UC San Diego

This project focuses on discursive formations of race, gender, class, and sexuality within food justice movements as well as these discursive formations within veganism. In particular, I analyze how mainstream food justice movements in San Diego engage in discourses of colorblindness, universalism, individualism, whiteness, and consumption. I also examine how these movements are centered on possessive individualism, or one's capacity to own private property, as the means through which they seek and obtain liberation. Through my participant observation at several San Diego food justice events, I demonstrate that these movements often discursively exclude communities of color and poor communities as its subjects. In addition, I analyze four vegan of color sites: the song "Be Healthy" by the hip hop group Dead Prez, eco-chef Bryant Terry's cookbook Vegan Soul Food, the Vegans of Color blog, and an anthology entitled Sistah Vegan! Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society. Through a cultural studies analysis, I explore the ways in which these sites engage a decolonial, anti- oppressive framework to guide their vegan politics. In this project, I seek to contribute to the works of those who have written about the relationship between race, class, gender, and space, as well as the fields of food studies and ethnic studies, through a critique of food justice movements' reproduction of common sense logics about subjecthood and difference as well as decolonial possibilities within veganism