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Adorno, Gastronomic Authenticity, andthe Politics of Eating WellKatherine E. Younga

a University of Hawai'i at Hilo, USAPublished online: 07 Jul 2014.

To cite this article: Katherine E. Young (2014) Adorno, Gastronomic Authenticity, and the Politics ofEating Well, New Political Science, 36:3, 387-405, DOI: 10.1080/07393148.2014.924248

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Adorno, Gastronomic Authenticity, and the Politics ofEating Well

Katherine E. YoungUniversity of Hawai’i at Hilo, USA

Abstract Recent trends like locavorism, green consumerism, and ethical consumptionpoint to a new politics of eating, what is called in this article the new gastronomy, whichcenters on buying locally, humanely, and sustainably produced foods. However, ratherthan exemplifying a novel and contemporary turn in food politics, it is argued that the newgastronomy’s faith in buying local is linked to an ancient politics of consumption that canbe traced back to the Greeks and is grounded in virtue and temperance; and, furthermore,that this is most evident in the new gastronomy’s emphasis on the humane treatment ofanimals. Additionally, the new gastronomy’s claim of authenticity with regard toproduction, distribution, and consumption (for example, artisan, farm to table, etc.) worksto veil this traditional politics of eating, lending its supporters a false sense of politicalprogressivism or radicalism. Working from Theodor Adorno’s analysis in The Jargon ofAuthenticity, it is demonstrated that what the local foods movement really offers isa jargon of gastronomic authenticity that claims self-transparency of action and provides asuperficial escape from the exploitative reality of late capitalism. Finally, Adorno’s critiqueof ideology and authenticity and his special attention to animals in his work are presentedas potential disrupters of bourgeois identity and as a way to strip the ideological surface ofthis new gastronomy to reveal its complicity with exploitative systems of food productionand distribution.

How might one begin to define gastronomic authenticity? Gastronomy, of course,refers to good eating or culinary styles. It seems, quite logically, that gastronomy,being the study of good eating, goes hand in hand with political theory, whichconcerns itself quite readily with the study of the good life. Aristotle makes thisclear in Politics when he describes the state in which the political animal emergesas first originating in the basic needs of life and then carrying on into “existencefor the sake of a good life.”1 Certainly the good life is the unique moral life forAristotle, yet this life is always dependent on moderating one’s passions,including and especially food. In this sense, the connection between the body andthe performance of the body, more specifically, is intimately bound up with thepolitical. Diet is an integral part of this care of the self, and the provision of food isthe cornerstone of health. Foucault, of course, brings this point to bear in The Use ofPleasure, noting that moderation in the Greek context was the reasonable principlethat allowed one to correctly practice pleasure and to master one’s pleasure in

1Aristotle, The Politics and the Constitution of Athens, 2nd ed., Stephen Everson (ed.)(Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 13.

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pursuit of greater logos.2 To practice the art of politics, one must practice inmoderation the pleasure of consumption and it is this consumption which in turnsatiates the soul and feeds the good life. Gastronomy is intertwined with dieteticsfor the Greeks and finds its birth alongside the birth of politics in the Aristotelianpolis and before it in Plato’s Republic.

Once again gastronomy has resurfaced as a way to rethink the political.Michael Pollan, for example, has built a career on what could be called apostmodern ethics of eating well, with numerous books that call attention to theatrocities of industrial foods and corporate agriculture while celebratingthe pleasure and promise of enlightened eating.3 Chad Lavin has recently tracedthe renewed significance of eating well, food, and politics in “The Year of EatingPolitically.”4 In Lavin’s analysis, Pollan’s locavore view is part of a largerneoliberal position that renders market exchange as a superior alternative topolitical struggle, implicating Pollan in what Lavin describes as “postpoliticalfantasies” that reiterate classical liberal assumptions about personal autonomyand private property, reject traditional public spaces, and offer an escape from andalternative to an otherwise inefficacious political life.5

Lavin convincingly situates this postpolitical fantasy within a neoliberalframework. Yet one could argue that the new gastronomy of greener, healthier,and sustainable consumption that he describes is really a recycled form of anancient politics of eating well, which sees good eating and the good life, politics, asintimately connected through virtuous action and which manifests as more“authentic” consumer choices in the neoliberal frame. This aspect of the newgastronomy is especially clear when these choices are viewed in relation to notonly laboring human bodies, but also the animal bodies offered to consumers inthe form of locally produced and sustainable grass-fed meat and dairy. Animalwelfare—cage free, free-range, humanely slaughtered livestock, for example—is aselling point for the new gastronomy, but the animal ethics it promotes is really

2Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure: The History of Sexuality, Volume 2, trans. RobertHurley (New York: Vintage, 1985), pp. 86–87.

3 For example, see Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (New York: Penguin Books,2006); and Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (New York: PenguinBooks, 2009).

4 Chad Lavin, “The Year of Eating Politically,” Theory & Event 12:2 (2009).5 Ibid. Notably, in the last section of the article, Lavin acknowledges that Pollan’s recent

writings point to more conventional forms of political participation, like voting, in additionto consumerist politics. In a recent article originally published in The New York TimesMagazine, for example, Pollan argues that the “soft politics” of market exchange played outin farmers’ markets and farm shares go beyond monetary exchange to build alternativecommunities that complicate the narrow role of consumers and that these real gains set thefoundation for a shift to the “hard politics” of Washington. For Pollan, this is a necessarynext step for the food movement, which will work to democratize good food and rescue thefood movement from potential elitism. Pollan uses the California ballot initiativeProposition 37, which sought to mandate the labeling of all food products containingGenetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), as an example of this move to hard politics.Michael Pollan, “Vote for the Dinner Party,” Michael Pollan.com, ,http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/vote-for-the-dinner-party/. . Note that Proposition 37 was defeatedat the polls on November 6, 2012. One could argue, although this is not a primary focus ofthis article, that the shift from consumer voting to electoral voting that Pollan describes isreally a shift from one form of market politics to another, both of which functionideologically to support neoliberal and capitalist structures.

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not new at all. Rather, its animal ethics resemble a more humane and palatableversion of what you find in Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics—the humanetreatment of animals is seen as part and parcel of a larger cosmopolitan orecological narrative in which the consumption of healthy and happy animals isbetter for local communities, for the earth, and for the animals themselves.Embedded within the nouveau politics of eating well is an implicit belief thatanimals by their nature are lesser beings to be killed and consumed for thecultivation of the good life. The potential political problem, then, is not killinganimals but unduly harming them in the process.

