Disrupting Maize Food, Biotechnology and Nationalism in Contemporary Mexico [Paperback]

The problem is complex and the authors ideas are stimulating. Theres no doubt, as the history shows, that growing and eating maize became a political objective for Mexican postrevolutionary governments, and that a sacredness of maize was somehow crafted to achieve that goal.Disrupting Maize offers a detailed and innovative examination of the ways in which food both becomes heritage and a focus of political activism. In 2010, Mexican cuisine was added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage. M?ndez Cota maps the complex and dynamic field of dissent and disagreements that challenged the nationalizing narrative represented by the listing. In doing so, she argues that diversity and dissent is an ongoing and integral aspect of intangible heritage. In illustrating the ways in which intangible heritage interconnects with disputes over knowledge production and biotechnological developments and applications the book provides a rare and sophisticated glimpse into the political and cultural complexity of 'living heritage.Contamination is present in all sovereignty and identity is always necessarily transgenic.? In the maize wars nationalist desire crosses biotechnical critique on its way to a posited refoundation that cannot know its limits and confuses its core. ?This fascinating book disrupts biological disruption itself while refusing to give in to endemic cultural moralisms. Its wager for democracy actively dislocates the compromised nostalgia of some emancipatory narratives while resisting the calculation of the future.Theorizes the disruptions precipitated by corporate agricultural biotechnology in Mexican cultural politics.Disrupting Maize undertakes a critical interrogation of maize, the staple food and symbol of the Mexican nation. As the centre of origin and genetic diversification of maize, the Mexican territory is regarded today as being under threat of irreversible contamination by genetically engineered maize, an imported biotechnological product. l³"