Framing Ferments: Discursive (Micro)Biopower in Fermentation Practice
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Date
2024-01-10
Authors
Beavers, Kaleb
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This paper considers how The Noma Guide to Fermentation is a microbiopolitical artifact that (re)produces certain values and characteristics associated with fermentation praxis. The Noma Guide to Fermentation is a significant and popular book within fermentation circles; the text transforms the fermentation program at Noma, the restaurant, into a narrative. By discursively framing the practice of fermentation within potent ideological contexts, The Noma Guide assists human fermenters at Noma in shoring up hegemonic power via fermentation praxis. In the book, microbes regularly take on the discursive role of the natural, the magical, the cultural, and the technoscientific—often simultaneously. This portrayal of fermentation is an alluring one; it can be wielded to collapse the scale between microbiopolitics and biopolitics, in effect transforming fermentation into a practice that can harness (micro)biopower and entrench existing systems of power.
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Keywords
biopolitics, discourse, fermentation, language, microbiopolitics, Noma