Unchaining Bodies: Rethinking Sexuality and Desire in Bodily Orientations to Food

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University of Amsterdam - Graduate School of Humanities

Unchaining Bodies

Rethinking Sexuality and Desire in Bodily Orientations to Food

By Alex Yletyinen

June 2015

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If we give up the effective subject, we also give up the object upon which effects are produced. Duration, identity with itself, being are inherent neither in that which is called subject nor in that which is called object: they are complexes of events apparently durable in comparisons with other complexes - e.g., through the difference in tempo of the event.

(Friedrich Nietzsche, 1968, 298)

The binary oppositions of nature and culture, and of the human and non-human, have re-mained firmly at the foundation of continental philosophy since the 17th century. In 1637, when the proclamation of the subject was made by Descartes, by virtue of cogito ergo sum, an absolute was defined. This absolute - which quickly became the foundation of all knowledge - not only penetrat-ed thought, but also establishpenetrat-ed scientific reasoning. Facts were establishpenetrat-ed. This rationale has been the driving force separating, and distinguishing, human consciousness from all else uncon-scious. Namely, from the material world of things, stuff such as food, non-human actors, animal and alien bodies. Now, the external world could be discovered via the human subject’s privileged posi-tion in the universe. Science was to ‘make sense of’ those ‘thinking subjects,’ at the top of the food-chain. To this, sexuality became an attribute of biology. One was to be born into a category of either minority or majority.

Simultaneously, this Cartesian dualism decided the fate of the material world, for all beings; it is to remain independent from the mind, something unknowable and only possible to experience as phe-nomena. Descartes assertion created an irreconcilable difference between thinking and acting, and this has remained the governing principle by which the human is considered in relation to itself and other all other bodies. This strict anthropocentrism only accelerated in the Victorian period, and, not only registered human subjects distinct from other animal bodies, but also created differentiations

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of and within, the very human body. Male, female, homosexual and heterosexual, are essentially rationalising categories of bodies. Or at least attempts of a rationalising. This sort of pre-emptive classification of bodies, for me, spells a perilous presupposition which I wish to here re-think. If all experience is simply phenomena and thus only perceptible, then should the material world bare any affects on the body? Or vice versa, if this is the case, should bodily affectivity bare any causal po-tentials in material conditions?

If the world indeed is composed merely of perceptible phenomena, one might suggest that bodies are effective when they so ‘choose,’ and therefore are prone to a stable subject, or rather mind. This would indeed also suggest becoming-minority bodies, is ultimately a choice. Are we then to assume that one simply chooses to be homosexual, bisexual or transgendered? Or the very ambiguous cate-gory of a woman? To concur with Nietzsche above, the effective subject who would make that choice, is no longer. Or indeed, never existed. This compels me to turn away from these ‘ratio-nalised bodies,’ to the complexes of events as Nietzsche (1968, 298) suggests. It is these intimate affairs and occurrences which matter, in constituting affective relations between the two previously considered independent entities (Subject and object). What interests me are deterritorialised rela-tions, those which do not compromise for heteronormativity for example. These relations are the mediatory facilitators of becoming-bodies. They are intensities which register in bodies as, what Deleuze calls in The Logic of Sense (orig.1969, 1990), sensory representations or denotations.

The event of relations, or complexes I will be focusing on, are those between bodies and food. More specifically; the material foldings and affective flows, which a relationality between food and body negotiates. When a body eats, drinks, seduces and fucks, it is - I will argue - merely folding the ‘outside world’ into a performative capacity. Or into an actualisable potential. These potentials are

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limitless, and by default therefore, it seems myopic and deterministic to think of the body as limited to the capacities of the mind. It is our minds that need our bodies, not vice versa. That is to say that; in order for an eating and a seducing-body to be actualised, in order for these events to become bod-ily, a folding of eating, seducing and the intensities of affect and sensation immanent to eating and seducing, must occur. This relational re-thinking of human bodies, allows for more creative poten-tials to become bodily potenpoten-tials. What ensues is essentially an opening up of creative avenues. These avenues do not confine an object or an event strictly as x or as y, but instead consider the af-fective materialities between objects and subjects, as events which ontologically make each other.

It would be rash to announce that what is effectively at stake here is humanity itself. Though this is not entirely false, it is more so the relations by which being human is made possible that I wish to de-thread. The materiality or relation which I see as opportune for such a de-treading, is that be-tween the body and food. In an anti-humanist manner, I do not wish to consider the mind and body as two distinct machines. Instead the two are causal of the external world, extensions of it. But it is the body which actualises its physical modal potential. The body is an active modality which ex-tends the real world, so as for the subject to be able to speak of a reality. To echo Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s re-formulation of the Spinozist question; we know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into compo-sition with other affects, with the affects of another body (1987, 257)

I will attempt here to release the human subject, or the effective subject, from it’s entrenched Fol-lowing the thought of Nietzsche (1968), Deleuze & Guattari (1977, 1983, 1987, 1993) and Michel Foucault (1968, 1982, 1985), as well as drawing from Donna Haraway (1989) and Bruno Latour (1993), I will suggest that indeed the material world is not unknowable to us. It is instead imminent to a ‘human subject’ being-in-the-world. I will take as my objects two scenes from respective films

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- Italian cult film Miseria e Nobilita (1954) and the more recent American Psycho (2000), - and a ‘deviant’ sexual preference some might refer to as a “fetish”, but will here be referred to as feed-erism. The purpose of my analysis is to think about bodies, their representations and becomings, together with these artefacts. Further, I wish to due away with the illusionary singularity of an ob-ject and with a politics of certainty. Food provides an excellent relational obob-ject to do away with such a politics, as it is so diverse yet its assumed function is singular; to saturate.

To echo Sara Ahmed (2006) let us remain sceptical of concrete events, such as that of saturation, or of events in general with one created and assumed orientation. This relative outlook to being human has the significant benefit of not presuming that there exists one orientation, which conditions being human-in-the-world. For, what is it to be human anyway?

As non-intentional beings (Haraway 2013), that question might obtain as many answers as there are human bodies. However, it most likely might not. Why is that? What is that animates, vitalise and breathes life into a human body? A cosmological order which harmoniously structures the world? Perhaps, but as I’am inclined to accept Nietzsche’s proclamation of the “the death of God”, this seems unlikely. Instead, I wish to suggest that it is the material world, engulfed with bodies and ob-jects with various intestines, sensations and affective properties which animates us. These bodies are imminent, as they form when any two forces come in contain with one another. That is to say that biological, as well as political relations constitute bodies. These bodies and objects can be thought of as multiplicities of ‘forces of demand’. Demands of the ‘subject’, of the constitutive rela-tions and associarela-tions. These demands are also those which locate human bodies on lines of orien-tation. So than, let us explore these lines and how they break, re-form and re-connect with other forces, for example at the dinner table or on a third date.

