Contemplative practices are used to integrate a student or individual’s holistic personal experience into the context of coursework or learning. With this in mind, not only has it been an important tool in allowing students like myself space to reflect on our involvement in the topics of class, it has also been an innovative approach to placing ourselves and our experiences within the broader systems we are attempting to understand and name.
For example, the exercise in which we were tasked with concentrating on the complexity of a single raisin, contextualized with the videos we had just been shown on raisin production, connected our pleasure of eating with the labor and technology involved in modern agriculture. One student noted that the raisin, held in his mouth, had partially rehydrated, reminding the classroom of its origin as a grape. In a normal sitting, we would likely eat raisins by the handful without much thought for their life cycle, and how this cycle connects and is intertwined with others.
Beyond allowing room for a moment of appreciation for the hands and work that made our experience of eating possible, the act of eating a single raisin in consideration of the system that allowed us access to it throughout the year unsettled our identities as consumers: the inveterate end of the production line. It connected us tangibly, albeit briefly, to the many other roles we play as we economically support the processes producing raisins, consume the nutrients present in the raisin that were absorbed through a soil rhizosphere likely inundated with glyphosate and other fertilizers and chemicals, and more. What’s more, as with other contemplative practices conducted in class, it made these systems unambiguous. In a meditative moment with a single raisin on our tongues, we were able to perceive with clarity our intimate connection to the world food system. The modern foodscape was no longer an abstract idea, but was sitting in our mouths.
Marilyn Frye wrote in Politics of Reality – Essays in Feminist Theory, “Consider a birdcage. If you look very closely at just one wire in the cage, you cannot see the other wires. If your conception of what is before you is determined by this myopic focus, you could look at that one wire, up and down the length of it, and be unable to see why a bird would not just fly around the wire any time it wanted to go somewhere… It is only when you step back, stop looking at the wires one by one, microscopically, and take a macroscopic view of the whole cage, that you can see why the bird does not go anywhere; and then you will see it in a moment… It is perfectly obvious that the bird is surrounded by a network of systematically related barriers, no one of which would be the least hindrance to its flight, but which, by their relations to each other, are as confining as the solid walls of a dungeon.”
Although this quote concerns the systemic oppression of women, it is a useful metaphor that applies to most systems that are inherently oppressive, including our food system. Although many of us in class are likely concerned with the contemporary foodscape, manifesting change, particularly if we can only conceive of our political agency through our roles as consumers, is far-fetched. Realizing our intimate connection to the world that feeds us, perhaps through the exercise of placing a raisin in our mouths, encourages critical thinking that engages us with the rest of the “wires” that constrain and coerce our political movements. In our intimate connection to the rest of the system that feeds us, we have more efficacy than we realize.
Cited:
Frye, Marilyn. “Marilyn Frye, The Politics of Reality: OPPRESSION.” Feminist Reading Group, 14 Feb. 2013, feminsttheoryreadinggroup.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/marilyn-frye-the-politics-of-reality-oppression/.
Hey Andrea! This was beautifully written, first of all. What a nice read. Second, I really loved the quote you included here. It’s a very insightful way to examine systematic oppression, especially with the analogy of a birdcage. I see how it does a good job of explaining oppressive food systems, too. However, I wish your post offered more insight on your thought process that connects the raisin practice to oppressive food systems. Whatever I’m inferring in my head is undoubtedly different from your ideas, and I think that’s something I’d love to have compared when reading your post. Your brief discussion on soil composition in the raisin process shows you have great insight on a part of the food system that I know little about. How you made those connections would also be something I would love to know! Still, I loved the quote and will be thinking about it in many future conversations about systematic oppression.