“Do You Eat Pork?”: Religion, Heritage and Culturalization of Citizenship

We are what we eat. But we are also what we eat exclusively, namely what others do not eat or do not want to eat. The consumption of pork is one of the questions that continues to divide the European public, but also certain parts of the Muslim World. Is it European to eat pork and Middle Eastern or Muslim to avoid it? Is it secular, is it Christian? Is it culture, is it heritage? Pork is a material object that enters the physical body of the individual and the political body of the nation while determining its health. It draws the line between those who belong unconditionally and those who belong only conditionally to the nation. In European countries, particularly in France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, there have been heated debates about the consumption of pork and its avoidance in schools and public institutions as a sign of a civilizational divide. In this paper, I will trace the legal and cultural classification of pork as part of laïcité in France and as a kind of national culture in Germany by analyzing public controversies in these two countries over the last decade. The paper aims to show the affective and material dynamics of the increasing culturalization of Christian practices with the simultaneous religionization of people from Middle Eastern backgrounds.