On food and power

Photo: liz west (CC) www.flickr.com

This kind of control was sometimes used to decide whether someone was hungry or not. To feed means to rule and control, granting not only life but also distributing the fundamental pleasures from eating food. This fundamental pleasure is connected to the one who supplies – to the one who has power.

Utopian concepts

The gastronomic projects of social utopias (e.g. The Republic by Plato, Utopia by Thomas More, The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella, New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon, Country of Harmony by Charles Fourier, and Porphyry’s neglected treatise On Abstinence from Animal Food, which contains a number of gastronomic principles to control the body and soul) offer specific invariant principles of culinary culture, which shall effectively influence a person and transform him or her into a new creature, barely dependent on material nature. These principles can be identified as with the following characteristics. A meal shall be a collective act (as opposed to a private or family one), thus the individual is integrated into a collective body. Private dining space (and private kitchens) shall be liquidated because an individual or family cannot themselves prepare a healthy meal. Homemade cooking needs to be replaced with professional cooking (identical for everyone and compliant with scientific principles). The orthodox role of a woman as a housewife and author of daily meals is abolished. The patronage of authorities becomes a key component in gastronomic practices: since the one who feeds has the power, then only power shall feed. A meal shall be accompanied by official ideological rhetoric. It is necessary for the power to demonstrate and reinforce its feeding function and to communicate its wishes to its subjects. Medical and technological approaches become dominating in the diet: the body is a machine and food is fuel. Finally, pleasure from food shall be avoided by all possible means, as it is an evil passion. People shall only derive pleasure from labour serving power, spiritual incentives and practices, but not from food.

With these principles, culinary culture in the utopia was expected to undergo a profound reconstruction. This was one important prerequisite in creating a model of a “new” society in which the “new” and more perfect human being would be formed – from the perspective of science. Human beings will overcome their base physical nature, subordinated it to lofty goals that are superior to trivial, everyday individual concerns. In Porphyry’s view, we will become souls, rejecting our physical bodies. Whereas abundant food helps feed the body, scarce food (i.e. hunger) feeds the soul, or hypothetical “higher” human beings.

Utopian ideals like this were implemented in the totalitarian project of gastronomic culture in Stalinist Russia during the 1920s and 30s. The project demonstrated that gastronomic culture can be an effective authoritative practice but it can only last for a very limited time. The project emerged within the framework of the “evolution of routine” during the 1920s and it involved abandoning private kitchens and the establishment of public catering. There are multiple reasons for the gastronomic revolution. The official ones include: the emancipation of women, who shall no longer be kitchen slaves (there is a famous slogan “Every cook has to learn how to govern the state”); the Soviet people have the right to healthy food in accordance with the best available science, and since the public are not aware of the latest research on nutrition, they are not capable of making an informed choice with it comes their diets; and everyone is inclined to overeat, so that is why the wise authorities should determine the required amount.

Interestingly, one of the criteria for superfluity was caloric content: it was assumed that only a high status person (i.e., someone useful to society) would justify a high caloric intake. For example, a party official was allowed to eat a lot of delicious food. Meals will bring people together: the collective shall dine together. Therefore, a new type of social solidarity was formed: not an intimate one with family and friends, but a collective one based on ideology; and whereas traditional culture distinguishes between every day and festive meals, in the new society every meal shall have the elements of a festive meal.

Total subordination

The real reasons for the gastronomic revolution, however, were different. Control over food was a tool for total subordination. As a result, women were not emancipated by abandoning their domestic roles. They left the kitchens and became workers of the state. The country was in need of a larger labour force. The function of feeding was taken away from women and put into the hands of the state which controlled everyone’s hunger and satiety. The authorities aimed to make people completely dependent on the state. Collective meals became a place of political propaganda. Ideological slogans and portraits of party leaders were everywhere. Political propaganda came with the supply of food and a way of maintaining the established social system. Private kitchens were declared unnecessary. One bed, or one room in the best case, was considered normal. Owning a private kitchen only became the norm for families in the late 1950s and early 60s. In circumstances of scarcity, a person focused on a single purpose: how to gain access to food.

It was declared that the technification and medicalisation of food consumption were aimed at the workers’ health. In reality, the aim was to functionalise consumption to the maximum, where food was merely fuel for the human body as a working machine. Thus, culinary culture was stripped of its traditional meaning and value, which prevented it from becoming Soviet food culture.

An unparalleled example of the culinary mythology within a totalitarian society can be found in The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food, published in the Soviet Union in 1939, where culinary and gastronomic rhetoric is tangled with political rhetoric. There has been no other cookbook like it in the history of mankind. The main objective of the cookbook was to pass gastronomic competences of power to the housewife. It presented the achievements of the Soviet food industry, which was represented as the leader and pioneer in the alimentation of its citizens. It consistently emphasised the difference between the Soviet and bourgeois food industries. The Soviet one preserves and improves quality, whereas the bourgeois one tries to pass off bad food through processing. The book contained many recipes and offers advice on manners and gastronomic etiquette. It created an impression that this was how Soviet citizens should live: in abundance, cooking in their spacious kitchens, access to the best products and having enough time to cook as much as they want.

