EL NACIMIENTO DE LA CONCIENCIA

Una lectura simbólica de El nacimiento de Venus

El nacimiento de Venus de Sandro Botticelli admite una lectura que va mucho más allá de la narración mitológica que aparentemente representa. Pintado hacia 1484-1486, en el extraordinario ambiente intelectual de la Florencia de los Médici, el cuadro ha sido interpretado desde el neoplatonismo, la poesía de Poliziano, la recuperación humanista de la Antigüedad y las concepciones renacentistas de la belleza y el amor. No existe, sin embargo, ninguna razón para reducir una gran obra de arte a las intenciones conscientes de su autor o al sistema intelectual de la época que la produjo. Las imágenes sobreviven precisamente porque son capaces de generar significados nuevos. 

La lectura que aquí se propone no pretende, por tanto, demostrar que Botticelli escondiera deliberadamente una teoría sobre el origen de la conciencia, sino utilizar la extraordinaria organización simbólica de su pintura para formular una pregunta mucho más antigua y quizá irresoluble: ¿cómo surge la experiencia de ser alguien dentro de una realidad que parece precedernos y desbordarnos infinitamente? 

Observado desde esta perspectiva, cada uno de los elementos fundamentales del cuadro parece ocupar un lugar preciso en una secuencia: el mar puede ser entendido como el infinito; el viento como el deseo de ser; Venus como la conciencia; la concha como el yo que la contiene y delimita; la orilla como el mundo en el que esa conciencia debe existir; la Hora como el tiempo y el orden al que queda sometida; y el manto como la identidad con la que finalmente será cubierta. El cuadro entero puede entonces contemplarse como una representación del tránsito desde lo ilimitado hacia lo individual, desde el ser indiferenciado hasta la persona que posee un nombre y una historia. En otras palabras, no estaríamos contemplando solamente el nacimiento de Venus: estaríamos contemplando el nacimiento de nosotros mismos.

El primer elemento de esta cosmogonía es el mar. Antes de Venus está el mar y, después de que Venus alcance la orilla, el mar continuará allí. Ocupa el fondo del cuadro, carece de una frontera visible que podamos abarcar y se prolonga hasta confundirse con el horizonte. Puede representar, por ello, aquello que precede a cualquier distinción entre sujeto y objeto, entre interior y exterior, entre yo y mundo: el ser todavía no dividido. La filosofía ha regresado innumerables veces a esta intuición. Para Plotino, toda multiplicidad procede del Uno, realidad absolutamente simple que no es una cosa entre las cosas sino el principio anterior a todas ellas; de él proceden el Intelecto y el Alma y, a través de sucesivas formas de manifestación, la multiplicidad del mundo. En las Upaniṣad aparece una intuición todavía más radical cuando Uddālaka enseña a Śvetaketu que detrás de la multiplicidad de las cosas existe una realidad fundamental y repite la célebre fórmula tat tvam asi: «tú eres Eso». Śaṅkara llevará siglos después esta intuición a una de sus formulaciones metafísicas más extremas: el ātman, el fundamento último del sí mismo, no está verdaderamente separado de Brahman, la realidad absoluta. 

Aunque Plotino y el Vedānta pertenecen a mundos históricos completamente diferentes y sería absurdo convertirlos en una única doctrina, ambos permiten formular una posibilidad que resulta esencial para nuestra lectura de Botticelli: quizá la conciencia individual no aparezca frente al infinito como algo completamente ajeno a él, sino que constituya una de las formas particulares mediante las cuales aquello que no tiene límites llega a manifestarse. Venus no aparece, en efecto, frente al mar. Sale del mar. La diferencia es decisiva. El infinito no es algo que ella contemple desde fuera: es aquello de lo que procede.

