Working the rational and the mystical into “superfoods”: a Benjaminian approach

In this paper, I apply Walter Benjamin's concepts "aura" and "wish-image" to explain the cultural making of avocados into a "superfood commodity" in southern Turkey's peasant communities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I employ a cultural-historical analysis to point out how, quickly after being introduced, the tree's leaves were used in folk medicine. As folk medicine, avocado leaf gained cultural importance due to its "aura." Later it was the dying charm of the leaf that breathed new life into the fruit to make it a "superfood," that is, a capitalist "wish-image" in Benjamin's thinking. This case study offers new theoretical insights into the production of symbolic-value from the bottom-up in the context of contemporary global capitalism while also suggesting new directions for research on symbolic-value resulting from the interplay between food and memory.