Beyond Biomedicine Finding Care in Embodied Memories about Food
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Fourteen women of color vividly illustrate their experiences of culinary spaces circa 2015 in the zine Women of Color #11: Food and Family History (hereafter WOC11). WOC11 reveals how rituals surrounding food function as vital moments for healing someone’s psyche, soul, and body. Yet, the biomedical framework for health frequently reduces eating to physiological topics like weighing the right amount. By taking us beyond biomedicine, this article examines how food practices promote wellness linked with feelings and the body. I argue that WOC11 illustrates vernacular forms of care by naming violent processes of alienation in Western foodways and commemorating food practices that encourage wellness for the zinesters’ selves, families, and communities. Scholars in rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM), the argument concludes, need to expand where and what is studied by thinking about health as physical, emotional, and spiritual wellness; such topics orient the field toward the lived realities of violence and care.
Article Details
References
Abrahamsson, Sebastian, Bertoni, Filippo, Mol, Annemarie, & Martín, Rebeca I. (2015). Living with omega-3: New materialism and enduring concerns. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 33(1), 4–19. https://doi.org/10.1068/d14086p
a’misa. (2015). Gardening the eastside: Japanese home gardens. In Women of color #11: Food and family history (pp. 14-15). Self-published.
Ahmed, Sara. (2014). Cultural politics of emotion (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press.
Ajana, Btihaj. (2017). Digital health and the biopolitics of the quantified self. Digital Health, 3, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/2055207616689509
Akassi, Monique L. (2018). Unveiling rhetorical strategies in a postcolonial era: Tropes of (de) alienation in The autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois. In Monique L. Akassi (Ed.), W.E.B. Du Bois and the Africana rhetoric of dealienation (pp. 82–100). Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Ang, Ian. (2004). Between Asia and the west: The cultural politics of food. Life Writing, 1(1), 147–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408340308518248
Anzaldúa, Gloria. (2015). Light in the dark luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality (AnaLouise Keating, Ed.). Duke University Press.
Bala, Poonam, & Kaler, Amy. (2009). Introduction: Contested “ventures”: Explaining biomedicine in colonial contexts. In Poonam Bala (Ed.), Biomedicine as a contested site: Some revelations in imperial contexts (pp. 1–8). Lexington Books.
Bordo, Susan. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, western culture, and the body. University of California Press.
Boria, Damon. (2015). Guerrilla gardening as nonviolent praxis: Existentialist ethics in food desserts. In Andrew Fiala (Ed.), The peace of nature and the nature of peace: Essays on ecology, nature, nonviolence, and peace (pp. 91–100). Brill Rodopi.
Brouwer, Daniel. C. (2010). Risibility politics: Camp humor in HIV/AIDS zines. In Daniel C. Brouwer & Robert Asen (Eds.), Public modalities: Rhetoric, culture, media, and the shape of public life (pp. 219–239). University of Alabama Press.
Burke, Kenneth. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. University of California Press.
Burke, Kenneth. (1984). Attitudes toward history (3rd ed.). University of California Press.
Cognard-Black, Jennifer. (2017). The embodied rhetoric of recipes. In Melissa A. Goldthwaite (Ed.), Food, feminism, rhetorics (pp. 30–47). Southern Illinois University Press.
Conquergood, Dwight L. (2002). Performance studies: Interventions and radical research. TDR: The Drama Review, 46(2), 145–156. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1146965
Davis, Joseph E. (2016). Reductionist medicine and its cultural authority. In Joseph E. Davis & Ana. M. González (Eds.), To fix or to heal: Patient care, public health, and the limits of biomedicine (pp. 33–62). NYU Press.
Davis, Sara, & Dubisar, Abby M. (2019). Communicating elective sterilization: A feminist perspective. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2(1), 88–113.
Derkatch, Colleen. (2016). Bounding biomedicine: Evidence and rhetoric in the new science of alternative medicine. University of Chicago Press.
Derkatch, Colleen. (2018). The self-generating language of wellness and natural health. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 1(1), 132–160.
Derkatch, Colleen, & Spoel, Philippa. (2017). Public health promotion of ‘local food’: Constituting the self-governing citizen-consumer. Health, 21(2), 154-170.
Derkatch, Colleen, & Spoel, Philippa. (2020). Health humanities as an interdisciplinary intervention: Constitutive rhetoric, genre, and health citizenship. In Lisa Melonçon, Scott S. Graham, Jenell Johnson, John A. Lynch, & Cynthia Ryan (Eds.), Rhetoric of health and medicine as/is: Theories and approaches for the field (pp. 13–32). The Ohio State University Press.
