What do you think?
Rate this book
Experimental Futures
Eating in Theory
As we taste, chew, swallow, digest, and excrete, our foods transform us, while our eating, in its turn, affects the wider earthly environment. In Eating in Theory Annemarie Mol takes inspiration from these transformative entanglements to rethink what it is to be human. Drawing on fieldwork at food conferences, research labs, health care facilities, restaurants, and her own kitchen table, Mol reassesses the work of authors such as Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans Jonas, and Emmanuel Levinas. They celebrated the allegedly unique capability of humans to rise above their immediate bodily needs. Mol, by contrast, appreciates that as humans we share our fleshy substance with other living beings, whom we cultivate, cut into pieces, transport, prepare, and incorporate—and to whom we leave our excesses. This has far-reaching philosophical consequences. Taking human eating seriously suggests a reappraisal of being as transformative, knowing as entangling, doing as dispersed, and relating as a matter of inescapable dependence.
208 pages, Paperback
Published April 23, 2021
17 people are currently reading
305 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 3, 2024
In this book, Annemarie Mol provides us with a very interesting analysis of eating. Particularly, she asks: how can practices of eating help us rethink some of the philosophical habits of the Western tradition? Considering this broad ambition, I think the book is of interest to people with a philosophical bent. Moreover, it should speak to people interested in anthropology as well as STS. What follows is an overview of the individual chapters as well as my take on the effectiveness of the book's overall project.
The first chapter, "Empirical Philosophy", explicates the book's starting point as well as its broader aim. The book "has no practical solutions on offer" (p. 1), but seeks to adapt the tools of the humanities and social sciences in the face of "the pressing realities of environmental destruction" (p. 1). Mol reminds us of the Western tradition's insistence on human exceptionalism: humans have been distinguished from animals, nature, etc. She wants to redirect this tendency by means of the following question: "What if our theoretical repertoires were to take inspiration not from thinking but from eating?" (p. 3). She explicitly criticizes Hannah Ahrendt's "The Human Condition" in which an image of "the human" is crafted. Mol takes issue with the universalizing tendencies of such philosophical work. Instead, she mobilizes an "empirical philosophy" which seeks to overcome the bridge between empirical and philosophical analysis. Concretely, such a method would work with empirical situations to draw philosophical lessons from them. Mol is heavily inspired by Foucauldian analyses of discourses as part and parcel of fields of power. Furthermore, she draws from Wittgenstein's analyses of language as empirically used as opposed to other analytical philosophies which sought to define concepts in clear cut ways (think of Wittgenstein's language games, family resemblance, etc.). She puts her inspiration in the following way: "both Wittgenstein and Foucault suggested that diverse socio-material formations and ways of using words make diverse 'realities' possible" (p. 22). Hence, eating is not one thing, but many different things. Mol does not offer a capital T theory, but "a repository of metaphors to write in, models to think with, ways of speaking and forms of responding" (p. 25).
The second chapter, "Being", problematizes Western philosophies' focus on being as firmly bounded. Instead, her main lessons: "Eating offers a model of being that is very different from that suggested by walking. For insofar as I am an eating body, my boundaries are crossed. For the life of me, I bite off, or slurp up, things from my surroundings and incorporate them into my body." (p. 39). Moreover, "eating suggests a model of being in which the body that is overflows into her surroundings" (p. 43) and a kind of being that is "neither fully here nor completely there, as here and there, multisited, dispersed" (p. 49". Put differently, thinking about being in terms of eating helps us see individuals as dispersed, rather than neatly bounded.
Third, in "Knowing", Mol takes issue with the Western philosophical habit of deriding eating as basic and somehow hierarchically below acts of knowing. Instead of knowing happing only through bodily perceptions, it happens in "specific, situated engagements of a person with stuf she happens to eat, here and now" (p. 60). Another lesson for theory: "Interacting with a food object may increase a person's perceptive skills, but also her appreciate propensities. The taste of foods is bound to affect the taste of those who eat them." (p. 67). In other words, "eating changes the conditions of possibility on which getting to know a dish depends" (p. 71). Put simply, this chapter offers an account of knowing as not merely an encounter between an active subject apprehending a passive world; no: "subject and object interfere with each other, change each other, intertwine. [...] knowing is not of the world, but in it. It is altogether tranformative." (p. 74).