Pero para que lo indiferenciado se convierta en existencia tiene que producirse un movimiento, y ese movimiento aparece en el cuadro bajo la forma del viento. Céfiro sopla desde la izquierda y toda la composición responde a su impulso: vuelan los cabellos de Venus, las flores atraviesan el espacio, las telas se agitan y la concha avanza hacia tierra. El viento puede ser leído entonces como el deseo de ser, no como deseo psicológico de poseer algo determinado, sino como impulso primordial hacia la existencia, una especie de voluntad anterior incluso a la formación del individuo. El viento de Botticelli puede convertirse así en la imagen de ese impulso inexplicable por el cual del océano de lo posible emerge algo que quiere existir. No sabemos por qué sopla. Simplemente sopla. Y ése es quizá el misterio primero de cualquier metafísica: no sólo por qué existe algo en lugar de nada, como preguntaría Leibniz, sino por qué aquello que existe parece empeñado en manifestarse, diferenciarse, organizarse y adquirir conciencia de sí.

En el centro exacto de ese proceso se encuentra Venus. Su desnudez adquiere, desde esta perspectiva, un significado especialmente poderoso: Venus representa la conciencia antes de ser revestida de identidad. Todavía no posee ninguno de los atributos con los que posteriormente aprenderá a definirse. No tiene profesión, nacionalidad, ideología, reputación ni biografía; no pertenece todavía a ninguna de las innumerables categorías mediante las cuales los seres humanos respondemos a la pregunta «¿quién eres?». Simplemente está ahí y sabe, de algún modo elemental, que está ahí. Ésta es la distinción fundamental entre conciencia e identidad. 

Descartes creyó encontrar en el cogito un punto imposible de eliminar: puedo dudar de todo, pero el propio acto de dudar demuestra que hay pensamiento. Husserl intentaría siglos después suspender mediante la epoché nuestras afirmaciones espontáneas acerca del mundo para regresar a la experiencia tal como aparece a la conciencia. Sartre radicalizaría todavía más la diferencia entre conciencia y cosa: la conciencia no posee la plenitud cerrada del objeto, sino que se caracteriza precisamente por no coincidir completamente consigo misma, por trascender constantemente aquello que ya es. Nuestra lectura de Venus se sitúa en ese territorio. Antes de que una persona pueda afirmar «soy español», «soy mujer», «soy profesor», «soy creyente», «soy rico», «soy pobre» o incluso «soy Juan», tiene que existir algo capaz de experimentar todas esas determinaciones. Antes de «yo soy esto» existe simplemente «yo soy». Y quizá antes incluso de que aparezca lingüísticamente ese «yo soy» exista el hecho desnudo e inexplicable de la conciencia: hay experiencia, hay presencia, algo está contemplando el mundo. Ésa es Venus antes del manto.

Sin embargo, Venus no flota directamente sobre el océano. Está sostenida por una concha, y esa concha introduce el acontecimiento decisivo de nuestra interpretación: la aparición del yo. Si Venus representa la conciencia, la concha representa el límite que permite que esa conciencia pueda experimentarse como individual. Una concha contiene y separa; establece una diferencia entre un interior y un exterior. De la misma manera, el yo convierte el flujo de la experiencia en «mi experiencia», separa este cuerpo de los demás cuerpos, estos recuerdos de los recuerdos ajenos, este dolor del dolor del otro. 

Schopenhauer recuperó la antigua expresión escolástica principium individuationis para designar aquello mediante lo cual la realidad aparece fragmentada en individuos separados en el espacio y en el tiempo. Jung utilizaría después el concepto de individuación en un sentido psicológico diferente, como proceso de integración de la personalidad. Aquí la concha puede entenderse de una manera todavía más elemental: como la frontera sin la cual no existiría un sujeto individual. El yo no tiene por qué ser considerado una ilusión inútil; al contrario, es una condición de nuestra existencia humana. Sin concha no hay Venus individual. 

