The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 27

The ident.i.ty of food

It is the act of mixing ingredients, boiling or stir-frying them, and the preparation of everything, the testing of different proportions, of new ingredients, of new combinations that results in the food we care for so much. The awareness of the entire process during which humans distanced themselves from nature is reduced in our understanding to some simple facts: instead of devouring the hunted animal, humans cooked it, preserved some parts for other days, learned how to combine various sources of nutrition (animal and plant), noticed what was good for the body and the mind. What is generally not accounted for is the fact that the break from the direct source of food to the experience of preparing is simultaneous with the emergence and establishment of language. Consequent changes are the use of methods for preserving, the continuous expansion of the food repertory (sources of nourishment), the development of better artifacts for increasing the efficiency of production and preparation of foods, and industrial processing. These changes parallel differentiations in the status of language-based practical experiences: the appearance of writing, the emergence of education, progress in crafts, the pragmatic of industrial society.

With the experience of literacy, human awareness of food experienced as a necessity, and as an expression of human personality and ident.i.ty, increases. Claude Lvi-Strauss, among others, forcefully dealt with this subject. The basic idea-of human dimensions expressed in nourishment-becomes more significant today. None of the many writers infatuated with the subject have noticed that once the limits of literacy, as limits of the pragmatics that made it necessary, are reached, we transcend the age of McDonalds, of synthetic nutritional substances, and of an infinity of prefabricated foods. This is also the age of endless variations and combinations. The human personality and ident.i.ty are more difficult to characterize. It is expressed in our nourishment, as well as in how we dress-choosing from an infinity of available cloths-our s.e.xual behavior- free to experiment in ever-expanding possibilities: patterns of family life, education, art, and communication. The infinity of choices available in the civilization of illiteracy eradicates any center, and to some extent undermines commonalty, even at the level of the species.

In this civilization, the investment in self is less community-related and more an act of individual choice. These choices are embodied in precise, customized diets based on individual requirements as defined by diet.i.tians. Computer programs control personalized recipes and the production of any meal or menu. The balance of time and energy has changed totally. Experiences of work, free time, and fitness mix. The clear borderline between them is progressively blurred. It is not clear whether one burns more calories today in jogging than in working, but it is clear that discipline, in particular that of self-denial, is replaced by unpredictable self-indulgence.

Consequently, to maintain the body's integrity, individual diet and exercise programs are generated, given a new focus through the transition from the economy of scarcity to that of consumption. Illiterate subjects accept that the market decide for them what and when and how to eat, as well as what to wear, with whom to pair, and how to feel. The appearance is that of self-determination. Independence and responsibility are not instant-mix experiences. Whether embodied in fast food chains, in microwave nourishment, in the television cooking shows, there is an illusion of self-determination, continuously reinforced in the seductive reality of a segmented world of competing partial literacies.

The appearance is that one can choose from many literacies, instead of being forced into one. The fact is that we are chosen in virtue of having our ident.i.ty const.i.tuted and confirmed within the pragmatic context. Awareness of and interaction with nature, already affected in the previous age of industrial processing of basic foods, are further eroded. The immediate environment and the sources of nutrition it provides are a.s.similated in the picture of seasonless and context-free shelves at the supermarket. s.p.a.ce (where does the food come from?) and time (to which season does it correspond?) distinctions, accounted for so precisely in literacy, dissolve in a generic continuum. One does not need to be rich to have access to what used to be the food of those who could afford it. One does not need to be from a certain part of the world to enjoy what used to be the exotic quality of food. Time and s.p.a.ce shrink for the traveler or TV viewer, as they shrink for the supermarket patron. They shrink even more for the increasing number of people shopping through the World Wide Web, according to formulas custom designed for them. With brand recognition, brands become more important than the food. The rhythms of nature and the rhythm of work and life are pulled further apart by the mediating mechanisms of marketing. The natural ident.i.ty of food vanishes in the subsequent practical experience of artificial reality. There is little that distinguishes between a menu designed for the team of the s.p.a.ce shuttle, for the military personnel in combat far from home, and the energy calculations for a machine. A little artificial taste of turkey for Thanksgiving, or the cleverly simulated smell of apple pie, makes the difference.