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Chapter 1)

Causal Bodies

Simply put, food moves about all the time. It constantly shifts registers: from the sacred to the everyday, from metaphor to materiality, it is the most common and elusive of matters (Probyn, 1999, 217)

Accepting Elspeth Probyn’s position on food is not a necessarily radical affirmation, but it is all the more indispensable. Indeed, my position in this first chapter, follows a very similar trajectory to that of Probyn. Here, food as an expressive negotiation, makes and marks an event. This event, I will come to suggest, is the further negotiation between human and non-human actants. Dinner is this negotiation. It is not grounded in a singular politics, social organising or cultural endowment. However, we should avoid naively assuming that all which is to be learned - i.e. what this or that dinner can tell us about our bodies - is to be learned from an event. On the contrary, let us consider that which is not told, those bodies for whom an object does not stand. This is to say, let us remain sceptical of concrete points of orientation (Ahmed, 2006, 545). I do not want to be shown a subject, told an object and thus informed of the real. We should attempt at creating the real for ourselves!

To do this, I suggest shifting our focus away from a phenomenological stance on objects. That is, distance thought assumptions from meditations that take objects as existing, as created, in a plane of externality. In a plane which is distinct from consciousness. Instead, lets consider a human ontology in which objects rhizomatically assemble, morph and orient our bodies. Objects accompany us, in 2

The concept of a rhizome is introduced by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, as something which “ceaselessly establishes 2

connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles” (1987, 7). Thus when thinking of human ontology as rhizomatic, we are invited to turn singularities into multiplicities, traverse points and positions and assume lines, flows and trajectories. Thus life - be it human or non human - can be envisioned as ‘playing out’ on a rhizomatic plane, where no concrete events or points of orientation can be fixed, for the line is constantly in flux and moving at varying intensities.

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our points or planes of orientation. These orientations are not only relational to and for a subject, constituting a body of affectivity. But more so, such a body has the capacity to affect, and, also the capacity to be affected. In considering such an ontological re-positioning, our orientations can better be described as forces of demands. These forces are what constitute and segment subjective embod-iment. I am not here speaking of a Cartesian, thinking subject. On the contrary, such an embodiment - or rather body-orientation - should be viewed here in the Deleuzo-Guattarian sense, as a collective assemblage of enunciation (1987, 7).

In order to think about body-orientations in the context not only of food, but dinner, I want to here discuss a scene from the Italian cult comedy Miseria e Nobilita (1954). What is to be said about the corporeal materiality between dinner and the diners? It is all to be found in the event, in the systems of communication, and in the intensities of sensory perception, temporal to dinner. Dinner should here be considered as not merely an event inscribed with a cultural and social norm-specificity. As something that can be experienced through direct engagement with dining. Rather it is something which negotiates outside of the table as well. The cultural praxis of dinner relies on socially, politi-cally and culturally specific signs, structures, ‘organising principles’ - or points of reference - in or-der to become dinner. Such an organising does not happen independent from non-human actors, though what should be noted, is the multifarious dimensionality of these material signifiers as well. This is also the crux my argument. It is needed not the case that matter - does not exist - or that - it does not speak - without the projection of human signifiers. There exists (De Landa 2007) a sense-perception through which the lived world is organised, or rather, self-organised. This self-organisa-tional capacity is highly at work at the dinner table, as well as in the producing and creating of the dining-body. (This will be discussed more in depth in chapter 3)

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One could here begin a thorough deconstruction of the historical projections of objects, actants and their relations to bodies, through which humans have come to learn and practice, the systems of ‘fact,’ central to dining. Though these matters of ‘fact’ that have come to be cannot be disregarded, such an investigation runs the risk of merely suggesting a new constitutive determinism, and, I will avoid them here. Instead what I propose, is to shift our focus — that is, the focus of those of us who are entertaining the concept of a post-Cartesian and post-humanist ontology - to the previously mentioned ‘facts’. Specifically to their intimate, or not so intimate materialities to the human body. For such a project which values relativism above all else, the body, like the grandiose concept of the human subject, are viewed as sociotechnical compositions inseparable from their mediators, seg-menters and sequencers. This shift must be told and traced in the most perspicuous way. To do so successfully, I will not make deterministic claims about the fate of the human subject and it’s thought, or of the ‘objective’ human experience. On the contrary, what ensues is an attempt to map an alternative bodily subjectivity. One which is the affect of relations between a body and an empir-ical cultural ‘fact.’ It should also be noted that I hold a healthy scepticism towards such facts, and will briefly discuss their inter-relation with myth.

Soup for Dinner

Some time ago, a companion and I were eating dinner which we had prepared for several hours. Though if the finished product were to have ended up on an episode of Master Chef, or be-fore the libertine eyes of Mr Ramsay, it would definitely not have scored well in terms of aesthetic appeal. In our defense, and to quote the great Roman poet Virgil, ‘trust not too much in a beautiful complexion’ (Eclogues). Nonetheless, this is secondary as the condensed soup turned out to be ap-petising, and more importantly to us its consumers, served its purpose; dinner was served. But what was that dinner for our bodies? Already here we see how the self-organisational potential of food, as it in effect assembles the material conditions of dinner and it’s bodies. It is not alone, as in

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indepen-dent from these bodies, that food organises its constitutive productions. The subject, i.e. the diner, is not what matters here. Her/his effectivity on dinner is secondary to that of the dinner on the body. For the body is what tells us about our material assemblages, our not so independent subjectivities. So when my companion and I were having dinner, what relational productions were we allowing ourselves to be affected or sequenced by?

Well, first and foremost, I mentioned that the soup was a condensed one. Therefore, staying true to the defining adjective and aforementioned sensory logic, the relations of precipitative liquefying not only matter to the food matter itself, but to the ingesting bodies. Thus what matters here, is matter itself and their relational capacities of affect. Does the carrot ‘break down’ better if first boiled whole or sliced, and how does this effect taste? Can we attribute the sweetness of the soup to the melange of ingredients or can we reduce the taste to each respective component? After blending does the apple and onion re-vitalise, or even intensify, their potentials for being affected by spices? I’m not suggesting to rush into a molecular gastronomy laboratory and conveniently, or not, deci-pher truths from these questions. I merely want to highlight how matter, just like the human, has several organising potentials and capacities, that have been located and assigned within a cultural praxis, in this case of dinner. Thus when eating the soup, one does not inherently consider what po-tentials one is eating. One tends to believe the meal to be the handprint of a professional human body, of the chef or not so professional body of the home cook. I suggest we minimise the human impact, or agency, for a moment, and focus on tasting relations and states. The emulsified carrot with the blended apple, and the cooked onion with the coriander, are components of a dinner-as-semblage not limited to human orientations. We might as well ask, what can a carrot do?

By asking the Spinozist question in regard to a carrot, we are indeed setting boundaries, limits and conditions for the potentiality for the life of a carrot, and as to what course/courses it might take.