La concha es empujada hacia la orilla, y la orilla representa el siguiente momento del proceso: la entrada en el mundo. Nadie existe en abstracto. Todo ser humano aparece necesariamente en algún lugar, en una determinada época, dentro de un cuerpo, una familia, una lengua, una sociedad y una cultura que no ha elegido. Heidegger llamó «arrojamiento» a esa condición fundamental de encontrarnos ya arrojados en una existencia que no hemos escogido previamente. No elegimos el siglo en que nacemos, ni nuestro primer idioma, ni nuestros padres, ni el cuerpo inicial desde el que comenzamos a experimentar el mundo. La conciencia que en el mar podía imaginarse todavía como posibilidad ilimitada llega ahora a una orilla concreta. Nacer significa adquirir coordenadas. El infinito se convierte en aquí. La eternidad se convierte en ahora. La posibilidad se convierte en circunstancia.

Ortega y Gasset formuló de manera inolvidable esta inseparabilidad entre sujeto y mundo: «Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo». La orilla de Botticelli es precisamente la circunstancia esperando a Venus. No basta con existir: hay que existir en algún sitio.Y en esa orilla la espera una figura extraordinariamente significativa: la Hora. En la mitología griega, las Horas representan el orden natural y los ciclos que regulan el cosmos; en la pintura, una de ellas recibe a Venus y se dispone a cubrirla. En nuestra interpretación, la Hora representa simultáneamente el tiempo y el orden, porque entrar en el mundo significa inevitablemente entrar en ambos. El individuo queda sometido a una secuencia: nacimiento, crecimiento, maduración, envejecimiento y muerte. San Agustín dedicó algunas de las páginas más profundas de las Confesiones a la paradoja del tiempo: sabemos perfectamente qué es mientras nadie nos lo pregunta, pero cuando intentamos explicarlo se nos escapa. El pasado ya no existe, el futuro todavía no existe y el presente parece desaparecer en el mismo instante en que intentamos apresarlo. 

La llegada de Venus a la orilla significa entonces algo mucho más grave que un simple desplazamiento espacial. En el mar pertenecía simbólicamente a lo ilimitado; en la tierra tendrá edad. A partir de ahora habrá un antes y un después, una infancia y una vejez, acontecimientos irreversibles, pérdidas, expectativas y recuerdos. El infinito no envejece. El individuo sí.

Finalmente aparece el manto. La Hora no recibe simplemente a Venus: pretende cubrirla. Ese gesto puede ser leído como la culminación de todo el proceso de individuación, porque el manto representa la identidad social. La conciencia llega desnuda al mundo, pero el mundo comienza inmediatamente a vestirla. Recibe un nombre y unos apellidos; se le asigna una pertenencia familiar; aprende una lengua; descubre una nacionalidad; interioriza normas; adquiere creencias, preferencias, lealtades, recuerdos y heridas; desarrolla una profesión y ocupa determinadas posiciones frente a los demás. Poco a poco, sobre aquella conciencia desnuda se deposita una biografía completa. 

George Herbert Mead mostró hasta qué punto el self se constituye mediante la interacción social y la interiorización de la mirada de los otros; Erving Goffman describiría la vida cotidiana mediante la metáfora teatral, mostrando cómo representamos diferentes papeles ante diferentes públicos. Necesitamos identidad para vivir entre otros. El error consiste en olvidar que es un manto. Cuando la conciencia termina creyendo que su nombre, su posición, su historia, sus opiniones y sus recuerdos constituyen exhaustivamente aquello que es, la vestimenta se ha convertido en piel.

El recorrido completo del cuadro puede entenderse entonces como una extraordinaria parábola de la individuación: mar, viento, Venus, concha, orilla, Hora y manto; infinito, deseo de ser, conciencia, yo, mundo, tiempo e identidad. Y precisamente al completar esta secuencia aparece su paradoja fundamental. 

Para poder convertirse en alguien, aquello que procede de lo ilimitado tiene que aceptar límites. Para tener una biografía debe entrar en el tiempo; para tener experiencia individual debe encerrarse en un yo; para convivir con los demás debe adquirir una identidad. En cierto sentido, para ser alguien hay que dejar de ser todo. La individuación es por ello simultáneamente una conquista y una pérdida. Ganamos un nombre y perdemos el anonimato del infinito; ganamos una historia y perdemos la eternidad; ganamos un lugar y perdemos todos los lugares posibles; ganamos un yo y aparece inmediatamente un no-yo. 