Somewhat surprisingly, Theodor Adorno has recently become an importanttheoretical interlocutor for rethinking global capitalism and the subversivepossibilities of alter-globalization movements.6 For Adorno, animals offer a formof dialectical resistance that reveals the dehumanization of human beings undermodernity but also what Christina Gerhardt calls a “so-called humanizingpotential,” which points to alternatives for human life and liberation.7 Adorno’scritique of ideology and authenticity, especially when read in relation to animals,I argue, offers the theoretical armature necessary to strip down the ideologicalsurface of this new gastronomy to reveal the material realities of global capitalismthat inherently support it. To demonstrate this, I present two interrelated analysesin this article. In the first section, I provide an overview of Plato and Aristotle’sthought as it relates to consumption and politics, integrating Jacques Ranciere’scritique of philosophy and his theory of the distribution of the sensible to point toand critically assess the neo-Aristotelian animal welfare ethics of the newgastronomy. In the second section, I critique this animal welfare position and,more generally, the politics of eating well espoused by the followers of the newgastronomy. Here I use Adorno’s critique of ideology in The Jargon of Authenticityto expose this new politics of eating as a theoretically bankrupt pseudo activitythat veils animal and human exploitation through what I call the jargon ofgastronomic authenticity.8 Working from this two-pronged analysis, myoverarching argument is that the local food movement reanimates a quitetraditional politics of eating that, in turn, works to cast “buying local” as aprogressive or radical practice, when in reality, locavorism and the newgastronomy ideologically function to obscure the systems of industrial foodproduction and distribution that leave most people in a state of food insecurityand scarcity.

The Art of Food and the Banquet of Politics

And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure and pain, and is thereforefound in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and

6Bradley J. Macdonald, “Theodor Adorno, Alterglobalization, and Non-IdentityPolitics,” New Political Science 34: 3 (2012), pp. 321–337.

7 Christina Gerhardt, “The Ethics of Animals in Adorno and Kafka,” New GermanCritique 97 (Winter 2006), pp.164, 177.

8 See also Theodor W. Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” in Critical Models:Interventions and Catchwords, trans. Henry W. Pickford (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2005), p. 269.

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pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speechis intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise thejust and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense ofgood and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beingswho have this sense makes a family and a state.9

In Politics, Aristotle goes to great lengths to describe a well-functioning household,which is integral for the habit and training of the citizen. For Aristotle, happinessis the result of reasoned action; and one becomes an ethical being through practiceand training. The distinct role of the household, or the private life of the citizen, isto satiate bodily pleasures in moderation by attending to the physical needs ofhuman beings. Biological and economic existence are interrelated for Aristotle, asboth relate to tasks that one must do for necessary survival rather than by freechoice. Nonetheless, he also believes that the biological and economic realmsmustbe ruled by reasoned action and are subsidiary but necessary parts for cultivatingthe citizen.

Aristotle is clear that human behavior is driven by happiness, which hedefines in terms of practicing the unique human attribute of reason. Goodbehavior, then, is dictated by rationality in the pursuit of performing a specificfunction well, which by Aristotle’s definition falls between the extremes of purereason and pure action.10 For example, if we consider Aristotle’s discussion ofwealth-getting in Politics, we find that the virtuous practice of wealth-gettingconsists of managing and providing for the needs of the household, as opposedto the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself, either in the form of accumulation oras a means to pursue excess bodily pleasure. Both hoarding and gluttonyrepresent two related extremes, which for Aristotle miss the true purpose ofwealth, which is to provide for the physical needs of the household and toultimately free a person so that he may practice politics. To hoard wealth, then,lacks the proper practice of wealth-getting, while the gluttonous pursuit ofwealth for pleasure is action without knowledge.11 Because consumption is ahuman necessity rather than a choice, for Aristotle happiness in the householdmeans rationally practicing consumption between these two extremes. Money isnot an end in itself, but a means to supply household needs; therefore, if a manbecomes driven by wealth as an end in itself, to Aristotle he is no more free thana woman, a slave, or an animal, because he is denying himself the highest formof human excellence, political life, which must be detached from materialnecessity.

Plato, you will remember, recognized the necessity of private ownership forthe producing class, but also found it to be the root of harmful behavior and,ultimately, the fall of the state. For Plato, the leisure time afforded by wealthleads to idleness and the lack of resources due to poverty obstructs the pursuit ofhuman excellence.12 In Plato’s just state, temperance instilled through correctbelief would ensure that all performed their crafts in the service of others, and as

9Aristotle, The Politics, p. 13.10Aristotle, Ethics, trans. J. A. K. Thomson (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1953), pp. 171–172.11Aristotle, The Politics, p. 24.12 Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Francis Cornford (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1945), p. 112.

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such, all would be provided for equally. It is this defining characteristic that

prevents either riches or poverty from dividing and conquering the interests of

the polis.Aristotle, on the other hand, is practical is his attention to the bodily appetites

of man—both biological and economic—as being a necessary component in

arranging the political state. Whereas Plato denies, at least overtly, the hierarchal

structuring of the polis (remember that the ruler always serves in the interest of

the weaker party for Plato), Aristotle believes that the inferior members of society

always already serve the superior rational ends of their masters. Thus, women,

slaves, and animals embody the deformed or insufficient forms of judgment that

naturally feed the highest form of human excellence—the rational political action

of men. Although subordinate to men and still relegated to the private sphere, it is

important to remember that women hold a greater place than slaves and animals

in the natural hierarchy of Aristotle’s polity.13 Although they are considered

inferior rational beings, Aristotle believes that women are still due a form of

friendship or love when ruled by their husbands and that they fill an important,

albeit secondary role in managing the household, including slaves and animals.14

If we compare Plato and Aristotle on the role of women, one could argue that Plato

implicitly feminizes the entirety of men in the producing class by reducing their

political role to one of natural subservience and leaves women, slaves, and

animals outside the realm of reason.15 In contrast, Aristotle attributes a weaker

form of judgment to these others, who are to be consumed in their various roles

within the private sphere so that all male citizens can be truly free in speech and

13Arlene Saxonhouse, “Aristotle: Defective Males, Hierarchy and the Limits of Politics,”in Mary Lyndon Shanley and Carole Pateman (eds), Feminist Interpretations and PoliticalTheory (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), pp. 32–51.Saxonhouse argues that Aristotle departs from Plato bymaking the practice of virtue linkedto the private realm rather than excluding it. Moreover, she notes that although Aristotleviewed women as defective males, he clearly maintains that woman (in anticipation of herrole as wife) is not a slave and that she serves a unique purpose and virtue in the privaterealm by giving birth, providing stability, and educating children.

14Here, one could also gesture to the related point, as Horkheimer and Adorno do inDialectic of Enlightenment, that concern for irrational creatures is left to women in Westerncivilization, with the result being: “She became the embodiment of biological function, theimage of nature, the subjugation of which constituted that civilization’s title to fame. [ . . . ]Between her andman there was a difference she could not bridge—a difference imposed bynature, the most humiliating that can exist in a male-dominated society,” Max Horkheimerand Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York:Continuum, 1999), p. 248.

