2
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