Let's recap chapter four, "Doing", in which Mol engages with ethics. She reminds us of the Western philosophical habit to erect straight boundaries between voluntarism/choice and natural processes on the other hand. Instead, she proposes that "eating is netiher a matter of voluntary control nor embedded in causal chains. It is a task that is difficult to achieve, but that, by creating suitable circumstances, and with the support from others, may yet be accomplished." (p. 86). Doing ought not to be turn between free will and natural causes, "it may also be configured as a task: willful and responsive, creative and adaptive [...]" (p. 88). Furthermore, she highlights how doing may "stretch out beyond" our skins; it "may as well be distribtued over a stretched-out, historically dispersed, socio-material collective." (p. 93). In terms of moralities, she argues taht "doing is not simply good or bad. It may be good for some and bad for others or good in some ways and bad in others." (p. 98) - we see here quite clearly spelled out Mol's ambition to situate ethics within specific worldly engagements (see also her argument about Nazi atrocities, p. 99). In sum, the ethics outlined in this chapter are ethics "without reassuring handholds, an ethics that does not envision this or that goal in isolation but realizes that deeds inevitably have diverse effects. An ethics that imagines worthy doing as caring, self-reflective, curious, attentive, adaptive." (p. 101).
Chapter 5, "Relating", turns to an analysis of relating. She draws here on Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical project of making people see the Other as a fellow human. Mol suggests that "eating offers a model of relating in which violence and love go together, intertwine" (p. 120). Moreover, "eating suggests a model of relating in which fighting is not just detrimental for those who lose, but also for those who win. For if the I destroys the conditions of possibility on which countless others depend for their life, this is inevitably self-destructive too." (p. 124). In general, she tries to think about relations beyond genealogical family trees: "being generative is not about having offspring, but about cultivating crops." (p. 125).
The final chapter, "Intellectual Ingredients", draws her insights together in an attempt to re-theorize politics. Mol recounts the Western philosophical tradition initial insistence on politics as belonging firmly to humans, and being based on conversation. Later, especially late 20th century and early 21st century, politics was extended to non-human actors as well (think about Latour's 'parliament of things', for example). Mol puts forth an account of politics that does not mean equates not "with making decisions, but with exploring alternatives." (p. 131). Her politics is a term for the alterity "between different ways of organizing socio-material realities" (p. 132). Put differently, "politics does not need to be verbal. It can also take the shape of cooking things up in one way or another." (p. 134). Throughout this book, she recounts, she asked in every situation: "What does it say, what does it remind of, what does it make me think?" (p. 137). She returns, in a round-about way, to her starting points (Wittgenstein/Foucault): "Words are part of practice: they help to shape what is being done. Hence, it is imporatnt to mind our words and explore the worlds they carry with them." (p. 141). Her book, she writes in closing, "is not a conclusion, not a place at which this book comes to rest. It instead offers an opening." (p. 143). She politely asks: "Please, reader, if you found anything inspiring here, run with it." (p. 143).
Ultimately, I believe that Mol very effectively challenges the theoretical habits of Western philosophy by taking cues from eating situations. Her project, obviously, is highly ambitious. The most central strength of this book, in my mind, is its unique methodological strategy of "empirical philosophy" which it exemplifies in a brilliant way. What kind of clues do empirical realities offer for philosophical inquiry? How can we approach the empirical as shot through with philosophy? How can we ground philosophy? Mol succeeds in mimicing Foucault's strategy: "My job is making windows where there once were walls". Indeed, after reading, eating situations offer windows into philosophical inquiry. However, I feel like the book at some times covers too much ground. Moreover, rich philosophical histories tend to be compressed too much in this book. For example, Mol's engagements with Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, while instructive, seemed rushed at times. Moreover, this book does not quite reach the level of analysis that is achieved in her landmark "The body multiple". Of course, these are pedantic critiques. This book, despite these minor critiques, offers many surprising and rich insights. Highly recommendable.