15Of course, Plato does make an argument for the equality of women in the Guardianclass in Chapter XV of Republic. However, feminist scholars point to the limitations of hisargument with regard to the actual roles of women in politics. See Susan Moller Okin,“Philosopher Queens and PrivateWives: Plato onWomen and the Family,” inMary LyndonShanley and Carole Pateman (eds), Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory (UniversityPark, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), pp. 11–31; Diana Coole,Women inPolitical Theory (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1988). Comparing Plato’s portrayalof women in Republic and the Laws, Okin argues that while Plato does question genderroles, this questioning largely hinges on the abolition of private property, and it is unclearthat it would broadly affect institutionalized gender roles and the objectified status ofwomen in the polis. Coole accuses Plato of making a formal argument for equality, but inreality trying to eliminate all womanly qualities from the public sphere.

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action to practice politics in the public interest—to ideally form what HannahArendt will critically render as the space of appearance.16

Plato’s solution to the paradox of political rule, of the self and the state, is toeliminate politics altogether and replace it with philosophy.17And it is theindustrious swineherd, as Jacques Ranciere discerns in The Philosopher and HisPoor, which justifies this necessity for Plato.18

You represent him, in his character of shepherd, as feeding up his flock, not for theirown sake but for the table or the market, as if he were out to make money as acaterer or a cattle-dealer, rather than a shepherd. Surely the sole concern of theshepherd’s art is to do the best for the charges put under its care; its own bestinterest is sufficiently provided for, so long as it does not fall short of all thatshepherding should imply. On that principle it followed, I thought, that any kind ofauthority, in the state or in private life, must, in its character of authority, considersolely what is best for those under its care.19

In the above passage, Socrates is reminding Thrasymachus through the analogyof a shepherd caring for his flock that ruling is an art that is always in the interestof the weaker party, not the strongest. But to be a master of a swineherd orshepherd is not enough. As Ranciere explains in The Philosopher and His Poor, thecity of pigs that feasts on wine and wheat cakes in Chapter VII of Republic is thefantasy of an egalitarian labor republic: “An apolitical society of industrious well-being [la sante travailleuse ], the myth of which will come to life again in the age ofanarchism and neo-Malthusianism.”20 The introduction of the luxurious state andits subsequent banquet of order based on production and consumption revealswhat Ranciere calls a subterranean logic of justice—Plato’s definition of justice isdoing what one is naturally inclined to do without interference from others, butwe can think about justice broadly defined as the fair exercise of power—thatdemands the disordering of health, so that it can once again be fairly distributed.21

Or, as Ranciere succinctly states in Dis-Agreement: “Politics exists only becausethere are equals and it is over them that rule is exercised.”22 Following Ranciere’scritique, Plato introduces the luxurious state and with it a multitude of luxuriouscallings into the polis with money and private property operating as necessarymediations that support the just ordering of society or its policing functions in thedistribution of the sensible.23 More specifically, within the polis the demos asproducing class is granted private property but denied politics because it is theformer that their souls desire. This is not to imply that Plato anticipated modern

16 See Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress, 1998).

17 Jacques Ranciere, Dis-Agreement, trans. Julie Rose (Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota Press, 1999), p. 63.

18 Jacques Ranciere, The Philosopher and His Poor, trans. John Drury, Corinne Oster, andAndrew Parker (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 9–19. See also Chapter VIIof Republic for a discussion of the luxurious state in relation to the primitive “community ofpigs,” Plato, The Republic of Plato, p. 60.

19 Plato, The Republic of Plato, p. 27.20 Ranciere, The Philosopher and His Poor, p. 8.21 Ibid., 9.22 Ranciere, Dis-Agreement, p. 71.23 See also Jacques Ranciere, The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible, trans.

Gabriel Rockhill (London, UK: Continuum, 2004).

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liberalism and its claims of liberty and individualism, but rather that his definitionof justice, which Ranciere observes to be predicated on a lie of nobility and nature,sets the logical terms with which the moderns would contend.24 More specifically,with regard to the producing class—they must only consume signs of justice andthe ideology that conceal the noble lie of the philosopher king.25

Returning to our discussion of those who explicitly have no part in Plato’sRepublic—none of this is to say that women, slaves, and animals are not to bevoraciously consumed in the pursuit of male appetites, which in the case ofanimals includes certain death, but that they should be treated humanely, sinceeach has its own form of excellence, which should not be obscured by thatwhich represents it, namely money.26 In effect, all of this indicates adeconstructive break in Plato’s Republic that hinges on animal bodies, orhumans signifying the animal position, which become markers of exclusion thatscore the threshold of ethical behavior and reveal a disjoint between philosophyand praxis.

Aristotle, on the other hand, integrates the demos into the political by way ofinstitutions that are to govern with common interest in mind.27 Yet as Rancierepoints out, this is all based on a slight of hand in which Aristotle inverts theproblem of how best to achieve justice by focusing not on the form of government,but by comparing different political regimes in terms of their difference from theform and conceding that all governments, if blatantly based in self-interest, wouldbring the ire of the demos and therefore end in their own demise. All forms ofgovernment in practice, then, should work toward the common interest, thedemos, or as Ranciere discerns—at least appear to.28 As Aristotle clearly describesin Politics, the voice of animals is simply one of mere intimation and expression ofpain and pleasure, but not of morality and judgment.29 The political animal thatinhabits Aristotle’s polity, in turn, is indelibly marked by the demarcation of thismode of access. Animals are always already excluded based on their lack ofspeech, but this also leads to the exclusion from politics of any humans whothreaten the natural order that Aristotle describes, with the slave marking thespecific transition from animality to humanity as the human who can recognizereason or good judgment, but does not possess it.30 And while animals and slavesare “living tools” that have nothing in common with men and consequently arenot owed the care and benefits of friendship, women are afforded a measure oflove due to their unique nature and as subjects of their husbands.31 All, however,are relegated to the private sphere and deemed lesser beings to be produced and

24 Ranciere, The Philosopher and His Poor, p. 53.25 Ibid., 52.26 See Jacques Ranciere, “Ten Theses on Politics,” Theory & Event 5:3 (2001), for a

discussion of “the part of thosewho have no part.”Note that Plato specifically condemns thedeliberate harming of animals in Chapter II of Republic: “But does not harming a horse or adogmeanmaking it aworse horse ordog, so that eachwill be a less perfect creature in its ownspecial way? Yes. Isn’t that also true of human beings—that to harm them means makingthem worse men by the standard of human excellence?” Plato, Republic of Plato, p. 13.

27Aristotle, The Politics, p. 71.28 Ranciere, Dis-Agreement, p. 74.29Aristotle, The Politics, p. 13.30 Ranciere, Dis-Agreement, p. 17.31Aristotle, Ethics, pp. 248–249.

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consumed by male citizens. All are explicitly reduced to phonic animals anddistributed accordingly.

