Against interpretation, for... an erotics of eating?

And introducing the Asian Slaw Alliance

To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world—in order to set up a shadow world of “meanings.” It is to turn the world into this world. (“This world”! As if there were any other.)

Recently I’ve been returning to some classics. Like Susan Sontag’s ‘Against Interpretation’, which is surely one of the top ten GOAT critical thinking essays. I invite you to chew on it with me and - knowingly in irony - re-interpret it with me.

You could tell that Sontag, writing in 1964, was a bit fed up with what we’d nowadays call art w*nkers. Setting out how the approach to art ‘content’ has separated from appreciation of art as ‘form’, she laments that it ‘makes content essential and form accessory’. In other words, the obsession with content turns into a ‘perennial, never consummated project of interpretation.’

Imagine the art world like one of those Russian doll sets: how it comprises the babiest of dolls first: the art, enclosed by its artist, then the art critics, the consumers and then all the layers of meta-criticism around each of those dolls. How is it so hard to get to the damn art itself? Sometimes I feel the same when hearing about a new restaurant. No, I don’t want to read the rave review or see the Instagram photo. Can I just taste the food first?

We see this schism of content and form exacerbated not just in an age of instant information, but also one in which experts’ interpretations are deemed to enhance our experience of art. Because to talk about interpretation inevitably leads to the discussion of meaning. Have you ever stood in front of art and felt nervous unless you worked out what does it mean?

Meaning - and the importance we give to them - is something I increasingly find provocative in my current area of interest, which is the intersection of food and diaspora cultures. If you operate in this space you might have noticed that sometimes our culture gets interpreted as a set of symbols. Both from within - for it becomes a way to distinguish our food identities as special and of cultural importance, possibly to gatekeep - and from outside, for it becomes a reductive way to consume the Other.

Chinese dishes and ingredients are laden with meaning… noodles for longevity… fish for abundance… peaches for longevity… I wrote about my discomfort with this notion in a recent Instagram post. What might eventually happen is that you start to believe your own meanings. Then you get invited for interviews and to appear on TV shows, repeating those meanings. Are you even eating food at this point, or are you eating symbols? Or, look at this way: does the flavour of a phở gà change if, halfway through slurping, you find out that it was based on the chef’s faithful recreation of his grandmother’s recipe?

Coincidentally, even as I started writing this, the latest podcast of Philosophize This! popped up in my earbuds, discussing ‘Against Interpretation’ in the context of modern psychotherapy. Specifically, how those of us well versed in therapy language have developed the hyper-awareness to talk about ourselves in the third person, like if you were to attribute your dislike of the colour red to that one incident at school when you were three. (Hands up if this is you, I’ve definitely done it.) The real shame is that we can go through life distanced from experiencing it - where every action or event is accompanied by a reflexive counter-analysis of its meaning.

Sometimes when a person or company gets in touch asking if I want to explain the traditional meanings of various Chinese dishes, I’ll politely decline. I’m rarely in the mood to perform. Because I don’t wake up everyday thinking I can’t wait to drink a bone broth brewed with ancestral wisdom and then slip on my cheongsam as a symbol of Chinese feminine anticipation!!! Then get on with my day as a very Chinese person living my culturally symbolic Chinese life!!!

I had a fun conversation with my partner about AI, as we do most nights. He said, ‘if I were an artist who drew a self-portrait on the eve of my execution, as opposed to one happy Wednesday morning, which would have more meaning?’ Of course, the meaning is determined by the critic and consumer, when informed by context, and naturally their inclination would be to pick the selfie of suffering. He continued, ‘but what if AI had drawn both self-portraits - AI which is fundamentally chaotic, meaningless?’ Can we decide which is more meaningful? And if it has no meaning, is it worthy of being called art? Hmm.

I know that Sontag was talking about art theory, and I am here chewing on cultural identity. But it’s the casualties that we’re both interested in: how ‘in some cultural contexts, interpretation is a liberating act… a means of revising, of transvaluing, of escaping the dead past. In other cultural contexts, it is reactionary, impertinent, cowardly, stifling.’ Sontag’s plea at the end of her essay speaks to me, snuffs out the flaming pride of my expensive, intellect-stoking education. Even in 1964, she’s asking us to chill the f— out.

What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us.

The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.

Overthink-y people like me, take note - sometimes we need to stop looking for more meaning and be fully embodied in experience. More than that, don’t hang all of perceived value on meaning and interpretation. My own homework - if you care to join me - is to continue discussing culture and identity without self-reducing to a code of meanings. As Sontag pleas for an erotics of art, I plea for an erotics of eating.

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Introducing the Asian Slaw Alliance

It’s a zine about cabbage! We poke fun at ‘Asian slaw’! It’s trope-busting, features food lovers of Asian heritage and it’s packed full of diverse and delicious cabbage recipes! And I made a ridiculous Star Wars opening crawl using AI-generated script.

Every week I’ll feature some new members of the Alliance in this Substack and on Instagram. Please do take the time to read their interviews; some are short, some are long, all will entertain and educate.

The rebel alliance and I would love you to cook their cabbage recipes and share the results with us.

This week’s featured interviews

Leslie Wiser

In this interview the founder of Radical Family Farms shares how farming Asian vegetables in Sebastopol, California started as a personal identity project. Plus, you get a recipe for Leslie’s popo’s lion’s head meatballs, as notated by her cousin Gerald. Read here.

Guan Chua

Only the lucky few have ever made it to Guan’s sellout supperclub. But now everyone can make his Peranakan Nyonya kerabu herb salad with Chinese leaf, watermelon, pineapple and wood ear fungus. Read here.