- Title
- Food and Nihilism :a Nietzschean and Deleuzian exploration of contemporary dominant food discourses
- Creator
- Du Plessis, Karen
- Subject
- Nihilism (Philosophy) -- History
- Subject
- Food culture -- Religious Aspects
- Date Issued
- 2020
- Date
- 2020
- Type
- Thesis
- Type
- Masters
- Type
- DPhil
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10948/46870
- Identifier
- vital:39718
- Description
- This study is based on the proposition that the respective philosophies of Nietzsche and Deleuze, including his collaborative work with Guattari, provide a way to rethink the underlying structures that inform ways of thinking about food and eating. In Nietzschean and Deleuzian terms, many of the dominant ways that humans currently think about food and eating are fraught with multiple anxieties that lead to passivity and despair, as well as obsessive concerns and feelings of guilt. This can be understood as various ways to say No to life and to difference‘. For the sake of overcoming (or at least addressing) such forms of eating-related nihilism, or life-denying attitudes, I argue that there is an urgent need for philosophical research that deals critically with the underlying food values‘ that lead to contemporary nihilistic ways of thinking about food. Further, I argue that critiquing contemporary dominant nihilistic food discourses and values from a Deleuzian and Nietzschean perspective, as well as exploring what produces nihilism, opens up Avenues/possibilities for shifts in approaching the problem of food and eating in a more life-affirming way. Specifically, Nietzsche‘s work on active and reactive forces, coupled with Deleuze and Guattari‘s account of concepts, allows for an exploration of what a starting point for overcoming nihilism might look like. In this case I argue that in order to think in a new way about the different aspects of eating, a more life-affirming and active concept of a body‘ should be produced.
- Format
- 279 leaves
- Format
- Publisher
- Nelson Mandela University
- Publisher
- Faculty of Arts
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Nelson Mandela University
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NMU School of Governmental and Social Sciences
| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details Download | SOURCE1 | du Plessis, K 217071856 Thesis April 2020.pdf | 2 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details Download |