The raw and the rotten: Punk cuisine

This article investigates the ideological content of punk cuisine, a subcultural food system with its own grammar, logic, exclusions, and symbolism. As a shared system of praxis, punk cuisine helps to articulate subcultural identity, purpose, and politics. In the case of Seattle punks in the late twentieth century, their cuisine served to critique Whiteness, corporate-capitalism, patriarchy, environmental destruction, and consumerism. (Subculture, food, capitalism, modernity, crime, Whiteness, veganism) ********** Having been moved 2,000 miles to the north of its original home on the Rio Grande, a steel government sign was placed along the colorful fence of the Black Cat Cafe in Seattle, and there it retained something of its original meaning. It was a small white sign with black letters which announced, "U.S. Border." On one side, land administered by the United States; on the other, the sign implied, a space beyond the reach of the American state: an autonomous region. For five years, this zone was a haven for people called punks and their kindred spirits, (2) an assortment of young adults who exercised and debated punk praxis in and through the premises. At the Cat, punks read, talked, smoked, and ate. They chewed ideas and articulated dietary practices, and rehashed their experiences with one another. Being punk is a way of critiquing privileges and challenging social hierarchies. Contemporary punks are generally inspired by anarchism, which they understand to be a way of life in favor of egalitarianism and environmentalism and against sexism, racism, and corporate domination. This ideology shows up in punk routines: in their conversations, their travels, and in their approach to food. Food practices mark ideological moments: eating is a cauldron for the domination of states, races, genders, ideologies, and the practice through which these discourses are resisted. Indeed, as Weiss (1996:130) argues, "Certain qualities of food make it the most appropriate vehicle for describing alienation." The theory and practice of punk cuisine gain clarity when they are viewed through the work of Claude LeviStrauss (1969), who saw the process of cooking food as the quintessential means through which humans differentiate themselves from animals, and through which they make culture and civilization. Levi-Strauss's tripolar gastronomic system defines raw, cooked, and rotten as categories basic to all human cuisines. This model is useful for analyzing punk cuisine, and thereby punk culture. Yet this article also toys with the model, using it to give voice to the ardent critics of "civilization." Many punks associate the "civilizing" process of producing and transforming food with the human domination of nature and with White, male, corporate supremacy. Punks believe that industrial food fills a person's body with the norms, rationales, and moral pollution of corporate capitalism and imperialism. Punks reject such "poisons" and do not want to be mistaken for being White or part of American mainstream society. A variety of practices, many dietary, provide a powerful critique against the status quo. A PUNK CULINARY TRIANGLE In the punk community, food serves to elaborate and structure ideologies about how the world works. Through a complex system of rules, suggestions, and arguments, punk cuisine is a code like those posited by Levi-Strauss (1969, 1997). But punk cuisine is best discussed as a cultural mechanism responsible to its own logic, and in dialogue with what punks perceive to be the normative culture. LeviStrauss's ideas about food are insightful, especially when placed in a locally defined context (Douglas 1984). His culinary triangle (Fig. 1) provides a helpful way to think about how the transformations of food can be cognitively mapped. For example, American food geographies have shifted toward processing (or cooking) food. Industrial food products are milled, refined, butchered, baked, packaged, branded, and advertised. …