Concerning Hunger: Empire Aesthetics in the Present Moment

Abstract

This chapter examines enduring ties among political economy, hunger, and art in the transnational present. Discussing liberal theories of sustenance (Marx, Smith, Malthus, and Darwin), it shows how the politics of alterity and altruism that attach to present artistic representations of hunger refashion colonial ideas about civilizational and subjective differences in order to reflect contemporary concerns about global culture and consumption. In addition to theories of hunger, there is a discussion of colonial famines and emerging hunger art from India.