The first chapter, "Empirical Philosophy", explicates the book's starting point as well as its broader aim. The book "has no practical solutions on offer" (p. 1), but seeks to adapt the tools of the humanities and social sciences in the face of "the pressing realities of environmental destruction" (p. 1). Mol reminds us of the Western tradition's insistence on human exceptionalism: humans have been distinguished from animals, nature, etc. She wants to redirect this tendency by means of the following question: "What if our theoretical repertoires were to take inspiration not from thinking but from eating?" (p. 3). She explicitly criticizes Hannah Ahrendt's "The Human Condition" in which an image of "the human" is crafted. Mol takes issue with the universalizing tendencies of such philosophical work. Instead, she mobilizes an "empirical philosophy" which seeks to overcome the bridge between empirical and philosophical analysis. Concretely, such a method would work with empirical situations to draw philosophical lessons from them. Mol is heavily inspired by Foucauldian analyses of discourses as part and parcel of fields of power. Furthermore, she draws from Wittgenstein's analyses of language as empirically used as opposed to other analytical philosophies which sought to define concepts in clear cut ways (think of Wittgenstein's language games, family resemblance, etc.). She puts her inspiration in the following way: "both Wittgenstein and Foucault suggested that diverse socio-material formations and ways of using words make diverse 'realities' possible" (p. 22). Hence, eating is not one thing, but many different things. Mol does not offer a capital T theory, but "a repository of metaphors to write in, models to think with, ways of speaking and forms of responding" (p. 25).
The second chapter, "Being", problematizes Western philosophies' focus on being as firmly bounded. Instead, her main lessons: "Eating offers a model of being that is very different from that suggested by walking. For insofar as I am an eating body, my boundaries are crossed. For the life of me, I bite off, or slurp up, things from my surroundings and incorporate them into my body." (p. 39). Moreover, "eating suggests a model of being in which the body that is overflows into her surroundings" (p. 43) and a kind of being that is "neither fully here nor completely there, as here and there, multisited, dispersed" (p. 49". Put differently, thinking about being in terms of eating helps us see individuals as dispersed, rather than neatly bounded.
Third, in "Knowing", Mol takes issue with the Western philosophical habit of deriding eating as basic and somehow hierarchically below acts of knowing. Instead of knowing happing only through bodily perceptions, it happens in "specific, situated engagements of a person with stuf she happens to eat, here and now" (p. 60). Another lesson for theory: "Interacting with a food object may increase a person's perceptive skills, but also her appreciate propensities. The taste of foods is bound to affect the taste of those who eat them." (p. 67). In other words, "eating changes the conditions of possibility on which getting to know a dish depends" (p. 71). Put simply, this chapter offers an account of knowing as not merely an encounter between an active subject apprehending a passive world; no: "subject and object interfere with each other, change each other, intertwine. [...] knowing is not of the world, but in it. It is altogether tranformative." (p. 74).
Let's recap chapter four, "Doing", in which Mol engages with ethics. She reminds us of the Western philosophical habit to erect straight boundaries between voluntarism/choice and natural processes on the other hand. Instead, she proposes that "eating is netiher a matter of voluntary control nor embedded in causal chains. It is a task that is difficult to achieve, but that, by creating suitable circumstances, and with the support from others, may yet be accomplished." (p. 86). Doing ought not to be turn between free will and natural causes, "it may also be configured as a task: willful and responsive, creative and adaptive [...]" (p. 88). Furthermore, she highlights how doing may "stretch out beyond" our skins; it "may as well be distribtued over a stretched-out, historically dispersed, socio-material collective." (p. 93). In terms of moralities, she argues taht "doing is not simply good or bad. It may be good for some and bad for others or good in some ways and bad in others." (p. 98) - we see here quite clearly spelled out Mol's ambition to situate ethics within specific worldly engagements (see also her argument about Nazi atrocities, p. 99). In sum, the ethics outlined in this chapter are ethics "without reassuring handholds, an ethics that does not envision this or that goal in isolation but realizes that deeds inevitably have diverse effects. An ethics that imagines worthy doing as caring, self-reflective, curious, attentive, adaptive." (p. 101).
Chapter 5, "Relating", turns to an analysis of relating. She draws here on Emmanuel Levinas's philosophical project of making people see the Other as a fellow human. Mol suggests that "eating offers a model of relating in which violence and love go together, intertwine" (p. 120). Moreover, "eating suggests a model of relating in which fighting is not just detrimental for those who lose, but also for those who win. For if the I destroys the conditions of possibility on which countless others depend for their life, this is inevitably self-destructive too." (p. 124). In general, she tries to think about relations beyond genealogical family trees: "being generative is not about having offspring, but about cultivating crops." (p. 125).