Duncombe, Stephen. (2008). Notes from underground: Zines and the politics of alternative culture (2nd ed.) Microcosm Publishing.
Elias, Megan J. (2017). Food on the page: Cookbooks and American culture. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Emmons, Kimberly. (2010). Black dogs and blue words: Depression and gender in the age of self-care. Rutgers University Press.
Esmonde, Katelyn, & Jette, Shannon. (2020). Assembling the ‘Fitbit subject’: A Foucauldian-sociomaterialist examination of social class, gender and self-surveillance on Fitbit community message boards. Health, 24(3), 299–314. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459318800166
Eves, Rosalyn C. (2005). A recipe for remembrance: Memory and identity in African-American women’s cookbooks. Rhetoric Review, 24(3), 280–297. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20176662
Guthman, Julie, & DuPuis, Melanie. (2006). Embodying neoliberalism: Economy, culture, and the politics of fat. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 24(3), 427–448. https://doi.org/10.1068/d3904
Halloran, Vivian N. (2016). The immigrant kitchen: Food, ethnicity, and diaspora. Ohio State University Press.
Hanganu-Bresch, Cristina. (2021). The rhetoric of food as medicine: Introduction to special issue on the rhetoric of food and health. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 4(2), 111-125.
Hannah, Mark A., & Arduser, Lora. (2018). Mapping the terrain: Examining the conditions for alignment between the rhetoric of health and medicine and the medical humanities. Technical Communication Quarterly, 27(1), 33–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2017.1402561
Happe, Kelly E. (2018). Health communication methodology and race. In Lisa Melonçon & J. B. Scott (Eds.), Methodologies for the rhetoric of health and medicine (pp. 79–95). Routledge.
Jones, Tonya. (2015). Introduction. In Women of color #11: Food and family history (p. 1). Self-published.
Kelly, Casey R. (2015). Cooking without women: The rhetoric of the new culinary male. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 12(2), 200–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2015.1014152
Kelly, Casey R. (2017). Food television and otherness in the age of globalization. Lexington Books.
Kempson, Michelle. (2014). My version of feminism’: Subjectivity, DIY and the feminist zine. Social Movement Studies, 14(4), 459-472. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2014.945157
Kessler, Molly M. (2020). The ostomy multiple: Toward a theory of rhetorical enactments. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 3(3), 293–319. https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2020.1016
Kibria, Nazli. (2002). Becoming Asian American: Second-generation Chinese and Korean American identities. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kolodziejski, Lauren R. (2020). Beyond the “hullabaloo” of the vaccine “debate”: Understanding parents’ assessment of risks when making vaccine decisions. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 3(1), 63–92.
Kopelson, Karen. (2020). What a difference a body makes: Addiction studies and the authority of experience. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 3(3), 350–370.
Kröger, Teppo. (2009) Care research and disability studies: Nothing in common?. Critical Social Policy, 29(3), 398-420. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018309105177
Lavis, Anna, Abbott, Emma, & Attala, Luci. (2015). Introduction: Reflecting on the embodied intersections of eating and care. In Emma Abbott, Anna Lavis, & Luci Attala (Eds.), Careful eating: Bodies, food and care (pp. 1–24). Ashgate Publishing.
Lee, Sally Moon. (2015). Transracial dinner. In Women of color #11: Food and family history (p. 9). Self-published.
Lock, Margaret M., & Nguyen, Vinh-Kim. (2018). An anthropology of biomedicine (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Lynch, John. A. (2019). Bioethics and “Brave New World”: Science fiction and public articulation of bioethics. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2(1), 33-59. https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2019.1002
Makhijani, Pooja. (2015, October 23). Rakhee Makhijani’s sindhi kandhi: A recipe for a vegetable curry, from a people in migration. Lucky Peach. https://web.archive.org/web/20151025200621/http://luckypeach.com/rakhee-makhijanis-sindhi-kadhi
McGee, Alexis, & Cisneros, J. D. (2018). Looking back, looking forward: A dialogue on “the imperative of racial rhetorical criticism.” Communication & Critical/Cultural Studies, 15(4), 300–305. https://doi.org/10.1080/14791420.2018.1533643
Mitchell, Ryan. (2021). “Whatever happened to our great gay imaginations?”: The invention of safe sex and the visceral imagination. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 107(1), 26–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2020.1863453
Molloy, Cathryn. (2015). Recuperative ethos and agile epistemologies: Toward a vernacular engagement with mental illness ontologies. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 45(2), 138–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773945.2015.1010125
Mudry, Jessica J. (2009). Measured meals: Nutrition in America. SUNY Press.
