Differences and Appreciations

Abstract

This concluding chapter by Annemarie Mol makes explicit why the earlier chapters forewent the use of well-vested academic terms like class, race and gender. They are yet more English words. All too easily, these terms are made to travel as residual universals, while their meaning and salience in different sites is riven with specificities. These terms therefore deserve to either be unpacked, or left out, but not black boxed in quick asides and unstudied presumptions. Subsequently, the author circles back to a theme that the preceding chapters all share: valuing. Academic researchers readily equate valuing with judging. The investigations presented in the book, by contrast, dwell on such things as encouraging others to enjoy their food, the pleasures of eating with fingers, the gratification following on from accepting the generous invitation of juicy fruits to bite into them, rewarding lunches shared with others, love for both an animal and its meat, and, finally, the careful avoidance of discomfort. They widening valuing out to appreciating. The gratitude that follows from appreciative eating, the authors contend, is not an emotion hidden inside a person, but a relational engagement. Finally, the conclusion comes back to the knowledge politics of this book. Attending to material and semiotic untranslatables does not enclose people and their words in separate cages. Instead, only by caring for equivocations may we stop distantiating ourselves from them and hope to engage in conversations.