What this reveals is an implicit logic of consumption that goes hand in handwith the birth of politics, which then demands the humane treatment of animals(and animalized humans) and justifies their death and exploitation at the sametime. To elaborate, from an Aristotelian standpoint it is the job of human beings,as knowers, to perceive the telos of animals.32 Returning to the example ofwealth-getting, but now specifically in relation to animals, the two practicalforms of knowledge include profitability and husbandry, both of which requireknowledge of the nutritive (nourishment and reproduction) and sensitive(movement and perception) elements of the animal soul. And while one cannotmake a direct argument for animal welfare from an Aristotelian vantage point,one can work from the angle of human health and happiness, as Michael AllenFox does in Deep Vegetarianism. A virtuous and therefore happy life is one that isguided by human rationality, which is embedded in human nature. Good health,then, is both part of the meaning and practice of virtue, finding its optimum inthe form of practical wisdom (between knowledge and action) or applied ethics.Key to this, for Fox, is recognizing that meat consumption counters humanexcellence, in that it has a detrimental effect on human health and well-being.Therefore, as part of our human virtue, we should avoid eating animal productsand especially those that are the result of industrialized animal agriculture.33

As he points out, “it is difficult to see how widely practiced, institutionalizedcruelty of any kind can be in the best interest of a society that aspires to call itselfdecent”.34

In his work on animal welfare, Bernard Rollin also points to human welfare tojustify humane treatment. For Rollin, animal welfare claims are derived fromcommonly held ethical beliefs and the role of philosophy is to guide societalbehavior by expanding these beliefs to deal with new categories in the materialworld. Blending Platonist and Aristotelian approaches, Rollin argues that animalsshould be respected for their natural differences, which means that they should beallowed to produce according to their nature (husbandry as opposed to industrialagriculture) and should not suffer (since they feel pain). Yet because of the naturalordering of society, they should be used for food, science, and labor.35 Using theexample of the shepherd to his flock, like Socrates to Thrasymachus in Chapter IIIof Republic, Rollin likewise reminds his audience that this was the guidingprinciple in the ancient (dominion) contract between man and animals, “humansfared well if and only if their animals fared well, and thus proper treatment ofanimals was guaranteed by the strongest possible motive—the producer’s self-interest.”36 In other words, humans must respect animal telos, which serves thetelos of producers, and ultimately the well-being of society.

32 Bernard Rollin, “On Telos and Genetic Engineering,” in Susan J. Armstrong andRichard G. Botzler (eds), The Animal Ethics Reader (London, UK: Routledge, 2003), p. 342.

33Michael Allen Fox, Deep Vegetarianism (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press,1999), pp. 71–76.

34 Ibid., 78.35 Bernard Rollin, “Annual Meeting Keynote Address: Animal Agriculture and the

Emerging Social Ethics for Animals,” Journal of Animal Science 82 (March 2004), p. 962.36 Bernard Rollin, “On Telos and Genetic Engineering,” in Susan J. Armstrong and

Richard G. Botzler (eds), The Animal Ethics Reader (London, UK: Routledge, 2003), p. 343.

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Both Fox and Rollin recognize animal bodies as important markers ofdivergence from human virtue, but ultimately their perception of the materialityof animal life is driven, perhaps even clouded, by their philosophical essentialism.One could argue that this is precisely the limitation of the animal welfare positionembedded in the contemporary gastronomic moment.37 Working from theAristotelian notion of virtue, the end goal of these new epicurean foodmovementsis the art of food—beautiful and virtuous food. There are two obvious limitationsto this kind of thinking: first, without contextualization within the larger contextof global capitalism, it serves to cement the importance of the petit bourgeoisieand reinforce liberal ideology; second, it does little to contest the killing ofanimals, and therefore, the fragmentation and consumption of animal bodies.38

This, in turn, works to depoliticize animals as they already have been throughoutthe history of Western political thought from antiquity onward, naturalizing anideology of consumption that justifies the death and exploitation of animals and atthe very least the invisibility and silencing of animalized humans.

The Jargon of Gastronomic Authenticity

In this new gastronomic context, political action takes the form of “Good”consumer choices coded with labels like Certified Organic, Certified Humane,Non-GMO-Project Certified, and Certified Cage Free. Adorno characterizes thejargon of authenticity as a system of language composed of magic words thatquickly act as signals of authenticity: “The jargon—objectively speaking, asystem—uses disorganization as its principle of organization, the breakdown oflanguage into words in themselves.”39 For Adorno, the jargon operates to elide allof the various components of the individual that Plato delineates—reason, spirit,and appetites—under the chargeof spirit.40One couldalso argue that this elision, inturn, works to conceal the underlying political economy discussed earlier, which issustained by animals and animalized bodies. As Plato describes in Chapter XIII ofRepublic, the spirited element of the soul functions to ensure that reason will ruleover appetiteswith regard to human action.41 According toAdorno: “The so-calledPlatonic psychology already expresses the internalization of the societal division of

37Note that Fox and Rollin present animal ethics positions in line with the Greektradition and, from my analysis, are illustrative of a kind of virtue animal ethics thatemerges from this tradition and which is very similar to the logic of animal ethics found inthe new gastronomy.

38 For Marx, the petit bourgeoisie are a class of small business owners who are becomingsmaller and smaller with the growth of industrialization. For the purposes of this article,petit bourgeoisie is used primarily because it is Adorno’s term in The Jargon of Authenticityfor purveyors of the jargon. The petit bourgeoisie are perhaps even greater defenders of thejargon that accompanies capitalism because of their seeming social progression to theowning class. For our discussion of animal ethics, in particular, the petit bourgeoisie are theindependent farmers, artisans, and comfortable liberal consumers who find this ethicalcraft production an authentic representation of social and environmental relations.

39 Theodor Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, trans. Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will(Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 7.

40Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, p. 67. See also, Theodor Adorno, “Marginalia ofTheory and Praxis,” in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords, trans. HenryW. Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).

41 Plato, The Republic of Plato, pp. 129–138.

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labor.”42 Moreover, by his observation, the “real force” of the division of theindividual subject is the tension between its material and rational components,which at once point to desire and the limitations of that desire imposed by thesocietal structure or correct belief (ideology) that Plato institutes. Thus, the criticaltensionbetween the elements of human life that Plato describes becomes trivializedand concealed by the jargon, which is driven by spirit alone.43 For Aristotle, correctbelief materializes as virtuous action, but the ideological drive remains the same,except that Aristotle’s Politics appears more humane than Plato’s Republic.44

Bourgeois liberalism works in the same way in the progression from feudal (andreligious) tyranny, in that it is a necessary stage of development in the progressionof human life, but also works to mask alienation resulting from the division oflabor—a kind of contradiction, one could argue, ofwhich Plato is keenly aware andwhich Aristotle subsequently naturalizes.45 With regard to the jargon, the willworks to encompass and dispensewithmaterial labor, lending the illusion that onecan willfully free oneself from the forces of material production. Nonetheless, asAdorno explains in “Marginalia of Theory and Praxis,” while this kind of modernwillfulness, which operates on the promise of “global dispensation from materiallabor” within the frame of late capitalism, indeed frees human life from “blindpredominance of material praxis,” it simultaneously invokes a disingenuousfreedom, the promise of the life of Zarathustra.46

