Fellows

Eating and Being Eaten. Death, animals and Eating in the work of Elias Canetti

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Among the major themes of this study are questions regarding contemporary manifestations of power that are founded upon elementary practices of food consumption, as illustrated by Elias Canetti in his study Crowds and Power. These metabolic systems of power may also be understood as regulatory systems of hospitality or inhospitality, and may thus be discussed as socio-cultural processes of translation within the framework of contemporary migration research. Issues of food and migration are as closely intertwined as they are topical. Yet only in the last decade have the two been considered as joint areas of research within the field of Cultural History and Theory. This project aims at providing a historical and topical analysis of the correlation between food and migration, which has so far only been rudimentarily explored, in order to broaden the scientific perspectives of both areas of research.

CV

Initially, Nikolina Skenderija-Bohnet studied German philology in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she also worked as a film and theater actress. She then went on to study German Literature at the Humboldt University of Berlin and received her B.A. in 2012, examining Peter Handke’s intellectual commitment for Serbia. Subsequently, she pursued an M.A. in Cultural History and Theory, also at the Humboldt University of Berlin. During her studies, she served as a student assistant in the field of Cultural History. She developed a particular interest in the topic of food, and in 2016, she defended her M.A. thesis about food and migration, in which she intensified her involvement with Elias Canetti’s cultural anthropology in Crowds and Power. Since July 2016, she has been working on expanding her M.A. research into a dissertation project with the title Eating and Being Eaten. Death, animals and Eating in the work of Elias Canetti.