Fermentation as Metaphor

the greatest promise of metaphorical fermentation is that it generates new forms, which seems very relevant right now in the midst of everything that’s happening during the pandemic when so much has been broken open to reveal the chasms in our society.

So in the cultivation of microorganisms on our food—which is what we’re doing in fermentation—we use the same word, “culture,” to describe the community of bacteria that turn milk into yogurt that we use to describe language, belief systems and the totality of what we’re trying to pass down generation to generation.

the mystical dimension of fermentation: the beauty of the unseen and working with mystery, which you describe as also what appeals to people; the way they tap into that broader unknown with a sense of what’s possible and out there.

Fermentation is ultimately a very hopeful practice because it does not yield immediate gratification. There’s always delayed gratification in fermentation, and so in a quite literal way it’s an investment in the future. If you are despondent and despairing and don’t know if there’s a future, why would you invest your energy into fermenting? It is q... See more

every now and then, I would notice in some article that I was reading, let’s say an article about jazz music, a certain place and time being one of great musical fermentation; I saw references to artistic fermentation; I saw references to spiritual fermentation; I saw references to political fermentation. I learned that the word “fermentation” come... See more

We need bubbliness. We need excitement. We need new ideas. And it’s not that I have any idea what the outcome needs to be. I just know that we can’t keep on doing what we’ve been doing. That we need to shift. We need to adapt because our circumstances are adapting. This is another way in which the metaphor of fermentation really is powerful because... See more

reclaim a relationship, not only with food production, but with traditions and communities and ultimately with the living world through the simple act of fermentation.

this idea of protecting the purity of our society against the contamination of outside ideas is, well, it’s been weaponized really. The way people project fear of the “other” has been such a theme throughout human history. With all these metaphors that we’re picking up from fermentation, we can look and see how they have been applied in our society... See more

For us right now, in this period science has some understanding of what’s going on, but historically fermentation has been such a mystery that it’s been really seen in many contexts as something quite literally divine. And there’s a huge amount of ceremony and ritual organized around fermentation. We can even look at some of the major world religio... See more

I think that many of our biggest problems relate to the ways in which we have become so distanced from our environment.