Language Trails: ‘Lekker’ and Its Pleasures

Language in Practice

If Strathern asks about ‘what to count as cutting’, she is not just talking to me. Her conversation is also with the all too strong remnants of an anthropological tradition in which singular grids were crafted as tools for comparison. There were numerical grids that allowed for the specification of people’s height, the number of their offspring, the amounts they ate, and so on. There were also verbal grids stipulated by anthropological theory: patrilineal/matrilineal, raw/cooked, animism/totemism, nature/culture, and so on. Whatever the differences between them, numerical yardsticks as well as structuralist tables built on and fuelled the dream that some singular theoretical apparatus might be suitable for knowing everyone. It is in contrast with this universalist ethos that Strathern insists on idiomatic specificities. If different people order the world in different ways, anthropologists would do well to not explain a whole range of ‘others’ (Melanesian, Amerindian, etc.) in ‘our’ (Euro-American) terms. Rather than against a fixed standard, comparison is better done by moving between sites. But which sites? These may be large aggregates, such as, indeed, Melanesian, Amerindian and Euro-American peoples. However, Strathern also compares and contrasts people on the coast and people in the hills of Papua New Guinea; or ‘real Elmdon’ and ‘newcomers’ in a tiny English village in northwest Essex. Just like fractal images, she argues, cultural difference maintains a similar degree of complexity at every level of amplification. Accordingly, at every level of amplification again, there may be differences as to what counts as ‘cutting’. ²

If I, in my turn, suggest that it would be interesting to ‘compare practices of cutting’, I am not just talking to Strathern. Instead, this particular proposal is informed by my aspiration to escape from the obsession with knowledge and epistemology that haunts Western philosophy. This obsession both depends on and reinforces a split between knowing subjects and objects being known. There are many variants. In one of these, knowing subjects, if only they stick to proper methods that bracket their subjectivities, are able to make faithful representations of the objects they seek to know. In another, observational categories (yardsticks, words) irredeemably stand between subjects and objects of knowledge, so that, however hard the subjects try, the objects remain out of reach, on their own (an sich). Now Strathern may bring these epistemological theories home and call both of them, as well as the back and forth movements between them, Euro-American (e.g. in Strathern, 2002). But is it also possible to stop moving between them and escape from their combined theoretical hold? In trying to do this, it helps to refrain from focusing on diverse modes of apprehending (in which a subject knows an object) and instead investigate knowledge practices (in which people interact with their surroundings). ³ In these practices objects of knowledge appear to be neither given to subjects eager to represent them, nor elusive and on their own. Instead, in laboratories and other research settings, diffuse and messy realities are being manipulated and variously (trans-)formed into objects of knowledge. Bits and pieces of living or dead material may be accelerated or slowed down; enclosed in a cage; injected with drugs; sliced, coloured, put under a microscope. Such active operationalizations do not leave reality untouched, but interfere with it. What is more, in many practices interfering with ‘the object’ is not an inevitable side-effect of knowing, but a goal that is strived after. Take the goings-on in an operation theatre. Various representations (echographies, X-ray pictures, etc.) may hang on the wall, but these are not singularly faithful so much as variously useful (to assess the severity of a deviance, to locate it, etc.). The surgical team does not hope to add another representation to this collection but tries to extract a tumour, insert a bypass, or otherwise act in a way that locally figures as an improvement. Surgical practices do not turn around knowing but around intervening. ⁴ Hence, and against epistemology, my insistence on cutting.

Is it possible to address both of these theoretical concerns and tackle universalism and epistemology in one go? That is my aim as I trace an inconspicuous but characteristic Dutch word between a few of the sites and situations where it is spoken. Lekker.

The sentence is het lekker? may seem easy to understand for those who are familiar with English, even if they speak no Dutch. ‘Is het’ after all, is very similar to ‘is it’. So similar that it is obvious that these two languages are related. In a second instance, however, there is a complication, for what is het?

