The intellectual table: why we eat as we talk. Part three: how can we propose our cuisine?

What language for Psychoanalysis? How can a talking practice like Psychoanalysis produce effects in different parts of the planet? How can Psychoanalysis be relevant for Hong Kong, or any other place? If we go back to our parallel with the food, we might have the impression that the only food that can be successfully exported at any latitude is the fast-food. Apparently this is a paradox, because fast-food means generally lack of quality, and to a lack of quality one would not associate a worldwide success. How is it possible? But we can consider another example, an experience that probably most of us share. When we taste our cuisine abroad we are easily disappointed; the restaurant could have a good reputation among the locals, but we just don’t like it. We might laugh when we notice that some dishes’ names are spelled incorrectly, or have been changed with some others, maybe easier to remember but definitely bizarre for us; then we might make some observations about the ingredients used, and some dishes are clearly an invention of the chef and not a traditional dish of our country; and finally we think that even the music in background is outdated, old fashioned. We then perceive that everything is settled to match the customers’ image of the place they want to buy, but this place is ideal, is a fantasy place, and not the place we used to know. There is an image to sell, rather than a cultural difference to promote. Then, the cuisine should be at the same time “exotic” but still accessible, different but not too much, not far from the taste of the customers. It should leave the customers the illusion of having really met the different (an extreme experience), while they have been given what already belongs to their world (what preserve from the anxiety of the discovery).  The final result is a hybrid far away from the original. And interestingly, I found this both for Chinese restaurants in Italy, and for Italian restaurants in Hong Kong, as to say that this is common worldwide, we all represent the other, continuously.

Preparation of home made dumplings, Shuhe, China

This premise to say: can we practice Psychoanalysis in China without losing quality (the fast food mentality), and without turning Psychoanalysis into something bizarre? How can we avoid the logic of the fast-food, of pre-cooked food, for which everything should be easy, ready-to-use and have a quick effect? What is the border between simplicity and simplistic? And how to propose Psychoanalysis here in Hong Kong, where the thinking, the attitude toward life, and the questions are remarkably distant from the European and American culture?

Why given the same ingredients a Chinese chef and an Italian chef will prepare two different meals, or: why we treat theories as we treat food.

 

In Hong Kong the common attitude is to combine together practices, theories, and knowledge regardless to their very different backgrounds. I was very surprised when I realized that in Hong Kong professionals do not generally choose only one elective approach, but they rather mix two, three or four different approaches together. This is rather unusual in the West, where on the contrary we tend to choose one theory and specialize in that. We tend to believe that different theories cannot match because they are grounded on different premises, and so this “practical” attitude of Chinese leads to create what we, Westerners, may consider syncretism (which is syncretism only at our eyes, but it is not. I will further this point in a future post).

To be noticed that in Europe and in Hong Kong we have different conceptions of “efficacy” (Jullien, 2004), which generally brought us to a continuous and mutual misunderstanding. Generally, westerners consider the Chinese thought as “mysterious” and “abstract” (which is interesting because Chinese culture is one of the most materialistic and goal oriented in history). And the Chinese probably do not clearly understand the speculative attitude of the Westerners, who appear to them as always willing to discuss again and again about the same issue, and not very prone to action. (My impression is that in most cases Westerners have approached this completely different system with their own words and categories, and have had in the end the perception of a culture that lacks of logic, a culture less sophisticated, less developed. But very surprising, I have found that most Chinese share this vision; many Chinese have a picture of their country, which is absolutely mediated by the West. And by the way, when we say “West” in Asia, it mainly refers to one country, the US).

Integration

Then, we simply pose differently toward the speech, toward the theory, and toward the food as well. It’s because our word proceeds differently. While the Western thought has arose and developed around the Greek philosophy and Christianity, proceeding per integration (things cannot have opposite meanings at the same time, the Aristotelian third excluded: this or that, true or false. Consequence is that things must be re-thought, such that they all share the same premises), the Chinese thought proceeds for combination (this and that. Things that are considered somehow useful are included in a practice, even though they arise from totally different grounds, because attention is oriented to obtain a result instead of producing theory). And same as for eating also in religion the Chinese tend to combine different practices and rituals together.

Combination

At the very beginning of my arrival in Honk Kong a friend of mine, Christian and quite serious about that, she once told me that she frequently used to go praying in the Buddhist temple “because it’s closer than the church”. Not that this is the norm, but it is significant of a different approach to life, even toward something (for us) as radical as faith. 

