DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2023.1.5| TAVAKOLI: BUTTA LA PASTICHE!_ INSIGHTOUT 1(2023) 36hetics or affect rather than their materialoutput—allows for an exploration of howefforts to protect the local instead come toreassert and reify the national without cynically reducing such technological systemsto the result of, at best, false consciousnessor, at worst, outright chauvinism.I don’t mean to say that we are not at risk of feeding nationalism on a diet of protected food. Indeed,I would like to suggest that the danger of feeding nationalism is greater for the fact that it can be bornout of—as Camp would indicate—“harmless fun”.A Race to the FinishEnding his recitation of 14th century poetry, Cecchiniaddresses his audience directly with an urgent message.“In a world ever more filled with supermarkets”,he says from behind a butcher’s block topped with astomach, a liver, and a bone saw,“and with butcherswho are practically considered a race in extinction,and perhaps they actually are, I am convinced thatbutchers instead are actually the most delicate ringin the food chain, the most delicate link[…] But I amhere as well to tell you that I do not want my worldto end. I am here to tell you that butchers are an essential part in the world of food. They are my race.”15ciotechnical systems affords the inclusion of a kind ofdangerous politics stripped of its own warning signs.There is an irony to Cecchini’s verse of choice. Foundat the end of the fifth canto, the lines are drawn froma response given by the soul of Francesca da Riminito a troubled Dante who asks“in the time of gentlesighs/ with what and in what way did Love allow you/ to recognize your still uncertain longings?”16Thisis the second circle of Hell, containing the souls ofthose damned for their lustfulness. In contrast to itsmodern connotation, to be lustful in the Republic ofFlorence was not to be driven by lecherous desirebut to love recklessly. To put contemporaneous ideasinto contemporary words, what Dante asks the noblewoman is how we know ourselves to be smittenwhen love is a sentiment that exists beyond reason,and with what language we might express affectionwhen, as a feeling, it exists beyond the realm of explanation. My own questions here have not been entirely dissimilar: How do we know ourselves to be advocating for exclusion when our advocacy takes onthe celebratory affect of Camp, and in what mannerdo we dismantle structures that would further facilitate xenophobia and national insularity when commemorating community?To treat categories of race and profession as likekinds, is, needless to say, simplistic if not downrightoffensive. Sliced and arranged between paragraphsof theory in a scholarly paper, the unhomeliness ofthe statement is clear. In a different context, however, the message might be more alluring. Despite itscarnage and its problematic equivalences, Cecchini’s performance is joyous and nonthreatening. Onecould choose to interpretCarne e Spiritoas sayingnothing more than that a local butcher’s craft is onlymeaningful in a specific context. Camp allows affection and danger to exist side by side. Camping our so15See n. 2.16Divine Comedy, 80(see n. 4).
