"Contaminazioni e consapevolezze mediate in Carne di Ruth Ozeki"

The interconnections of food-related hazards and effective risk communication have progressively been included in cogent critical debates. A large number of recent studies have illustrated how the mass media play a significant role in the (mis)perception of risks and the diffusion of “food scares”, which may determine irrational and unjustified consumer behavior. The special status granted to risk communication depends on the globalized nature of the published or broadcasted information: the whole world is involved in the potential dangerous situation at stake, which is in fact mediated and thus subject to alterations and disproportionate amplifications. By contrast, the non-dialogic nature of the mass-broadcasted catastrophic news may also permit the agents responsible for that very risk to become the source of the message, oftentimes with the clear intention to minimize (or deny) health hazards and reduce economic losses. This is the case depicted in Ruth Ozeki’s semi-autobiographical novel My Year of Meats (1998), which focuses on unhealthy practices and fake behavior of both corporate agribusiness and globalized media. By conflating beef meat with human flesh and woman with nature, the novel offers an exploration of issues such as minority identity re/production, cultural authenticity, racial justice, and heteronormativity, while dissecting a variation of processes of nature embodiments. Drawing on Stacy Alaimo’s concept of “trans-corporeality” (2008), “a conceptual descriptor for the flows of substances and discourses across the bodies” (Iovino 2011: 3) I explore Ozeki’s skills in the reconfiguration of the boundaries between the human and the environment.