Het may be food. An example. February 2008. In the kitchen of nursing home Yellow, I ask the cook about the food that he and his colleagues are busy preparing. Is het lekker? He doesn’t look enthusiastic. A few moments earlier he explained that the central kitchen is too small for the many dispersed wards that they cater for. What makes things worse is that he has to work with cheap ingredients – the total sum spent on food in the outfit is ridiculously low. ‘Do you taste it?’ I ask. A wavering sad smile, then a shift to irony. ‘Not if I can avoid it.’ In this particular scene ‘is het lekker?’ asks about the food and this ‘het’ is not particularly lekker. But what does that mean? As I write in English, I am inclined to translate this particular ‘lekker’ into the English word tasty. An adjective. The predicate of a noun. Food evaluated.

But het may also be the activity, eating. March 2008. Nursing home Blue, living room. Mrs Sanders is crying. She gets up from the couch where she was seated. Looks bewildered. Starts to wander about. ‘Hey, Mrs Sanders,’ Natasha says in a soothing tone, approaching her. One of Natasha’s hands moves to Mrs Sanders’ shoulder, the other to her arm. ‘What’s going on?’ Mrs Sanders wants to go home. She’s done here. And at home her mother is waiting for her. It is not good to let her mother wait for so long. Natasha walks with Mrs Sanders up the corridor. ‘But you know what,’ she says after a few steps, ‘we will be eating soon. And we have counted on you, you know.’ There is not a lot to do for the inhabitants of the nursing home. A bit of gymnastics – for those who are able to move. Some television – but who can still follow that? Singing old songs – for half an hour or so. Breakfast, coffee, lunch, tea, the evening meal – and a drink of juice a few times in between. Moments of eating and drinking mark the day. Make the day. ‘Shall we walk to the table, now?’ Natasha tries, ‘Come on. Dan gaan we lekker eten’. Then we go and eat – lekker. Here the lekker does not specify the food. It denotes the activity, eating. In English this activity would not be called tasty, instead it might be called pleasant.

Mrs Sanders and the others are sitting around the dinner table. The new ambiance protocol stipulates that the living room should be kept quiet over dinner, that it should not be open to passers-by. ⁵ But sometimes people still walk in. A care assistant who is late because she had to fetch something, or a doctor who has looked in on a bedridden person and who takes the opportunity to show her face in the living room. Today the head nurse suddenly appears. (To support the staff on duty? To inspect them?) Approaching the table that Mrs Sanders shares with three other ladies, she asks, loud and clearly: ‘Is het lekker, dames?’ Here, the ‘het’ is ambiguous. It may be the substance, the food, but it may also be the activity, the eating. ‘Ja, heel lekker’ (Yes, very lekker) answers Mrs Sanders, who by now is calm again. She radiates gratitude. So, too, does her neighbour Mrs Klaver, who adds: ‘We worden zo verwend!’ (We are being truly pampered!) It is all very good. The chewing, the chatting, the sitting together at the dinner table. The indulgence of not having to do the care work yourself, the luxury of being taken care of. The satisfaction of a full stomach.

Bodily Responsiveness

At this point we hit upon a second, related but different, set of theoretical concerns. Once more they have to do with language. This time the issue is neither to underline that meanings may vary from one place to another, nor to insist that words may be part of the action. This time the issue has to do with the way language relates to the nature/culture divide. Let me give you the feminist version. In the 1970s it was a prominent feminist concern that ‘women’ were all too easily equated with nature (wild, irrational) and ‘men’ with culture (controlled, rational). In the sciences, for instance, ‘women’s’ activities were explained by causal physical processes, while ‘men’s’ minds seemed to somehow allow them the freedom to overcome such determinism. Various anthropologists suggested that the women/nature, men/culture equation was not so much a sexist specificity of the Western tradition but rather a more widely spread ruse of patriarchy. They presented ethnographic studies that showed how it fitted their fields. Not so Strathern. Here, as elsewhere, she refused universally applicable yardsticks and theoretical tools. Hence, her contribution to the debate was to lay out that the Hagen in Papua New Guinea had no nature and no culture. They made quite different divisions. ⁹