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Above I have given an account of one potentiality of a carrot, in a dinner-assemblage. By emulsify-ing and liquidatemulsify-ing the carrot, we are qualifyemulsify-ing its ‘nature.’ Thus we might say one of two themulsify-ings; yes, a carrot has the potential of x with the risk of y, or, just as well, given that y is a risk-potential of x, x cannot be said to have the capacity for z. These are conditions not infallible qualities, myths not facts. This compels Roland Barthes’ to note that;

We reach here the very principle of myth: it transforms history into nature. We now understand why, in the eyes of the myth-consumer, the intention, the adhomination of the concept can remain manifest without however appearing to have an interest in the matter (1957, 128)

Following Barthes’, how are we than supposed to differentiate between myth and fact? If our orien-tations to objects, sensations and events are taken not as steadfast and contextually transcendental; but contrastingly as chameleonic, fluid and queer, can we sincerely speak of a rationally agential human subject? Or suggest that someone do the human thing? Are we not merely immersed in our own myths, the assemblages of sensation, gesture, nature and culture which we take as our very subjectivities? Must we not take myth seriously? Bruno Latour certainly does (1994) when thinking of alternative human subjectives. For Latour, myths and their inception, suspend and retrace our knowledge ‘of what constitutes the human subject and the nonhuman object,’ therefore;

Only a myth, at this point, may help move the discussion further and point and the common locus from which is produced a certain type of linkage between certain types of humanity and certain types of nonhumanity (791-792)

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For the purpose of the re-thinking at hand, dinner is the myth, and the body on the table the common locus. How we regard this myth, is down to the culture of our treatment of the myth itself. Are we seeking to necessarily claim something anthropologically? Make a political statement about the ‘performance’ of dinner? For me, truth claims are not part of a myth, and rightly so. For this why myths stand as both captivating and mischievous. Lets thus turn our gaze to materiality between alimentary body-orientations, and their objects within the mythology of dinner.

Bodies of Myth - Miseria e Nobiltà (1954)

It is only appropriate — or perhaps a cliche — to discuss Italian culinary traditions as tran-scending the dinner table and kitchen; thus having an affect beyond the location and temporality of dinner, or cena. Whether this is the case in all Italian households, from the alpine cottages of Madonna di Campiglio, to the villas of Tuscany and estates of the Scampia in Napoli, is certainly not a ‘matter of fact.’ More so it is a matter of myth. Therefore, I do not claim overarching trends which typify Italian dining, and translate into a social praxis. I am not interested in posing a truth about the rituals of Italian dining. Instead, I turn to folklore, to myth and to Mario Mattoli’s 1956 film Miseria e Nobiltà.

Perhaps, taking into consideration my own inclinations, this also has to do with the fact that I find Italian food amongst the most ‘comforting’ of foods. This is not contra to that of my own native Finland. There majority of dishes, like in Italy, occupy a space and materiality between the home and restaurant, between the domestic and commercial. Mash potatoes will please a gourmet diner as well as a student, as long as they are semiotically appropriated. Perhaps the bourgeois diner would relate to the dish less timidly, were it served a la something. Nonetheless, day-to-day Italian cuisine remains aesthetically unpretentious and at least out of the dominant European cuisines, the least

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‘contaminated’ by the haute of haute cuisine. (Recognising here that my postulations over Italian cuisine as a totality, are simultaneously myth-constitutive. I will keep such categorisations to a min-imum)

Mattoli’s Miseria e Nobiltà is a comedy set in Napoli in the 1950s, notably in post-war Italy. The film deals primarily with the dynamics of friends and family, along with a perpetual theme of hunger, all in a satirical sketch-like manner. The lead protagonist, whom the camera is dominantly focused on in the scene which I will here outline, is played by renowned Italian comedian Antonio Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno De Curtis di Bisnazio Gagliardi, more commonly known as Totò. The scene I introduce bellow, begins with Totò’s character Felice Sciosciammocca, standing around an empty table along with his wife Luisella, his friend Pasquale along with his wife Con-cetta and their daughter Pupella. The film also features Gemma, played by a young Sophia Loren.

As the tittle suggests, Felice and Pasquale live in relative misery and poverty along with their wives, though in a grand estate which belongs to Peppiniello, Felice’s son. Their misery is indeed relative

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(Fig. 1. Felice [Totò], the second from the left, seen along with the ‘gang’ as the argument is coming to an end. The chairs are positioned in the middle of the shot as the table remains outside of the camera angle and is only

visible once all are seated)

to the ‘nobility’ of the lives of Felice, Pasquale et co., as the men and women wear torn up clothes, Felice hardly works though he is a scribe; Pasquale is a photographer. The nobility is represented through the environment and location where the entire film takes place. The externalities, of nobili-ty and misery, are what matter 'orientationally' to the bodies on camera. Furthermore, the gestures and utterances of the ‘secondary’ characters - that ultimately means those who are, by aesthetic comparison, more noble then Felice and Pasquale in particular - should not be overlooked. For these bodies, such as that of the butler, are boundary signifiers for our main protagonists. These bodies vitalise the not so noble bodies to become noble. Whether or not this comes to fruition or not, is only of subsequent importance. These other bodies matter furthermore, as we will come to see, be-cause the ‘main’ bodies we are watching in the scene, traverse into queer and even burlesque bod-ies. (This hasn’t the slightest sexual connotation) As completely antithetical to that which their no-ble orientations would suggest.

The scene begins with loud debating taking place around an empty table. Once the quarrel has died down, Felice, leads the gang to take all take seats on chairs which are located at a proximity to the dinner table, though have not been set up for dining (See Fig. 1). With his compelling and exagger-ated facial expressions, accompanied by zoomorphic barks, Felice’s body begins an event of orien-tation. This orientation is towards an immanent potential of dinner, though the object itself i.e. the food, remains uncharted. A playful and upbeat Disney-esque trumpet tune begins to accompany the barking, immanent-body. It appears that the pending arrival of food - the locus of dinner - political-ly orients those bodies, in an affective relation with matter itself. This would not be the case, for example, for an anorexic body. For such a body is not in a relation of affectivity with food matter.

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That is to say, an anorexic-body rejects the effect of food (being full), and thus the affectivity of matter on the body. This matter is not limited to food. However, food is perhaps the most significant object in a dinner-assemblage, as it politicises, actualisesand orients hungry bodies.

A chef enters the dining room. He eyes the occupants of the room as if tallying them up in his mind. He departs briefly, only to return along with two butlers carrying three wicker baskets, which im-mediately orient the gang. Here we have another object, a wicker basket, which is not one for laun-dry, flowers or gifts, but it might as well be. We must remain attentive to the assemblage of the bas-ket, which is to say, or rather ask; what is the basket for whom? By its relation to a body, namely the chef, we are able to answer this question. The basket is semiotically actualised as an medium of food, in so far as it is presented by butlers and a chef. Further, the basket is immanent to the event of dinner. We also see here a reversal of the anorexic-body orientation. The bodies of Felice, Luisella, Pupella, Pasquale and Gemma - all in an affective materiality with food - allow for an af-fective object, they do not reject it.

