Freedom and Food, Slavery and Agriculture: A Philosophical Ecology

Abstract

In this dissertation I examine the relationships between freedom and slavery through the intersections of food and agriculture. Qualified in various ways, contemporary research across disciplines supports the view that, before agriculture, hunters and gatherers lived in relatively egalitarian societies wherein wealth was communal and hereditary inequality nonexistent. Interrogating the basic arc and assumptions of this narrative, I analyze how human practices surrounding the acquisition, production, distribution and consumption of food intersect specific forms of political power. My aim is to articulate a political theory of subsistence, or a theory of subsistence politics, that reconstructs the relationships of freedom and food on the one hand, and slavery and agriculture on the other. My thesis is that the experiences of freedom held as central to human nature and politics are inextricably linked to specific configurations of power operative within the realm of human necessity. in this way, the realm of human necessity in general - and the various activities attendant the biosocial reproduction of everyday life in particular - constitutes a general economy of domination and dependence, as well as a vital ecology for cultivating new forms of resistance and radicalism.