Eating (with) Insects: Insect Gastronomies and Upside-Down Ethics

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Vincent M Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? (Whitstable and Walsall: Pryor Publications, 1992). 2 Kelly Oliver, Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p.292. 3 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.18. 4 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.3. 5 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.18. 6 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.6. 7 Animal ethicist Peter Singer situates invertebrates, outside our direct ethical obligation on the basis that currently there is no adequate evidence that establishes their sentience or self-awareness. ‘Ethics Matters: A Conversation with Peter Singer,’ < http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/audio/data/000619> [22/09/2012]. 8 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.22. 9 While pesticides exploit knowledge of insect appetites and behaviours to conceal their presence in the food chain, Holt proposes that farmers will be motivated to remove insects pests from their crops, if the public develops an appetite for them. 10 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.22. 11 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.56. 12 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? pp.53-54. 13 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.57. 14 Freud, Totem and Taboo (1913), p.35. 15 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.11. 16 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.4. 17 Original Italics. Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.93. 18 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.62. 19 Sigmund Freud, ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’ in SE, 14, 1925, pp.117-140. From Triebe und Triebschicksale. Internationale Zeitschrift für (ärztliche) Psychoanalyse, III, pp. 84-100; G.W., X, 1915, pp.210-232. 20 Robyn Ferrell, Passion in Theory: Conceptions of Freud and Lacan (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p.16. 21 Freud, ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’, p.117 Ferrell recognises that although Freud's focus is the human instincts, his account does not foreclose the possibility that even simple instinctual animals may have drives that are not fixed. 22 Freud, ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’, pp.121-122. 23 Ferrell, Passion in Theory, p.10. Instincts are bodily needs, which require mental processes as part of their satisfaction. 24 Freud, ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’, p.122. 25 Ferrell, Passion in Theory, pp.14-15. 26 For Freud the vicissitudes are expressions of our instincts – enabling satisfaction or partial satisfaction of a bodily need – but also defences against them, especially in the case of repression. 27 Freud, ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’, p.131. 28 Freud, ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’, p.130. 29 Kristeva's account does not adequately address the cultural variability of disgust. 30 Oliver, Animal Lessons, p.285. 31 Oliver, Animal Lessons, p.286. 32 Oliver, Animal Lessons, p.287. 33 Oliver, Reading Kristeva, p.96. 34 The insects sprayed by pesticides are missing from the table. Their instinctive behaviours around breeding and eating intensively managed in order to protect consumers from their instinct of disgust. 35 Oliver, Animal Lessons, p.278. 36 At Bugs for Brunch the organisers create a scenario to open up learning for children. We argue that such events do more than impart knowledge; they help enable objects and ideas fixed in the adult realm to be reassembled through childhood play. This suggests that the more mobile vicissitudes are not inevitable stages as a developmental readings of Freud claims, but modes of imagination that can be actively cultivated or discouraged. 37 Marco Frascari, ‘Cooking an Architectural Happy Cosmospoiesis’, Built Environment, 31.1, (2005), p.31. 38 See our paper ‘A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds: Semblances of Insects and Humans in Jakob von Uexküll's Laboratory’, in The Animality Revolutions to-come: Between Techne and Animality, Special Issue of Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities (2013). 39 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? pp.61-62. 40 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? p.62. 41 Holt, Why Not Eat Insects? pp.62-63.