The intellectual itinerary

Riceballs from Yunnan, China

As mentioned before, there’s a general tendency to consider everything coming from “the West” as coming from the same place, so that everything can be combined. It happen the same in Italy, where people at the same time want to practice Yoga, learn about the Feng-Shui and eat Sushi, but of course they have no idea where these traditions come from: it’s all “oriental”. Of course also Psychoanalysis can be attractive because it is a practice that originates in a western culture, but this can be at the same time an advantage and a limitation, as it might be always perceived just as one practice among many. But the point that I want to focus is another, because I find no interest in “exporting” Psychoanalysis in China, while I find more interesting investigating what China can give to Psychoanalysis, and most of my work goes in this direction. But here the question that I want to pose is yet slightly different. For instance, instead of questioning if Psychoanalysis can be effective in China, I would reverse the question and ask: is China ready for Psychoanalysis? If we consider when Psychoanalysis emerged in Europe, more than hundred years ago, it raised a big debate around it, which involved every aspect of cultural life. From its birth psychoanalysis has been considered much more than just a treatment for mental diseases (Roudinesco, 2003). Many scientists, artists, philosophers, literates, directors, have taken into account psychoanalysis for their work. Psychoanalysis has always had a big role in societies and many people were aware of its relevance even thought if they never considered beginning an analysis. Even some movies showed some psychoanalysts at work; psychoanalysis was not unfamiliar. So, how to create a culture for psychoanalysis in China?

The intellectual table: why we eat as we talk. Part two: how is set the intellectual table?

 English and Italian can be also paratactic, especially in the spoken language, but anyway they tend to be more hypotactics. Chinese is paratactic because in Chinese there are no connectors (and, also, in fact, even though, nonetheless, anyway, despite, etc...), so the clauses can only be placed side by side, juxtaposed (a famous example from Julio Cesar is: “I came; I saw; I conquered”). Following Du and Yu (2008) “English emphasizes the complete structure of a sentence and pays much more attention to the grammar rules. […] The sentence structure is relatively complete and the sentence is relatively rigid”. Liu (1991) states that “Comparing with English, Chinese is not restricted to the grammar limitation and its sentence structure is more flexible than that in English” (as cited in Du and Yu, 2008, p.42). As opposite to Italian, the grammar of modern Chinese is more linear and sentences are more simple and clear, not too long and not too articulated. English and Italian develop more like a tree, while Chinese are more like a bamboo.

bamboo

Huang (2009) distinguish the two languages identifying Chinese as “discourse-oriented” and English “sentence-oriented”. Compared to Chinese, English aims at capturing, defining, transferring the meaning. On the contrary, Chinese depends more by the context, and this because “Chinese emphasize function rather than the form” (Lian, as cited in Du and Yu, 2008, p.42). And as Wang notes “English emphasizes formal cohesion while Chinese focuses on semantic coherence. English is controlled by grammar law while Chinese is governed by user convenience” (Wang, as cited in Du and Yu, 2008, p.42). As a result more work is required to the reader, but the meaning is more open. This is the spirit of real Chinese which emphasizes various understanding and reflection in the world. 

In Chinese there is not the same obsession for the precise meaning as in the west, where we are always in search of “the right words”. We think that the right words are those that better describe the object, those that better “grasp” the “essence” of the concept; for the Chinese, words count for the effect that they can produce, rather than the (supposed) meaning that they should transmit. So, the words are “right” or “wrong” depending by the effect that they provoke within the relation, within that context; they can’t be defined in advance. For the Chinese, words rarely help to clarify, but quite on the contrary they add noise, confusion, chaos. Apparently the Chinese are more aware that misunderstanding is structural to speaking, while we westerners still think that everything can be said, that meanings are shared, and that the misunderstanding can be eliminated. Not only the combination of the clauses within a sentence, but all the speech should follow an order with a beginning and an end. Since the presocratics, Western has developed rhetoric. Oration has some premises that need to be exposed, argued, and demonstrated by some proofs before jumping to the conclusions. The structure of the discourse, the way elements are disposed, arranged (taxis), all reflect an attitude. Western has always adopted, from philosophy to art, or food, the monadic solution: the single thought, the perspective, the point of view, the main/only dish. In China, food fits differently: one does not go without the other, the opposite go in combination. In Chinese culture, food can be warm or cold and need to be combined to gain the balance.

