Does edible matter seem to have more agency or affect than nonedible or other inanimate matter? Why? How do the foods we eat, the potions we drink, the medicine we inject, the drugs we habituate all work as affecting assemblages?
ENGL 365 | Medieval Object Ecologies
Dr. Myra Seaman | Fall 2014
As Bennett sets out, edible matter works together with “intention-forming, morality-(dis)obeying, language-using, reflexivity-wielding, and culture making human beings” (37). More so than other nonedible matter, edible matter when introduced into an assemblage transforms, in a way that would be impossible without the assemblage. Edible matter actually changes the human matter, which consumes it. For instance, the medicine we take produces a specific chemical change within the body, but there are many factors that contribute to that chemical change (such as weight and height). The best example of this is from the example from Emma Roe, where “a carrot as it first enters the eater’s mouth is a full-blown entity” but later in the stomach it has little “difference between carrot and eater” (49).
I agree with Elizabeth (and with Bennett) that one of the key differences in this sort of relationship is the fact that the edible matter “changes the human matter” and vice versa. This is the most likely reason to make the assumption that what is edible has more agency than what is not.
There is more to it than that, I believe. Bennett states on page 49 “If the eaten is to become food, it must be digestible to the out-side it enters. Likewise, if the eater is to be nourished, it must accommodate itself to the internalized out-side”. I think this is the essence of the powerful eater/eaten assemblage: the incredible reversal of inside and outside, the intimacy of proximity. Were I to eat rocks instead of carrots, the rocks and I would form another (so much worse) assemblage.
The whole idea of an eater/eaten assemblage is for the two to incorporate, literally. The boundaries between carrot and stomach are broken down by biological mandate. The inside becomes the outside, the outside becomes the inside. Yet, as one actant disappears (carrot, stomach acid), more can be found to take that place (beta carotene, waste).
There is also physical need for this kind of assemblage. Instead gratuitously appreciating it for its own sake, the eater/eaten assemblage is necessary, required, demanded by the eater in question.
I would be hesitant to guess whether edible matter has “more” or “less” agency; I prefer to think in terms of what I would call “closeness” of agency. Yes, edible matter seems to be able to affect our perception and mental processes. However, would the meals eaten by the workers in the World Trade Centers on 9/11 have “more” agency than the airplane used to destroy the towers? While it is possible, I have not been given enough evidence to answer one way or another. I absolutely believe that edible matter is a dramatic actant “inside and alongside intention forming, morality-(dis)obeying, language-using, reflexivity-wielding, and culture making human beings” as Bennett states on page 39, forming and adjusting our demeanors, desires, and impulses, but remain unsure of where it ranks in the hierarchy of agency.
I do not believe that the agency of edible matter is more or less prevalent than the agency of other non-human or inanimate objects in an assemblage. I do believe that the reciprocity of the assemblage in which edible matter and human matter are actants is more concretely represented. The edible matter actant working with the human actant forms an assemblage that can be concretely observed as a pair of actants combining and transforming into and through each other. As Bennett explains on page 49, “both (human and nonhuman bodies) exercise formative power and both offer themselves as matter to be acted on. Eating appears as a series of mutual transformations in which the border between the inside and outside becomes blurry.” The distinct reciprocal exchange between food and human is a concept that one is actively able to observe and the process of eating is an assemblage in which non-human matter has inarguable vitality. For this reason, I believe that edible matter may appear to hold more agency and vitality than other inanimate and non-human matter when in fact this argument for agency can be made with the same level of intensity for any other non-human actant working in an assemblage of mutual reciprocity with a human actant.
I agree that the agency of the edible matter is somewhere between the human and nonhuman bodies, but I think in the act of human assemblage, the natural assemblage that make up edible matter, chemicals and growth without human actants.