Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot — a Talk, and Tasting, with Kyla Tompkins

The words we use for unpleasant substances are often the very same we apply to social deviation: rot, froth, ferment, intoxication. For Kyla Tompkins, scholar, food writer, and author of Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot (NYU), the parallel vocabularies of “deviant matter” and deviant behavior point to the shared history of microbial and social hygiene. How we react to food and other organic matter, in other words, has a lot to do with how the biopolitical state, under capitalism, regulates society, foodstuffs, and the individual body. Yet, deviant matter, precisely because it unsettles, offers new and visceral ways of conceptualizing and experiencing transgression, resistance, and play. Deviance, after all, is the “locus classicus of queer and other minoritarian life.”

Join us Friday, March 7th, for a multi-sensory talk, and tasting, with Kyla Tompkins, Dilettante Army Editor-in-Chief Sara Clugage, and BISR faculty Rebecca Ariel Porte, as we explore the social history and transgressive power of four deviant materials—rot, ferment, jelly, and intoxicants—while sampling the substance that’s perhaps the most unruly of all: Jell-O. We will ask: How can we understand the historic interrelationship of state formation, industrialization, and the cultivation and projection of values regarding food production, preparation, and consumption? How do norms surrounding food—what’s good or bad, palatable or abhorrent—relate to how we judge and categorize peoples and behaviors, from cis-white normativity to Black, Brown, and queer deviancy? What comes from a revaluation of deviant matter, of things that mutate, stink, slither, and bubble? With Jell-O in hand, how can we think about the erotics and sublimity of viscous material? Can deviant materials be a source not only of pleasure, but also of revolutionary feeling and vision?

The event is free to attend, with suggested $10 donation. Copies of Deviant Matter will be available for purchase. Beer, wine, seltzer (bubbles!), and snacks (alongside Jell-O) will be served. Please RSVP below.

“Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot — a Talk, and Tasting, with Kyla Tompkins” is being held in partnership with Dilettante Army, an online journal for critique, feminism, visual culture, and writing that expands boundaries.

Event Schedule

Friday, 7:00pm ET
March 07, 2025

$0.00

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