« The Midwest of settler colonialism (introducing a special issue of the Middle West Review): Jon K. Lauck, ‘Introduction: Finding the Boundaries of the American Midwest’, Middle West Review, 10, 2, 2024, pp. xi-xx
Exit against fight: Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Exodus or Revolution“World Turned Inside Out” vs “World Turned Upside Down” in a 1980s Exchange’, in Maurice Jr. Labelle, The Boomerang Effect of Decolonization: Post-Orientalism and the Politics of Difference, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023, pp. 120-139 »

Starving settlers: Danielle Alesi, ‘”What Would We Not Have Eaten?” Animals and Disgust in Colonial Starvation Narratives’, Global Food History, 2024

28Apr24

Abstract: “What would we not have eaten?” Jean de Léry posited, remembering the undesirable animals and foodstuffs he consumed while starving on a ship in the Atlantic in 1558. This was a question rhetorically present in nearly all the starvation accounts in sixteenth century colonization narratives. When colonizers starved in the Americas during their attempts to settle, they reported the hierarchy of animals they ate, from the most to the least “edible,” often arguing that in desperation, one would eat anything at all. However, edibility, like taste, is as culturally constructed as it is physiological. This article looks at these accounts of starvation and presents an analysis of these hierarchies of edibility and disgust as phenomena intrinsically linked with cultural identities and integral to developing colonial thought processes. When Europeans reported eating “disgusting” animals, they said just as much about themselves and their shifting identities as the animals.


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