The language of expectations

Beasts of habit, people expect some reminders of taste and texture even when they know that what they eat or drink is the result of a formula, not of natural processes. This is why the almost fat-free hamburger, devised in laboratories for people in need of nourishment adapted to new conditions of life and work, will succeed or fail not on the basis of calories, but on the simulation of the taste of the real thing. This is how the new c.o.ke failed. Non-alcoholic beer and wine, fat- and sugar-free ice cream, low cholesterol egg, vegetable ham, and all subst.i.tutes for milk, b.u.t.ter, and cream, to list a few, are in the same situation. In the fast lane of the civilization of illiteracy, we expect fast food: hamburgers, fish, chicken, pizza, and Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Thai, and other foods. The barriers of time and s.p.a.ce are overcome through pre-processing, microwave ovens, and genetic engineering. But we do not necessarily accept the industrial model of ma.s.s production, reminiscent of literacy characteristics quite different from those of home cooking.

We cannot afford those long cooking cycles, consuming energy and especially time, that resulted in what some remember as the kitchen harmony of smell and taste, as well as in waste and dubious nutritional value, one should add. A McDonalds hamburger is close to the science fiction image of a world consuming only the energy source necessary for functioning. But the outlet reminds one of machines. It is still a manned operation, with live operators, geared to offer a uniform industrial quality. However, the literate structure gives way to more effective functioning. At intervals defined by a program continuously tracking consumption, the restaurant is stocked with the pre-processed items on the menu. None of the cooks needs to know how to write or read; food preparation is on-line, in real time. And if the requirements of the pragmatics of the civilization of illiteracy overcome the current industrial model, the new McDonalds will be able to meet individual expectations no less restricted than those of the Internet pizza providers. If this does not happen, McDonalds and its many imitators in the world will disappear, just as many of the ma.s.s production food manufacturers have already disappeared.

The mediating nature of the processes involved in nourishment is revealing. Between the natural and artificial sources of protein, fats, sugar, and other groups recommended for a balanced meal and the person eating them with the expectation of looking, feeling, and performing better, of living longer and healthier, there are many layers of processing, controlling, and measuring. Many formulas for preparation follow each other, or are applied in parallel cycles. After we made machines that resemble humans, we started treating ourselves as machines. The digital engine stands for the brain, pump for the heart, circuits for the nervous system. They are all subjected to maintenance cycles, clean sources of energy, self-cleaning mechanisms, diagnostic routines. The end product of food production-a customized pizza, taco, egg roll, hamburger, gefilte fish-resembles the "real thing," which is produced at the lowest possible cost in a market in which literate food is a matter of the past, a subject of reminiscence.

The new dynamics of change and the expectation of adaptability and permanence a.s.sociated with the nourishment of the civilization of literacy collide at all levels involved in our need to eat and drink. What results from this conflict are the beautiful down-sized kitchens dominated by the microwave oven, the new cookware adapted to the fast food and efficient nourishment, the cooking instructions downloaded from the digital network into the kitchen. The interconnectedness of the world takes rather subtle aspects when it comes to food.

Microwave ovens can perfectly be seen as peripheral devices connected to the smart kitchens of the post-industrial age, all set to feed us once we push the dials that will translate a desire, along with our health profile, into a code number.

Three-quarters of all American households (Barbie's included) use a microwave oven. And many of them are bound to become an address on the Internet, as other appliances already are.

The conflict between literate and illiterate nourishment is also doc.u.mented by the manner in which people write, draw, film, televise, and express themselves about cooking and related matters. This addresses the communication aspects of the practical experience of what and how we eat. The people who could go to their back yard for fresh onions or cabbage, get meat from animals they hunted or tended, or milk their own cow or goat, belong to a pragmatic framework different from that of people who buy produce, meat, cheese, and canned and frozen food in a small store or a supermarket. To communicate experiences that vanished because of their low efficiency is an exercise in history or fiction. To communicate current experiences in nourishment means to acknowledge mediation, distribution of tasks, networking, and open-endedness as they apply to communication and the way we feed ourselves or are fed by others. It also means to acknowledge a different quality.

Once upon a time, writing on food and dining was part of literature. Food authorities have been celebrated as writers.

But with the advent of nourishment strategies, literate writing gave way to a prose of recipes almost as idiosyncratic as recipes for the ma.s.s production of soap, or cookbooks for programming. Some gourmets complained. Food experts suggested that precision was as good for cooking as temperature gauges.