Esta tensión se encuentra, bajo formas muy distintas, en  las grandes tradiciones contemplativas de la humanidad. Plotino concibe la filosofía como un retorno desde la multiplicidad hacia el Uno del que procede toda realidad; Eckhart habla del «fondo» del alma, allí donde deben caer las determinaciones particulares para que pueda manifestarse aquello que ninguna imagen ni concepto puede contener. 

Por eso el cuadro admite finalmente una segunda lectura, inversa a la primera. Podemos recorrerlo de derecha a izquierda. En lugar de contemplar el nacimiento del individuo, podemos imaginar el camino de regreso. Primero retiramos simbólicamente el manto y comprendemos que nuestra identidad es verdadera pero no absoluta: tenemos un nombre, pero no somos únicamente nuestro nombre; poseemos una historia, pero no somos exclusivamente nuestra historia. Después atravesamos la Hora y descubrimos que nuestra biografía está construida sobre pasado y futuro, mientras que la experiencia sólo sucede en el presente. Llegamos entonces a la orilla y comprendemos que nuestras circunstancias nos constituyen profundamente sin necesariamente agotarnos. Más allá aparece la concha: el yo que organiza la experiencia y establece sus fronteras. Y finalmente queda Venus, la conciencia desnuda, antes de cualquier predicado. Pero incluso Venus permanece todavía frente al mar. Si damos un último paso, desaparece también la distinción entre la conciencia individual y aquello de lo que surgió. Regresamos al infinito. El nacimiento se ha convertido en retorno.

Es aquí donde adquiere su sentido más profundo la antigua fórmula del «tú eres Eso». No significa que nuestro pequeño ego sea omnipotente ni que cada individuo sea literalmente el universo entendido como conjunto de objetos. Significa algo mucho más radical: que la frontera mediante la cual nos experimentamos como seres absolutamente separados quizá no pertenezca al nivel último de la realidad. 

La imagen de los ríos que desembocan en el océano resulta especialmente apropiada para regresar a Botticelli. El río posee nombre mientras discurre entre sus orillas; al llegar al océano pierde ese nombre sin dejar por ello de ser agua. Del mismo modo, nuestra identidad individual puede ser real en el nivel de la existencia cotidiana sin constituir necesariamente la última palabra acerca de nuestro ser. Alan Watts, recogiendo y popularizando en Occidente ideas procedentes de las filosofías asiáticas, insistió frecuentemente en invertir nuestra representación habitual: no somos criaturas extrañas depositadas accidentalmente dentro del universo, sino acontecimientos que el propio universo está produciendo. Pertenecemos a la realidad que intentamos contemplar desde fuera. El observador también forma parte de aquello que observa.

Quizá por eso la imagen de Botticelli resulta tan extraordinariamente fecunda para esta interpretación. Venus se encuentra detenida exactamente en el instante intermedio. Ya ha emergido y, por tanto, ya es una; pero todavía no ha sido cubierta por el manto. Ya existe la concha que la individualiza, pero ésta todavía toca el mar. Ya se aproxima al mundo, pero sus pies aún no han entrado completamente en él. Es una conciencia situada en la frontera entre lo ilimitado y la identidad. El cuadro congela precisamente ese instante imposible que en nuestra vida dura quizá menos de un segundo: el momento en que somos antes de saber quiénes somos. Después llegará el nombre, la historia, el lenguaje, el tiempo y la interminable acumulación de definiciones. 

Pasaremos entonces gran parte de nuestra existencia defendiendo aquello que el manto dice que somos y temiendo todo cuanto pueda amenazarlo. Pero debajo del manto continúa Venus; debajo de Venus permanece la concha; y alrededor de la concha continúa extendiéndose el mismo mar del que todo comenzó.

