On racial constitutions and digestive therapeutics

Abstract

This dialogic piece includes two case studies examining how racial difference figures in digestion, health, and assimilation through the digestive tract. Each study–of Taroena and fecal microbiota transplants–involves turning once undesirable/abject substances into therapeutic health products and promissory futures. Both essays explore the extractive nature of colonial encounters–of locating resources (foodstuffs or fecal matter) in Indigenous bodies and culture for the purpose of nourishing the colonizer–and revealing the discursive and technoscientific work required for such a task. The authors demonstrate the need for scholars of critical food and nutrition studies to reckon with the constitutively colonial manner in which dietary products, therapeutics, and ideals link “natural” or “ancient” foods to Indigenous lands and bodies.