According to Martin Jay, Adorno charges authenticity with resting on “adubious ideal of self possession and integrity” that fails to realize all selfhood asmimesis or simulacra, and instead introduces an “ontological fictionof absoluteness that falsely sees itself as the antidote to the leveling equivalenceof the exchange principle,” or to expand on Jay’s description, a palliative cure tothe devastating alienation and isolation of global capitalism.47 Adorno discernsthe concrete result of the jargon to be a linguistic armature that shields its user ofany culpability for his or her actions within the system: “Whoever stands behindhis words, in the way in which these words pretend, is safe from any suspicionabout what he is at the very moment about to do: speak for others in order topalm something off on them.”48 In other words, one’s enlightened choices,

42Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, p. 67.43 Ibid., 67–69.44Adorno, “Marginalia of Theory and Praxis,” p. 267.45 For example, consider Plato’s discussion of the luxurious state in Chapter VII of

Republic. Here Socrates initially describes the citizens of the polis as harmonious and self-regulating. It is the introduction of the fever state, which is driven by material desire that inturn justifies the emergence of the guardian class as a natural corrective to the unbridleddesires of the multitude. Wealth becomes a necessary iniquity, a force of motivation for theproducing class and a justification for the imposition of the ideology of the ruling class, butit is also this seed of desire planted within the foundation of the polis that anticipates itseventual downfall. Plato, The Republic of Plato, pp. 59–63.

46Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” p. 267. Here Adorno is discussing theseparation of theory and praxis and the dialectical relationship of a repressive but humanequasi-bourgeois consciousness and an authoritarian primacy of praxis. He goes on to note:“Whoever does not make the transition to irrational and brutal violence sees himself forcedinto the vicinity of the reformism that for its part shares the guilt for perpetuating thedeplorable totality.” Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis,” p. 268.

47Martin Jay, “Taking on the Stigma of Inauthenticity: Adorno’s Critique ofGenuineness,” New German Critique 97 (Winter 2006), p. 25.

48Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, p. 14.

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which follow the order-words of the jargon, are imagined to escape theexploitative realities of the mode of production. One could argue thatgastronomic authenticity is grounded in the pursuit of enlightened eating,wherein the guiding assumption is that local farmers practice and perfect theirarts by producing authentic “whole” foods that reciprocally serve their owninterests and the interests of the community, and thus by default, the interests ofthose over which they have dominion (that is animals and nature). In theAristotelian sense, practicing husbandry via small-scale farming ensures thatanimals are allowed to reproduce according to their unique excellence withinthis context; likewise, humane treatment ensures the sensitive nature of animals,in effect preventing the manipulation of their bodies into a less perfect form. Onthe producer side, the end result is healthy, sustainable, grass-fed meats anddairy brought to market by craftsmen driven by their true virtue, as opposed tosimply profit. On the consumer side, the jargon of gastronomic authenticity actsas shorthand for enlightened choices, preventing ensnarement in the toxicmarketplace of mainstream commodities. The animals themselves, theircontradictory existence as both life and death, are lost in the trade: “Animalsare only remembered when the few remaining specimens, the counterpart of themedieval jester, perish in excruciating pain, as a capital loss for their owner whoneglected to afford them adequate fire protection in an age of concrete andsteel.”49 In effect, one could argue that the jargon eliminates reflection beyondthe signifier at hand, rendering a closed language of dictum and decision quitesimilar to Herbert Marcuse’s description of operational language in One-Dimensional Man.50

As Jay explains, what Adorno’s critique of ideological authenticity offers is acommitment to the contradictions of the historical present and a necessaryrecognition of the constant gravitational pull of the subject toward the outside, theOther.51 Adorno’s alternative nonauratic authenticity52—embodied, most notably,in difficult works of art but also in the miserable and contradictory livesof animals, as described above—abrades the glossy postcard image of the jargonof gastronomic authenticity. Consider an article about humane slaughter in arecent issue ofModern Farmer, which praises the humane slaughtering practices ofthe Prather Ranch Meat Company: “Prather doesn’t just give cows the best lifepossible, but the best death possible. There is hardly an animal in nature—humansincluded—that dies as quickly and painlessly as Prather’s herd.”53 Prather, whichwas one of the first small operations to sell its meat at farmers markets, claims toproduce the most sustainable meat available and has successfully grown its

49Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 251.50Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon, 1991), p. 101.51 Jay, “Taking on the Stigma of Inauthenticity,” p. 29.52 Ibid.53Mac McClelland, “This Is What Humane Slaughter Looks Like. Is It Good Enough?”

Modern Farmer, No. 1 (Spring 2013), p. 47. Temple Grandin’s research on the design ofhumane slaughterhouses is referenced in regard to the ethics of humane slaughter and the“surprising strong” slaughter standards at not only Prather but more corporate operationsin the United States. Notably Grandin is a meat eater and argues that with a design thatminimizes noise and visual stressors on cattle, the slaughter process can be humane andrelatively painless to the animals. See also, Temple Grandin,Animals in Translation: Using theMysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior (New York: Scribner, 2005).

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business to include a downtown San Francisco storefront that sells, “quality meatsand meat products from farms and ranches that respect the land and the animalsraised on it.”54 Here the characterization of the small farmer as a virtuousentrepreneur and humane steward is cast as a significant rupture and recoding ofcapitalist markets. Emphasized in terms of importance is the ability to make betterchoices, whether as a producer or consumer. What this strategy neglects, however,is a certain depth of analysis that goes beyond its ideological fac�ade. Equal rightsand equal opportunity form the cornerstone of liberal ideology and support thelogic of the jargon of authenticity’s choice-based framework. This, in turn, worksto obscure societal inequities. As Adorno explains: “Such universal humanity,however, is ideology. It caricatures the equal rights of everything which bears ahuman face, since it hides from men the unalleviated discriminations of societalpower: the differences between hunger and overabundance, between spirit anddocile idiocy.”55 The virtuous foodie believes that with the right knowledge and aroll-up-your-sleeves attitude, local and sustainable goods can manifest anywhere,when in reality, millions of Americans live in United States Department ofAgriculture-designated food deserts and have no direct access to fresh meats andproduce or healthy foods. In rural agricultural areas, food deserts are the directresult of the accumulation of fertile farm lands for industrialized agriculture inorder to grow crops like corn and soybeans, which are used to supplyConcentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) or are key ingredients inprocessed foods.56

Certainly there are subgenres connected to the local food movement, likeveganism, that offer more substantial critiques of food production anddistribution that perhaps push the limits of the jargon of gastronomic authenticity.As Bob Torres explains, veganism is the most immediate action that one can taketo work against animal cruelty and suffering.57 Pointing to Carole Adams’s nowclassic analysis in The Sexual Politics of Meat, he is quick to note that vegans in thecompany of carnivores stand in for the animals that would otherwise beunnoticeable and unthinkingly consumed.58 Adams views the gestalt shift thatoccurs when one sees the dead animals that would otherwise be absent at thedinner table, what she calls absent referents, as a first step toward recognizingintersecting forms of oppression.59 Arguably, Torres expands this logic from

54 “About Us,” Parker Ranch Meat Company, ,http://prmeatco.com/about-us/. .55Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, p. 66.56 Julia Savacool, “What It’s Like to be Stranded in a Food Desert,” Women’s Health

(October 2013), pp. 154–159. One could argue that the solutions to the food crisis globallyand in the US that are presented in this article focus on market and philanthropic solutionscoming from the ranks of the petit bourgeoisie; for example, a young entrepreneur whoopened a fresh foodsmarket in an isolated part of Seattle, a wealthy NewYork City duo thatproduced a film to raise awareness about hunger, and a young woman who created a non-profit to provide clean water, health clinics, and organic micro farms in Africa. Readers arealso encouraged to donate restaurant leftovers to the homeless, donate extra produce fromthe garden to a local food pantry, and to patronize restaurants that turn food waste intolivestock feed.

