Adorno,Gastronomic Authenticity,and the Politics of Eating Well

Recent trends like locavorism, green consumerism, and ethical consumption point to a new politics of eating, what is called in this article the new gastronomy, which centers on buying locally, humanely, and sustainably produced foods. However, rather than exemplifying a novel and contemporary turn in food politics, it is argued that the new gastronomy's faith in buying local is linked to an ancient politics of consumption that can be traced back to the Greeks and is grounded in virtue and temperance; and, furthermore, that this is most evident in the new gastronomy's emphasis on the humane treatment of animals. Additionally, the new gastronomy's claim of authenticity with regard to production, distribution, and consumption (for example, artisan, farm to table, etc.) works to veil this traditional politics of eating, lending its supporters a false sense of political progressivism or radicalism. Working from Theodor Adorno's analysis in The Jargon of Authenticity, it is demonstrated that what the local foods movement really offers is a jargon of gastronomic authenticity that claims self-transparency of action and provides a superficial escape from the exploitative reality of late capitalism. Finally, Adorno's critique of ideology and authenticity and his special attention to animals in his work are presented as potential disrupters of bourgeois identity and as a way to strip the ideological surface of this new gastronomy to reveal its complicity with exploitative systems of food production and distribution.     

Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen

This essay examines a figure usually considered with justification to be the premier Roman historian of the nineteenth century and perhaps the greatest scholar in his field of all times. It tries to show why Mommsen focuses, particularly in the last volume of his magisterial study of Rome down to the end of the Republic, on the life and activities of Julius Caesar. The essay concludes by reassessing conventional narratives about why Mommsen admired Caesar, so much so that he could not bring himself to describe the death of the Roman leader whom he characterized as the founder of a “military monarchy.”     

Towards a Feminist Aesthetics of Melancholia: Kristeva,Adorno, and Modern Women Writers

Abstract

Melancholia is a hybrid concept, deployed in feminist and philosophical theories politics and aesthetics, but "properly" belonging to neither. This heterogeneity of melancholia as both an aesthetic and a political category allows us to interrogate the interrelationship between gender politics and aesthetics without, however, abolishing their differences. Reinterpreted in the context of a feminist aesthetics, melancholia not only points to art's origin in the unjust and gendered division of labor and power but also to the ethical and political task of art to bear witness to the mute suffering of women cut off from the signifying possibilities of language. Moving beyond the entrenched oppositions between historicism/subjectivism, subject/object, or formalism/materialism, my own approach to an aesthetics of melancholia in women's modern novels stresses unpredictable, conflicting migrations of pain between subjects and objects, political oppression and autonomous art, language and affect.     

Capitalism,Markets and Politics

The term ‘capitalism’ is no longer a relevant way in which to describe or to understand a modern economy. Ownership of capital is not the source of economic power that it once was. Business leaders of today do not own the factories and the machines, nor do they need to. Let us consider instead, markets. Not the markets for financial products that we see depicted on rows of flickering screens in Canary Wharf, but real markets. Market economies have proved to be chaotic, and imperfect and yet they are the most successful way we know to allocate goods and services. Through a process of experimentation, much failure and some success they evolve. Their development is necessarily uncertain, but that is also their greatest strength.     

Politics Lost, Politics Transformed, Politics Colonised? Theories of the Impact of Mass Media

In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the literature on the relationship between politics and mass media, mainly in discrete topic areas such as the impact of mass media on electoral behaviour, the emergence of new forms of political communication, or media political economy. At the same time, this diverse literature has often focused on a single general issue, typically characterised in terms of the 'transformation' of politics. Despite this common theme, there has been relatively little attempt to connect and compare the different approaches. Looking at the theoretical differences in the new literature on politics and mass media reveals three perspectives – pluralist, constructivist, and structuralist. These approaches have too often tacitly co-existed, instead of more competitively striving to advance knowledge in the three main topic areas above.     

Nature,Dialectics and Emancipatory Politics

Ecofeminist theory and politics, which originally grew out of the radical feminist movement and peace and environmental movements of the early 1970s, is composed of many voices. Since the 1970s, ecofeminists have emerged in such places as India, with the work of Vandana Shiva, and Australia, with the work of Ariel Salleh, among others, expanding beyond their Western origins. Like feminists, ecofeminists do not claim a single theoretical position and practice. And like feminism, ecofeminism is constantly changing, motivated, in part, by the lively theoretical debates within it. The purpose of this interview is to introduce the reader to ecofeminist philosophy, to explore what ecofeminism is, what ecofeminists' central debates are about, where they are going, and what ecofeminism's possibilities are as a theoretical tool for understanding the underlying structures of social and ecological problems.

Barbara Holland‐Cunz has contributed to ecofeminist theory and politics since the 1970s. She has been an active member in the feminist movement, the anti‐militarist movement, and the anti‐nuclear movement in Germany since 1978. She holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Political Science from Frankfurt University, where she currently teaches in the Women's Studies center in the Social Sciences Department. Holland‐Cunz' research areas include political theory, philosophy of nature, feminist politics and utopias, and the history of ecofeminism. The courses she teaches include: feminist theory and epistemology, gender in political theory, political strategies and Utopian thought, and ecology and the philosophy of nature. Holland‐Cunz lives in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and is an Editor of CNS.