'La politica è servita': cibi mostruosi e discorsi populisti

It would be tempting to discount conspiratorial tales of global corporate elites to offer ‘monstrous food’ to consumers as simply electoral click-bait from populist politicians who have made their fortunes on extreme statements. We argue that such appeals – and their symbolic objects – need to be taken seriously for they speak to a much wider set of anxieties among European publics. The spectre of ‘normal’ meat being forcibly replaced by insects may be a catchy electoral ‘fetish’ but, we argue, it is much more than that. Specific objects, just like specific bodies, are central to understanding the politics of populist resentment, as recent work in cultural and political geography on affective geopolitics has emphasized. Just like migrant bodies that have become the symbols of alterity ‘out of place’ in right-populist discourses, food is increasingly taking on a similar function.