The understanding of how close the act of cooking is to writing about it, or, in our days to the tele-reality of the kitchen, or to the new interactive gadgets loaded with recipes for the virtual reality cooking game, is often missing. When conditions for exercising fantasy in the kitchen are no longer available, fantasy deserts the food pages and moves into the scripts of the national gourmet video programs and computer games-or on Web sites. Moreover, when predetermined formulas for bouillons, salad dressings, cakes, and puddings replace the art of selecting and preparing, the writing disappears behind the information added according to regulation, as vitamins are added to milk and cereals. A super-cook defines what is appropriate, and the efficient formula turns our kitchens into private processing plants ensuring the most efficient result. What is gained is the possibility to a.s.semble meals in combinations of nutritional modules and to integrate elements from all over the world without the risk of more than a new experience for our taste buds. From the industrial age, we inherited processing techniques guaranteeing uniformity of flavor and standards of hygiene. The price we pay for this is the pleasure, the adventure, the unique experience. Food writing is based on the a.s.sumptions of uniformity. In contrast, cooking shows started exploring the worlds of technological progress, in which you don't cook because you are hungry or need to feed your family.

You do it for compet.i.tive reasons, in order to achieve recognition for mastering new utensils and learning the names of new ingredients. In the post-industrial, the challenge is to break into the territory of innovation and ascertain practical experiences of cooking, presentation, and eating, freed from literate constraints.

Coping with the right to affluence

Pragmatic frameworks are not chosen, like food from a menu or toppings from a list. Practical experiences of human self-const.i.tution within a pragmatic framework are the concrete embodiments of belonging to such a pragmatics. A new pragmatic framework negates the previous one, but does not eliminate it.

Although these points were made in earlier chapters, there is a specific reason for dealing with them again here. As opposed to other experiences, nourishment is bound to involve more elements of continuity than science or the military. As we have already seen, literacy-based forms of preparing and eating food exist parallel to illiterate nourishment. This is the reason why some peculiar forms of social redistribution of food need to be discussed.

From self-nourishment to being fed

Humanized eating and drinking come with moral values attached to them, foremost the rule of sharing. Pragmatic rules regarding cleanliness, waste, and variation in diet are also part of the experience of nourishment. These a.s.sociated elements- values, expectations, rules-are rarely perceived as const.i.tuting an extension of the practical experience through which humanity distinguishes itself from sheer naturalness. Literacy appropriates the rules and expectations that acknowledge and support ideals and values. Once expressed in the literate text, however, they appear to be extraneous to the process. Changes in the condition of religion, civic education, family, and the legal code, as well as progress in biology, chemistry, and genetics, create the impression and expectation that we can attach to food whatever best suits the situation morally or practically. The self-control and self-denial of previous pragmatic contexts are abandoned for instant gratification.

In the compet.i.tive context of the new pragmatics that renders literacy useless, the sense of a right to affluence developed.

Parallel to this, inst.i.tutions, founded on literacy-based experiences, were set up to control equity and distribution.

Against the background of high efficiency that the new pragmatics made possible, compet.i.tion is replaced by controlled distribution, and the experience of self-nourishment is replaced by that of being fed. Absorbed by tax-supported social programs, the poor, as well as others who chose giving up responsibility for themselves, are freed from projecting their biological and cultural ident.i.ty in the practical experience of taking care of their own needs. Thus part of the morality of eating and drinking is socialized, in the same manner that literacy is socialized. At the same time, people's illiteracy expands in the sphere of nourishment. Today, there are more people than ever who could not take care of themselves even if all the food in the world and all the appliances we know of were brought into their homes. Dependencies resulting from the new status of high efficiency and distribution of tasks free the human being in relative terms, while creating dependencies and expectations.

The problem is generally recognized in all advanced countries.

But the answer cannot be so-called welfare reforms that result only in cutting benefits and tightening requirements. Such reforms are driven by short-sightedness and political opportunism. A different perspective is necessary, one that addresses motivation and the means for pursuing individual self-const.i.tution as something other than the beneficiary of an inefficient system. The pragmatics that overrides the need for literacy is based on individual empowerment. As necessary as soup kitchens are under conditions of centralism and hierarchy, the dissemination of knowledge and skills that individuals need in order to be able to provide for themselves is much more important.

Run and feed the hungry

"Sponsors.h.i.+p for a charitable track event. Funds for Third World countries threatened by starvation sought. Register support through your donations." And on a nice sunny weekend, many kind-hearted individuals will run miles around a city or swim laps in a pool in order to raise funds for organizations such as CARE, Oxfam, Action Hunger, or Feed the World. Hunger in this world of plenty, even in the USA and other prosperous countries, derives from the same dynamics that results in the civilization of illiteracy. The scale of humankind requires levels of efficiency for which practical experiences of survival based on limited resources are ill suited. Entire populations are subjected to hunger and disease due to social and economic inequities, to weather conditions or topological changes, or to political upheaval in the area where they live. Short of addressing inequities, aid usually alleviates extreme situations.

