An Italian Critic of Slow Food
The fact that a movement like SF – anti-progressive, antiscientific, worshipping the traditional societies, fond of the little, stratified and perennial communities in which the place of each is eternally fixed and immutable, uncaring and ignorant of history and of the reality of the relations of production, and thus incapable of seeing the inextricable contradictions and historical fictions which build up this vision – might be considered today, in Italy, ‘left’, is something which deserves a close study and should create, in all those who care for the future of our country, more than a passing worry.
That’s the conclusion to an interesting critique of Slow Food by Italian lawyer Luca Simonetti. He is not a foodie, but a practicing lawyer with an office in Rome. He was moved to write this long thoughtful article by the increasing political clout of Slow Food in Italy. Here’s the link to the-ideology-of-slow-food2.
I should say that he quotes me quite a bit. But he has his own line and he also has lots of quotes from Slow Food not readily available in English. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in advancing the debate about how we should think about food in the modern world.
Like the TV ad says –
*Half the page covered in footnotes: $8000 (of exasperation and boredom)
*Dense sentences full of facts with essence of No Story Whatsoever: $3 Billion (of wanting to escape and not read it)
*Quoting You: Priceless
OK, OK, OK, Karen. I don’t know the TV ad and I’m sure Luca Simonetti doesn’t either since neither of us live in the US. But I will stick up for footnotes and serious efforts to struggle with intellectual and political issues. I was delighted to find someone used to analyzing arguments taking this on which as you have said before takes some courage. And having written papers in Spanish, I am impressed by Luca Simonetti’s agility in English.
Thanks for posting about this essay – I’m about a third of the way through it and find that the elitism on the surface of Slow Food has such deep and complex (free-trade sourced and artisanal!) roots.
It makes me wonder – has anyone written a feminist critique of Slow Food? Food is so often women’s work, of course, and it seems that the movement glosses over that. Strikes me as a glaring omission.
Not that I know of Molly. There’s an opening for you. As Ji-Young says further up, I’ve posted and thought a good bit about the related servant issue but not specifically with respect to Slow Food.
Hi Molly, Rachel has written quite a bit about domestic servitude issues and “the good old days”.
Thank you for the link and for the comments, Rachel!
Sorry for having bored you, Karen: I am a lawyer and we lawyers always yield to the temptation of getting our point through the very words of our opponent… But do you find the text boring also without reading the footnotes?
Luca, Quite a number of people have downloaded the article. With luck there will be more comments.
Ciao Luca. I’m reading your article now.
My story, which made the local newspapers, is here:
Is Slow Food gaining importance in Italy? Here in the US it seems to have settled into a nice potluck community gathering kind of group with no real political clout. Even the new organic White House garden installed by the Obamas seems to have been done without any mention of Slow Food. I know there’s a new head here in the US but one seems to hear less, not more.
Luca – If Rachel says that what you have written is good in the way it was meant to be written then my opinion simply doesn’t count. I agree with all the points Rachel made, and if I was rude please consider accepting my apologies.
I would have preferred to see more of ‘you’ in the text. That is what I campaign for. Seeing the ‘you’ (whomever the ‘you’ may be) expressed in words, or in life. Your point about the lawyerly way is taken but it is my way to argue against that way. To me any argument written in an academic form or in a lawyerly form will not be as persuasive as it would be if it were not written in those forms.
Of course I realize I’m in the minority here, like the piece of ziti that somehow showed up in the plate of tortellini. But since I am the ziti, I must be the best piece of ziti I can be, and I am not a quiet piece of ziti.
You will find many commentaries more useful than mine in this instance, Luca. Really. :)
Dott. Simonetti’s article crystallizes some of my hesitations about the official Slow Food philosophy. The inherent elitism of that glass of Barolo, which theoretically should not be consumed out of Piedmonte (I bet the wine exporters would have a stroke at that thought since Barolo is pretty big business), the absolute ignorance of what it takes to get a meal to a table of merry makers on a summer afternoon, the hypocrisy of eating local and the goals of Terre Madre.
That being said, Slow Food has accomplished an awakening, an awareness, which was missing from the food dialogue of the late 1980’s, and for this I am grateful. Since then the organization has scattered its seed and its message. It has succumbed to that “subversive” scourge: the sound bite. Parceling bits of information into little feel good packets without proper science or regard for the drudgery of farming and kitchen work.
As I read through the article, I kept picturing Dickens’s Mr. Pickwick as the ideal Slow Food spokesman; wise, wonderful and fiction. But, is Carlo Petrini the devil? Or is he the quintessential Italian pontificator that is to be found in every piazza, the one who speaks quite knowledgeably about things, as they should be without being bothered by research or science or rules or reality?
This thoughtful article produces yet more questions: how do we feed people well with minimal environmental damage, or damage to the wallet, or endless hours in the field or the kitchen?
As usual, I have no answers, only more questions.
Mi permesso di dire la ringrazio molto per il suo articolo.
Hi Steve.
On Slow Food US I only know what is written in the article (mainly info gathered from sources like Ms Gaytan’s paper and some newspapers articles), and the fact that SF US is the SF entity with more members after SF Italy. I am sure, however, that it is, as you say, only a niche without political clout. Actually, also in Italy SF is a niche: it is not a political party, and Mr Petrini in particular is very careful not to appear as endorsing any party’s program. Probably my article is a bit confusing in this respect: most of SF’s ideas were already present in Italy before SF’s birth, and SF’s importance is mostly due to a shrewd exposition and business exploitation of them. In other words, it is only an aspect of a more general problem (a cultural problem), which is only Italian I fear. I don’t think that SF may be dangerous also outside Italy.
Dear Karen,
you weren’t rude and I need no apologies at all. Actually, I am the least qualified of all to judge of whether my article is boring or not: so, if you think it is, maybe you’re right!
I see your point about the ‘you’ thing, but mine is intended as an academic article: one has to acknowledge debts, to justify one’s assertions…
Judith,
I think that once one has realized “the inherent elitism of that glass of Barolo (…), the absolute ignorance of what it takes to get a meal to a table of merry makers on a summer afternoon, the hypocrisy of eating local and the goals of Terre Madre”, then one is entitled to acknowledge also Slow Food’s merits. Whether SF was right at the beginning and got it all wrong later, as you say, I don’t know: my impression is that the ‘message’ was mostly wrong since the beginning.
But I agree with you: Petrini is by no means the devil, and your final questions are more important than ever. (I don’t think that SF has an answer to those questions, either, but I guess you agree…)
Grazie mille a lei!
In the case of The White House garden, Slow Food was not alone in aiming to gain traction-by-association. That would have been quite a feather in any person or organization’s hat – to have the Grant Wood painting made of themselves along with our President, standing in front of the garden with busy stinky automobile traffic zooming along the street in front with the gleaming corridors of power of the White House in the ever-so-close background.
It would seem to me that likely the decision was made to not look as if one was giving favor to any one person or group – by the political strategists who offer guidance in these things to the President. Less muss and fuss.
Luca, I didn’t mean to imply that SF got things right at the beginning, but I do think they contributed to an overall awareness of the food process. At least they got people to think about their food sources, but once people actually stop to think beyond the simplistic slogans, the cracks in SF logic begin to appear.
Ciao,
Judith
I think it’s fascinating that Slow Food seemed to be pointedly excluded from any official role or influence on the White House garden. And Alice Waters, too.
I was a delegate at the first Terra Madre, by the way. And I still participate in Slow Food events where I get to spread my gospel of heirloom beans. But after his shenanigans in San Francisco, I have about half a teaspoon’s respect for Petrini.