Would a Potato by Any Other Name Taste as Good?: A Reader Response Analysis to Gallagher and Greenblatt's "The Potato in the Materialist Imagination"

The punny sense of humor of Greenblatt and Gallagher is evident in this chapter of Practicing New Historicism, and I have to sometimes wonder with such a tone and playfulness with words (even including “matter and antimatter”) just how serious the authors intend this analysis to be.

As a technical editor, I shuddered at the lack of concern for widows and orphans (typographical terms, not actual poor starving people) on page 111, so that may have also caused me to think G & B were acting somewhat whimsically and not taking their subject too seriously.

I would never have thought so many potato references and such spud verbiage could be used together like that in a serious analysis (eg. tuberous, sprouted, unearthed), and I was quickly craving this strangely fascinating staff of life until coming upon it’s relation to the Host and the body of Christ.

I was surprised both by their choice of analyzing potatoes in relation to the Host, but also that potatoes were much later to our history than I imagined, especially since I’m part of a group (the Society for Creative Anachronism) which studies Medieval history extensively.

This idea that potatoes are poor food and much less preferable to wheat and bread is interesting. I am reminded of learning recently that lobsters were originally considered only fit for the poor and prisoners (granted, they were often nastily processed), and parasites of the sea not fit for consumption by anyone but the starving.

That people consisted primarily on one food, however, does make the more various minerals and the protein in whole-grain bread preferable as sustenance to those in potatoes. That this sense of only the poor, unwashed, and uncultured being “potato people” and thus the English, of course, thought of the Irish is also interesting, especially to go so far as to portray them as living underground like their potatoes.

This culture vs. non-culture and wheat vs. potato makes sense to then become Host vs. potato, but how is it that it was Ireland, a country which was mostly potato farms, it seems, had the wheat to use in regular making the Host for its masses of inhabitants? Or was it often reserved for a spiritual purpose? Or maybe just uncommon COMPARED TO potatoes?

G & B mention that England saw them at this point as being delusional for their faith, having rebelled from Catholicism to the somewhat confusing protestant Church of Enlgand. In a similar fashion to how, it seems, the British are expected to be part of that church, it was not many years ago (perhaps 1950s) before the Swedish protestant church stopped automatically viewing and treating its citizens as members upon birth.

Utah being so close to Idaho, and my paternal grandmother being from there (she needed groceries if she didn’t have about six different forms of potaotes in her house), it is hard to see the tuber as being this nasty, dirty, “hog feed.” Granted, my British mother usually preferred yams (which we should technically call sweet potatoes for the yam is African and different) far above the common potat—except, of course, for fish ‘n’ chips.


It was interesting that the concern over the idea of feeding the poor with potatoes causing the English poor to then be labeled as such, perhaps this was exacerbated by the idea of English being lumped together with Irish in such a categorization and eating such a lowly food.

The idea of taking the idea that we are what we eat to such a level as showing status and worth as people may seem extreme, but our American culture has a whole social structure which revolves around the ability to afford or even get into posh restaurants where the movie stars and others are society has concluded are elite dine.

I like Bataille’s idea that waste and wealth are indistinguishable, especially in relation to the “Englishman’s garbage” Raleigh threw away. That statement is thought-provoking and reminds me of my paper which emphasizes how people who are different, such as Stevie, are often thrown away because their true and unusual usefulness to society, their true beauty, is not seen.


Vocabulary Words:

Remind me what G & B are referring to by the “elusive object” in chapter 3.

Ur-food (like urbane food?)

Autochthonous

Chimerical spirituality

Transmogrified (Changed from one physical thing into its opposite?)