Igniting food assemblages in Sri Lanka: Ritual cooking to regenerate the world and interrelations

Abstract

Food, human beings, ritual events and the world exchange components while their interaction alters their heterogeneous constitution as an assemblage. I intend to revise and vitalise assemblage theory by foregrounding the role fire plays in shaping exchange and transformation by the very process of ‘cooking’. I elaborate these modifications and alchemic transformations of existing theory by exploring the ritual cooking of coconut milk and the offerings made in a harvest rite in Sri Lanka. The offerings of coconuts enable participants to transfer merits as well as to purify themselves in this surrogate self-sacrifice while reconfiguring the positions within the cosmology. The boiling over of coconut milk acts as a centripetal force around which the ritual evolves, drawing together spectators, historical origins, myths, actions and intentionalities. Heated by fire, the ritual ‘cooks’ these components, from which emerge renewed assemblages of the world, human beings and food. Hence, ritual cooking of food becomes an allegorical materialisation of a ‘cooking’ of the world and interrelationships.

The Transformative Power of Food: The “Milk Mothers” in Sri Lankan Buddhism

“…The origin of the name milk mother may be unclear, but it provides a clue to how the frame, which is crucial for the linking of the women's identities, is constructed. 1 An exception is a number of anthropological studies on food: Beck 1969, Nichter 1987, Nordstrom 1989, Ladwig 2012, and more specifically for Sri Lanka, Kapferer 1997and van Daele (2018, 2017, 2013a, 2013b. 4 See Langer 2007, 6-7 for a more detailed description.…”

“…One of my informants explained to me that kiribat is often cut into diamond shapes as it is aesthetically more pleasing. 20 Women's role in food distribution has received some attention from anthropologists (Van Esterik 1982, Van Esterik 1985, Janowski and Kerlogue 2007, Ladwig 2012, Van Daele 2013a, but with the exception of Gombrich 1971 and van Daele 2013a, these studies mostly concentrate on Thailand and Laos, and look at the dynamics of the ritual economy and gift exchange in a specific context. 21 For most events labour is provided by family, neighbours and friends, who expect that their favour will be returned.…”

“…Gombrich (1971) wrote a short article on the topic andObeyesekere (1984, 294) devotes just one paragraph of his impressive volume on the Cult of the goddess Pattini to the ritual.More recentlyVan Daele (2013a, 2013b, 2017 wrote extensively on milk, milk rice and the milk boiling ceremony in Sri Lanka but does not engage with the milk mothers.…”

Entangled Assemblages

“…Hence, scale itself shifts since the size, magnitude, and scope of agency in an emergent state of affairs are all parts of its becoming. We thus have a bubbling topology of entities engaged in the ‘cooking’ of life (Van Daele, 2013 ), unlike the flat topology of ANT.…”

“… 7 The example opens up a more alchemical rendering of assemblage theory that I have introduced and elaborated elsewhere (Van Daele, 2013 ). …”