©2017 Tashima Thomas ALL RIGHTS RESERVED AN IMPERIAL DIET: FROM CACAO TO COCONUTS – REPRESENTING EDIBLE BODIES IN THE AMERICAS FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT by TASHIMA THOMAS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Art History Written under the direction of Dr. Tatiana Flores And approved by New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION An Imperial Diet: From Cacao to Coconuts – Representing Edible Bodies in the Americas from the Eighteenth Century to the Present By TASHIMA THOMAS Dissertation Director: Dr. Tatiana Flores This dissertation endeavors to prove through a series of visual mediations that the alimentary tract signifies a gastropoetical dialectic between the eater and the eaten. Alimentary discourse is capable of developing a visual language that illustrates the interiority of appetites of empire through the politics of provender. In this study sugar, cacao, pineapples, and coconuts operate as a lens to view the scaffolding of social and artistic strategies. This project is committed to the excavation of image construction, the visual representation of the African Diaspora in the Americas, and understanding the formation of gastronomical narratives through colonial discourse. Anthropologist Sidney W. Mintz suggests that anthropology has the capabilities to answer the outside and inside meanings of food pathways; but so far it has not done so. This dissertation will be able to offer insight into these issues. In a way, this work calls out what I consider obvious omissions regarding the connections between art history, the visual archive, and tropical food pathways by clearly articulating the power of these foods to transform cultures of vision and the induction of a modern world system. Ultimately, my dissertation offers a critical study of race, gender, sexuality, transnational, and transhistorical food pathways. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Henry C. Kinley for making all things possible. Whose love, guidance, graciousness, and eternal kindness has been a tremendous encouragement and sanctuary. I would like to thank the members of my committee for their support. For their financial and moral support I would like to thank the Ford Foundation and the Rutgers Center for Cultural Analysis. I also am grateful for a very special tribe of artists, academics, and angels especially, Marsha Thompson, Abigail Lapin Dardashti, Nkeiru Okoye, Sybil Cooksey, Allison Harbin, and James and Valencia Green. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract p. ii Acknowledgements p. iii Table of Contents p. iv List of Illustrations p. v Introduction p. 1 Chapter One Sugar p. 20 Chapter Two Cacao p. 83 Chapter Three Pineapples p. 135 Chapter Four Coconuts p. 169 Conclusion p. 209 Illustrations p. 210 Bibliography p. 227 iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Chapter 1 Fig.s 1.1-1.3 Photographs from The Latin American Library at Tulane University and from The Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, c. late 19th century-early 20th century. Fig. 1.4 Adolphe Duperly & Son. Banana Carriers. Jamaica. Photographs from The Latin American Library at Tulane University and from The Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, c. 1905. Fig. 1.5 John Genin, Allegory of Sugar Cane, 1884. Fig. 1.6 Andrea Chung, Bain de Mer, (Helmuth Projects), video still, 2013. Figs. 1.7-1.9 Andrea Chung, Bato Disik, 2013. Fig. 1.10 Andrea Chung, Sink and Swim, 2013. Fig. 1.11 Vik Muniz, Valicia Bathes in Sunday Clothes, from the series Portraits of the Sugar Children, 1996. Fig. 1.12 Vik Muniz, Big James Sweats Buckets, from the series Portraits of the Sugar Children, 1996. Fig. 1.13 Kara Walker, A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, 2014. Fig. 1.14 Kara Walker, A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, (sugar boy), 2014. Fig. 1.15 Batlhsar Permoser, Moor with Emerald Cluster, c. 1724. Fig. 1.16 Kara Walker, A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, (close up), 2014. v Chapter 2 Fig. 2.1 Marcel Duchamp, Chocolate Grinder Number 1, 1913. Fig. 2.2 Marcel Duchamp, Chocolate Grinder Number 2, 1914. Fig. 2.3 Oscar Murillo, A Mercantile Novel, 2014. Chapter 3 Fig. 3.1 Hendrick Danckerts, King Charles II, receiving gift of a pineapple from the Royal Gardener, John Rose, 1675. Fig. 3.2 Agostino Brunias, A Negroes’ Dance in the Island of Dominica, ca. 1779. Fig. 3.3 Agostino Brunias, A Linen Market with a Linen-stall and Vegetable Seller in the West Indies, ca. 1780. Fig. 3.4 Francois Beaucourt, Painting. Bust-length portrait of a black / mulatto slave woman holding a plate of tropical fruits, including a pineapple, 1786. Fig. 3.5 La Masurier, A Mulatto Woman with Her White Daughter Visited by Negro Women in Their House in Martinique, ca. 1775. Fig. 3.6 Agostino Brunias, Free Women of Color with Their Children and Servants in a Landscape, ca. 1770-96. Figs. 3.7-3.8 Agostino Brunias, Toussaint L’Ouverture