57 Bob Torres, Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights (Edinburgh, UK:AK Press, 2007), pp. 130–131.

58 Torres, Making a Killing, p. 133. See also Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat:A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (New York: Continuum, 2000).

59Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat, pp. 55–56.

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critique to action60 by warning that lifestyle veganism, much like other forms ofgreen consumerism—and in this categorization one can easily imagine the newgastronomy—is yet another form of reformist liberalism: “For veganism to meananything at all, it must be more than lifestyle politics and expensive consumertrinkets produced without animal-cruelty; it must be part of an integrativemovement that seeks affinity with other causes promoting justice, and it mustreach out to communities that would not normally consider veganism.”61

Torres briefly mentions groups like the Animal Liberation Front62 and FoodNot Bombs,63 both of which go beyond the lifestyle politics that he critiques in hisanalysis, but ultimately he concludes that vegan activism can take a variety offorms—from organizing to art, depending on one’s individual strengths—so longas they do not rely on domination or use tactics embedded in systems ofcommodification and exploitation, and consciously and doggedly pursue theinstitutions and practices that sustain human and nonhuman suffering:“Anarchists always say that there’s no one better able to decide how to runyour life than you. Similarly, there’s no one better able to decide how to run youractivism than you. [ . . . ] Guided by our own creativity, innovation, and interests,we can challenge the social relations that create social problems.”64 And perhapsthis is the greatest weakness in Torres’s analysis—his faith in individual action

60Contra the symbolic violence of meat, Adams offers the metaphor of the plant worldas an alternative for understanding politics, one in which: “Political implications arederived from a sense of organic unity rather than disjunction; harvest rather than violence;living in harmony rather than having domain over,” ibid., p. 201. Here one could argue thatAdams’s literary focus runs the risk of falling back on individual enlightenment andcritique as a means for paradigmatic change without sufficient attention to politicalorganization and action or to the deep structural inequalities that may prevent a shift tovegetarianism.

61 Torres, Making a Killing, p. 137.62 Steven Best and Anthony Nocella II (eds), Terrorists or Freedom Fighters: Reflections on

the Liberation of Animals (New York: Lantern Books, 2004), pp. 7–8. The Animal LiberationFront (ALF) comprises affiliated cells of individuals and groups around the world who, atany time, take direct action against animal abuse and exploitation in the name of animalrights and while following ALF guidelines, which are as follows: “To liberate animals fromplaces of abuse, i.e., laboratories, factory farms, fur farms, etc., and place them in goodhomes where they may live out their natural lives, free from suffering; To inflict economicdamage to those who profit from the misery and exploitation of animals; To reveal thehorror and atrocities committed against animals behind locked doors, by performingnonviolent direct actions and liberations; To take all necessary precautions against harmingany animal, human and nonhuman; Any group of people who are vegetarians or vegansand who carry out actions according to ALF guidelines have the right to regard themselvesas part of the ALF,” Best and Nocella II (eds), Terrorists or Freedom Fighters, p. 8.

63 “Three Principles of Food Not Bombs,” Food Not Bombs, ,http://www.foodnotbombs.net/principles.html. . Food Not Bombs (FNB) recovers food that cannotbe sold and would otherwise be discarded. Usually, FNB chapters do this by working withstores, markets, and bakeries to schedule regular pick-ups for their unsellable food. FNBargues that food is a right and not a privilege and FNB chapters operate on three guidingprinciples: All food is vegan or vegetarian and free to everyone; Each chapter isindependent and self-governing and engages in decision-making using the consensusmethod; FNB is dedicated to non-violent social change and is not a charity. FNB is directlydemocratic in its operations and works in affinity with other groups using nonviolentmethods for social change, often providing food at protests and strikes in addition to theirmore regular community meals (which often feed the homeless).

64 Torres, Making a Killing, p. 146.

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and what Adorno calls the “primacy of practice,” which favors tactics over allelse.65 Adorno sees actionists as lacking introspection and criticism regardingtheir own impact and inherent complicity with the system: “Whoever imaginesthat as a product of this society he is free of the bourgeois coldness harborsillusions about himself as much as about the world; without such coldness onecould not live. The ability of anyone, without exception, to identify with another’ssuffering is slight.”66 With regard to vegan actionism, the implication is that thereis no real escape from the political economy of meat that drives everyday life.Arguably the best that vegans can do is to reflect on the disruptive theater of theiractions rather than mistake it as untouched or self-apparently transformative.And to do this requires relentless critique. 67

Freedom of thought, for Adorno, is the minute freedom that human beingspossess in everyday life under late capitalismand it is precisely in the irreconcilablerelationship between subject and object, theory and praxis, which this freedomemerges. Certainly veganism, with its specific attention to animal bodies and thedisjoint between our consumption of animals and their lived realities, marks a turnin this direction—and surelymore so than other strains of the new gastronomy. Butit also falls prey tomanyof the same shortcomings, albeit in quite differentways, byassuming that one can largelydisentangleoneself fromcarnivorous systemsof foodproduction—even, arguably, in veganism’smost radicalmanifestations. Contra thenegative dialectical model that Adorno offers, what the jargon of gastronomicauthenticity generally assumes, in the Heideggerian sense, is the self-disclosure ofcontinuity between human beings and their world. One could argue that like alljargon, gastronomic authenticity harkens back to a time in which human beingswere not completely defined by the division of labor and the institutions ofexchange—romantic and nostalgic images of sustainability, ecological harmony,and humane dominion over animals. Yet as Adorno reveals, this kind of thinking is

65Adorno, “Marginalia to Theory and Praxis”, p. 268.66 Ibid., 274.67 Idid., 275. Here Adorno points to Brecht’s concession of being essentially “more

interested in the theater than changing the world,” arguing that such an honesty would bethe best “corrective” for the actionist happenings of the 1960s which had, in his eyes,muddled “aesthetic semblance and reality.” While one could read this passage ascondemning activism to the realm of empty theatrics, it could also be interpreted as a morepositive rendering of action, one that offers a dialectical injection into what could otherwisebe considered rote activism while simultaneously acknowledging the critical tensionprovided by activism. Consider recent online newsfeed reports that some “natural” vanillaflavoring comes from the anal secretions (technically from their castor sacs) of beavers forexample. See Melissa Locker, “Your Vanilla Ice Cream May Actually Smell Like BeaverButt,” Time, ,http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/10/03/your-vanilla-ice-cream-may-actually-smell-like-beaver-butt/. . While this may sound shocking, it is an example of the manyanimal ingredients that factor into everyday products, including wood glue, tires, refinedsugar, and film to name a fewwell-known examples in vegan circles. It is nearly impossiblefor most people—arguably, even vegans—to keep up with the vast amount of animalingredients in everyday products let alone to have the time and resources necessary to writemanufacturers to find out ingredient sources, to always buy certified vegan or vegetarianproducts, to trace the commodity chains of commercial and locally produced foods, or toavoid contact with animal-sourced ingredients outside of purchasing choices. In short, thepolitical economy of meat is everywhere and inescapable, and one could argue thatrelentless critique, in the Adornian (and Marxist) sense, is necessary to bring to bear whatcould be considered a bourgeois faith in the power of individualism to escape or overthrowsystems of exploitation.

