently, becaus~ of their economies, people oon't have much choice. If they were more affluent they might choose a different kind of meal. IL's very hard for many Pacific Islanders to say no to lamb flaps. This is why we and bts of other people think their governments should be allowed to say no for Lhem. Or, in a really significant way, help Lhem say no.

OG: As we said, Lhe King of Tonga could have said no. The woman whom we spoke about, Lhe 2 70 lb Tonga woman, who was a member of the Tongan elile, could say no. Because she

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Much Ach about Mutton could change her diet. Because she had options. But the vast majority of people in Tonga and Papua New Guinea and Fiji really have limited choices. They can go back lo villagesmany of them-and start growing taro again. And ching that which their ancestors did They'd be healthier, in some cases. I am not sure that they'd be healthier in the Papua New Guinea highlands if they did that but in some cases they wouk:I be healthier. But to do that is a very complex thing, because it involves the denial of modernist aspirations, which of course they have been incuk:aled with. Now you and I may be romantic about going back to the land, but actually in the tropics it's hard, hard work FE: In the coastal areas, it's extremely hard work We wouk:I be just huffing and puffing and dripping with sweat by the time we even got lo the gardens, much less before we started chopping things chwn or digging things up. It's not easy.

DG: Leaving the village has been bng defined by missionaries, by western style education, as being something people shouk:I aspire to, so that they could make something of themselves.

In Papua New Guinea, most kids don't go very far in school -- only a small percentage can go lo high school and then to university. Others are considered failures, because they haven't gotten the education that can get them jobs in town to get money; the jobs that will a lbw them to remit, to allow their parents who may be back in the villages Lo buy things they want And people ch want things. Like kerosene and clothes, to say nothing of outboard motors, which make fi shing a lot easier. Money is necessary for all of that, and that's not available in large amounts if you're growing your sweet potatoes in the highlands of New Guinea. There is a lure of modernity. These countries are all caught up in a modern work! and it's very hard, given their place in the modern work:! -- which is by and large as poor third work! countries -- for the vasl majority of people living there Lo say no Lo products like lamb flaps.

FE: And especially products that really ch tweak certain human predilections.

DG: We ch have a predilection for fat.

FE: And we ch have a predilection for sweet. Put sweet and fat together and we'll have snack food And we all know that is hard to stop eating iL DG: There's even some suggestion, although I don't know how to evaluate these kinds of claims, that combinations of sweet and fat can be addictive. dC: That's what I've heard .. s ugar is addictive.

FE: I think bodies get set up in certain ways, with certain physiological expectations, and some people have argued that the junk food diet is so short in vital nutrients that the body really keeps signaling that we need more, we need more- in terms of getting these vital nutrients. dC: IL seems so complex, because if you ch define Lhe problem as that of health and overnutrition, then your intervention wouk:I be to try Lo get people to slop eating. But what if the problem is not over-nutrition? IL is so complex in different areas. How do you go about

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Gewertz and Errington finding solutions? IL seems as though the problem can be defined in different ways.

DG: You would hope that smart anthropobgists and epidemiobgists working together in different contexts couk:I come up with solutions that might not be uniform internationally, but directed to particular groups of people. I think the solution in a place like Papua New Guinea has to be different than a solution for a place like Tonga. There are some people who say that banning flaps is an important first slep. But there are other people, epidemiobgists, who say that banning flaps without an overall reduction in saturated fats wouldn't be very effective. And so whal we actually need in places like Tonga may be a reduction in fats of all kinds, not just flap faL And we need as well an overall reduction in cabries consumed According to a major epidemiologist, a very strongly anti-fat and anti-meat-eating epidemiobgist, elimination of flaps from Tonga and Fiji, wouk:I not improve the health of Tongans and Fijians unless, as I've said, there is an overall reduction in saturated fats and an overall reduction in cabries. And I think many feel that. But, again, bok at flaps, flaps seem Lo be the culprit. Stop eati ng flaps, then you will stop being fat that's probably not true in the end The Fiji case, where they did ban flaps, indicates that isn't true, because the health of Fijians has continued Lo deteriorate sin ce the ban in 2000. dC: Do you think that the ban was a success, in the terms of that these people said no, that they chn't want other people's scraps?

DG: f think it had important socio-cultural effects in Fiji. It didn 't in fact improve the health of Fijians. But it may make Fijians more accepting of interventio~s which .have t~ take plac~.

Fiji is in a pretfy bad state. People are working on what those interventions might be. Its clear that the ban on flaps didn't work the way they hoped it would work It was more a symbolic gesture than anything else. Not an unimportant symbolic gesture -- one that sa~s the government cares about us. The government is strong enough. It can defy colonial powers.

FE: Fiji thinks of itself as a much better place than Papua New Guinea. Unlike Pa~ua New gover~?1ent is able to Guineans -- whose government is ineffectual -- Fijians can say, take these decisive steps on behalf of the citizenry." And so I thi~k some Fi1ians take so~e pride in being the first of the Pacific Island stales Lo have the will to defy New Zealand m these particular matters.

:¡our

dC: You talk about these different people coming together to sort of talk about a change. If.a change is necessary, how that would it happen? Since ~ou wrote ~e ma~uscript for this book, have you seen that happening? Have there been differen.t actions bemg taken, .~here epic:lemiobgists and anthropologists and politici~ns a~e comm_g t~.~ether to say, Okay.

Perhaps we need a new solution besides just banning things outright .

DG: The banning issue is still strong. Flaps have powerful symbolic value. People ju~t can't give up the idea that banning them wouk:I be important There have bee~ meetings of Pacific region countries. Their health ministers, in talking about bans, recognize that these issues are difficult. The Pacific Island health ministers say, "Ban! We must ban, we must bani" And the New Zealand health mini ster and the Australian health minister and the trade

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Much Ach about Mutton interests say "But, no, no, no, it won't work." Then Pacific Island heallh ministers counter and say, "WeJL we're sick and you 're dumping on us." And lhe olher people say, "You may be sick. but we're not dumping on you. You just have to say no!" And they say, 'Weli we can't!"

And it just goes on and on and on. And no, we have not seen any real transformations in the nature of the ~bate, and parUy because flaps are so bbody compelling. They are just obvious to everyone as a focus of the debate. And also because, what are you going to say to KFC? What are you going to say to white bread or jam companies? To lhe economy? It's really not just flaps that are being ~bated Flaps are about all of these olher things. And lo some ex.tent, they ~fleet attention from all of lhese other lhings. If you can focus on flaps, you don't have to worry about other aspects of lhe nature of the international relationships, which make flaps an issue. The flap about flaps is really a funny, maybe somewha t ~leterious, displacement of what is really involved- which is these olher issues, and how people in lhe Pacific Island region should live togelher.

Gewertz, Deborah and Frederick Errington. 2010. Cheap Meat Flap Food Nations in the Pacific Islands. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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dis Closure a journal ofsocial theory forthcoming Spring 2011

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