Contemporary discourses of food and health links the illness and suffering of today to the eating and feeding of the past. When disaster strikes memories and images of the past’s incorporations are transformed into images of incorporating the disaster.
Paper long abstract:
In contemporary Western societies, food is instrumentalized so as to find its main function as a means to achieve health related goals. This process of pharmacologization links the illness and suffering of today to the eating and feeding of the (remotest) past, and the incorporations of today to the (potential) suffering and illness of the (farthest) future. Embedded in the discourse on health and food one finds statements like: "What is killing you now is what you ate - or did not eat - 30 years ago". "What makes you child suffer today is what you ate while being pregnant". When disaster strikes memories and images of the past's incorporations are transformed into images of incorporating the disaster. The paper will inquire into this process including its implications for sense of self or subjectivity. Semiotics in the Peircean tradition will inform the investigation. Emphasis will be on semiosis; the generation of interpretants including their retrospective alteration.