ENGL 6040: Mol Keynote

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The end is nigh.
The end is now.
The end was already.

eating in theory
empirical philosophy
“
The theory relevant to this project is not a grand
scheme that holds smaller elements together in
the way a large wooden box may hold smaller
wooden boxes. It is rather like a cloth that may
be wrapped around or, alternatively, is folded
within what is being said and done. It is a
repository of metaphors to write in, models to
think with, ways of speaking and forms of
responding. It is a style (Mol 25).
According to Bohr, theoretical concepts (e.g.,
“position” and “momentum”) are not ideational in
character but rather are specific physical
{arrangements (Barad 47).
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eating in theory
empirical philosophy
“
What if we were to stop celebrating ‘the human’s’
cognitive reflections about the world, and take
our cues instead from human metabolic
engagements with the world? Or, to put it
differently: What if our theoretical repertoires
were to take inspiration not from thinking but
from eating (Mol 3)?
The move toward performative alternatives to
representationalism shifts the focus from
q u e s t i o n s o f c o r re s p o n d e n c e b e t we e n
descriptions and reality (e.g., do they mirror nature
or culture?) to matters of practices/doings/ {actions (Barad 802).
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eating in theory
empirical philosophy
“
Shaped by this new feminist ethos, I revolted
against the idea of casting aside as lowly the
life-saving labor of people—women or otherwise
—such as farmers, cooks, and cleaners (Mol 9-10).
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eating in theory
empirical philosophy
“
But in thus celebrating rationality, philosophical
anthropology downgraded physical labor and
elevated humans above other creatures. This
does not help when we seek to address concerns
p e r t a i n i n g t o e c o l o g i c a l f r a g i l i t y. T h e
Anthropocene requires us to revisit what we
make of anthropos (Mol 20).
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“The Botany of Desire” (Michael Pollan + PBS)
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eing
knowing
doing
relating
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eing ingredients
Which beings are
gathered in for this
dish? Of what and who
is it comprised? From
when and where have
those beings arrived?
knowing tastes
Which forms of
knowing as sensation
are cultivating in
through the being of
this dish? Of what and
who is it comprised?
From when and where
have those beings
arrived?
doing techniques
Which tools and
techniques as other
bodies are obligate to
preparing this meal?
And what does doing
look and feel like?
relating eater(n)
Across which bodies is
this meal consumed?
Who and what and how
is gathered through/as
it? What specific
relations are activated
and brought into play?
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eing
“
Survival cannot be taken for granted […] This is a
sad reality that in a philosophical tradition
invested in thinking—however embodied—is all
too easily forgotten. I am only to the extent that I
exchange stuff with my surroundings (Mol 33).
In eating, then, I am a semipermeable, internally
differentiated being, getting enmeshed in
intricate ways with pieces of my surroundings
{(Mol 36).
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eing
“[Bashkow] notes that many anthropologists shy
away from affirming alterity because they
presume that countering injustices depends on
holding on to a universal human and inclusive
humankind (Mol 33, 35).
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eing
“
Here is the lesson for theory. Eating suggests a
model of being in which the body that is overflows
into her surroundings. Some elements of that
which was outside me I incorporate (Mol 43).
Why do we think that the existence of relations
{requires relata (Barad 812)?
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knowing
“
But is seeing necessarily a perceptive
engagement by which a subject learns about
the surrounding world? Maybe not always and
maybe not everywhere (Mol 55).
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knowing
“
In the eating situations I describe, food is
swallowed. This affects both the perceptive
abilities and the sensations of the subjects who
are eating. The model of knowing that emerges
is neither objective nor subjective, but
transformative (Mol 55).
the agential cut enacts a local resolution within
the phenomenon of the inherent ontological
indeterminacy. In other words, relata do not
preexist relations; rather, relata-withinphenomena
emerge through specific intra- {actions (Barad 815).
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knowing
“
Perceiving is not the natural effect of the
encounter between an eating subject and a food
object, but a possible event occurring as a part
of a complex socio-material practice. It is
something that may happen, or not, something
that may be done, or left undone (Mol 58).
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knowing
“
Here is the lesson for theory. Interacting with a
food object may increase a person’s perceptive
skills, but also her appreciative propensities. The
taste of foods is bound to affect the taste of
those who eat them. One’s liking may increase or
decrease. This may be reversible or not. It may
happen slowly, over repeated sessions, or
remarkably fast, on a single occasion not so
festive after all (Mol 67).
