Fermentation as Metaphor

the greatest promise of metaphorical fermentation is that it generates new forms, which seems very relevant right now in the midst of everything that’s happening during the pandemic when so much has been broken open to reveal the chasms in our society.

Producing food forces us to become more connected to the weather, the insects that are around us, just so many aspects of the world that are right there but it’s so easy for us to ignore them because they don’t seem like they’re directly relevant to our life and to our experience even though they are.

reclaim a relationship, not only with food production, but with traditions and communities and ultimately with the living world through the simple act of fermentation.

For us right now, in this period science has some understanding of what’s going on, but historically fermentation has been such a mystery that it’s been really seen in many contexts as something quite literally divine. And there’s a huge amount of ceremony and ritual organized around fermentation. We can even look at some of the major world religio... See more

this idea of protecting the purity of our society against the contamination of outside ideas is, well, it’s been weaponized really. The way people project fear of the “other” has been such a theme throughout human history. With all these metaphors that we’re picking up from fermentation, we can look and see how they have been applied in our society... See more

It seems like there’s a reclaiming of ancestral roots that is also part of this fervor in fermentation. But it also seems like those ancestral roots that they’re trying to reconnect to are not going to take shape in the same way. They’re not going to appear like they did for their grandparents or their great-grandparents or back in the old country ... See more

every now and then, I would notice in some article that I was reading, let’s say an article about jazz music, a certain place and time being one of great musical fermentation; I saw references to artistic fermentation; I saw references to spiritual fermentation; I saw references to political fermentation. I learned that the word “fermentation” come... See more

We need bubbliness. We need excitement. We need new ideas. And it’s not that I have any idea what the outcome needs to be. I just know that we can’t keep on doing what we’ve been doing. That we need to shift. We need to adapt because our circumstances are adapting. This is another way in which the metaphor of fermentation really is powerful because... See more

SKIn both literal fermentation and metaphorical fermentation the fermentation is breaking down previous forms into new forms. We don’t know yet what the outcome of this pandemic is going to be on us. I mean, as I was finishing my manuscript, it was clear that society was making this sort of abrupt shift in a way that I don’t know that I had ever se... See more