Hunger is a Political Condition

I've just turned in the first 10 (really 12) pages of my thesis, and I'm feeling excited about this work for the next few months!  I think that I outlined my argument pretty well, stated why this project is important, and even managed to define and not-define affect to my liking at this stage in the game.

So, now that I've been able to put words around my general ideas and make the necessary connections between subjectivity, technology, and citizenship, I'm about to delve into these issues more deeply.  One thing that I came across this week is this statement by James McGovern, representative from Massachusetts (and American University alumnus): "I believe hunger is a political condition. We have the means to solve hunger in America once and for all, but we haven’t mustered the political will to do so. Shame on us for not doing more to end this terrible scourge."  I came across this as I was confirming my graduation date and time because James McGovern is meant to be one of our commencement speakers.  So, I checked out his website to see what he is all about and found this statement in response to the current debates around Food Stamps. Of course, I found an immediate connection with my thesis because this is what I think about 90% of the time nowadays.

Basically, the argument that I am trying to progress in my thesis is that human needs and desires -- physical and bodily needs as well as spiritual and metaphysical needs -- are not separate mind/body needs, but holistic human needs and they are bound up in issues of citizenship.  The issue of hunger in this country, especially poignant as the country is also plagued by severe obesity, is only one example of this relationship.  By looking to address hunger as a singular issue, I believe that politics will continue to fail American citizens because hunger, for me, is not a singular issue and cannot be addressed simply with food stamps.  Obviously, food stamps is a necessary program that will alleviate some of that -- providing food stamps is an essential program, in my opinion, and I fail to understand how people who claim to have values can debate against this program.  But what I mean is that we all know that hunger stems from much more than just lack of food.  I think it stems from all sorts of structural inequalities from unemployment to racism.  Anyway, I guess my point that I'm working out right now is something about how addressing poverty as a purely bodily need and not as a bigger issue perpetuates the structural inequalities that lead to hunger in the first place.

And Science Fiction as a genre is eerily spot on about this assessment.  It's crazy to look at Sci Fi novels from the 1990's that warn against the increased use and distribution of pharmaceutical drugs, for example, and to see how many of those fears are playing out today.  So, I'm taking my cues from Octavia Butler here to learn more about this connection as opposed to the history of political theory or whatever its called.