La experiencia filosófica, contemplativa o mística podría consistir precisamente en recordar ese origen sin necesidad de destruir la identidad que nos permite vivir. No se trataría de abolir el yo, abandonar el mundo o negar nuestra biografía, sino de dejar de confundir una forma provisional con la totalidad del ser. Podemos llevar el manto sabiendo que es un manto. Podemos tener un nombre sabiendo que ningún nombre nos contiene completamente. Podemos vivir en el tiempo conservando la intuición de aquello que el tiempo no explica. Podemos habitar nuestra concha sin olvidar el océano. 

En ese punto la frase «tú eres todo» deja de ser una afirmación grandiosa del ego y significa exactamente lo contrario: el reconocimiento de que el ego no es el centro de la realidad, porque la frontera entre nosotros y la realidad es menos absoluta de lo que imaginamos. El yo no contiene el Todo; es el Todo el que, por un instante, adopta la forma limitada del yo.

Así entendido, El nacimiento de Venus puede convertirse en una imagen del gran viaje de la conciencia: de lo ilimitado a lo limitado, del ser a la persona, del silencio al nombre, de la eternidad al tiempo y de la unidad a la separación. Pero también contiene, invertido, el camino contrario. Basta recorrerlo con la mirada hacia atrás. Retirar el manto. Atravesar el tiempo. Abandonar por un instante la orilla. Reconocer la concha. Contemplar a Venus. Volver al mar. Y entonces aparece la intuición que estaba escondida desde el principio: Venus nunca estuvo verdaderamente separada del océano. El océano tomó la forma de Venus. Del mismo modo, quizá nosotros no seamos fragmentos aislados arrojados dentro de una realidad extraña, sino formas momentáneas mediante las cuales esa misma realidad llega, misteriosamente, a contemplarse a sí misma. El nacimiento de la conciencia sería entonces también el nacimiento de la ilusión de separación; y el conocimiento, en su sentido más profundo, consistiría en recordar lo que éramos antes de recibir un nombre. Tú no estás simplemente en el Todo. Tú eres Todo.

COMPETITION LAW AS AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE RIGHT TO FOOD

Competition law has too often been applied in food markets through a narrow focus on consumer prices and affordability. A broader interpretation could also consider how market concentration affects nutrition, farmers, workers, sustainability, resilience and other essential dimensions of the right to adequate food. 

Reciently, we had the pleasure of inviting Olivier De Schutter to join one of the regular meetings of FAO’s Right to Food Team and share his views on the current state of the right to food, the main challenges ahead and the priorities that should guide future action. Olivier shared many insightful and stimulating ideas. One of them particularly resonated with me because it is an issue I have been reflecting on for some time: how competition and antitrust law could be used more effectively as an instrument to advance the right to food. This blog brings together some initial reflections inspired by that discussion. 

Competition law in both the European Union and the United States has traditionally assessed concentration in food markets through a relatively narrow question: does it lead to higher consumer prices? This approach has helped protect affordability, but it is insufficient from a right to food perspective. The right to adequate food is not limited to access to cheap calories. It also includes nutritional adequacy, availability, sustainability, dignity, participation and accountability. 

Yet competition authorities have generally treated affordability as the main, and sometimes the only, relevant public interest concern. This limitation is increasingly problematic because food systems have become highly concentrated across seeds, fertilizers, agrochemicals, agricultural machinery, commodity trading, processing, logistics and retail. 

A small number of firms now exercise considerable influence over what food is produced, how it is produced, who can participate in food markets and what consumers eventually find on supermarket shelves. The central assumption of conventional antitrust policy is that concentration may be acceptable as long as prices remain low. 

However, low prices do not necessarily mean that the right to food is being realized. Food may remain affordable while becoming less nutritious, less diverse, more environmentally damaging or increasingly dependent on poorly paid and precarious labor. Market concentration may also weaken the position of farmers and small-scale producers, who often face only a limited number of buyers and therefore have little capacity to negotiate fair prices or contractual conditions. 

This is especially relevant in relation to buyer power. Large retailers and processors may use their dominant position to impose low farm-gate prices, delayed payments, exclusivity clauses and the transfer of commercial risks to producers. Consumer prices may remain stable, while farmers’ incomes may decline and rural livelihoods become increasingly fragile. From a right to food perspective, this is not a secondary issue. Many food producers are themselves vulnerable to poverty, food insecurity and exclusion. 

