Michael Pollan and ethical eating.

Abstract

In this thesis I analyze the whole of Michael Pollan’s books and other media appearances as a cultural technology, in the sense theorized by Foucault, Laurie Ouellette, Tony Bennett and others. I argue that Michael Pollan’s work can be seen a technology of an ethical form of neoliberal citizenship. In my first chapter, I point out that while Pollan attempts to defend his program through a rational economic model of cost-benefit, there is a morality to his program beyond economic rationality. In my second chapter, I argue that, though perhaps the moral dimension of Pollan’s program opens up possibilities for a progressive politics of food, this moral dimension is a highly classed one. In the final chapter, I look at the ways in which Pollan, while purporting to address a race-, class-, and gender-neutral audience of equal Americans, defines a problem-cause-solution constellation that allocates blame on a racialized and gendered basis and calls upon readers to pay “karmic debts” accrued through failure to pay the “hidden costs” of the industrial food system, by freely choosing the pleasurable exercise of labor.