Chop Sticks

Thesis:

: ... the instrument never pierces, cuts, or slits, never wounds but only selects, turns, shifts. For the chopsticks ... in order to divide, must separate, part, peck, instead of cutting and piercing, in the manner of our implements; they never violate the foodstuff: either they gradually unravel it (in the case of vegetables) or else prod it into separate pieces (in the case of fish, eels), thereby rediscovering the natural fissures of the substance ...
: ... chopsticks are the converse of our knife (and of its predatory substitute, the fork): they are the alimentary instrument which refuses to cut, to pierce, to mutilate, to trip ... by chopsticks, food becomes no longer a prey to which one does violence ... but a substance harmoniously transferred ...

Originally from EmpireOfSigns?, 1982. See http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/wyrick/debclass/rbchop.htm for more.

Antithesis:

But then what happens after you harmoniously transfer the food to your mouth? Your incisor teeth unceremoniously chop and shred the foodstuff whilst your molar teeth mash it up. Then your tongue pushes it back to where your throat muscles squash the pulverised mass into a crude lump and squeeze it down to your stomach, where it is dissolved by acids. If your body violates the foodstuff and does violence to it so thoroughly, what can be the point of pretending you're respecting the food with chopsticks? Barthes says they "never wound" the food, but you can't wound something that's already dead. The reason people use a knife and fork is because they're direct and efficient. They don't attempt to euphemise what is happening to the food - it needs to be taken apart, and that's what's going to happen.

Synthesis:

The knife you have on the table is going to be duller than the knife the expert chef wields in the kitchen. And the chances are very good that she's better at using a knife than you are. There is a certain aesthetic in preparing food this way that is worth understanding, and perhaps even worth learning from.

For knife and fork vs chopsticks, there are historical reasons, however virtue can be made from necessity, and was, in this case. The little chunks of food that chopsticks are used to grasp are prepared by a chef using, yes, a knife, to cut and chop the ingredients into small pieces; which are then reformed into morsels that chopsticks can manipulate. And if you want to go even further with it, the chopsticks themselves were created by inciting violence upon a raw piece of wood. It all depends on how much importance you attach to ceremony in a thing like eating. It is of significance that in some cuisines all the cutting takes place away from the table. In other cuisines it's acceptable to cut a piece of meat that is sticking out of your mouth.

CategoryEasternThought