Cruel Cuisine

By Durba Chattaraj (Ashoka University)

With the passing of three                                                                             
It is time to ask
Is anthropology
Cruel cuisine?

“The term ‘cruel cuisine’ (zankoku ryöri)
Sometimes used to describe                                                                  
Still-living fish                                                                                                                        
Served for sashimi,                                                                                  
Suggests ambivalence.”[i]

Ambivalence is all well                                                                              
But sometimes I think                                                                               
Our discipline
Pins us down                                                                                                                              
By the eye,                                                                                             
Carves us up,                                                                                       
Serves us forth.

It is the lucky
Who get to be sashimi.
For if you are going to be pinned by the eye                                            
And flayed
The best possible fate is to be consumed
By connoisseurs for whom you can provide                                             
Flavor; revelation; pleasure.
That is why you walked willingly into this market                                     
And gave up your covering.

The saddest fate is to be skinned, then rejected                                     
Left uneaten
Told to make your own fate in the world
Eye still smarting from pin                                                                                                
Flesh forever aching from lack of skin.

I have been both. Pinner and Pinned.                                                 
Sashimi, trash fish.

In these roles
I have learned
That anthropology is “cruel cuisine” (zankoku ryöri) indeed                                          
But in a manner that suggests ambivalence

In the years between when I first offered up my eye                               
And the present day
A word has grown in ubiquity.
No, not entanglement.                                                                                              
Gaslighting is the word I am after.

Gaslighting: “A form of intimidation or psychological abuse, sometimes called Ambient Abuse where false information is presented to the victim, making them doubt their own memory, perception and quite often, their sanity.”[ii]

There are some abusers here
And still we find                                                                                        
New, hopeful, walkers.
Any anthropologist worth their salt
Has walked, willfully, into another world.                                            
Dwelled there: thickly, deeply, richly, muchly.                                       
Questioned, extravagantly, their perceptions                                       
Questioned, tremulously, their sanity.

This is our job.
Nothing can be known
Without questioning.
Not our natures,
Not our desires, not even our memories.                                             
There is no normal, little is true.
(It fucks you up, anthropology does
It may not mean to, but it do).[iii]

The field is fire
More than archive or text could ever be                                                   
No matter how much paper you look at                                                       
It is never your body on the line.

When that body comes back
It hopes for a home
A cool plate on which to cool its feet
An occasion for thoughtful mastication
It looks for connoisseurs for whom to provide                                        
Flavor; revelation; pleasure.

Here’s where the cruelty comes in:                                                       
Most of those we launch
Return to find little shelter
In which to regrow their skin                                                                
Soothe that smarting eye.                                                                                              
Never the main course,
Always the adjunct, if lucky,
Or suspended in aspic of pre-tenure terrors.

Skinned eels in trash wither.
Cast away too early, they die too early.                                                        
Of course anthropology is not the cause.                                                 
But it is not not the cause either,
In a manner that suggests ambivalence.

Here’s what I say to us discarded fish                                                        
Still living:
Fuck sashimi
Those plates are so limiting                                                                   
Connoisseurs diminish daily.

Find a stream
In water you will live
Morph into something beautifully unbounded                                              
You are question, not conclusion.
Skinless, you are shapeshifter now
The world needs this rawness                                                                                        

This ability to dwell as uncertainty,                                                          
Liminality now.

There’s a dinner plate behind you and an ocean ahead                           
And you: creature of uncountable forms.

“Cruel Cuisine” illustration by artist Shoili Kanungo. An image of a weeping eel leaving for wider oceans.

NOTES

[i] Bestor, Theodore C. Tsukiji. According to the Harvard Crimson, in 2018, a Harvard investigation found Bestor guilty of two counts of sexual misconduct, and there had been multiple complaints made against him dating back to 2013. What has since unfolded at Harvard demonstrates the endemic abuses of power inherent to how anthropology is practiced in the contemporary, and increasingly precarious, academy. While one is still saddened by Bestor’s early passing after battling an illness, Bestor’s own words about cruel cuisine provide a fitting metaphor for where our discipline currently sits and what violence it can do to its most vulnerable practitioners. More power to them for standing up and calling out.
[ii] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Gaslighting.
[iii] This is an appropriation of the first two lines of Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse.” https:// www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse. In addition to his poetry, Philip Larkin was known for his racism and his misogyny, so I feel just fine about helping myself to his lines to call out and make a complaint about the practice of both within our discipline.

BIOS

Durba Chattaraj teaches anthropology and writing at Ashoka University in New Delhi, India.

Shoili Kanungo is an artist and designer based in New Delhi. You can find her work at https://shoilikanungo.art/.