The staff of two butlers and a chef begin to lay out a dining cloth, plates and cutlery. While this is happening, the camera adjusts onto the wicker basket placed by Felice, and we see the affective re-lation in full force. The force of orientation between Felice and the basket, is in real contention. The wicker basket has been semiotically actualised, however there remains a cloth covering it’s content. Here we have a double-dealing object, one which orients bodies toward a familiarity but not a cer-tainty. Such an object could actualise affective relations within the already existing field of rela-tions, i.e. with the immanence of dinner. However, it could also cause a break in relarela-tions, a re-ori-entation of points and forces of orire-ori-entation, and of desire (something which will also be discussed further in chapter. 3). For Felice cannot be sure what the ontology of the basket is, unless he looks under the cloth. Unsurprisingly, the mischief-maker makes an untimely attempt of garnering a meal,

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and does peak under the cloth covering the basket. The body is here, as it were, flooded by the ob-ject, it’s forces penetrating embodiment.

Not only does the trumpet tune intensify at this point, once the food is being served, the camera fo-cuses solely on the face of Felice as his guise becomes more and more ‘doglike’. His eyes begin to resemble those of a puppy, as do his bodily mannerisms; holding both of his arms to his sides and dangling his hands in front of his chest, as to mimic a canine on its back. What reason does a body have, what forces affect it, as to behave like a non-human? Certainly none that would suffice a Cartesian. There is a queer relationship at stake here between the human and non-human. A rela-tionship which revels in the inseparability of the subject and object, of nature and culture. Here zoomorphism has a greater vitality than anthropomorphism, and is something we should also ad-dress, but perhaps another time.

As the steaming spaghetti - that which is supposedly Isabella Rossellini’s guilty ‘pleasure’ - is 3 served along with fish, chicken and bread, the gang of jittery diners are left to indulge. The food has

The actress turned philanthropist/handbag designer was quoted in an Q&I with The Guardian (Dec 21. 2012) claiming pasta 3

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(Fig. 2. We see the dining table set and prepared, with the bowl of pasta placed in the middle of the table. The wicker basket to the left of Felice, who is all the way on the right, is the same one which he made an attempt at

earlier, before the table had been set.)

been left by the chef and butlers on the dining table, and the becoming of dining-bodies is in full effect. Let us return to the orientations suggested in the title of the film, namely that of nobility.

The first suggestion of the traversing of a dominantly noble force, comes unsurprisingly from Fe-lice. In its affective relation with food, and causal relation of hunger, Felice’s body takes the first ‘step’ towards the table. Unsuspecting faces surround the table, and as the anxiety builds, Pasquale’s palms begin rubbing on his thighs at a perpetually faster pace. We see these bodies as causally ori-ented. They are causal of the relationship between food and hunger, which clearly generates the hunger-effect in all of the bodies present in the scene. Dinner is now alive, it has become an affec-tive event or force. It has become something with real differences. It has left noble forces of de-mand and orientations around the table, like flows or trails of condensation which aeroplanes leave in the sky. Although what is to follow, is what gives the scene the following name; La scena della pasta in tasca or ‘the scene with pasta in the pocket’. The noble event is quickly forgotten, even in the presence of the noble body of the butler. The unruly bodies productive of the hunger-effect, commence in shameless indulgence. Uncontrollably Felice attacks the steaming plate of pasta with his hands, and others instantaneously follow suit. An inspired barbarous madness ensues, which is depicted in Fig. 3 below.

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(Fig. 3.)

Thingy Bodies

So, now we have established how objects orient us and how flows segment our subjectivi-ties. The mythology behind dinner, I believe, is an apt event for such a de-threading of relations. Because of the abundance of objects (food and non-food), and bodies in the dining-assemblage, we can look at a very particular myth and do not have to claim generalities of dinner at large. (This would also be going against the entire project of relativity) This is nonetheless not strictly a critique of the post-modern anthropos. It is not an assumption that we humans have departed a once ‘pure’ and pre-modern nature. Nor is this a suggestion that now, in a time of liquid modernity, nature and culture are finally separable - contra to the grand narrative of scientific reasoning. Instead what is at stake here is the malleable, contingent and ‘negotiative’ immanence of nature, of any nature.

I suggest not to assume one united, singular nature, as it would somehow exist independently of socio-technical manufacturing or human involvement. Thus presumptions such as ‘dinner should or must be…’ do not constitute truth about dinner, but merely myth. Like human subjectivity, dinner

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can be viewed as a vital thing. Something bound to bodies and matter, but to their temporal differ-ences as opposed their assumed singular nature. Jane Bennett elaborates on this notion of non-hu-man vitality, by which she means:

… the capacity of things — edibles, commodities, storms, metals — not only to impede or block the will and designs of humans, but also to act as quasi agents or force with trajectories, propensities or tendencies of their own (2010, viii)

So what can a thing do to, or for, our bodies? How thingy are our bodies? According to Michael Schudon (2014, 1) ‘some things are more thingy than others’. It this imbalanced thingness of things where the temporal differences, for example in relation to alimentary objects, are created and actu-alised. The orientations which position us at a dining table, are only limited to the objects within a given system of communication. This system tends to be limited to the kitchen, the diner, the su-permarket and butcher, but it needn't be as will be discussed in further chapter. Bodies are only bound in so far as they recognise the definite system of communication, and, are normatively ori-ented in so far as affective relations exist between the body and the matter.

Though both are things, steak for instance is less ‘thingy’ and more hard-boiled in its ontology than cheese. Steak does not inherently stand for a cut of beef, however for the sake of positing another myth lets agree that it does. Cheese on the other hand, has a much ‘looser’ ontology as it can be sourced from various livestock. It can obtain varying degrees of hardness and be fused with cumin, pesto or wasabi, not to even mentioned fondue. Thus dinner as discussed here, is more like a rennet-coagulated cheese, then steak tartar. It is like a complex microbiological and biochemical process, resulting in changes to the curd, and in the flavour and texture characteristic particular to the vari-ety (McSweeney, 2004, 127).

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But what if, for example when looking into the wicker basket discussed earlier, it would have ori-ented Felice to something outside of the alimentary regime? That is to ask what if Felice were queerly oriented, like the anorexic body? An object wouldn't thus produce an alimentary orienta-tion, but perhaps a sexual one?

After all, objects have just as many faces as humans and vice versa; the laboratory biologist does not become a biologist without her spatula and pipette, neither does the molecular gastronomer, the drug dealer nor the medical worker. We are here talking about a non-human vitality which - in the assemblage of the drug dealer for example - cannot be reduced to it’s parts. It is together with and in relation with matter, that the drug dealer and medical worker constitute their becomings. If we ex-tend this kind of vitalism - not to be misinterpreted as agency - to nonhumans, the event of dinner becomes a whole new space of negotiation. We can then begin to trace the trajectories of relations at the table, between humans and nonhumans, and consider the dining bodies, as hosts to the network of these forces, orientations, trajectories and flows. It is bodies which matter. To echo Deleuze and Guattari, who draw heavily on Spinoza’s meditations of the body;

We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other affects, with the affects of another body (1987, 257)

If one is to discover and de-veil the affects of the body, one is to ‘dissipate the onto-theological bi-naries’ of human/nonhuman, a project which has been gaining significant pertinence in more con-temporary academia (Buchanan, 1997; De Landa, 1997, 2006; Colebrook 2010) By doing so, one ‘induces in human bodies an aesthetic-affective openness to material vitality’ (Bennett, x).