The final chapter, "Intellectual Ingredients", draws her insights together in an attempt to re-theorize politics. Mol recounts the Western philosophical tradition initial insistence on politics as belonging firmly to humans, and being based on conversation. Later, especially late 20th century and early 21st century, politics was extended to non-human actors as well (think about Latour's 'parliament of things', for example). Mol puts forth an account of politics that does not mean equates not "with making decisions, but with exploring alternatives." (p. 131). Her politics is a term for the alterity "between different ways of organizing socio-material realities" (p. 132). Put differently, "politics does not need to be verbal. It can also take the shape of cooking things up in one way or another." (p. 134). Throughout this book, she recounts, she asked in every situation: "What does it say, what does it remind of, what does it make me think?" (p. 137). She returns, in a round-about way, to her starting points (Wittgenstein/Foucault): "Words are part of practice: they help to shape what is being done. Hence, it is imporatnt to mind our words and explore the worlds they carry with them." (p. 141). Her book, she writes in closing, "is not a conclusion, not a place at which this book comes to rest. It instead offers an opening." (p. 143). She politely asks: "Please, reader, if you found anything inspiring here, run with it." (p. 143).
Ultimately, I believe that Mol very effectively challenges the theoretical habits of Western philosophy by taking cues from eating situations. Her project, obviously, is highly ambitious. The most central strength of this book, in my mind, is its unique methodological strategy of "empirical philosophy" which it exemplifies in a brilliant way. What kind of clues do empirical realities offer for philosophical inquiry? How can we approach the empirical as shot through with philosophy? How can we ground philosophy? Mol succeeds in mimicing Foucault's strategy: "My job is making windows where there once were walls". Indeed, after reading, eating situations offer windows into philosophical inquiry. However, I feel like the book at some times covers too much ground. Moreover, rich philosophical histories tend to be compressed too much in this book. For example, Mol's engagements with Arendt, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, while instructive, seemed rushed at times. Moreover, this book does not quite reach the level of analysis that is achieved in her landmark "The body multiple". Of course, these are pedantic critiques. This book, despite these minor critiques, offers many surprising and rich insights. Highly recommendable.
February 11, 2024
Not as fully enlightening as I hoped it would be, but some of the chapters are really worth the time. The main objective is for Mol (an anthropologist) to figure out a way to look at our concept of and engagement with reality that is not funneled through the workings of the rationale mind or the words that reflect that rationale assessment. What else do we do on a regular basis that could conceivably be a basis upon which we assert and enact a relationship to the world. Eating is one but it might only be one.
The chapter on eating as a form of being and eating as a form of knowing are very interesting in talking about how engagement with food does biologically and culturally make us who we are. Likewise, engagement with food leaves a mark on how we know ourselves and our world, especially when we see how food is grown or cultivated. The other chapters veer off into what feel like more conventional arguments about ecology. But an overarching themes is that the boundary between I and not I, typically thought of as ending at the skin or being contained in the brain is complicated when looking at the impact of eating and growing practices and their networks of human and non-human actors that we regularly make a part of us and in some cases central to our identity.
The chapter on eating as a form of being and eating as a form of knowing are very interesting in talking about how engagement with food does biologically and culturally make us who we are. Likewise, engagement with food leaves a mark on how we know ourselves and our world, especially when we see how food is grown or cultivated. The other chapters veer off into what feel like more conventional arguments about ecology. But an overarching themes is that the boundary between I and not I, typically thought of as ending at the skin or being contained in the brain is complicated when looking at the impact of eating and growing practices and their networks of human and non-human actors that we regularly make a part of us and in some cases central to our identity.
September 11, 2024
I savored this book and didn't want to let it go. It lays out not a methodological but ideological and practical foundations for empirical philosophy by continuing to develop the subjects of 'tinkering' and 'exemplary situations'. Mol also revisits ground-up the classical philosophic hierarchies, notably the one put forth by Arend in Human condition. With this, Mol shows the politics as everyday practice of fitting in and making things fit, always dynamic, never finished and contingent on the sociomaterial environment. A must read!
May 16, 2024
One of the most provocative contemporary anthropologists, Annemarie Mol doesn't disappoint here either. Her STS informed approach manages to deconstruct so many of the things we take for granted that it can blow your mind. However, her "obsession" with care manages to pave the way towards a better world of sorts.
September 12, 2025
Read for class! Cool how she uses eating to understand/critique previous western philosophical and anthropological understandings of being, knowing, doing, relating. I didn’t realize it wasn’t about eating at all but I liked the ideas in here
August 11, 2022
Body Multiple and even Logic of Care are definitely better. This is way too banal. But it's not boring to read.
December 16, 2024
Laden with Merleau-Ponty
Food moves through you
Food moves through you
November 28, 2023
There is simply nothing like this masterpiece. It changed the way I look at the world permanently.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews