The Podcast for Social Research · The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Podcast for Social Research, Episode 87: Deviant Matter

·1 hr 30 min·1 clip

Food studies allow us to diffract into race, sexuality, carcerality, state control, and the politics of the everyday body.

Kila Wazana Tompkins discusses her book Deviant Matter at Brooklyn Institute with artist Sarah Klugage. Tompkins traces how ferment, intoxicants, jelly, and rot have become affiliated with marginalized communities and state control. She connects historical regulation (Food and Drug Act 1906, cocaine criminalization) to contemporary carceral systems, showing how the state uses food and matter to manage bodies and energy. She argues food and eating become alibis for racial violence while also becoming sites of queer, anti-capitalist resistance. Sarah creates edible artworks (jelly butts) that embody these theoretical arguments in sensory form. The discussion is scholarly but playful, theoretical but grounded in embodied practice.

As heard by us

Jelly, rot, and plantation history anchor a sharp discussion of race, taste, and the senses.

Rebecca Ariel Port's framing keeps Kila Wazana Tompkins' Deviant Matter grounded in the body: jelly, rot, hygiene, intoxicants, and the sensory side of race and capital.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want jelly, plantation history, and race theory in one dense conversation.

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