Dim Sum

While the western thought developed around the concept of logos, the Aristotelian reasoned discourse (Rahe, 1994), the isolation of parts (concepts and ideas), and the definition of meaning, Chinese thought searched the balance of the opposites and has given more importance to the whole, to the context rather than to parts. The West has chosen the syntax and the Aristotelian logic, believing that logic is founder of the world, thinking the world was a book that just needed to be deciphered, and so embraced the discourse of science. The same did not happen in China, where the source (the authority) was often more important than the evidence. But as Randall Groves notes “instead of causal thinking or logical analysis, China utilized correlative thought, which related image or concept clusters in terms of their meaningful dispositions”, and coherently with our thesis “correlative thinking is best suited to “process” understandings of the world, while causal thinking better accommodates “substance” views”. Probably for this reason many Westerners feel annoyed by the (apparently) a-logical proceeding that some Chinese show. Again Randall Groves “the Chinese give priority to the correlative while the West gives priority to causal thinking. The view that correlative thinking is merely an early pre-logical or pre-scientific form of reasoning is a result of viewing correlative thought from the perspective of causal thinking. If we begin instead from the perspective of correlative thought we realize the interdependence of the two modes”. We are so eradicated in our linear, causal, rational thinking that we feel a certain difficulty to relate to anyone who moves from other premises. The Chinese proceeding is more impressionistic, analogical: it’s more paratactic. But hypotaxis and parataxis represent two ways of proceeding, no one is better than the other. They simply represent different logics, different rhetoric.

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916

Chinese proceed per analogy rather than pointing straight to the core of the matter, and some time they beat around the bushes. They might let the other imagine something, rather than express it directly. And they emphasize the timing for saying, rather than the message itself. Westerner are obsessed by the truth, by the substance, the content of the message. The truth is the key to the world: everything can be done in name of the truth. As a consequence if one keeps silent, that means tacit consent, even submission, or ignorance. But it’s different in Chinese culture, where the relation comes first: one can be right, but not direct, because this is considered unpolite and a lack of respect. In China a silence is sign of wisdom, because the relation is first of all with the other, not with the (big) Other.

The Western discourse is substantialist, it aims at the core of things. We do not just approach problems, we want to go to the bottom, we want to analyze in depth. We face concepts until we have digested them. Or until we made indigestion. We want to go all the way up to the dessert. Just compare the cutlery and chopsticks. Chopsticks pick up food, do not pierce it. Not to mention the knife, never seen it on a Chinese table. The same word "chopstick" has been derived from "chop chop", meaning quickly (Merriam-Webster). Food and words in Chinese culture are taken in small doses, little by little. Difficult to make real binges with Chinese food. Hard to feel a sense of heaviness after a Dim Sum. Satisfactions are different at the table: the taste of substance in the west, the pleasure of variety in China.

The intellectual table: why we eat as we talk. Part one: an introduction on how the language shapes the way we think and act.

Eating is a moment of conviviality: words and food go hand in hand. Why do we sit around a table; why don't we just sit on the ground, or why don't we lay on the sofa? Eating requires a dispositive because eating is not just satisfying a need. Eating is a simple act, which refers to a complex culture: the attention we give to the food, the attention we give to the dispositive is the attention we give to the word. The same act of cooking is a matter of courtesy and hospitality; cooking requires the semblant, and care of the word. 

The food exists within a story; there is no taste out of the word, the taste comes as a consequence of a telling. The food is caught in a symbolic order; what we like or dislike is not written in the DNA, it is the effect of the language. It is a common experience to change our taste completely and unexpectedly regarding certain food, for example from childhood to adulthood, or when we go to different places. In foreground is always the question of the language; of the word. The same act of eating together is meaningless if it is not accompanied by a good conversation. In Italy, the place where I come from, we can have meals for hours because we mainly meet for talking.

Words and food enter and exit from our mouth[1]. We are hungry for knowledge, thirsty for information, we eat books, we receive tasty or spicy news, we digest a concept and we can say something sweet or bitter. Some ideas are disgusting, some others are just food for the mind. Our relationship with food and eating is also our relationship with the word. It's curious that even within a country the food changes on regional bases, just as the language does with its dialects. In Italy one might be asked to “talk as you eat”, meaning “don’t pretend, use your own words”. 