Nestle, Marion. (2013). Food politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health (2nd ed.). University of California Press.
Olivia, Olivia. (2015). How to eat salad like a boss (and other secrets for culinary explorers). In Women of color #11: Food and family history (pp. 18-21). Self-published.
Oum, Young R. (2005). Authenticity and representation: Cuisines and identities in Korean-American diaspora. Postcolonial Studies, 8(1), 109–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790500134380
Piepmeier, Alison. (2009). Girl zines: Making media, doing feminism. New York University Press.
Presley, Rachel. (2021). Kincentricity and indigenous wellbeing: Food(ways) and/as holistic health in the native medicine wheel. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 4(2), 125-157.
Prosser, Michael H. (1968). A rhetoric of alienation as reflected in the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 54(1), 22–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335636809382866
Rail, Geneviève, Holmes, Dave, & Murray, Stuart J. (2010). The politics of evidence on ‘domestic terrorists’: Obesity discourses and their effects. Social Theory & Health, 8(3), 259–279. https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2009.10
Reeves, Carol. (2019). Medical rhetoric and the sympathetic “inebriet”: 1870–1930. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2(4), 415–445. https://doi.org/10.5744/rhm.2019.1019
Scrinis, Gyorgy. (2013). Nutritionism: The science and politics of dietary advice. Columbia University Press.
Segal, Judy Z. (2005). Health and the rhetoric of medicine. Southern Illinois University Press.
Shim, Janet K. (2010). The stratified biomedicalization of heart disease: Expert and lay perspectives on racial and class inequality. In Adele E. Clarke, Laura Mamo, Jennifer R. Fosket, Jennifer R. Fishman, & Janet K. Shim (Eds.), Biomedicalization: Technoscience, health, and illness in the U.S. (pp. 218–241). Duke University Press.
Shugart, Helene A. (2016). Heavy: The obesity crisis in cultural context. Oxford University Press.
Slocum, Rachel. (2013). Race in the study of food. In Rachel Slocum & Arun Saldanha (Eds.), Geographies of race and food: Fields, bodies, markets (pp. 25–60). Ashgate Publishing.
Sointu, Eeva. (2013). Complementary and alternative medicines, embodied subjectivity and experiences of healing. Health, 17(5), 530–545. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459312472080
Spoel, Philippa, Harris, Roma, & Henwood, Flis. (2014). Rhetorics of health citizenship: Exploring vernacular critiques of government’s role in supporting healthy living. Journal of Medical Humanities, 35(2), 131–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-014-9276-6
Stambler, Danielle. (2021). Eating data: The rhetorics of food, medicine, and technology in employee wellness programs. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 4(2), 158-186.
Thompson, Cheryl. (2015). Neoliberalism, soul food, and the weight of black women. Feminist Media Studies, 15(5), 794–812. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2014.1003390
Tompkins, Kyla W. (2012). Racial indigestion: Eating bodies in the 19th century. NYU Press.
Vester, Katharina. (2015). A taste of power: Food and American identities. University of California Press.
Waldby, Catherine. (1996). Aids and the body politic: Biomedicine and sexual difference. Routledge.
West, Isaac. (2007). Performing resistance in/from the kitchen: The practice of maternal pacifist politics and La WISP’s cookbooks. Women’s Studies in Communication, 30(3), 358–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2007.10162519
Willard, Barbara E. (2005). Feminist interventions in biomedical discourse: An analysis of the rhetoric of integrative medicine. Women’s Studies in Communication, 28(1), 115–148. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2005.10162486
Williams, Melinda. (2015). The expectations of food. In Women of color #11: Food and family history (pp. 18-21). Self-published.
Williams-Forson, Psyche A. (2006). Building houses out of chicken legs: Black women, food, and power. University of North Carolina Press.
Williams-Forson, Psyche A. (2012). Other women cooked for my husband: Negotiating gender, food, and identities in an African American/Ghanaian household. In Psyche Williams-Forson & Carole Counihan (Eds.), Taking food public, redefining foodways in a changing world (pp. 138–154). Routledge.
Witt, Doris. (2004). Black hunger: Soul food and America. University of Minnesota Press.