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in itself ideological.68 Although a select group of philosophers and academics setsthe jargon into motion, Adorno is clear that its importance cannot beunderestimated because in real life countless people speak it and live by it.69 Forexample, one quickly gets the sense that the articles in Modern Farmer are less foractual farmers and more for hip green urbanites and suburbanites who have thedisposable incomes to purchase the custom chicken coops that look like miniaturebungalows and the sustainably produced wines and spirits that are advertisedalongside those articles—articles which range in topic from organic farms in Chinaand the effects of monsoons on rice farmers in India to how to kill a wild pig,choosing the right breed of chicken (complete with a recipe for scrambled eggs),and planting your own cocktail garden.70 The aesthetic focus of the journal ispalpable, and like so much of the jargon of authenticity, appears to resonate with aHeideggerian conceptualization of the objectiveworld, one that not only assumes asmooth continuity between the enlightened subject andhis orherworld, butwhich,according to Susan Buck-Morss in her analysis of Adorno, reduces the objectiveworld to equipment to be “owned and manipulated by the [domesticated,bourgeois] subject: their use value was personal rather than social.”71

More specifically, what is all-too-often absent from the haute framing ofbeautiful foods featured in this gastronomic genre is a deep critique of the largercontext of the socio-economic production of commodities and the overall qualityof social life, since the jargon assumes that one’s ability to participate via personalchoices in niche markets affects the world in a meaningful way and that allhumans are equal to participate in this way. As Gillian Rose explains in TheMelancholy Science, from Adorno’s perspective, to believe that human relations aresimple and transparent in a society in which they are not “lends support to themode of domination in that society.”72 Returning to Adorno in his Lectures onNegative Dialectics, what ensue are a deluded conception of being-in-oneself and aconsequent and continuous bleating about “one’s own ticket, one’s own slogan,one’s own membership of a group as a guarantee of truth.”73

Comparing the life of jargon to the alluring image of Elsie, “the happyAmericanadvertisement cow”of Borden fame,Adornonotes that the cliche ofmanwouldnotbe so captivating if we saw beneath its ideological veil to the violence of life undercapitalism.74 If the new epicurean saw the daily hunger of the millions ofAmericans who are food insecure or witnessed the “humane” slaughter of animalsboth in CAFOs and in sustainable farming operations, would the privileged choiceto buy locally grown heirloom tomatoes and free-range bison steaks seem eithermeaningful or political? Adorno’s selection of the Borden cow as an analogy forhuman life is particularly telling, one could argue, because it resonateswith Plato’saccount of the fattened, sacrificial calf in Republic. According to Adorno, by

68Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, p. 59.69 Ibid., 19.70 See Modern Farmer (Spring 2013).71 Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics (New York: The Free Press,

1977), p. 120.72Gillian Rose, TheMelancholy Science: An Introduction to the Thought of Theodor W. Adorno

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 74.73 Theodor Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics, Rolf Tiedemann (ed.), Rodney

Livingstone (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2008), p. 107.74Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, p. 62.

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neglecting the historical and social conditions that shape human life, the jargonimplicitly works to dehumanize modern man.75 Ironically, animals are forms ofmateriality that work to apply dialectical tension to the metaphysical idealsassociatedwith the jargonof authenticity.76 It is not surprising, then, that he looks tothe animal character of Elsie to signify the dehumanizing effect of bourgeoisideology and that he specifically uses the example of small-scale farming toillustrate the ideological function of the jargon. Noting the failures of modernEuropean literature to realistically depict rural people, Adorno criticizes this sameliterature in its portrayal of the small farmer:

The small farmer owes his continuing existence entirely to gracious gifts from thatexchange society by which his very ground and foundation, even in appearance,have been removed; in the face of this exchange the farmers have nothing on theirhorizon except something worse—the immediate exploitation of the family withoutwhich they would be bankrupt: this hollowed-out state, the perpetual crisis of thesmall farmer’s business, has its echo in the hollowness of the jargon.77

Here, Adorno appears to suggest that the only comfort that the small farmer has isideological—his virtue derived from necessity78 or even, perhaps, a glimpse ofjoining the ranks of the petit bourgeois as an entrepreneur. Returning to the jargonof gastronomic authenticity, to which Adorno’s example lends itself so well, thefarmer and his products can be seen as captured in the cash nexus of the wholefoods marketplace and circulating as fetishes, the consumption of which appearsto escape the throws of exploitation. At the same time the sign of the happy cow,which is really the all-too-human sacrificial calf, circulates in such a way as toobliterate nonhuman animals. It is important to note that radical veganismcommitted to anti-capitalist politics and direct action may work to restore theanimal absent referent, as discussed above, but the larger question still remains asto whether it is actually possible, even for radical vegans, to be completelydisentangled from systems of industrialized food production and to provokemasssocial transformation given the predominance of niche markets that cater tolifestyle vegetarians, who make up a large share of herbivores, and the power ofthe jargon of gastronomic authenticity generally, which assuages liberal guilt withregard to environmental degradation, animal welfare, and food security, whilesimultaneously appealing to reformist sensibilities.79 Without a theoretical

75 Ibid., 59.76Gerhardt, “The Ethics of Animals in Adorno and Kafka,” p. 164.77Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, p. 55.78 Ibid., 56.79 “Vegetarianism in America,” Vegetarian Times, ,http://www.vegetariantimes.com/

article/vegetarianism-in-america/. . According to a 2008 Vegetarian Times poll, 7.3 millionpeople or 3.2% of the American population is vegetarian. Of that number, 0.5% or onemillion people are vegan. According to the poll, 53% of all vegetarians eat a plant-based dietto improve their overall health; 47% are vegetarian for environmental reasons; 39% practicevegetarianism for “natural approaches to wellness”; 31% are vegetarian due to food safetyconcerns; 54% listed animal welfare as the reason for their vegetarianism; 25% said theypracticed vegetarianism for weight loss; and 24% said they practiced vegetarianism forweight maintenance. Note that the Vegetarian Times worked with the Harris InteractiveService Bureau, who polled a statistically representative sample of the US populationtotaling 5050 respondents, to collect the survey data and with RRC Associates out ofBoulder, Colorado, to perform the data analysis.

