Join us at our public engagement event for a panel discussion on:
Food, Pleasure and Poison in Cape Town: A Response to World Food Day
followed by a theatre performance entitled:
My Daily Bread
Magnet Theatre
19 October 2019
Food is without doubt a social, cultural and political concern. Intricate forms of social identification are enacted through consuming food; food travels through fascinating geo-political routes; affective and emotional bonds are associated with eating, many food events and cooking. At the same time, our neo-liberal and post-millennial foodscape is a terrifying one: fastfood outlets sell food impervious to ageing; supermarkets promote foodstuffs saturated with GMOs and preservatives; the lives of millions are affected by rising prices for unsafe, unhealthy and unappetizing food items. So is our world of food today one marked only by tainted pleasure? Is it one that is irreversibly poised? Might it be a combination of both?
- Panel Discussion @ 16h30
- Play @ 19h00
- RSVP: here
Our interactive panel discussion will explore wide-ranging forms and meanings attached to food in urban and peri-urban environments. Much has been written about South Africans’ access to food, strategies for increasing food production and processes for distributing food justly. Far less has been said about the quality of the food we eat, how and why we derive pleasure from certain foods and not others, or what happens to our bodies and our psyches when the food we eat is legally and scientifically “poisoned”.
In the panel discussion, four speakers, well-known in their fields, explore the complex negative, positive and ambivalent meanings attached to food and eating in present-day South African urban contexts.
Speakers: Ru Furusa, Zayaan Khan, Angelo Fick, Haidee Swanby • Chair: Desiree Lewis
The panel will be followed by a thought-provoking play, first performed at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in July this year. “My Daily Bread” has been written, directed and performed by(untrained) black women students at UWC. The play will be followed by a discussion of the issues it raises.
Panel discussion and performance co-hosted by Auwal Socio-Economic Research Unit and the Critical Food Studies Programme Supported by the Centre of Excellence in Food Security (CFS),UWC and The Andrew M Mellon Foundation.