When fairly soon after its publication I happened to read No Nature, No Culture: The Hagen Case, I immediately loved it. But rather than being impressed by ‘their’ being different, I was seduced by ‘their’ being interesting. Since ‘our’ theoretical terms were heavy with sexism, any possible inspiration for rethinking them was welcome. Hence my reading: if the Hagen had no nature and no culture, then why should ‘we’? Strathern insisted that the nature/culture divide was not universal; I read that it was not self-evident. With some effort it might yet be possible to also describe ‘our’ practices without reiterating this divide. ¹⁰

Back to nursing home Blue. Remember the opening scene. As Sandra carefully places the spoon on his tongue, Mr Grevers gobbles up the mashed mixture of meat, potatoes and beans. ‘Is het lekker?’ Sandra asks. What is going on here? Mr Grevers is being fed as he has lost the ability to feed himself. His food is mashed for him in the kitchen since he cannot chew it properly, or sometimes forgets to do so. If it were not viscous and smooth, he would not be able to swallow properly and might choke on it. That I cannot read his face may also be related to the dementia that plagues him. He hardly ever talks and if he does, nobody quite understands him. All in all, then, when Sandra asks Is het lekker? this cannot be because she expects an answer. ¹¹ Her question is not an inquiry, it is a contribution. The hope is that this friendly question, asked in a caring tone, may yet evoke appreciation. Likewise with the head nurse. Even if Mrs Sanders and Mrs Klaver are perfectly capable of responding to this particular question, when the head nurse ask Is het lekker? she is likewise not probing for facts. Her question rather resembles laying a hand on someone’s shoulder. It is caring.

In Dutch dieting, as in many other places, the nature/culture divide is not just heavy with sexism. It also impedes care. For calling upon wilful minds to control bodies deemed to be self-indulgent by nature casts eating as a sin, a guilty kind of greed, that is best done quickly and got over with. It blocks pleasure. To dream up pre-linguistic bodies that would elude culture-imposed rules if only they were left alone is to endorse neglect. ¹⁷ Hence, it is more promising to seek altogether different ways of relating words and bodily pleasure. This is where lekker comes in. For in practice this word tends to mess up the nature/culture divide. It may help to cultivate bodies and to generate pleasure. No, not just frame pleasure, generate it. Asking is het lekker? may have bodily effects. When you calmly and caringly ask each other and yourself is het lekker? appreciation is encouraged. And who knows (this, at least, is the hope that informs Annette’s counselling practice), if you allow yourself to be affected, if you are attentive to what you eat, lekker eten may yet come to give you satisfaction.

Wholes versus Trails

The third theoretical issue that I want to address has to do with the connectivity of language. How do the words and sentences that are being spoken or written, as a part of diverse practices, relate? For a long time language figured as a model of coherence. Utterances (paroles – in French) were explained by the language (the langue) that made them possible, while the regularities of the language, in their turn, could be learned from adding together its spoken and written instances. This model not only inspired parts of linguistics but also acted as a backdrop for a range of theories in the social sciences that, by analogy, explained social events by alluding to the whole of which they formed a part (be it a culture, a society or a social system), while this whole, in its turn, could be known by studying its instances. Strathern has been critical of this tactic. Committing themselves to holism and coherence is one of the ways in which the social sciences impose a Euro-American scheme on the rest of the world as they make it understandable within their theoretical repertoires. Strathern has also suggested an alternative. Taking her inspiration from Melanesian figures of relatedness, she has suggested the possibility of what she calls merographic descriptions. Merographic descriptions trace instances that do not form or fit into larger wholes, but may rather be found along trails where links go together with gaps, and similarities hit up against differences. ¹⁸

Earlier my preoccupations were related to, but different from, Strathern’s, but at this point I wholeheartedly follow her guidance. Tracing the term lekker is an interesting case for a merographic exploration. It allows me to talk about all kinds of events so long as the word lekker is spoken or written down there. ¹⁹ Language (or in this case the Dutch language) and its conceptual possibilities do not define these events. An ethnographic investigation is called for. And while I started out in practices to do with eating and drinking, step by wandering step lekker leads us elsewhere.

