In its etymology, the word "publishing" originally meant to populate communities and to breed interspecies relations. According to this definition, making food in the occupied territory of Palestine is an revolutionary act of publishing, and an immigrant worker at a diasporic restaurant is certainly practicing “queer publishing.” Their publishing practice is very likely to be endangered, not only by gentrification of the neighborhood and exploitation of their bodies through excessive underpaid labor under the racial capitalist system that makes certain population more productive, but also through accusation of Monosodium glutamate, the chemical substance that makes their food scrumptious.
MSG, the flavor enhancer widely used in Asian cuisine, has been unjustly accused as the cause of the so-called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" in the 1960s. Despite this popular belief that consumption of MSG causes fatigue, MSG naturally occurs in various species such as tomatoes, anchovies, seaweed, mushrooms, and basically every non-human body that we find savory. MSG is synthesized naturally even in human bodies and plays an indispensable role as a neurotransmitter. There’s no way that these naturally occurring MSG can be distinguished from the artificially produced MSG. To be more precise, the expression “artificially produced MSG” is self-contradictory, because the current industrial production of MSG relies on bacteria called Corynebacterium glutamicum, which “naturally” digests sugar and excretes MSG. In this case, it is not only that the bacteria actively work in alliance with human producers to transform sugar into glutamate; they also influence and transform the behavior of those they work with – demanding attention, discussion, cultivation of knowledge, and specific forms of material intervention and care. This sentence is, by the way, quoted from the 2014 work of Oona Morrow, who made a compelling argument for the extension of the notion of labor to acidophilus bacteria in a neighborhood yogurt production cooperative. Using this industrially produced MSG in cooking can potentially reduce meat consumption, as the same savoriness can be achieved using relatively less meat. This can be seen as a “viscous” means of interspecies unionization between the bacteria and farm animals. And the effect of this unionization is global and planetary, as the effect of industrial farming on climate is enormous.
It is "the Science" – with a capital S – that racializes nonhuman bodies by transporting violence through these molecules – the scientific signifiers. The xenophobic claim of fatigue after consuming Asian food ignited extensive research about the toxicity of MSG, which ironically concluded only in the fact that MSG is safe to the human body. It also turned out that Chinese Restaurant Syndrome has only been reported in the United States, despite the fact that MSG, or Asian food has long been consumed in many other parts of the world even before the history of Asian immigration in the US. One survey also demonstrated that the similar sorts of fatigue are reported not only concerning Chinese food, but a lot of other immigrated cuisines including Mexican, Italian, German and African American soul food. MSG was, in fact, not exclusively used in these racialized and alienated cuisines, but the whole post-war consumerist food industry has heavily relied on the savoriness of MSG for all sorts of processed food even until now. Regardless of its actual harmlessness, it was through the language and the apparatus of scientific knowledge production that the stereotype of "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" continues to challenge the livelihood of many Asian-run businesses. The metabolism of glutamate-excreting bacteria somehow translated one form of historical trauma imbued in sugar into another historical trauma conveyed through accusation of MSG.
MSG is associated with certain bodies as markers through which violence can be mobilized. Racialized bodies are oppressed when these molecules are controlled and suppressed. As demonstrated in these recipes, the effects of racialization extend to various nonhuman bodies connected through the molecular interdependency. This highlights racism as an ecological issue.
Lecture text by Noam Youngrak Son