Many researches have been conducted on language differences and food differences (Mintz, 1996; Mintz and Du Bois, 2002; Debevec and Tivadar, 2006), but most of the times these topics have been treated separately, as belonging to different fields. Linguists explain extensively the differences between English, Italian and Chinese languages, but they generally lack at explaining how this is relevant for us, how this affect us as human beings. Anthropologists, on the other side, concentrated much on the substance: what food in what culture, cooked or raw, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy (isn’t it the same logic undergoing anorexia and bulimia?). I think that we should move from the logic of the “meaning” to the logic of “signification”: we are not just what we eat, as suggested by anthropologists, rather we are as we eat, and we eat as we talk: different eating patterns reflect different syntaxes.

Evidence shows that language structures the way we represent the world. Language is not just a medium of the “mind”. Research from Boroditsky, Schmidt and Phillips (2002) shows that people speaking different languages think differently and that “differences in thought can be produced just by grammatical differences in the absence of other cultural factors”. Starting from language differences my aim is to analyze how they shape our construction of the world, the way we think, the way we eat and the way we approach problems or theories. For example in Italian or in English we can have very long sentences, with lots of phrases connected, all of them having a precise order and subordination to another. Look at the Sonnet 29 from Shakespeare:

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings.

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

This is one long sentence of 20 phrases! It is like a huge lunch of 20 dishes, from appetizers to the coffee. Following Cerantola (2010) one might ask: how to translate all this huge amount of food into Chinese? Most probably on a Chinese table we would see 20 different plates and cups at the same time that we wouldn’t even be able to distinguish where to start from, because actually there is not a temporal sequence, there is not something that comes before and something that follows. 

This is the difference between hypotaxis and parataxis. According to the Oxford Dictionaries (on-line resource) hypotaxis is “the subordination of one clause to another”. Parataxis on the contrary is “the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination, as in Tell me, how are you?”. Linguists consider this as one of the most important typological distinctions between English and Chinese (Nida and Taber, 1982; Ning, 1993; Li, 2006;). And what is the syntax of our eating patterns? We can say that at eating Westerners more than Chinese emphasize the subordination, the sequence and the structure.  

During an Italian lunch you see dishes coming one by one: first some appetizers, then pasta or rice (which we call “il primo” meaning literally “the first” course), meat or fish (which is the main course, also named “il secondo”, the second course), some vegetables and finally dessert, fruits and coffee. The name of the dish itself indicates the order of arrival on the table: pasta is a first, even if paradoxically we were to reverse the order of arrival on the table. There’s a precise order and every dish is “subordinated” to the others, just as for the sentences of a period. For example we usually don’t mix meat and fish as main dishes: one excludes the other. A lunch itself is structured around a main dish, develops a theme that arise from a dominant flavour. Quite opposite, what do we find on a Chinese table? On the Chinese table we find at the same time (there is not temporal sequence) meat and fish, tofu and mushrooms, sweet and sour foods, and the Dim Sum and is just as the most evident example.

So a parallel between the way we talk, think and eat might be more than just a joke. The language structures us so deeply that we don’t even notice, but everything around us reflects the same premises that support our discourse: from art to science, from food to architecture. For example: isn’t this the structure of the city of Hong Kong itself? Is HK not set like a Chinese table, with lots of different districts one next to another, without any possibility to individualize any clear order and any real center (around which develops the story and the discourse of the city), otherwise so typical in Italian cities?

Bibliography

Boroditsky, L., Schmidt, L., & Phillips, W. (2003). Sex, Syntax, and Semantics. In Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (Eds.,) Language in Mind: Advances in the study of Language and Thought. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.

Cerantola, L. (2010), L’altro Giappone o la bellezza della paratassi [The other Japan or the beauty of parataxis], Novembre 2010, from http://dweb.repubblica.it/dweb/2010/02/13/attualita/attualita/084jap68184.html

Debevec, L., Tivadar, B., (2006), Making connections through foodways: contemporary issues in anthropological and sociological studies of food, Anthropological Notebooks, XII/1, pp.5-16

Li, S.J. (2006), On How to Achieve Functional Equivalence in Translation between Chinese and English, Sino-US English Teaching,Dec. 2006, Volume 3, No.12 (Serial No.36)

Mintz, S. 1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp.1996 Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Culture, and the Past. Boston: Beacon Press. 176 pp.(1996), Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power, and the Past, Boston: Beacon press

Mintz, S., Du Bois, C.M., (2002), The anthropology of food and eating, Annual Review of Anthropology

Nida, E.A., Taber C.R., (1982), The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Ning, Y. (1993), Chinese as a paratactic language. L2 Talk: The SLAT Working Papers (University of Arizona) 1, 1–15.

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[1] With Freud we could say that food and words are attached to the oral drive