Nursing home Blue, March 2008. It has rained in the morning, but in the early afternoon the weather clears up. The sun manages to shine between scattered clouds – a bit weak but promising. A care assistant and a trainee set out to take a few of the inhabitants for a walk. One carer is able to either push a person in a wheelchair, or accompany two people who can walk (as she may need to hold them each by the hand). I suggest that I may push a wheelchair too. (Is this an offer or a request? Am I keen to observe this outing, or it is just that I long to get out myself? It is stuffy in the ward.) As they are used to volunteers in home Blue, I am treated as another volunteer and the answer is yes, please, that would be wonderful. Sandra approaches Mrs Klaver and asks if she feels like going out. ‘Wilt u lekker mee gaan wandelen, mevrouw Klaver?’ Would you like to join for a walk?, she asks. But – you have seen it already – there is an added word in the sentence: lekker. Wandelen – going for a walk – may be lekker, too. Sandra makes the prospect of a walk attractive by presenting it as lekker. Mrs Klaver nods, smiles, says ‘yes’ and eagerly cooperates with getting seated when a wheelchair has been fetched for her. As we walk – that is to say, as I walk, pushing her wheelchair over the pavements of the small provincial town where home Blue is located – she repeats time and again how wonderful it is to get out. Thank you, she says. And time and again she also asks: ‘Een lekker zonnetje, vind u niet?’ Since it changes so much the weather is a standard topic for innocent conversations in the Netherlands. And, being rare, the sun is something you always appreciate. It warms your body, it lightens your soul, you may indulge in it. The sun in March, when all of a sudden you are wheeled out of your stuffy nursing home, is lekker.

Which Language?

To elucidate the term lekker I did not write about ‘Dutch’ in the abstract but about particular instances where this word is spoken. Words, after all, are not spoken in language but in daily life practices. Behind the famous Chinese greeting have you eaten today? lie many famines. ²⁷ The question is het lekker? fits sites and situations that give occasion for bodily pleasure. However, even though I did not write about the Dutch language, I have so far restricted my inquiries to settings where the language spoken is Dutch. What about tracing lekker into other languages?

In German there is a word that sounds like the Dutch lekker, its spelling is just a little different: lecker. Lecker relates to eating and drinking and has not spread out to other bodily appreciations. This means that native speakers of German who are learning Dutch tend to experience (hilarious, alienating) moments of disconcertment when they come across the term lekker. How can a sweater or a shower be lecker/lekker? They are so funny, these Dutch, they are like small children who put everything in their mouths! ²⁸ In Swedish, again, there is a word that sounds more or less the same. It is spelled läcker. This word does not stand for mmm or yummy during a meal, but it may be used for food on the table that looks good, det ser läckert ut, and after a meal it may be an appreciative conclusion, det var läckert. But neither of these sentences is frequently spoken. Läcker is an unusual word that stresses the exceptional character of what it values. ²⁹

By laying this out, Strathern effectively underscores the provinciality of asking social science questions that relate food and bodily pleasure. I readily agree. The present article forms a case in point. My curiosity about lekker is informed by such things as Western philosophy and its epistemological obsessions; sexism and nature/culture divisions; the ways in which nutrition science singles out nutrients and calories as objects of knowledge and thus educates dieticians; but also the interesting alternatives to all this, such as those of Annie M.G. Schmidt and my resourceful informants in various health care settings. Why should I try to elevate concerns that rise from this local nexus into big theory and burden everybody else with my problems? ³² Strathern is right: it is important to safeguard ‘the others’ from ‘our’ concerns. They do not deserve to be studied on ‘our’ terms but on ‘their’ terms. However, I am still left with a question. What if the author is Hagen? In writing the present text I have put myself in a minute (but for that no less illuminating) variant of that position. For as I trace a word from my native Dutch tongue in a text that I painstakingly write in English, then what am I: them or us?

