Abstract:
This thesis uses a multifaceted process to engage with the topic of food sovereignty in
California. It employs diverse methods, including critical and creative prose, photography,
autoethnographic mixed media, storytelling and poetry. I am particularly concerned with the
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challenges of approaching food sovereignty, a radical praxis that combines subsistence practices
with anti-capitalist resistance, while in my own "skin," which is thoroughly embedded in white,
urban, middle classed culture and in corltextualizing ecological relationshipslkinships via
cultural, historical and economic trajectories. The project utilizes a processual methodlology
drawing substantially from the work of Brian Massumi to explore these issues through four
creative narrative pieces which coalesce around the elemental metaphors of air, fire, water and
earth. Following Deleuze and Guatarri's concept ofrhizomatic plateaus, the thesis narratives are
comprised of many non-hierarchical layers and can be read from many angles. Each is offered
"in process" rather than as a finished piece, thus practically validating the concept of the ongoing
work of research and suggesting the equally omnipresent possibility of change and mutation in
the formation relationally based knowledges. Cultivating ecological ethic and healing on
multisensory levels, as well as commitment to emergent and re-productivist worldviews are
goals of this project's research.