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To expose and consider this affective openness, I proposed - following Latour (1994) - turning to a myth. It is neither by accepting nor rejecting the current myth, but simply by posing it as a ‘one of many’ dining experiences or practices, by which we can start to uncover the ‘common locus’ (La-tour, 791). We have managed to uncover this locus somewhat. We have established that the body is that which is common. But not a body. What still remains elusive as ever, as Probyn (217) notes at the very beginning of the chapter, is food and its movement. Food has tropic qualities that we can only begin to actualise when turning to body-affectivity. This places the body which tastes, smells and subjectively registers food, at conflict with the collective, politically and morally mediated body. This is the body upon which expectations matter, and upon which orientations effect. As per-haps the most obvious ‘relational organising matter’ concerned with the dining experience, food occupies a paradoxical location in its relation to the human. It is both a marker of the absolute indi-viduality, and complete universality (Simmel, 1994, 346).

Eating and dining remain separate here, although one does pass into the domain of the other, the ‘ritualised’ dinner practice is an advanced and engrained institution. As such, this institution matters to bodies at home, to those in the construction yard, the military and at the playground picnic. If we believe that eating stems from the productive hunger-effect - or a desire which produces hunger - ‘anchored in space and time,’ (Kristensen & Holm 2006) than what can eating-bodies tell us about dining, lunching or the Dutch social practice of borrel? We saw how the bodies in the scene from Miseria e Nobilita became causal bodies of orientation. Causal of noble flows and intensities. These are orientations for expected tendencies, and are actualised by drinking for example.

Though we can imagine tendencies as being objective - like that of dark clouds to usually produce rain, and that rain water to freeze in negative temperatures - these tendencies remain thingy.

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How-ever, the same cannot be said about relations between tendencies and bodies. There are no objective tendencies of bodies; and therefore necessitates the return - rather anthropological than philosophi-cal - to body-orientations. Tendencies seen as inherent to nature, like that of water freezing, do per-vert orientations or collective enunciations. This is to say that orange juice, has an expected tenden-cy to quench my thirst, and thus the thirsty-body follows the forces of demand of the juice. Who I am to say that everyone who drinks orange juice, has been oriented by the thirst quenching capacity of the juice? Is it not conceivable to drink orange juice with ulterior orientations, such as for its nu-tritional/dietary value or simply to pleasure ones palate?

The body orients in a way as to relate to the object, to both affect it and be affected by it. Thus there are as many orientations as bodies, and several orientations can be capacitated by one body. We are not congruent subjects, whose actions and subjective enunciations reflect a uniform nature; as if a nature-mirror exists in which we compare ourselves to the nature of subjectivity. Rather, we are car-icatures of such a nature. Amplified and dramatised, regulated and demoted carcar-icatures. Nature is to be found in our planes of experience. That is, in our culture, as opposed to on some plane of exter-nality which is not consciously conditioned. Therefore, we can hypothesis for example, of the sev-eral natures of orange juice, food, dinner and lunch. Which ultimately are corporeally dictated and become universally oriented, as to harmoupisouly bring together a subject and it’s object.

In the following chapters, I will attempt to demonstrate such orientations and suggest how we should begin considering something other than nature-proper. We should rather, to borrow Donna Haraway’s term, imagine nature-cultures (2003).

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Chapter 2)

The Body-Politics of a Business Dinner

What regulates the obligatory, necessary, or permitted interminglings of bodies is above all an alimentary regime and a sexual regime (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, 99)

In the previous chapter, I explored the notion of orientation (Ahmed 2006) as that which effectively assembles a dining event. With reference to a cultural artifact, Miseria e Nobilita, I made an attempt at suggesting the ‘mythical’ status which dinner has in my view assumed. This status which dinner has come to occupy in daily proceedings, will be further explored here with reference to day-to-day dynamics of a business dinner or lunch. These ritualistic practices from family meals to military canteens, which revolve around food and its consumption, have departed from the basic assumption that humans must eat. This departing - of which the concept of brunch is also a product of - has become inscribed into their very aesthetic of food, and thus onto bodies. Events like a busi-ness lunch, are not only perceived as concrete events of busibusi-ness, but are also highly materially charged foldings of space and body. In these events, the body which is perceived interior to subjec-tivity, becomes nothing less or more than a folding of the exterior world. Thus, potentials of the body are only limited in so far as those of the material world. Enter, what Annemarie Mol has termed, the body multiple (2002).

By virtue of its application to and for bodies, food - not just as nutritional sustenance but as matter - is constantly morphing. New forces of demand are inscribed into matter, for example, during a business dinner. This matter, as I will come to demonstrate, is not limited to food. A business dinner also matters for - and vice versa - the space it is politically, socially and sexually actualised in. It matters what intensities of colour, sound and smell orient bodies to and for an event as such. Here

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food, and more specifically gourmet dishes, signify matter beyond consumption. This matter is far from innocence. It is what bodies either relate to or reject relations with. It is these relations which I wish to bring to the forefront here. Michel Foucault (1984) has for example claimed food as having replaced sexuality, as a locus for identity politics. This is a notion I will focus on in the final chap-ter, and currently something to keep in mind. Namely what I am concerned with, to follow Deleuze and Guattari (1987) and Ahmed (2006), are the ‘intermingling’ events of alimentary and sexual regimes. To pursue this, I will discuss a scene from Brett Easton Ellis’ American Psycho (2000) as one such ‘concrete’ event. By doing this, I wish to highlight the orientational-logic which food has come to acquire.

I will refer to this ‘logic’ as a position. As something which has been acquired (or better, has be-come) through politicised, socialised and sexualised human/non-human relations. These are rela-tions in which those consuming, serving and preparing food, as well as the time, location and bodies the food is in affective relations with, all play together. This ‘playing’, constitutes much more then merely dining bodies, it exposes in food a multitude of ‘social, cultural and symbolic meanings,’ which then become bodily experiences, representations and orientations (Bell 1997). My analysis here will focus on these bodies as sites and contractors of power, politics and sexuality.

De-threading Body Events

Let us recall briefly the scene from Miseria e Nobilita which was discussed prior. By de-threading symbolic objects, gestures or utterances, we can begin - if so desired - to decipher the na-ture of cultural symbolism specific to post-war Italy. During this time, circa 1950, nationalist sym-pathisers were particularly popular and ‘the Italian identity’ was being re-examined in the post-WW2 climate. This re-examining did not however - according to our little myth - challenge the al-ready patriarchal and religiously systematised structure, of body-orientations and relations. Or did

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it? For it is bodies, I believe, which can constitute real change. Changes in relations, in representa-tion and affective flows of producrepresenta-tion; for example of creative ideas or actualisarepresenta-tion of identity. Thus in La scena della pasta in tasca, who or what constitutes such a challenge? Keeping with food, it could come by way of an Other. That is to say, by way of a foreign food endowed with new intensities and flows of sensory perception. However it does not. Neither do we see a sexualised challenge by way of a female body. Rather, this potential for challenging orientations is constituted by Felice’s humorously outrageous male body. But in order for Felice’s performance to be effective, and indeed actualise a creative potential - though it might not stray far from the table - he needs an object, a non-human; pasta.