buttons, c. 18th century. Chapter 4 Fig. 4.1 Francisco Oller, Still Life with Coconuts, c. 1893. Fig. 4.2 Francisco Oller, Self-Portrait, 1889-1892. Fig. 4.3 Francisco Oller, Still Life with Plantains, c. 1893. Figs. 4.4-4.5 Heino Schmid, Landmines, 2011-2012. vi Fig. 4.6 Power Figure (Nkisi N'Kondi: Mangaaka), Kongo Peoples; Yombe Group, 19th century. Fig. 4.7 Nkisi N'Kondi, Kongo Peoples, 19th century. Conclusion Fig. 5.1 Wangechi Mutu, The End of Eating Everything, video still, 2013. vii 1 INTRODUCTION An Imperial Diet: From Cacao to Coconuts – Representing Edible Bodies in the Americas from the Eighteenth Century to the Present I believe that the taste of freedom and the taste of food may be much more closely linked than they seem at first to be. ---Sidney W. Mintz, Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom, 1996 Food is personal. Food is at once personal and then we personalize food with our customs, religious beliefs, fad diets, ethical eating, fair trade, and personal preferences. However, in its final installment, food becomes our person. Through the process of digestion the nutrients from what we consume become assimilated into our bodies absorbing fats, proteins, and carbohydrates so that the food and the body become one. As the old adage goes – “We are what we eat.” Author bell hooks expands this analogy and re-conceptualizes its affectation on the body. She references the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn who states that putting images inside of our heads is just like eating. She advocates Hahn’s postulation that we “eat” images. Such that if “we are what we eat” then can it also be said that we are what we see?1 If we eat images and become what we see, then how is our natural constitution transformed when we feast our eyes upon images of sugarcane, chocolate, bananas, and other tropical comestibles? This dissertation decodes the cultural meanings of representing tropical foodstuffs in the Americas from the late eighteenth century to the present. Sugar and bananas have become two 1 bell hooks. “No Beasts in the Wild.” http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2012/09/bell-hooks-no-love-in-wild.html. 2 of the most significant food sources on earth. Sugar is the most popular source of sucrose as a refined carbohydrate. Tropical foods such as cacao, pineapples, and coconuts conjure the paradisiacal and the exoticism of the Americas. In this study sugar, cacao, pineapples, and coconuts operate as a lens to view the scaffolding of social and artistic strategies. These powerhouse foods have built empires, global economies, transformed international palettes, and even dominated governments. This project is committed to the excavation of image construction, the visual representation of the African Diaspora in the Americas, and understanding the formation of gastronomical narratives through colonial discourse. By looking critically at the layering of images regarding these foodstuffs we discover the interface of these food pathways with sexuality, blackness, techniques of power and hierarchies of taste. This master palette of constructed cultural meanings paints a portrait of these tropical comestibles that far exceeds their nutritional values. By culling the visual archive of sugar, cacao, pineapples, and coconuts, which are emblematic of the bounty of colonialism, we are able to establish a foundation for discussing the intersectionality of borders, social formations, gender, sexuality, class, race, value systems, and other structures of power. I have chosen each of these commodities specifically over other possible alternatives because of their relationship to building empires, transforming landscapes, and their representation both materially and artistically within a visual archive. My narrowed focus of four tropical comestibles presages that I will not include a discussion of the billion dollar industry of coffee. Coffee has been one of the most consistently and profitably traded commodities since the sixteenth century. Contemporary authors argue that studying coffee serves as lens for understanding larger theoretical trends. Statistically speaking, Latin America produces twice as 3 much coffee as the rest of the world combined and coffee has served as the principal export of seven Latin American countries during the mid-1980s.2 Referencing a medieval manuscript on humoral medicine, author Wolfgang Schivelbusch suggests, “It is of secondary concern to us that coffee should be condemned in this medical expert’s report. What matters are the notions, images, and ideas that are presented.”3 Indeed the notions, images, and ideas surrounding coffee present an archive that includes coffee production, labor, customs, and coffee houses resulting in a robust body of work deserving of further exploration. Also deserving of further attention outside of this dissertation is a discussion of bananas that mediates its representation within visual culture, performance, and high art.