Concentration may also affect nutrition. Large food companies may have strong incentives to prioritize highly profitable products with long shelf lives, intensive marketing and standardized formulations. This can increase the availability of inexpensive ultra-processed foods while reducing dietary diversity and the market space available for fresh, local or culturally appropriate foods. Competition law rarely considers whether mergers or dominant market structures reinforce unhealthy food environments, even though such effects are directly relevant to the adequacy dimension of the right to food. 

Labour conditions must also be taken into account. Powerful buyers can place intense pressure on suppliers to reduce costs, and these savings are often achieved through low wages, informal employment, unsafe conditions or the exploitation of migrant workers. A food product may therefore be cheap because part of its real cost has been transferred to workers. Antitrust analysis that looks only at the final retail price risks ignoring these wider human rights consequences. 

Highly concentrated food systems may also be less resilient. Recent pandemics, wars, transport disruptions, fertilizer shortages and climate-related shocks have shown how dependence on a limited number of suppliers can create systemic vulnerabilities. Competition policy should therefore consider whether greater diversity of firms, producers and supply channels would strengthen food security and reduce exposure to future crises. 

Environmental sustainability is equally relevant. Concentrated markets may reinforce production models based on monocultures, heavy chemical use, standardized seeds and long supply chains. These systems may deliver short-term efficiencies, but they can undermine biodiversity, soil health and the long-term capacity to produce food. Since the right to food includes sustainability for present and future generations, these impacts should not remain outside competition analysis. 

Many countries already possess legal and institutional tools that could support a broader approach. EU competition law under Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, together with merger control rules, can address exclusionary conduct, abuse of dominance and structural concentration. In the United States, antitrust policy has recently paid greater attention to monopsony, labour markets, innovation and market structure. These developments show that competition law is not inevitably limited to immediate consumer prices. A right to food approach would not require abandoning traditional antitrust analysis. 

It would require complementing it. In food-related cases, authorities should assess whether mergers, agreements or dominant practices may affect affordability, nutritional quality, food diversity, farmers’ livelihoods, labour rights, environmental sustainability and the resilience of food systems. These considerations should be especially important where markets concern essential goods and where concentration creates power over producers, workers and consumers simultaneously. 

Food is not an ordinary commodity. It is essential to life, health, dignity and social stability. Competition policy should therefore move beyond the narrow objective of protecting cheap food and begin protecting food systems capable of realizing the right to adequate food.

Why Food Governance Must Begin with Human Dignity

Last week, I had the privilege of delivering the closing keynote at the I World Food Policy Conference hosted at Universidad Pablo de Olavide in Seville. The conference brought together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, civil society actors and international organizations working on some of the defining food policy challenges of our time: climate change, nutrition, conflict, inequality, resilience, governance and the human right to food.

My keynote focused on a question that increasingly sits at the centre of global debates: what does it actually mean to build agrifood systems around human dignity rather than around exclusion, concentration and structural inequality?

I began with the story of Rimas, a ten-year-old Syrian girl living in a refugee camp near Erbil. Her story, documented in recent UNICEF research, stayed with me because it captures many of the contradictions of modern food systems in a single image. Surrounded by ultra-processed foods, digital advertising and unhealthy products that are cheaper and more accessible than fresh food, Rimas is not simply facing an individual nutritional challenge. She is living inside a food environment shaped by poverty, displacement, weak regulation and unequal power dynamics.

And that is precisely the point. Too often, food debates remain trapped in production statistics, yields or supply chains. But today’s food crises are increasingly crises of governance. Hunger is rarely only about lack of food. More often, it is about inequality, exclusion, affordability, unhealthy food environments, environmental degradation and lack of accountability.

