philosopher's stone - Aura and food production

I’ve just been made aware that my friend Nan started a blog a while back. It looks worth following. Here’s one entry that stood out to me:

Look at this outrageous quote by Heidegger.

Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.

That’s obviously hyperbole.

But the quote reminded me of the book Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Pollan is an excellent writer and describes the processes of modern food production. He tries to make a point that our relation to food and how it’s grown, processed, harvested, and what kinds are eaten in the modern world has serious social, economic, political, ethical, implications.

The first time I read the book was for an environmental phil class. I wanted to write a paper on the German Jewish cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s notion of aura in works of art and food.