Pasta remains pasta for bodies in the scene. This is crucial, because the relative ‘stability’ of pasta, is what allows for the conditions of possibility, for the actualisation of the hysterical and absurd body. As long as the object remains, the body can materialise an affective relation in what would be considered a highly unconventional manner, i.e. in a sexual one. Thus what can we take, or make, from this simple de-threading of bodily relations? The answer; a plethora of materialities with the potential to be untangled. A simple untangling would trace the binary sexual bodies and their rein-forced positions in lunching or dining events. These relations remain virtual in so far as they are assumed, not pronounced. However they constitute real differences. For example, Felice’s body re-mains the patriarch-organising/body-cue to all the rest of the bodies. Once his body becomes ludi-crously oriented, so do the rest. Thus the materiality between multiple bodies and one single body, is effectively conditioned by that single body’s relation to a common object, in this case pasta.

We can now begin to see how a de-threading around a table would take place, and what therein mat-ters. Relations between persons traditionally considered active agents and non-persons or non-hu-mans considered inactive, or passive objects, are what matter. Body-to-body, matter-to-matter,

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mat-ter-to-body and body-to-matter, are all kinship systems, which cannot be reduced to one or the oth-er. I believe this - or these relations - are also the crux of subjectivity. We should begin to get to know the world from the outside-in.

I will here focus on two features of these relational inscriptions which should be kept in mind for the duration of this chapter. Namely;

1. A body - and its materiality to other bodies - is always conditioned through its rela-tion to bodies of (other) sexuality, gender, class, disability and race

2. A body is invariably actualised within a place, location or space. That is to say, that bodies are geographical sites of representation. Along with sites of power, politics and pleasure

To put it in the words of Judith Butler, my attempt is to de-thread the ‘repeated stylisation’ of a con-tingent body (1990, 33). This stylisation happens through various discursive matrixes, and what is important in this chapter, through and within space. The stylisation is not only constitutive of the physical body. It is embodied in conduct, in gesture and is therefore also performative of the space in which it is engineered; or in which a folding event occurs. It is through these events that the sta-tus of objects can change, morph or congeal into something else, hence altering orientations. What does the object now mean or do for the folded body? What affective bodily flows become into rela-tion with the ‘new’ object? Thankfully Deleuze provides us with a proposirela-tion as follows,

The new status of the object no longer refers its condition to a spatial mold - in other words, to a relation of form-matter - but to a temporal modulation that implies as

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much the beginnings of a continuous variation of matter as a continuous development of form (1993, 19)

In other words matter exists, but form is what we humans project onto, or, ‘make of’ matter. For example in the case of a hamburger, one establishes a relation to that form which ‘makes ethical sense’ in the time of the anthropocene. Yet, there exist stupendously perverse forms of hamburger that certainly do not compliment this mythical time. From the vegetarian variations of mushrooms, lentils, carrots and breadcrumbs; to the unflattering foie gras-stuffed, wagyu beef and truffle smoth-ered caliber (which is to be served with a bottle of red wine), the forms a burger takes are if any-thing, temporal modulations of orientation. Thus attempting to reduce a burger to its component parts, becomes a sterile event. Its ontological multiplicity is unbound. The hamburger-myth than, makes for an apt signifier of contemporary anthropological orientations, and I suggest should be taken up in further object orientated analysis. One can begin to see how such a ‘myth’, or any myth for that matter, signifies a particular time in a particular space, and then some as Deleuze suggests above. Let us now begin the de-threading of the mythical scene found in Ellis’ tour de force, Ameri-can Psycho.

American Psycho or Dido ? 4

I will here be using and relying on the cinematic interpretation of Brett Easton Ellis’ Ameri-can Psycho, though the original novel had been published a year prior in 1999. Ellis himself has stated that he feels the ‘book didn’t need to be turned into a movie,’ specifically because at the cen-tre of the novel is an ‘unreliable narrator.’ When this must be then depicted on film, the narration

4

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becomes reliable in so far as ‘it [the movie] demands answers’. Ellis’ position is a relative one, and 5 one that I agree with. For I hold that one thousand words, say more than a picture every could. Ellis recognises American Psycho’s unanswered ambiguity - in its novel form - as the crux of the story,

I don’t think American Psycho is particularly more interesting if you knew that he did it [committed murders etc] or think that it all happens in his head. I think the answer to that question makes the book infinitely less interesting (Ellis, 2010)

To echo Ellis, I also do not intend to unravel or speculate upon the ‘hidden truths’ in the film. For me, this oblivion is what sustains the vitality of the work and does not relegate it to a deterministic score. So, by working together-with the cinematic depiction, I want to know the following: What can we say about the human and nonhuman actants, which together congeal the relations necessary for the constitution of a) the space for a business lunch, and b), the bodies that ‘lunch’ or ‘dine’, i.e. business (verb) within that space? To begin this working-together, we do not have to look past the opening scene of the satirical masterpiece. (Duly noted that the scene discussed here is not lunch, but dinner)

As the trademark slogan you are what you eat suggests, food has for long been thought of as having self-defining or self-organising qualities when it comes into relations with a body. These relations have created an inescapable tie between that which one puts in ones mouth, and identity. For me, this 'identity' assemblage is a simultaneous actualisation of desire, pleasure and body-politics. De-sire to produce an aggregate of food, i.e. saturation. The pleasure principles, or in other words, the immanent values of taste which are made available to the body, not by the body. Which is to say

Ellis was asked about the film adaptions of his books in a 2010 audience interview at The University for Creative Careers. 5

The interview can be found following the link: http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2010/06/19/1534716-bret-easton-ellis-talks-film-adapta-tions-at-scad

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that what one tastes, even if eating the same dish as someone next to you, is also down to the affec-tive or inaffecaffec-tive folding of meal; as well as the material conditions under which it is served for, and actualised by. the body. That is to question: what does it do for, or to, the heterosexual body, to eat club sandwich? An ontologically queer food assemblage.