But it establishes dependencies instead of encouraging the best response to the situation through new agricultural practices, where applicable, or alternative modes of producing food.

Seduced by our life of plenty and by the dynamics of change, we could end up ignoring starving and diseased populations, or we could try to understand our part in the equation. Living in an integrated world and partaking in the pragmatics of a global economy, people become prisoners of the here and now, discarding the very disconcerting reality of millions living in misery. But it is exactly the pragmatic framework leading to the civilization of illiteracy that also leads to the enormous disparities in today's world. Many forces are at work, and the danger of falling prey to the slogans of failed ideology, while trying to understand misery and hunger in today's world, cannot be overestimated. Starvation in Africa, South America, in some East European countries, and in parts of Asia needs to be questioned in light of the abundance of food in j.a.pan, West Europe, and North America. Both extremes correspond to changes in human self-const.i.tution under expectations of efficiency critical to the current scale of humankind.

If human activity had not changed and broadened its base of resources, the entire world would be subject to what Ethiopians, Sudanese, Somalis, Banglades.h.i.+s, and many others are facing.

Extreme climatic conditions, as well as decreasing fertility of the land due usually to bad farming practices, can be overcome by new farming methods, progress in agricultural technology, biogenetics, and chemistry. Spectacular changes have come about in what is considered the most traditional practice through which humans const.i.tute their ident.i.ty. The change affected ways of working, family relations, use of local resources, social and political life, and even population growth. It resulted in a new set of dependencies among communities that had afforded autarchic modes of existence for thousands of years. The environment, too, has been affected probably as much by scientific and technological progress as by the new farming methods that take full advantage of new fertilizers, insecticides, and genetic engineering of new plants and animals.

Motivated by literacy-based ideals, some countries took it upon themselves to see that people in less developed lands be redeemed through benefits they did not expect and for which they were not prepared. At the global levels of humankind, when the necessity of literacy declines, dependencies characteristic of literacy-based interactions collide with forces of integration and compet.i.tion. What results is a painful compromise. Hunger is acknowledged and tended to by enormous bureaucracies: churches, charities, international aid organizations, and inst.i.tutions more concerned with themselves than with the task at hand. They maintain dependencies that originated within the pragmatics of the civilization of literacy. The activities they carry out are inherently inefficient. Where the new dynamics is one of differentiation and segmentation, the main characteristics of these experiences are those of literacy: establishment of a universal model, the attempt to reach h.o.m.ogeneity, tireless effort to disseminate modes of existence and work of a sequential, a.n.a.lytic, rationalistic, and deterministic nature.

Consequently, where nourishment from the excess attained elsewhere is dispensed, a way of life alien to those in need is projected upon them.

Aid, even to the extent that it is necessary, re-shapes biology, the environment, the connection among people, and each individual. Diseases never before experienced, behavioral and mental changes, and new reliances are generated, even in the name of the best intentions. In some areas affected by starvation, tribal conflicts, religious intolerance, and moral turpitude add to natural conditions not propitious to life. These man-made conditions cannot and should not veil the fact that human creativity and inventiveness are prevented from unfolding, replaced by ready-made solutions, instead of being stimulated.

Empowerment means to facilitate developments that maintain distinctions and result from differences, instead of uniformity.

Would all the populations facing hunger and disease actually jump from the illiteracy of the past-a result of no school system or limited access to education, as well as of a pragmatics that did not lead to literacy-to the pragmatically determined illiteracy of the future? The pragmatic framework of our new age corresponds to the need to acknowledge differences and derive from heterogeneity new sources of creativity. Each ton of wheat or corn airlifted to save mothers and children is part of the missionary praxis commenced long ago when religious organizations wanted to save the soul of the so-called savage. The answer to hunger and disease cannot be only charity, but the effort to expand networks of reciprocally significant work. The only meaningful pragmatics derives from practical experiences that acknowledge differences instead of trying to erase them. Access to resources for more effective activities is fundamentally different from access to surplus or to bureaucratic mechanisms for redistribution.