I am not just them, because writing makes me one of us. But I am not quite us if only because, by lack of practice, I lack language. Which word, for instance, to use in English where in Dutch I detected lekker? ³³ I may well think of tasty or pleasant and the dictionary may suggest these as proper translations, but if I were to use those terms in my texts, native speakers of English would find them artificial. This is not how we talk! In order to write in a convincing way, knowing ‘the language’ is not enough. I need to know how speakers of English would talk in analogous sites. But which speakers of English: those in the US, Australia, India? And what are analogous sites: nursing homes, home-based dementia care, dinner tables? I consult a colleague who knows about health care in Britain. She tells me that in situations where in home Blue or Yellow I heard is het lekker?, a British care assistant or head nurse would most probably ask Is it nice? ³⁴ Does that mean I should translate lekker as nice? It fits that nice has an ability to flow that is quite like that of lekker. Food is nice, the activity of eating is nice, and so are lots of other entities and activities. However, there is also a betrayal that hurts: nice evokes being nice. And that stands in a stark contrast to lekker stout. What would get lost, then, is the transgressive undertone, the naughtiness, of the bodily pleasures evoked by lekker.

Overall, to my taste, nice is too soft. It has no bite. It doesn’t quite fit the ambiance of the nursing home care that I witnessed, let alone the feel of the various lekker trails that I went on to follow. But, at least as important, the theoretical concerns that I sought to bring out in this text would not work if I would babble on about nice. Argh! I wonder how and where I acquired my sensuous reservations against this term. Maybe they transpired from the English language novels or ethnographies that I have been reading. ³⁵ Or maybe it happened in the summer of 1978 when, walking in the Lake District, my travel companion and I deserted our soaked tent for a night and stayed over in a nice pink and fluffy bed-and-breakfast with nylon sheets. ³⁶ However this may be, nice does not seem capable of carrying the theoretical insights about language, bodies and pleasure in practice that I related above. These rather depend on lekker and the unique combination of sites and situations where it is being used. What to do? Gradually I come to wonder if it might not be possible to keep on using lekker when writing in English. Why not import this term into the imperialist tongue? It might be an enrichment.

January 2012. The internet. I am surfing to find out if someone has already tried to play with lekker in English. I hit upon the claim that yoga is delicious. It emerges on a variety of websites and there is even a blog called yoga delicious. I quote: ‘When one of my amazing teachers was pleased with the effort and concentration of our poses she would say, “delicious”. What a great way to explain yoga. It is delicious. You take it in, you taste it, you swallow and digest it, and then it changes you from the inside out. Just like food.’ ³⁷ Here, then, the term ‘delicious’ – another possible translation of lekker – travels from enjoyable food to the quite different bodily pleasures of moving, stretching, sensing, breathing. The metaphorical character of the shift is still explicit. It is made articulate and productive. It changes you from the inside out. That comes close to what I am after.

Another finding, why didn’t I think of it? Importing lekker into English has already happened. Not in theory, though, but in South Africa. The most easily visible trace of this (to someone who surfs the internet while physically located in Amsterdam) is that it is used in the widespread slogan local is lekker. I quote: ‘To [those who read this and who are] non-South Africans, “Local is Lekker” is a common phrase meaning the things close to home are often the best. Lekker (adjective) actually means delicious, but is also used to describe something as nice, cool, awesome and many more similar descriptions. The best sounding English word that sounds like lekker is lacquer (as in lacquer thinners), or if you prefer the phonetic spelling (lăk’Ər). The most important part is the rolling “r” at the end … lekk-irrrr.’ ³⁸ In Dutch, let me tell you, there is no rolling r. In Afrikaans, the creole language with a largely Dutch ancestry that is spoken by most white Afrikaner boer as well as many so-called coloured people, there is. The rolling r marks the fact that Dutch and Afrikaans are different. But in both languages the word lekker denotes and evokes a wide range of sensuous appreciations, while connecting these to one another, in a way that is not quite available in English. ³⁹