The club sandwich is ontologically so loose, that it can resemble a Caesar salad just as much as burgers and chips. It can be cold or warm, packaged or served from the kitchen. It can come in two halves, four quarters or even in bite-size, served on ends of cocktail sticks. Thus for the body, eating a club sandwich is the accepting and actualising of hybrid alimentary relations. Or, the capacity the capacity to actualise a hybrid, or queer, ontology. In this event of affective materiality, relations be-tween body and food, I suggest, define no only the who. But more so what the consumer-body is, in essence. Thus eating a club sandwich, or a queer ontology, requires a certain orientation of the body. One that is for example distinct from that of eating steak. A steak has a clear and undisputed ontol-ogy, and is essentially defined by three or four 'modes of ripeness', and that is it. In this sense, the body prior to the consumption of the steak, has a simple orientation to make. This orientation has even in most cases been actualised already in the event of choosing the steaks ripeness. However, when a body chooses to order or purchase a club sandwich, what 'modes' are orienting the body? As Taylor notes,

Food, marking for gender, race, ethnicity, class, and politics, is a significant expression of each of these sites of identification, and thus functions as an important means of self-constitution (Taylor 2010, 76)

Therefore, perhaps in desiring a club sandwich, a body desires something queer and hybrid? Some-thing which does not demand and force a clear and distinct orientation? On the contrary, an

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orienta-tion I argue that is far from being queer, is that vegetarianism. Though I do not wish to downplay alimentary choice itself, for me it is one which undoubtedly has been inscribed into binaries of mas-culine/feminine, ‘whiteness’ and class. This choice is often associated with femininity, as one is choosing to reject masculine associations with hunting, meat-eating, butchering, and slaughtering. I use the word ‘choice’ here with full intent, as vegetarianism is ultimately a position made available by ones relation to food, wealth, status etc. Or is it even perhaps a privilege? For me, its hard to imagine that in Angola where food is scarce - especially in an arid environment - that one would reject meat due to a lifestyle choice. Similarly, I associate not not buying fur or leathers as a privi-lege, which it ultimately is here in the Global North.

We – by which I mean bodies in Western Europe - have the capacity to produce synthetic materials for clothing, along with synthetically processed foods. This is a capacity of food and clothing mat-ter, and indeed a further temporal modulation of science, nutrition and aesthetics. It is a choice made available by techno-science, pursued in a humanist vein, which is to say it is not about the human, but instead for it’s benefit. What we encounter in Ellis’ cinematic depiction, is a dramatic reversal of this vegetarian-feminine position. The protagonist Patrick Bateman, played by Christian Bale, performs an absurd role of a Wall St. yuppie whose life choices are - like that of the vegetari-an - foldings from the outside-in.

Murky Red Substance

When American Psycho opens, the viewer is met with a blank white surface, upon which the various cast members names and titles are displayed (How surprising…) Drops of a dense red liquid fall vertically across the screen, in tune with the plucks of an otherwise symphonically mastered violin. The viewer might at first glance associate this curious red substance with paint, blood, wax or even nail polish. The density of the substance is seemingly perceptible. However, the ontology of

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the substance becomes slightly more intelligible, as the murky red matter comes to contact with the white surface. It continues to flow once reaching the surface, at a steady rate, forming a stream of the, still, unidentified material. The relation between the substance and the white backdrop, be-comes thus manipulated, and the viewer struggles to at first orient itself ‘accordingly’.

The manipulation of the unknown red entity, results in wavy movements — and thus patterns — being projected onto the white surface. The music has also developed into an increasingly harmonic violin-led medley, as if to accompany the development of an organic assemblage. Next; the give-away. A knife appears out of nowhere, to violently slice a fresh oven-baked ciabatta. The beans have been spilled. Food; is indeed how the film is first introduced to the viewer after the prelimi-nary ambiguities. Not only is the inclusion of food here significant, but the space in which it is pre-sented; the values it connotes. This remains yet unknown, but soon becomes soon revealed.

A ciabatta enjoyed at a communal working-site lunch in Genoa - perhaps just with olive oil — as a ‘system of communication and protocol,' is hardly the ciabatta sliced and served at an Upper East Side restaurant. This, Upper East Side restaurant, is where the film begins. It was Roland Barthes who thought that food should not merely be ‘priced’, in regard to its nutritional value, but it should also be considered as ‘a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situa-tions and behaviour.’ (orig. 1961//2008, 29) To go a step further than Barthes’ suggestion, food on its own cannot perform ‘situations and behaviours’. As I have suggested, food — be it cooked or uncooked, slaughtered or harvested — is invariably caught in a multiplicity of relations. This is not a peculiar ‘state’ for any other object. Food is not a singular matter-structure, but a vital thing whose ontological constitution is just as relational to the human and non-human actors, as it is to the space in which it is constituted. Thus in order for food to be an active player in a system of

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communica-tion, or constitutive assemblage of orientacommunica-tion, we should begin to de-thread what the specific dish-es — which will be mentioned below — do and mean, to bodidish-es actualised in a busindish-ess space.

The ontology of the above mentioned stout and elusive red substance, becomes evident once it comes in contact with another material. Once again, it is in relation to something, some other object or matter, by which the viewer sense perception becomes animated. The white surface upon which the red stream now flows, reveals itself as a plate. Following what is only moments later clarified via the anonymous citing of a restaurant employee as raspberry coulis, these two actants merge in a decorative manner. This merger is the start of the to-be assemblage, of rare roasted partridge breast in raspberry coulis with a sorrel timbale (Ellis). These are the opening lines-turned offers of the film. Accompanied by suggestions of swordfish meatloaf with onion marmalade, grilled free-range rabbit with herbed french fries and squid ravioli in a lemon grass broth with goat cheese prof-iteroles (Ellis). All this matter-turned-form, is only the beginning of the folding of bodies.

Silk Gloves

Now that the camera has settled in the restaurant, the viewer begins to get a first glimpse of the dining and serving-bodies. Firstly the hands, the prehensile-machines of the human body. The hands that are seen to be enjoying the above mentioned dishes, include a cigarette-smoking-hand and a black-silk-gloved hand. The exclusive dishes, the cigarette being smoked in a refined yet flamboyantly decorated dining hall, and the black silk glove, signify for us two important things. 1) These are dishes of cultured taste, of an acquired and performed taste, which requires a body through which to actualise and become haute. These are dishes not intended for the blue collared. And 2) The space in which these dishes are assembled and performed, as it were, codify the dishes themselves by virtue of the dinner event. The food-event begins in the kitchen. It begins in the hands of the garde manger and entremetier, but it is made in relation to the entire dining space and

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it’s bodies. Thus, the performance of a silk glove and a smoking cigarette, are just as crucial to the values and taste sensed in the dish, as the matter-turned-form that is performed by the glove sport-ing-body.

It is highly unlikely — though not impossible — that those who would be common folk, would ever intend on wearing a gloves while enjoying a meal. Alienated from the contextual and patio-temporal performance of the glove, that body would remain outside the constitutive ‘discursive matrix’ of bourgeois dining (Butler 1997, 84). Thus those who sport a silk glove in a space of dining, are not merely performing the perceived orientations of dining at a haute establishment. More so, they acti-vate the materiality of the material to the space, from the glove to the haute locality. Hence bodily, sensually and materially actualising their own haute-body. This is also true in the opposite; what constitutes the bodily performance of the glove, is the space in which it is actualised. It is these rela-tive kinship systems between bodies and space, - and indeed their inexorable profusion - which compels a rethinking of the solely agential, rational and effective subject.