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doing
“
A task does not just happen; it is something that
needs to be done. But this doing is not a matter
of centrally controlled action, but of what might
best be termed caring. Of negotiating, tinkering,
trying, and trying again (Mol 77).
“Humans” are neither pure cause nor pure effect
but part of the world in its open-ended becoming
{(Barad 821).
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doing
“
Here is the lesson for theory. Doing is not
necessarily centered in an embodied individual.
It may as well be distributed over a stretched-out,
historically dispersed, socio-material collective
(Mol 93).
You get the picture. Described in this way, the I is
not making choices for which she needs
information. Nor is she being propelled by hidden
{causes. Instead, she is cooking dinner (Mol 87).
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doing
“
Certainly, there is more to life than staying alive.
But what I argue here is that ‘staying alive’
already always entails that more. The eating on
which survival depends is not ‘natural’ but
‘cultivated.’ It is suspended between diverse
socio-material configurations and may be done in
different ways (Mol 100).
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doing
“
This lack of control, however, is no excuse for
cynicism. Rather, it calls for another kind of ethics.
An ethics without reassuring handholds, an ethics
that does not envision this or that goal in
isolation but realizes that deeds inevitably have
diverse effects. An ethics that imagines worthy
doing as caring, self-reflective, curious, attentive,
adaptive. And tenacious (Mol 101).
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elating
“
This suggests a model of relating in which taking
is not necessarily bad, while giving is not simply
good. What makes a particular feeding/eating
relation either good or bad cannot be sketched
in broad strokes. It resides, again and again, in
the specificities of the situation (Mol 114-15).
The notion of intra-action (in contrast to the
usual “interaction,” which presumes the prior
existence of independent entities/relata)
[describes how] the boundaries and properties of
the “components” of phenomena become
determinate and that particular embodied
concepts become meaningful.
{(Barad 815).
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elating
“
It is a virtuous cycle: a propensity to eat
contributes to the cultivation of the variety; the
easy availability of the variety increases the
likelihood that more people will acquire a taste for
it. Hence, while my eating this particular apple
destroys what I bite off, chew, and swallow, our
eating this kind of apple is generative. It helps to
care for the trees that bear the fruits we covet
(Mol 110).
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elating
“
Instead of seeking to know man, an alleged
universal, anthropology should respect that
different groups of people are profoundly
different. They do not just look differently at the
same reality; they live different realities. Their
ontologies are different. Rather than embarking
on an inquiry into what humankind has in
common, Viveiros de Castro argues, we would do
well to sincerely attend to equivocations, to nonequivalence
(Mol 118).
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elating
“
Here is the lesson for theory. Eating relations
turn not around degrees of similarity, but
around agreement. If I am lucky, I love what I eat
and I eat what I love. But eating is an
asymmetrical relation. My love is of a violent kind.
To compensate for that, to assuage it, I would do
well to ask, again and again, what might agree
with those of whom I eat. In theory, at least,
eating offers a model of relating in which
violence and love go together, intertwine (Mol
120).
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eating in theory
empirical philosophy
“
If historical investigations show that things used
to be otherwise, this offers the promise that they
might become different again. And maybe they
already are, somewhere else. As criticism is
inevitably caught in the terms of those being
criticized, it may be wiser to go out, run, play.
Experiment with alternatives (Mol 18).
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eating in theory
empirical philosophy
“
In the absence of an external, transcendental,
position, normative questions cannot be
answered in absolute terms. But they can still be
asked. Not just by philosophers, in the abstract,
but concretely, here, now, by everyone engaged
in a particular practice (Mol 23).
The differential constitution of the “human”
(“nonhuman”) is always accompanied by
particular exclusions and always open to
{contestation (Barad 824).
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eating in theory
intellectual ingredients
“
This particular kind of politics does not depend on
conversations; rather, it is a matter of doing
things in one way or another. It hinges not on
decisions and choices, but on trying and
adjusting. Ideally, it takes the shape of adaptive
and responsive tinkering, of ongoing cultivation
and never-ending care (Mol 137).
Particular possibilities for acting exist at every
moment, and these changing possibilities entail a
responsibility to intervene in the world’s
becoming, to contest and rework what matters
{and what is excluded from mattering (Barad 827).
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eating in theory
intellectual ingredients
“
What is more, disentangling desirable effects
from unwanted side effects is not always easy.
Doing is often ambivalent. Bad, but not just bad;
good, but not just good. Not good for everyone.
Not good enough. Suspended within complex
normative force fields, doing goes on and on. It
never comes to rest (Mol 142-43).
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(post)
The end is nigh.
The end is now.
The end was already.