Where literacy never became a reality, no organization should take it upon itself to impose it as the key to survival and well being. Our literacy-based medicine, nourishment, social life, and especially values are not the panacea for the world, no matter how proud we are of some, and how blind to their limitations. Human beings have sufficient means today to afford tending to differences instead of doing away with them. In this process, we might learn about that part of nourishment that was rationalized away in the process of reaching higher levels of efficiency. And we might find new resources in other environments and in the peculiar self-const.i.tution of peoples we consider deprived-resources that we could integrate into our pragmatics.

No truffles (yet) in the coop

Our civilization of illiterate nourishment is based on networks and distributed a.s.signments. The change from self-reliance to affluence corresponds, first and foremost, to the change of the pragmatic context within which the human condition is defined.

We project a physical reality-our body-that has changed over time due to modifications in our environment, and the transition from practical experiences of survival to the experience of abundance. The room for invention and spontaneity expands the more we discover and apply rules that guarantee efficiency or limit those preventing it. There might be several dozens of sauces one can select from, and no fewer cereals for breakfast, many types of bread, meat, fish, and very many preprocessed menus. It would probably be an exaggeration to say that all taste alike. But it would not necessarily be false to ascertain that behind diversity there are a limited number of changing formulas, some better adapted to succeed in the marketplace than others, and some better packaged than others.

Yes, people are nostalgic. More precisely, people are subjected to the nostalgia- triggering stimuli of ma.s.s media: the attraction of the homemade, homestyle, Mom's secret recipe.

This is not because the majority of us know what these icons of the past are, but rather because we a.s.sociate them with what is no longer possible: rea.s.surance, calm, tradition, protection, permanence, care. We also hear the voices of those who demystify the literate cooking of yesteryear: women spent their lifetime slaving in their kitchens. They did so, the argument goes, to satisfy males, only too happy to be taken care of. Both voices, those idealizing and those demystifying the past, should be heard: We enslaved part of nature and took it upon ourselves to annihilate animals or, worse, change their genetic structure. In order to satisfy our appet.i.tes, we sacrificed the environment.

And, giving in to gluttony, we effectively changed our genetic const.i.tution. The truth, if there is any above and beyond the cultural and economic conditions of cooking, is that transitions from one scale of humankind to another subjected practical experiences of self-const.i.tution to fundamental modifications.

Trying to understand some of the patterns of life and work, as well as patterns of access to food or of preparing it, requires that we understand when and why such changes take place.

Language stored not only recipes, but also expectations that became part of our nourishment. The culture of food preparation and serving, the art of discovering new recipes and enjoying what we eat and drink, is more than language can convey.

Truffles, the food of kings and n.o.bles, and more recently of those who can afford them, bear a whole history, obviously expressed in language. Whether seen as the spit of witches, a more or less magic aphrodisiac, or a miraculous life-prolonging food, truffles gain in status because our experience, reflected in the language pertinent to cooking, led us to regard them from a perspective different from those who first discovered, by accident, their nutritive value. It is in the tradition of orality that fathers whispered to their sons the secret of places where truffles could be found. Practical experiences involving writing, and later literacy, raised the degree of expectancy a.s.sociated with their consumption. They affected the s.h.i.+ft regarding the eating of truffles from the sphere of the natural (the pigs that used to find them, and liked them probably as much as the gourmets, had to be replaced by specially trained dogs) to the realm of the cultural, where the interests of human beings prevail over anything else. Through language processes paralleled by the semiosis of high gastronomy, truffles enter the market as sign-of a discriminating palate, of sn.o.bbery, or of actually knowing why truffles are good.

Language and food interact. This interaction involves other sign systems, too: images, sounds, movements, texture, odor, taste.

Through the influence of language and these other sign systems, the preparation of food and the appropriate drinks becomes an art. In the age of illiteracy, the languages of genetics, biology, and medicine make us aware of what it takes to avoid malnutrition, what it takes to maintain health and prolong one's life. Literacy was reinforced in the convention of how people eat, what, when, and how satisfaction or disappointment was expressed. In our new nutritional behavior and in our new values, literacy plays a marginal role (including interaction at the dining table). The artificial truffle is free of the mystique of origin, of the method for finding truffles, of secret formulas (except the trade secret). It is one item among many, cheap, illusory, and broadly available, as democratic as artificial caviar or, as Rousseau would have put it, government by representation.

