Death on the margins of the kitchen:
Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace
Keywords:
animal theory, David Foster Wallace, kitchen, othernessAbstract
The kitchen – the physical space where food is prepared– and cooking – the set of processes involved before, during and after the preparation and consumption of food– are not only territories where the food that humans eat for their survival is prepared, but also a field where the limits of human ethics and, therefore, the limits of the human condition are constantly in debate. The essay "Consider the Lobster", by David Foster Wallace (1962-2008), published in Gourmet magazine in 2004, is paradigmatic in analyzing the social, cultural and ethical implications of lobster consumption. This paper analyzes Wallace’s reflection from within the animal theory proposed by J. M. Coetzee, Jacques Derrida and Kari Weil. Wallace’s text confronts the reader of Gourmet magazine with the undoubted pain of the other– the lobster that will be food– by using metatextual literary resources and significant footnotes, which introduce a way of reading from animality: from the primal otherness. This work focuses on the full consideration of the other, in order to rethink the limits of the human condition.
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La Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Críticos Animales con ISSN 2346-920X se adhiere a las diferentes iniciativas que promueven el acceso libre al conocimiento, por lo que todos los contenidos de la misma son de acceso libre y gratuito y publicados bajo la licencia Creative Commons, que permite su difusión pero impide la alteración de la obra e incluye siempre mención al autor/a y fuente.
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