This is why the right to food matters so much today.Not as an abstract legal principle. Not as rhetoric. But as a practical governance framework capable of asking uncomfortable but necessary questions. Who shapes food systems? Who benefits from them? Who is excluded from decision-making? Who carries the costs of unhealthy diets, environmental collapse or market concentration? And ultimately: are our food systems serving human dignity, or undermining it?

The right to food changes the conversation because it transforms people from passive beneficiaries into rights holders, and governments from voluntary providers into duty bearers. It introduces participation, accountability, transparency, non-discrimination and rule of law into the heart of food policy.

And this matters enormously in the world we are entering. We increasingly live in societies where hunger and obesity coexist side by side. Where the cheapest calories are often the least healthy. Where children are systematically exposed to aggressive marketing of ultra-processed foods. Where low-income communities are not necessarily those eating the least food, but often those eating the least healthy food.

For decades, we imagined hunger mainly as emptiness. Today, hunger increasingly comes packaged in plastic.That transformation forces us to rethink governance itself.Policies such as front-of-pack nutrition labelling, regulation of junk food marketing directed at children, school food standards or healthy public procurement are not only public health measures. They are governance decisions about what societies choose to protect, regulate and prioritize. Countries such as Chile, Brazil, Mexico or India have shown, in different ways, that food systems are not immutable natural forces. They are shaped by law, institutions, public policy and political choices. And therefore, they can be transformed.

Another major reflection running throughout the conference concerned power. Increasingly, decisions affecting seeds, agricultural inputs, retail systems, advertising, processing chains and even narratives around diets are concentrated among a relatively small number of actors. Recognizing this reality is not about demonizing markets or rejecting the private sector. The private sector is indispensable. But markets alone do not automatically generate equitable, healthy or sustainable outcomes.

Public governance remains essential. Without regulation, unhealthy food environments become normalized. Without accountability, inequalities deepen. Without public safeguards, commercial logic progressively displaces nutritional, social and environmental objectives.

This is why rights-based approaches matter. They insist that food systems must operate within frameworks of dignity, public interest and democratic accountability.

One of the strongest messages emerging from the discussions in Seville was the importance of territorial and local governance. Food systems are ultimately lived locally: in school meals, neighbourhood shops, municipal procurement, local markets, transport systems, water access, urban peripheries and rural landscapes.

Some of the most inspiring innovations today are happening precisely at that level. Cities developing food strategies. Municipalities linking school feeding programmes to local farmers. Food Policy Councils bringing together producers, nutritionists, civil society, researchers, local authorities and citizens around the same table.

These spaces matter because they rehumanize governance. Food policy stops being an abstract technical document and becomes a collective conversation about health, territory, livelihoods, children, budgets and dignity.

The conference also reinforced something that becomes impossible to ignore in today’s world: resilience cannot be separated from justice. Highly efficient systems can also be extremely fragile when they are unequal, concentrated and disconnected from communities. Exclusion creates fragility. Participation creates resilience.

Climate change makes this even more urgent. Droughts, floods, biodiversity loss and environmental degradation are already transforming food systems worldwide. Yet the heaviest burdens continue to fall on those least responsible: small-scale farmers, indigenous peoples, women, pastoralists and low-income communities.

 
The right to food helps frame climate action not only as an environmental necessity, but also as a question of justice, dignity and entitlement.

The same applies to conflict. One of the themes I addressed during the keynote was the growing weaponization of food systems in war. Modern conflicts increasingly destroy not only infrastructure, but the very systems through which communities sustain life: fields, fisheries, irrigation systems, markets, roads and agricultural livelihoods. In these contexts, the right to food becomes inseparable from international humanitarian law, protection of civilians and peacebuilding itself.

And yet, even in the middle of destruction, communities continue planting, cooking, rebuilding markets and sharing food. Those acts are not marginal. They are the foundations of recovery.

Perhaps that is ultimately what stayed with me most strongly after these days in Seville. Food systems are not only technical systems. They are profoundly human systems. They are built through care, memory, culture, relationships and trust. And therefore, transforming food systems is not only a technical challenge. It is also an ethical and political one.

