Still Life, With Lobster

On March 1, 2018, the Swiss government enacted a ban against boiling live lobsters to death. This article explores the significance of that ban: Is it a political statement, a symbolic gesture, or both? In asking those questions, the author seeks to understand what kind of food politics are at play when a country bans a cooking technique. Drawing upon such seemingly disparate works as David Foster Wallace's landmark essay “Consider the Lobster,” the author's own ethnographic fieldwork in an haute cuisine restaurant in Europe, and the teachings of the French existentialist philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, this article argues that regulations over how we kill the animals that will become our food are ripe for reconsideration.