Identical in so many ways, the cafeterias that extend an industrial model in a post-industrial context feed millions of people based on a formula of standardization. Hierarchies are wiped away. This is no place for truffles. One gets his tray and follows those who arrived before. There is no predetermined sequence. All that remains is the act of selection and the execution of the transaction-an exercise in a.s.semblage not far removed from composing your own pizza on a computer monitor. When the language of available nourishment is standardized to the extent that it is in these feeding environments-elegant coops stocked with s.h.i.+ning metal coffee, tea, and soda dispensers, refrigerated containers of sandwiches, cake, fruit-the language of expectations will not be much richer. The increased efficiency made possible this way accounts for the wide acceptance of this mediocre, illiterate mode of nouris.h.i.+ng ourselves.

We are what we eat

If we were to a.n.a.lyze the language a.s.sociated with what, how, when, where, and why we eat, we would easily notice that this language is tightly connected to the language of our identification. We are what, how, why, when, and where we eat.

This identification changed when agriculture started and families of languages ascertained themselves. It changed again when the pragmatic framework required writing, and so on until the ident.i.ty of the literate person and the post-literate emerged from practical experiences characteristic of a new scale of human experiences. Today we are, for quite a broad range of our social life, an identification number of a sort, an address, and other information in a database (income, investment, wealth, debt history) that translates into what marketing models define as our individual expectations. Information brokers trade us whenever someone is interested in what we can do for him or her.

Powerful networks of information processing can be used to precisely map each person to the shelf surface available in stores, to the menus of restaurants we visit on various occasions, and to the Internet sites of our journeys in cybers.p.a.ce. Our indexical signs serve as indicators for various forms of filtering calories (how many do we really need?), fats (saturated or not), proteins, sugars, even the aesthetics of food presentation, in order to exactly match individual needs and desires. Scary or not, one can even imagine how we will get precisely what best suits our biological system, influenced by the intensity of the tennis game (virtual) we just finished, the TV program we watched for the last 30 seconds, or the work we are involved in. To make this happen is a task not so much different from receiving our customized newspaper or only the information we want through Pointscape, saving our monitors from excessive heat and saving us time from useless searches.

In the pragmatic framework where illiteracy replaces literacy, eating and drinking are freed from the deterministic chain of survival and reproduction. They are made part of a more encompa.s.sing practical experience. Each time we take a bite from a hot dog or sandwich, each time we enjoy ice cream, drink wine or beer or soda, take vitamins or add fiber to our diet, we partic.i.p.ate in two processes: the first, of revising expectations, turning what used to be a necessity into luxury; the second, of continuous expansion of the global market present through what we eat and drink. Many transactions are embodied in our daily breakfast, business lunch, or TV dinner. With each bite and gulp (as with each other product consumed), we are incorporated into the dynamics of expanding the market. The so-called Florida orange juice contains frozen concentrate from Brazil. The fine Italian veal microwave dinner contains meat from Romania. The wildflower honey "Made in Germany" is from Hungarian or Polish beehives. Bread, b.u.t.ter, cheese, cold cuts, jams, and pasta could be marked with the flag of the United Nations if all the people involved in producing them were to be acknowledged. Meat, poultry, fruits, and vegetables, not unlike everything else traded in the global market, make for an integrated world in which the most efficient survives in the compet.i.tion for pleasing if not our taste, at least our propensity to buy.

The efficiency reached in the pragmatic framework of illiteracy allows people to maintain, within the plurality of languages, a plurality of dietary experiences, some probably as exotic as the literacy of ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Aramaic, or cuneiform writing. Even the recipes of the Roman Empire can be enjoyed in exclusive settings (as in Saint-Bernard-de-Comminges in the Pyrnes) or as haute, ready-made cuisine (the Comptesse du Barry food company offers wild boar in spicy sauce, stuffed duck in ginger, and sea trout with wild leeks). The j.a.panese have their sus.h.i.+ prepared from resuscitated fish flown, in a state of anabiosis (organic rhythm slowed through refrigeration), from wherever the beloved delicacies are still available.

The multiplicity of food-related experiences in our time is representative of segmentation and heterogeneity in the civilization of illiteracy. It is also an expression of the subtle interdependencies of the many aspects of human self-const.i.tution. The democracy of nourishment and the mediocrity of food are not necessarily a curse. Neither are the extravagant performances of artist-cooks that fetch a price equivalent to the average annual salary of a generic citizen of this integrated world. Difference makes a difference. Feminism, multiculturalism, political activism (from right to left)-all use arguments related to how and what we eat, as part of the broader how and why we live, to advance their causes. If nothing else, the civilization of illiteracy makes possible choices, including those pertinent to nourishment, for which we are ill prepared.

The real challenge is still ahead of us. And no one knows how it tastes.

The Professional Winner