F R O M T H E T A B L E | Caitlin Morgan

Commensality in Crisis

MA RCH 31, 2 020: B URL I NGT O N, VERMON T One farmer prepares a morning snack and delivers it to
the others to share. During my fieldwork, we stopped one
Last year, as a visiting researcher at Aarhus University in

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morning halfway through a chicken slaughter to rest and re-
Denmark, I gave a guest lecture on commensality for a food cul-
fuel. The slaughter itself was a ritual, a weekly scheduled kill-
ture course. The professor, Susanne Højlund Pedersen, taught
ing of three hundred hens destined for members’ freezers,
in English that day, not only for my benefit but because she
and the break was a way to regather from our respective pla-
said there is no Danish equivalent for the specific, layered
ces in the production line (slaughter, bleeding, defeathering,
meanings of the word commensality. The name invokes not
beheading and dismembering, evisceration, sterilization, bag-
only the practice of sitting down to a shared meal but also the
ging) for dense bread, peanut butter, eggs, honey, and coffee.
feelings that arise from that practice. The physical presence of
We did not sit down together but stood amiably in the dusty
company. The interdependency and reciprocity that can de-
sun.
velop. The community created by shared experience.
Friday distribution is another “coming together” around
In her lead-up to my talk, Susanne spoke about Babette’s
food. Local members arrive in their cars to pick their week’s
Feast. It is a classic story of strictly religious Danes encounter-
supplies and chat with each other and the farmers. Despite
ing the sumptuous, sensual pleasures of French cooking, and
the wide geographic net—some members live nearly an hour
how the sharing of an exquisite meal can change both rela-
away—it is a circling of physical space and community in the
tionships and perspectives.
midst of personal and group food choices.
A good deal of my doctoral research has taken place on
Finally, there is a virtual community in the farm, created
Essex Farm, a medium-sized diversified CSA farm in upstate for their distant members in New York City, who receive pre-
New York, which offered the most interesting empirical infor- packed boxes of food. It is a different relationship, less close,
mation I had to share with the students. The only date that less communal. And yet, members in New York feel very con-
worked for me to visit the class, however, was the day sched- nected to the farm, even those who have never visited it. Every
uled to discuss commensality. Unsure how I would ever con- week, they choose their products, and a few days later unpack
F AL L 2 0 2 0

nect the two, I carefully read their assigned article by Claude a box wafting the aroma of fresh herbs, the damp of washed
Fischler (2011) and mapped the tenants of commensality greens, and the air of the north country.
against my knowledge of the farm. The result was a surprise It is commensality that I think of more than almost any-
46 to me: although not what we normally think about as a shared thing else in the weeks since COVID-19 became a full-blown
meal, the CSA actually represents many elaborated aspects of pandemic. In many ways, my daily life has not changed dra-
G A STR ON OM ICA

commensality. matically. I am writing this from my home desk, slightly less

The students had learned that humans, being social animals, efficiently than if I were at the office, but writing nonetheless.
eat with others. On a deeper level, commensality is about habit- I answer my emails. I exercise. I teach, albeit on Zoom. I
ual sharing, reciprocity, and commitment. From my experience work during the day and relax during the evening. I even see
on the farm, I suggested that these aspects surface not only in my friends, carefully distanced, for strolls around the neigh-
eating food but also in growing it. As Fischler argues, commen- borhood. The most significant difference is that I am not eat-
sality means that food cannot be entirely privatized or commod- ing with anyone other than my spouse. My favorite way to
ified; it is shared, and specific to an experience. Three different unwind is to make a meal or get a drink with my family or
practices on the farm show commensality as we might not nor- close friends. It is in these cozy, intimate moments that I lay
mally conceptualize it. down my efforts—all the ways in which I try to be good,

GASTRONOMICA : THE JOURNAL FOR FOOD STUDIES , VOL . 20, NUMBER 3, PP. 46–47, ISSN 1529-3262, ELECTRONIC ISSN 1533-8622. © 2020 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA . ALL RIGHTS RESERVED . PLEASE DIRECT ALL REQUESTS FOR PERMISSION
TO PHOTOCOPY OR REPRODUCE ARTICLE CONTENT THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS’ S REPRINTS AND PERMISSIONS WEB PAGE, HTTPS:// WWW.UCPRESS.EDU/JOURNALS /REPRINTS -PERMISSIONS . DOI: HTTPS:// DOI .ORG /10.1525/ GFC .2020.20.3.46.

Pigs share a meal.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CAITLIN MORGAN © 2018
productive, healthy, efficient, diplomatic—and relax into the
pleasure of discussing or ignoring life’s vagaries, with people
whom I love. Commensality as an academic idea involves a
shared experience, physical presence, habitual and specific
practices, and interdependent reciprocity. As a lived experi-
ence, it is an emotional and physical relief.
It is just this kind of relief that I need as I shelter-in-place
in my apartment in Vermont, and exactly what is rendered
impossible by social distancing. And so I return to the argu-
ment I made to a class of undergraduates in Aarhus: there are
different ways of expressing and experiencing commensality.
We might find comfort in the things we are still able to share.
Now that I am looking for it, I see all the ways my friends and
family encircle each other with crisis-constrained food. Those
of us who are able offer to grocery shop for those who are
quarantined. My brother sends me photos of his experiments
in vegan sushi. A friend and I subtly try to one-up each other
on how delicious and nourishing our previous night’s dishes
sound to one another. I have begun calling people during
lunch so that we can chat and eat slowly together. My friends
set up video-chat coffee breaks and cocktail hours so that we
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can see each other. Somehow, having something to sip to-
gether is more festive, and perhaps more soothing, than just
talking into our phones.
Last night, I called my parents just as they were sitting
down to eat. Normally, they would ask me to call back later,
but instead they put the phone on speaker and talked with
me and my husband as they ate, and as my husband prepared
our own dinner. I sat in our kitchen, they sat in theirs, my
husband stood and chopped, we sipped wine, the lights
glowed yellow, and fragrant spice filled the air. Although
we spoke at length about coronavirus, the moment was warm
and nearly normal. I felt I could almost touch them with my
voice and the feeling of being together through anything. In
FALL 2020
these and other ways, we can hold on to the importance of
breaking bread together—doing so in isolated places, but not
isolated practice.
47
G A STR ON OM ICA
REFERENCE
Fischler, Claude. “Commensality, Society and Culture.” Social
Science Information 50, no. 3– 4 (September 2011): 528–48.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0539018411413963.