“Chicks Restaurant”

Once the camera has ‘flown’ around the absurdly decorated and wildly theatric dining rooms, it settles at the table where the viewer meets, for the first time, the film’s protagonist and his business associates. The three men emit a self-indulgent and pompous aura. They are dressed in late 80’s power suits, have slicked back hair and are slouching in their post-dinner fatigue. These stereo-typical Wall St. caricatures assume conversation:

Price: God, I hate this place. This is a chicks restaurant. Why aren't we at Dorsia? McDermott: Because Bateman won't give the maitre d' head.

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Price: Are you freebasing or what? Thats not Robinson. McDermott: Who is it then?

Price: Thats Paul Owen.

Bateman: Thats not Paul Owen.Over there. Paul Owen is on the other side of the room. Over there.

McDermott: Who is he with?

Price: Some weasel from Kicker Peabody.

[Van Patten, the fourth colleague, returns to the table]

Van Patten: They don't have a good bathroom to do coke in. McDermott: Are you sure thats Paul Owen over there? Price: Yes. McDufus, I am.

McDermott: He's handling the Fisher account. Price: Lucky bastard.

McDermott: Lucky Jew bastard.

[Further conversation regarding anti-semitism, until the bill is brought to the table]

Price: And speaking of reasonable...

[Price shows McDermott the bill for their business meal]

McDermott: Only $470.

Van Patten: Not bad. (No irony intended)

What is immediately striking from the conversation above, is the significant attention payed to everything non-food related matter. Besides the ‘small’ matter of actually paying for it, the meal

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itself is not discussed. The food is hardly mentioned . The semiotics of the scene matter, however I 6 will focus on the foldings, which are much more than semiotically actualised. The shameless mate-rialism of the characters is ripe for commentary, however, I feel that this is precisely the grand in-tention of the depiction. The ‘traditional’ post-modern film critic might assert that this petty arro-gance is in the nature of the characters, so let me therefore offer an alternative. Lets look into the foldings of these sexually normative, heterogeneously white hyper-masculine bodies. We could eas-ily conclude that the business-dinner, or lunch, is indeed less about the food, and more about sexu-alised elements, gestures and flows which vitalise the meal. This would be an accurate commentary. Further, we might say that this is first and foremost a business event, space and performance. Busi-ness is that which orients bodies, but food is what actualises busiBusi-ness-bodies. Thus we cannot es-cape the food! For without food-matter, what conditioning and organising principle remains for the seated bodies? Food remains the crux. For food, together-with a body, establishes a space from that which is placed on the plate, and from that which is tasted but no necessarily enjoyed. Here we have a subjective codification, of an “hautness”, via the physical gesture of eating. Essentially we are talking about a folding. A folding of the material space, its conditions, codes and its signifiers, into an interiority perceived as impenetrable.

Take the first two lines of the conversation above. Price’s discontent at the restaurant as one for “chicks,” just might be rooted in the lack of a masculine ambience, interior or perhaps a quality, or quantity, of the food that he sought to be missing. Whatever it may be, it is retracting from the grand narrative of the dining event; business first. Or is it? Simply by affirming to himself and the others

This is only the case with the cinematic adaption, as Ellis’ novel does begin before the actual first line of the film; god I hate 6

this place. Before Price’s utterance, he himself suggested that their plates had been removed because the portions are so small to be-gin with, that the waiter ‘probably thought we were finished’ (1998). Van Patten also excuses himself prior to the bathroom, where he makes his regretful discovery about the inadequacy of the cocaine-consuming facilities provided by the restaurant. In the novel, Bate-man narrates that he is currently ‘in a bad mood because this is not a good table and Van Patten keeps asking dumb, obvious questions about how to dress.’ Bateman is nonetheless taking the time to explain his, or rather the, etiquette for not dressing as not to appear ‘too studied’.

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that they are at a “chicks restaurant,” i.e. not one where MEN do business, the conditions of busi-nessness are compromised. This detachment from femininity in order to remain a businessman, is merely a folding of the objectively perceived ‘nature’ of a man in the ‘business world’. A chicks restaurant could not possibly be the space in which a such a dinner is had could it? Certainly not for these men. Instead, the chicks restaurant is a threat to the coded masculine solidarity of a business dinner. The solidarity, is what follows foldings. Intensities of material masculinity and of alpha-sex-uality, are amongst others, capacities these men actualise. They do so in relation to other bodies, including each others. The flows of hyper-masculinity find each other, intersect, tangle around the table and;

… highlight in spectacular ways the interarticulation of sites of difference: the interweaving of class, gender, ethnicity with sexuality. (Probyn 422)

These sites of difference, are the root to materially created hyper-masculinity. It is from these sites that identities are created, in so far as they are not discovered. In the film, Bateman does create for himself an ‘identity’, though I wish to discuss it as a body-multiple. Bateman does what Deleuze (1977) calls experimenting with the virtual. His becoming is that of a sadistic serial-killer; some-thing which I can imagine Deleuze would have pounced on, considering his work Coldness and Cruelty (1967), in which philosophically articulates differences and genealogies of Sadism and Masochism. Nonetheless this becoming - a grotesque development of Wall St. masculinity - is something real and productive. It is productive of a further space of difference, where the material environment conditions the actualisation of the serial-killing-body. Bateman chooses not to contin-ue living in the actual, but ventures - albeit submerged in twisted savagery and kinky sadism - into the world of virtualities and of creative potentials.

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Following Foucault (1985) and Probyn (1999), I suggest that foldings such as that of a serial-killer, have only proliferated - not that there was ever necessarily a time free-from-folds - since the En-lightenment. They are integral to material culture, indeed to all culture. For me, the entire culture of the human is a folding. It is a folding of the material and semiotic histroical genealogies, from which the human is learnet and practiced. These genalogies obviously remain contested, and their de-threading would require a tour-de-force.

Instead, let me here articualte foldings are that immament to the modern. To this, it is the prolifera-tion of gastronomic perversions; the instituprolifera-tionalisaprolifera-tion of breakfast/brunch/lunch/dinner, and for example the privilege of vegetarianism amongst other dietary 'courses', which constitute foldings I am interested in. This is what I suggest anthropological inquiry should pay attention to. For it is these events, courses and positions which have increased the sexualised, racialised and coded bod-ies. It is these coded bodies orient to spaces, for exmaple of dining. These bodies have also diversi-fied the material actualisation of identity, through association and kinship with non-human matter, creating a human/non-human material rapport.

Cocaine Facilities

Let us now return to the dialogue. Dorsia would clearly have been the more appropriate lo-cation according to Price. However the gang ended up at the present theatrically designed rosy es-tablishment, because Bateman, according to a leering McDermott, refused to give the maitre d’ head. What can only be meant by McDermott as a jest or dig, now materialises the heterosexual position around the table; and positions it, as well as Bateman, contra to homosexuality (To make it clear, I am here assuming that the maitre d’ in this case is a man). Once again the normative values and performances transcend from the office to the dinner table. As the scene progresses, the viewer witnesses the post-dining bodies develop into sites of multifaceted representations. The men begin

Unchaining Bodies: Rethinking Sexuality and Desire in Bodily Orientations to Food