To Conclude

Marilyn Strathern has written a great deal. But this is not the only reason why I did not seek to give an overview of her work. There is something else: her work defies overviews. It is not a whole. Following a few merographic trails through it just seemed to be more fitting. Accordingly, there is a lot of ‘Strathern’ that the present article does not touch upon. Concerns to do with university accounting systems; gifts; kinship and new reproductive technologies; bilums (a Melanesian netted bag described with a superb eye for socio-materialities: ‘The bag that bulges across a woman’s back curves over it as her belly curves in the front’; Strathern, 2002: 95). Rather than trying to encompass everything, I have related to just a few of Strathern’s concerns. These have all to do with language. In addressing them I have not been faithful to Strathern, but I have turned, twisted or run with her work in order to tackle some concerns of my own. As a case I explored a range of events where the word lekker was written or, more often, spoken. But of that case I offered no overview either. Merographic research cannot fully map any domain (be it theoretical or empirical) because it is not into mapping domains. ⁴⁷ Instead it follows trails that never end. Thus, it is bound by practical limits, such as research time and publication outlets. But most importantly, in this kind of research cases are delineated by the concerns that drive the inquiry and that, in their turn, they help to transform. As one follows merographic trails, what counts for most is not finding an end but making a point. It is to allow a concern and a case to mutually shape and reiteratively fine-tune each other.

In the present article I may have overdone this, since I have made no less than four points. Here is a recap. One, words participate in practices where they may refer to entities or activities, but they may also float around and be part of the action. Here lekker is a case in point: in saying it out loud, one may inform after a fact or act out one’s appreciation. Two, words do not necessarily stand in contrast to bodies, which elude them, or which they seek to catch. Instead, bodies may be intertwined with talk. Hence, asking ‘Is het lekker?’ may help to evoke pleasure and generate appreciation. Three, language does not form a coherent system that either helps to order, or provides an orderly model for, cultural or societal wholes. Instead, words move between sites and situations, along iterative trails, fluidly changing along the way. On the trails that the word lekker travels it gets involved with all kinds of bodily pleasures. It connotes these with the pleasures involved in eating and drinking, while tinging them with a touch of transgression. Four, it makes a difference which language, and thus whose language, is being used: our language or theirs. But as I write about lekker in English, it is not obvious what our language is and what is theirs. So I wonder if I might solve our/their – my – problems of translation by taking lekker along with me as I move from Dutch to English. This is not so strange. After all, in the course of its imperialist adventures English has absorbed many crumbs from other languages. However, transplanting individual words does not solve the looming question as to the terms on which they might access the so-called international academic conversation that we (who?) are so busily having.

There it is. The end presents itself. For now I have said what I had to say. Along the way, in order to bring out half-hidden resonances, commonalities and frictions, I have put a lot of effort into making things explicit (which is what Euro-Americans do, says Strathern). At the same time, in drafting this text I have sought to explore and strengthen a relation between persons (if not quite a Melanesian relation). Persons? No, not whole persons. But not fragments thereof either. The link was rather between authors – ‘Strathern’ and ‘me’ (the personal pronoun that indexes the author of the present text). ⁴⁸ Which raises a final question. What are the kinds of relations the academic tradition permits between those figures that it performs as authors? Textbooks still endorse ancestral lines that come with quasi-genetic myths of influence. Schools of thought celebrate variations on brotherly solidarity and similarity. Here, the biggest man may become the icon of the collective, and then his name covers all the others. The favoured mode of handling differences is by and large the fight. In fights, that are called arguments, authors relate to each other critically. ⁴⁹ And then what? In the present text (inspired by how she handles relations with other authors) I have tried to write with Strathern. So what kind of relation is that? Now that overly idyllic dreams of feminist unity have waned, sisterhood might perhaps be mobilized as a model here. Such sisterhood would then evoke relations of diffraction. ⁵⁰ The investment is not in emulating – that is, in copying or fighting. Instead, those diffracting each other’s work move between respecting and transforming. There is playing, turning, digesting, tickling, twisting, endorsing, asking, teasing, stretching, caring. And having tried to write with Strathern in this vein, I wonder if the diffractions of sisterhood might also offer inspiration for experimenting with more imaginative and spirited relations between them and us.