Needless to say, very few people could afford to live the life that was presented in the book. However it is important to remember that it did not represent reality, but what the Soviet Union aspired to be like. Moreover, it established Soviet culinary mythology. Later on this mythology became part of Soviet nostalgia – a specific form of gastronomic nostalgia. The chronological framework of the project of gastronomic culture covers a rather short period of time – from the early 1920s to 1939. This period was very significant because it was an unprecedented experiment in the history of gastronomic culture. It involved underlying principles of reorganisation that are typical of the classic totalitarian utopias and it demonstrated the effectiveness of discipline through the control of food. At the same time, this period demonstrated that such effectiveness was very short-lived because it was based on hunger, scarcity and deprivation.

The project reached it limits by the end of the 1930s. In 1939 The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food was published and it addressed women again as the housewife, and began reassuming the presence of the private cooking space. The strict control of power gave way to its “soft” care. The authorities shifted their approach: they were now sharing with the Soviet public their highly informed understanding of food and nutrition through the pages of the book. The gastronomic project demonstrated that it was possible to create a “feeding” relationship between the authorities and the individual. This relationship might serve as the cornerstone of a very effective way of governing.

Unattainable ideal

Interestingly, the project demonstrated the disciplinary capacities of the gastronomic culture. For the first time utopian ideas were implemented to reform the culinary culture of the new Soviet citizen. The project also revealed the low disciplinary effectiveness of a gastronomic culture premised on hunger and scarcity. Yet the underlying ideal of extraordinary spiritual growth, resulting from the rejection of food, did not produce the desired results. In the long term, the Soviet authorities had to resume the gastronomic culture in its basic form. A person needs a private dining space, the ability to choose what to eat and to create family and group solidarity through shared meals.

However, the authorities were not able to hand back the full scope of the gastronomic competences. The old system of distribution was still in place to distribute food. Ordinary citizens had to stand in line while food rations of the nomenklatura were delivered to their homes. Hence, the core principle was preserved: the authorities controlled access to food. Before you could cook anything, you still needed to obtain the food from somewhere. A prehistoric man hunted mammoth, the Soviet people stood in lines. The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food had many further editions, yet it still was an ideological product of the Soviet project. In reality, the gastronomic culture produced a special type of cookbook – a handwritten one owned by every housewife. It contained recipes of tasty and healthy dishes that could be cooked from the available (often poor quality) products.

Fast food totalitarianism

   The present-day culinary culture is also undergoing a major transformation. Its main format is fast food. This is also a form of gastronomic discipline with specific features. While totalitarian gastronomic culture relies on food scarcity and hunger as a tool for disciplining, the present-day culture relies on temptation and abundance. Can we speak of a new type of totalitarianism? Absolutely. This totalitarianism is different, however. Coercion takes the form of temptation.

The distinguishing feature of modern gastronomic culture is that food no longer ensures a predictable sensual experience. This is a consequence of the development of the food industry – a clear link between the original product and the final outcome is lost. In this way, the symbolic context of eating becomes more important. It is not so important what you eat, but how, where and from what company. Food advertisements are not intended to sell food as such, but its symbolism; if you purchase something, you also purchase an identity.

The meal, as a basic form of social regulation, is devaluated and simplified. On the one hand, there is the promotion of a thin body. This is rooted in the cultural traditions going back to antiquity, which encouraged minimal food consumption. On the other hand, we live in a world of widespread food consumption. Consequently, there is another norm advanced by body positivity – a body that is not necessarily thin, but shaped by personal choice and preference, which may not conform to the cultural mainstream. However, this leads to eating disorders so the sound path of gastronomic consumption becomes increasingly problematic. Hence, there is a contradiction between the ideal of slimness and the overabundance of food and consumption. Is it possible to eat a lot but nevertheless remain thin?

 Fast food is based on the abundance of food and a constant temptation to eat. The abundant consumption of food is fuelled by continuous stimulation. The stimulation comes from advertising; the on-the-spot offering of food; the symbolism of fast food as food for communication and optimism. Therefore, temptation is the fast food industry’s main strategy, which involves the physiological stimulation of non-stop eating. At the same time, it is assumed that one can choose his or her own gastronomic path. Yet only personal motives, self-reflection and effort might lead to a different choice among the suggested consumption strategies. Nevertheless, fast food remains a major and obvious choice. Pleasure from fast food is easy, quick, affordable and often socially endorsed.

Thoughtless consumption

What do the first and the second types of disciplines have in common? Both kinds are premised on thoughtless consumption: food is inhaled but not assimilated, nor consumed slowly or thoughtfully. The experience of eating is a fundamental one that is also reflected in other types of experience. Therefore, the habit of gulping is formed at the level of alimentation. This habit is the basis for the thoughtless perception of various ideological narratives. In other words, eating habits shape the fundamental communicative patterns in the world. They also help form self-identification. Thoughtless consumption expands to everything else, including information, ideology and social practises.

Moreover, a hungry man can be resisting – though dependent and on the verge of starvation – but not willing to serve power for food, but also to protest, to struggle for freedom (i.e. a hunger strike). People living in the world of temptation and abundance do not resist. They become a voluntary repository for the authorities. Therefore, the gastronomic culture of fast food offers huge potential for totalitarianism. The authors of classical utopian ideas did not consider this. They could not conceive the development of the food industry during the second half of the 20th century. This false abundance cannot be simply eaten, but it can also serve as a foundation for a new type of feeding relationship between individuals and power.

Translated by Olena Roguska

Irina Sokhan is a philosopher, writer and researcher of gastronomic culture. She is the author of the books Totalitarian Project of Gastronomic Culture. Evidence from Stalin era 1920s-1930s and Transformations of Modern Gastronomic Culture and Totality of Fast Food.