metaphysics where your mouth is

Levi with an interesting post that begins with an amusing (and true) paragraph:

“One of the nice things about the Claremont Whitehead conference was that they declared they were going to ‘put their metaphysics where their mouth is.’ This meant that we were served locally produced vegetarian food all week. Graham was in heaven. I was, guiltily, in withdrawal. Nonetheless, I love the concept.”

The story of my vegetarianism is perhaps an unusual one. In my early childhood my parents were not vegetarians (my mother, like my youngest brother, became one some years later), though they were full-blown hippies and so there was a countercultural environment in the family that made it possible, perhaps.

Freud thinks the classic childhood question is where babies come from, but I have more conscious memories of wondering where food comes from. From an earlier age, I clearly remember denying that french fries could possibly be made of potatoes. The color was all wrong. Some french fries were simply a lot longer than any potato I had ever seen. There’s a very clear memory of posing the question of the origin of fries to my grandmother, point blank, and being almost angered when she gave me the usual “potatoes” answer. We were sitting at Bishop’s Cafeteria in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at night, and I must have been 4 years old or so. Very clear memory. (And another thing that bothered me that night was when I asked her why people were putting quarters in those March of Dimes coin stands with pictures of children in wheelchairs on them. She replied that the money “goes to those children.” And I thought that “goes to those children” amounted to the claim that the money was somehow transmitted or teleported through space to those children by being put into the cardboard slots. And I didn’t believe it, and retroactively this made me believe her claim about the origin of french fries all the less.)

Along with my working theory of “french fries must come from trees” was the related theory that “hamburger must come from trees.” And after hearing and finally accepting the truth of the matter (this time from my parents) I vowed never to eat any again.

Actually, there was one other factor I’ve explained here before. For some days I was trapped in a paradox, wondering how I could go on eating meat but not quite being able to stop. The moment I was finally able to stop was when my mother told me that there was a concept known as “vegetarian.” Once I heard that the concept existed, that was my signal that a certain class of people had already paved the way for what I was only vaguely hoping to do. The decision then became an easy one.

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As for the rest of Levi’s post, I wanted to note that I too am an admirer not only of Foucault’s “microfascism” remark, but of the whole of his preface to Anti-Oedipus.

I’ve generally been a Foucault Scrooge over the years, failing to react with the expected enthusiasm to anything he writes even as others around me cheer him every step of the way. But along with the delicious interviews in Foucault Live (which are masterpieces of intellectual flexibility and liveliness), the Anti-Oedipus preface is one of those Foucauldian writings that I treasure.