Veganism and the Politics of Nostalgia

Abstract

To write about food-related nostalgia is to wade into a cultural ocean of common sense, cliché, and iconic narrative: Proust’s madeleines, of course; Seders; soul food; mom’s cooking; any and all gustatory lifelines to what was once home. Food and memory are, after all, inextricable, even across species lines; most sentient beings actively and continuously need to inhabit the intersection of food and memory in order to survive at all. In this chapter I will compare two different modes of political survival and their reliance on collective memories of food: on the one hand, the corporate food system makes heavy use of nostalgic advertising to keep business profitable, and, on the other, burgeoning vegan foodways are turning to food stories in order to create a sense of community and shared identity. As usual, the political survival of systems and stories has biopolitical consequences: the lives of billions of animals are at stake in the narratives we choose to live by and the infrastructure we build on those narratives. Given this fact, we need a more robust account of the food memories we are currently being invited to identify with. It is becoming increasingly clear that veganism not only needs to persuade rationally or make ethical appeals—it also needs to tell stories and make memories.