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critique of veganism and its entanglement with the jargon, veganism risks veiling

the same systems of exploitation that it exposes by re-embodying dead animals,

either by righteously believing that the cruelty of those systems can be fully

escaped or, likewise, by fetishizing vegan products, whether commercially or

locally produced.The danger in all of this is the unsettling reality that Plato attempted to

resolve in Republic with his notion of justice and by replacing politics with

philosophy: the economic realm leads to a contradiction in the form of a

necessary division of labor and, consequently, exploitation. Ideological language

in the common form of correct belief masks this material reality from

the multitude so that all economic activities become justified in the service of

the state; thus the luxurious state, the products of which Plato recognizes are

unnecessary and ultimately destructive in Chapter XXXI, is a necessary evil

because it delineates the state of exception along economic lines.80 In effect, one

could argue that Plato’s attempt to counter sophistry is itself a sophistic turn,

which Aristotle then turns into good habit or virtuous action.81 Practically

speaking, what this means in the late modern context that Adorno critiques is

that any self-interested (economic) action can portray itself to be in the service

of the public interest when wrapped in the jargon.82 As Adorno explains:

“Thus, nothing is done in any serious fashion to alleviate men’s suffering and

need. Self-righteous humanity, in the midst of a general inhumanity, only

intensifies the inhuman state of affairs. This is a state of affairs which

necessarily remains hidden to those who suffer here and now. The jargon only

doubles the hiding cover.”83 And perhaps most importantly, all of this

reinforces a politics of exception according to Adorno: “Petit bourgeois have few

acquaintances; they feel uncomfortable as soon as they come together with

people they don’t already know, and their duplicity turns this attitude into a

virtue.”84 With regard to the “whole” food movements of today, the jargon of

gastronomic authenticity lends itself to a parochialism that supports the petit

bourgeois in their roles as enlightened consumers and producers—a kind of

foodie club for those in the Aristotelian know.85 All the while, what is veiled by

the jargon of authenticity is the larger context of exploitation that sustains this

niche market.

80 Plato, The Republic of Plato, pp. 284–286.81Adorno, The Jargon of Authenticity, pp. 44–45. Here Adorno discusses the double

character of the antisophistic emotion of philosophy, which he traces back to the success ofPlato and Aristotle in defeating the Socratic left.

82 Ibid., 67.83 Ibid.84 Ibid., 48.85As Horkheimer and Adorno observe: “Even Aristotle, who allowed [animals] a soul

(though of an inferior kind), preferred to concern himself with animals’ bodies and parts,with their movements and manner of reproduction, than with their actual existence,”Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 246. One could argue thatcontemporary animal welfare ethics replicate this Aristotelian oversight by focusing on thefragmented and objectified forms of animal bodies, via husbandry and proper care, ratherthan the universal conditions of exploitation and ultimately death that the majority of theseanimals face in their actual existence.

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To Market, To Market: Which Market?

On the one hand, we must cast off our provinciality. In other words, we shouldcease to speak as if we could explain a substantive world fromwithin itself, as Hegelbelieved he was able to do, given that this world’s substantiveness has long sinceslipped out of the reach of the philosophical mind. On the other hand, if we wish tocontinue to philosophize and not to act as if we confused a comfortably furnishedcottage with the Pentagon, we have to undertake the task, the quite unavoidabletask, of describing the path that will turn our thoughts back to philosophy—or, ifnot describing it, that is a task that goes beyond any reasonable expectation, then atleast attempting to reconstruct it in our minds.86

Philosophy lives on because it has missed its moment of realization according toAdorno.87 Adorno explains that in late capitalist society, freedom is synonymouswith the individual freedom to pursue one’s own interests in opposition to societyand other individuals and that this freedom is deceiving because it rests upon anillusory individuality.88 Contemporary discussions of gastronomy can easily driftinto a cottage industry, emanating a whiff of opiate and a waft of bad air in theirfaith in the transformative power of consumer choices. Likewise, the animalwelfare ethics often embedded within these discourses further mask the violenceof consumer culture. The material reality is that niche green markets, whichmarginally improve the lives of some humans and animals (although do noteliminate death, especially in the case of animals), live on because they sustain thesystem via the jargon of gastronomic authenticity—the goods of organic,sustainable, and whole foods—and because they are supported, in terms ofmarket share, by industrialized food production. For the petit bourgeoisie, thejargon of gastronomic authenticity offers an illusively better lifestyle and theassuaging of liberal guilt. For the majority of the world, however, food is a scarceresource and not a luxury good and food security is a matter of life and death.Even within the US welfare state, the majority of the working class cannot affordor access whole foods without sacrificing basic necessities. And like the animalsthat they consume in their fast food and microwave dinners, they are products ofthe Thanatos of consumer culture, albeit via chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes,and heart disease.

Focusing on individual lifestyle choices like eating healthy foods or starting acompassionate although profitable business that provides better products to alocal market does not change the fact that, overall, food production processes areexploitative of people, animals, and the environment. Similar to the ruse ofrecycling that Timothy W. Luke points to in his discussion of the consumeristtreatment of ecology, the hyper-individualistic, market-based solutions of the newgastronomy are also “virtually meaningless” in terms of radical action and socialtransformation.89 Likewise, one is reminded of bell hooks’s assessment in herdiscussion of feminist politics that the contemporary focus on identity and

86Adorno, Lectures on Negative Dialectics, pp. 41–42.87Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 3.88 Ibid., 261–262.89 Timothy W. Luke, “Green Consumerism: Ecology and the Ruse of Recycling,” in Jane

Bennett and William Chaloupka (eds), In the Nature of Things: Language, Politics, and theEnvironment (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p. 171.

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lifestyle provides people with a pleasurable, albeit false sense of praxis, and that inreality: “Struggle is rarely safe or pleasurable.”90 The new gastronomy indeedmakes the petit bourgeoisie feel good about what they are consuming, literally asdecadent and delicious foods, but also figuratively and ideologically as signs ofvirtue—fetishes and proxy for political action. What Adorno offers is a way tobreak down the aura of gastronomic authenticity to see the realities of theincreasingly invisible and hidden systems of domination that order our capitalistlife world. What is revealed from this kind of analysis is neither pleasurable noreasy to politically transform because it requires collective political action thatexceeds liberal and neoliberal choice-based politics and undermines thenarcissistic drives, especially those of the petit bourgeoisie, to which thesepolitics appeal and upon which they depend. Yet as Adorno realizes—andperhaps this is the most important counsel that he can provide with regard to thejargon of gastronomic authenticity—the very discomfort that critical theory bringsto bear in its unrelenting critique of all things existing is a potent form of praxisdialectically tied to radical social transformation.

Notes on Contributor

Katherine E. Young is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Scienceat the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Her current research focuses on theintersection of animal rights, environmental political theory, and WesternMarxism.

90 bell hooks, Feminist Theory: FromMargin to Center, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: South EndPress, 2000), p. 30.

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