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frontières du « vivant ». En témoignent les débats autour du bien-être animal et leurs 
conséquences dans les choix alimentaires. Le concept d’incorporation, « je suis ce que je 
mange », fait alors jonction en
tre le singulier et le collectif, entre des propensions 
individuelles et des engagements militants. Ces conflits incorporés peuvent ainsi 
constituer autant l’expression d’inquiétudes, de craintes, de repli, qu’une source 
d’inventivité et de changement collectif et individuel. 
 
Le séminaire « Alimentations, conflits et dissidences 
» a l’ambition d’approfondir ces 
questions. La prochaine rencontre aura lieu le 9 février de 17h à 19h en Salle de la Table 
Ronde à la Misha, avec Gilles Tétart, anthropologue, Université de Tours, sur « Les conflits 
autour des OGM et le retour de l’action radicale ».  
 
Nicoletta Diasio
, Faculté des Sciences Sociales, Université de Strasbourg, UMR 7367 
Dynamiques européennes  
And in English 
Embodying Conflict: Food as a Battlefield? 
The time when Barthes defined steak-frites as "the sign, in terms of food, of being French" 
is definitely gone. Today, food is neither a matter of “consensus”, - and fortunately - much 
less a matter of "patriotism". It is now an area where diversities a
intolerant to gluten, vegans, halal or kosher eaters, people on a no-salt diet are often 
found around the same table. However, eating habits particularly channel conflicts which, 
throughout Europe, are emerging and moving very quickly into different domains: from 
anti-
system criticism to political, religious and economic dissension, from questioning 
gender distinctions to questioning conventional medicine. Through diet preferences, 
statistics on dissidence and resistance can be observed. 
They can take the form of 
boycotting as in cases of diets "without" or even "anti"-
lactose, sugar, meat ... Other 
forms of opposition are deployed in criticisms directed at production chains, supply 
routes, as well as consumption and health practices. These complex relations to food are 
not separable from the importance of the body, especially the vulnerable body, on the 
scene of contemporary conflicts. This body constitutes the place of expression of the 
person, with his/her preferences and sensitivity: it 
constitutes that by which one seeks to 
be recognized in one’s singularity. It sets itself up as a sentinel on the lookout for attacks 
coming from the outside (pesticides, GMOs); conflict can take the form of a war that the 
organism fights within itself, t
hrough intolerances to foods or allergies. Preserving this 
body is also the objective of public policies and collective responses to the uncertainty of 
the present times: through health entitlements for example. Choices and controversies 
finally bring together a body-species which is the object of a "biocentric" consciousness, in 
a society that is increasingly self-interrogating on the status and boundaries of the “life” 
and the living beings. This is reflected in the debates around animal welfare and their 
implications for food choices. The concept of incorporation, "I am what I eat", then 
constitutes the junction between the singular and the collective, between individual 
propensities and activist engagements. These embodied conflicts can thus be the 
expre
ssion of anxiety, of fears, of withdrawal, as well as a source of inventiveness, 
collective and individual change. 
The seminar series on "Food, Conflicts and Dissents" aims to explore these issues. The 
next meeting will hold on February 9, 2017 from 5 pm to 7 pm in the Salle de la table 
ronde (room of the round table) at MISHA, with Gilles Tétart, an anthropologist from the 
University of Tours, on the topic: "Conflicts around GMOs 
and the return of radical 
action". 
Nicoletta Diasio, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Strasbourg, UMR 7367 European 
Dynamics 
Translation by Mic Erohubie