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7. Food and Nation
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chapter 7 Food and Nation THE POLITIC BODY It has been suggested thus far that the major changes within Renaissance nutritional theory reflect larger transformations of European society, culture, and thought. The most conspicuous features of this new outlook have been described as reactions to various greater trends: a demographic surge, inflation, a greater disparity of wealth, the differentiation of social strata, and divergence of high and low cultures. One other signi ficant development may be discerned in the recommendations of dietary regimens, and this is a growing consciousness of regulation, order, and rational government at a personal level in terms that parallel the rationalization of political states. In tandem with the use of political metaphors is a fear of physical insurrection brought on by disorderly diet as well as its opposite, fear of tyranny and excessive regulation. Both these may in turn reflect current political anxieties that sprang easily into the minds of physicians when describing the impolitic body. First, there is what many historians have described as “the rise of the modern nation-state.” Without entering into the argument of whether the centralization, rationalization, and bureaucratization of the state were truly something novel, at the very least the monopolization of violence by the state does bear a relationship to the growth of manners. As Norbert Elias would have put it, as governments claim exclusive right to organize and order human beings, arbitrate disagreements, and enforce 217 218 Food and Nation 1. Norbert Elias, The History of Manners, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982). Elias places the transition from medieval “courtesy” to a more general “civility” precisely in 1530 with the publication of Erasmus’s book on manners (De civilitate morum puerilium). Whether or not this is coincidental, it matches nicely my division between periods 1 and 2 in the dietary literature. The most complete discussion of this topic as it relates to food and table manners can be found in Visser, The Rituals of Dinner. 2. Brooke, 112. 3. Hessus describes the temperate body in these terms: “est perfectissimum, ubi non aequalitas, sed harmonia qualitatem inter se spectatur,” 8. settlements, the more unacceptable personal violence and emotional outbursts become. Behavior on the whole becomes more “civilized.” All apparent signs of violence or lack of self-control are banished from polite society or disguised from the gaze of others. Any behavior that might be construed as threatening or offensive, such as the use of a knife to bring food to the mouth or blowing one’s nose at the table, becomes barbaric. In fact, any physical act that is a reminder of our animal nature is relegated to privacy or is ritualized. Sex, defecation, and eating are all eventually given their own separate place and time and are all strictly regulated so as not to pose a threat to others. The threshold of embarrassment and shame is raised along with the growing power of the state. Thus, there is an explicit connection between the intensification of government at the political level and the growth of manners and self-government on the personal level.1 As one among many forms of self-government, the dietary regimens and their attempts to control and rationalize eating behavior also, logically , flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, our periods 2 and 3. That the authors of these works considered the government of the body as analogous to that of states is quite clear. It is no coincidence that the words regime and regimen share a common root in the Latin regere, to rule, and are still sometimes used interchangeably for ruling both the body and the state. The “body politic” as a popular metaphor has a long history, but here it appears to revert back to its physiological sense. Governing the body is a matter of each organ fulfilling its specific role as subordinates of the brain. To eat without any regulation is, as Brooke puts it, to have “our Bellies sovereign to our Brains.”2 Just as each part of the body has its own function, each humor, though essentially opposed to the others, must be distributed proportionally, balanced to achieve not equality but harmony.3 The elements of the universe, classes in society, and humors in the body all function precisely because of this inherent opposition, tension, and unequal distribution of power. This is a classic [54.227.136.157] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:29 GMT) Food and Nation 219 4...