Justin Wong’s Fermentative Thinking: How contamination can free the mind

納豆 or Nattō: Japanese fermented soy beans. A traditional Japanese food made from whole soybeans that have been fermented with Bacillus subtilis var. natto. It is often served as a breakfast food with rice. It is served with karashi mustard, soy or tare sauce, and sometimes Japanese bunching onion. Nattō is often considered an acquired taste because of its powerful smell, strong flavour, and sticky, slimy texture. A 2009 survey revealed that 70% of Japanese people find the taste pleasant, and others who may not find the taste of the food pleasant still eat it out of habit.

Through Justin Wong’s practice, the most complex of subject-matter becomes metabolised into digestible forms. From ingestion to abjection, his mind leaps between disparate topics so adeptly that, were it not for his diligent guidance, we’d be semantically adrift. This is evidenced in his seminar from Food Cosmogonies Eating the Abject: Troubling purity narratives in food, where he identifies the entanglement of disgust and purity within our culinary and cultural systems.

Witnessing Justin’s distillation of relational narratives from such diverse subjects can be likened to the process of fermentation, in both its physical and notional contexts. In both, a substrate is inoculated with a foreign body: a dough with a starter; a mind with an idea. As such, both negate purity by engendering diversity through contamination. Through his research, Justin contaminates our minds with his diverse thinking, helping us build new thoughts and ideas.

In Eating the Abject, Justin begins by examining the emotion of disgust, a feeling so visceral that we often cannot control its expression. Disgust is often primarily associated with food, however it can easily break the culinary bounds to become culturally focussed. It does not take much contemplation for one to see that, like many of our perceptions, disgust is, in fact, largely dictated by dominant cultural narratives. 

Surströmming: Swedish fermented Baltic sea herring. During the production of surströmming, just enough salt is used to prevent the raw herring from rotting while allowing it to ferment. A fermentation process of at least six months gives the fish a characteristic strong smell and somewhat acidic taste. A newly opened can of surströmming has allegedly one of the most putrid food smells in the world.

Here Justin cites journalist Jiaying Fan’s 2021 The New Yorker article The Gatekeepers who Get to Decide what Food is “Disgusting”, which examines the decision-making behind the founders of Sweden’s Museum of Disgust. Fan identifies how, though the museum is notionally intended to encourage visitors’ introspection of their notions of disgust, it serves to compound purity politics by showcasing a large proportion of foods from nonwhite cultures. 

Fan shows the museum’s selection of so-called ‘disgusting’ foods to be prescriptively whitewashed by Western narratives. Ingestion, due to its intimacy, amplifies this, and the nonwhite cultures from whence these ‘disgusting’ cuisines come become ostracised for their non-Western tastes. Beyond the physiology of food, the notions of ‘disgust’ that the museum propones becomes indicative of normative ways of perceiving the world.

A dominant culture’s disgust of a certain cuisine ‘others’ it's eaters, and endeavours to make them assimilate their tastes. Those who do not, or cannot, remain disgusting in the dominant culture’s narrative. In literary critical theory, this is termed ‘abjection:’ that which is rejected by society; or disturbs social reason. 

Linguistically, ‘abjection’ suggests something of extreme detriment; or, according to the dictionary, someone ‘completely without pride or dignity.’ This semantically presupposes a person’s abasement, and scales them inferiorly against the ‘norm,’ further compounding their abjection. In the contemporary Western narrative, this norm is white. Non-normative, nonwhite ‘others’ are subsequently eschewed. 

Cue purity politics: the framework of separation that comes from social othering. If a dominant social narrative is predisposed to favour whiteness, then the nonwhite becomes a taint thereof. This is compounded by the pure/toxic; human/nonhuman; and good/evil binaries around which Western narratives are constructed. In her Powers of Horror (1980), philosopher Julia Kristeva identifies food as the most elementary form of abjection; ergo: food can be seen as one of abjection’s biggest signifiers.

Purity politics is also reflected in the dominant systems that govern how we eat. From dieting trends; to wellbeing movements; to government-sanctioned food safety regulations: that which is ‘other’—culturally; socially; or microbially—is a contaminant to the norm, and must be ‘purified.’ In Justin’s research, this is exemplified by the treatment of Chinese people in the Western narrative, where a long history of orientalism has repeatedly othered the Chinese as dirty and impure. From the 19th century Chinese Exclusion Act; to the demonisation of monosodium glutamate (MSG); and the rise of the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome (CRS): abjection has become part of the lived experience of the Chinese immigrant in Western cultures. 

味の素 or Ajinomoto a.k.a. MSG. It was first prepared in 1908 by Japanese biochemist Kikunae Ikeda, who was trying to isolate and duplicate the savoury taste of kombu, an edible seaweed used as a base for many Japanese soups. Ajinomoto balances, blends, and rounds the perception of other tastes, and is used in cooking as a flavour enhancer with an umami taste that intensifies the meaty, savoury flavour of food.

This form of abjection engenders what Justin identifies as a unique notion of socially prescribed self-disgust, where a person’s surrounding culture perceives them with such disgust, that they cannot help but feel it is self-ascribed. Disgust, through its alterity to the norm, helps delineate cultural notions of purity through its difference. Justin cites philosopher Alexa Shotwell’s Against Purity: Living ethically in compromised times (2016), in which she identifies purity to be a social illusion that encourages ‘others’ to follow a social order.

Here, the metaphor of fermentation can again help us understand Justin’s research, and further reveals how purity politics align with gastronomic theory. In fermentation, a base becomes inoculated—or ‘contaminated’—by a foreign culture, one that will integrate with the substrate and transform it into something else. Thus contaminated, the substrate diversifies and begins to take on new forms as it is metabolised by the contaminant. To avoid contamination, substrates are kept sterile—or ‘pure’—actively preventing their diversification. 

Casu Marzu is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese that contains live insect larvae (maggots). Derived from pecorino, casu martzu goes beyond typical fermentation to a stage of decomposition, brought about by the digestive action of the larvae of the cheese fly of the Piophilidae family. These larvae are deliberately introduced to the cheese, promoting an advanced level of fermentation and breaking down of the cheese's fats. The texture of the cheese becomes very soft, with some liquid (called làgrima, Sardinian for "teardrop") seeping out.

The semantics of fermentation—’contamination;’ ‘foreign;’ ‘culture’—are also aligned with Justin’s research. Transposed socially, purity becomes the white Western narrative; and contamination is nonwhite diversification. Justin draws upon celebrated anthropologist Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger (1966), in which she identifies contamination to be socially constituted. Purity is thus a social constitution between one category and another, and “filth is that residue that is excluded from the normal systemic classification system” (ibid: 54). 

Justin identifies Douglas’ ‘filth,’ Kristeva’s ‘abjection,’ and Shotwell’s theories on purity as a byproduct of Western progress; one that, in its impurity, challenges dominant narratives. Though abjection is rooted in rejection, it can in fact reroute us through its alterity. Being inherently ‘other’ is radical resistance, and can be reclaimed as such. As Justin states: the abject disturbs our perceptions of the world; the abject disrupts normativity. The abject, then, can become a notional way in which we can self-diversify our thinking. If we are the substrate, let the abject foment us, fermenting our notions into novel forms.

Find out more about our guest speaker Justin Wong here https://jwong.info