The central question before us is whether we are capable of building agrifood systems centred on human dignity rather than exclusion. Systems where healthy diets are not privileges for some, but realities accessible to all. Systems where governance is not captured by the most powerful voices, but shaped through participation, accountability and justice.

Because food systems are never only about food. They are about the kind of societies we choose to build — and the kind of future we believe is still possible.

The Right to Food in Armed Conflicts: When Hunger Becomes a Battlefield

Fotos by FAO 

For many decades, discussions about the right to food were largely situated within the fields of development policy, food security strategies, agricultural transformation, and poverty reduction. Hunger was generally understood as a structural problem related to inequality, economic exclusion, weak governance, or environmental stress. Armed conflict, while recognized as an important driver of food insecurity, was often treated as one factor among many.

Today, this perspective is increasingly inadequate. Contemporary conflicts are revealing a much deeper and more troubling dynamic: the systematic disruption of food systems has become a central feature of warfare. In many contexts, hunger is no longer merely a consequence of violence but a direct outcome of strategies that target the systems through which people produce, access, and consume food.

Agricultural lands are destroyed or rendered inaccessible, irrigation systems and storage facilities are damaged, markets collapse, transport routes are blocked, and rural populations are forced to flee their livelihoods. These disruptions reverberate across entire food systems, undermining not only food production but also distribution, access, and stability. The result is a profound erosion of the conditions necessary for the realization of the right to adequate food.

Understanding these dynamics requires moving beyond a purely humanitarian lens. It requires recognizing that food systems themselves have become arenas of conflict.

The Legal Foundations: The Right to Food in Times of War

From the perspective of international law, the right to adequate food remains fully applicable during armed conflicts. The obligations derived from international human rights law do not simply disappear in times of war. Rather, they continue to operate alongside the rules of international humanitarian law, creating a complementary framework for the protection of civilians.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right of everyone to adequate food and the fundamental right to be free from hunger. These obligations apply to states at all times, including during situations of armed conflict and occupation. States are required to respect existing access to food, protect populations from actions that undermine that access, and take steps to ensure that food is available and accessible to those who cannot secure it for themselves.

At the same time, international humanitarian law, the Geneva Conventions,  establish clear prohibitions that reinforce these protections. The starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited. Parties to conflict are forbidden from attacking, destroying, removing, or rendering useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, including crops, livestock, drinking water installations, and irrigation systems.

Taken together, these legal norms form a powerful framework. They affirm a simple principle: even in the midst of armed conflict, the basic conditions necessary for human survival must remain protected.

The Weaponization of Food Systems

Despite the clarity of these legal standards, the reality of modern conflicts often tells a different story. Across multiple conflict settings, the destruction and manipulation of food systems has become a recurring feature of warfare.

Food production systems are frequently disrupted through the destruction of agricultural infrastructure, the contamination of land, or the occupation of fertile areas. Market systems are weakened or dismantled through blockades, restrictions on movement, and the fragmentation of supply chains. Humanitarian access is often limited or obstructed, preventing assistance from reaching populations in need.

These dynamics create cascading effects that extend far beyond immediate food shortages. Rural livelihoods collapse, families lose their primary sources of income, and entire communities become dependent on humanitarian aid. Local markets shrink or disappear, further reducing access to food even when it is physically available.

In many situations, the erosion of food systems contributes directly to displacement and instability. When people lose the means to sustain themselves, migration becomes not only a survival strategy but often the only available option.

This is why the concept of the “weaponization of hunger” has gained increasing attention in international debates. Hunger, in these contexts, is not accidental. It becomes embedded within the broader logic of conflict.

Beyond Emergency Response: Protecting Food Systems

Ensuring access to food during armed conflicts is not only a matter of quantity but also of quality, safety, and nutritional adequacy. In many conflict situations, the collapse of food systems is accompanied by a sharp deterioration in food safety standards and dietary diversity. Disrupted supply chains, damaged storage facilities, lack of clean water, and weakened regulatory oversight can increase the risks of food contamination and foodborne diseases. At the same time, populations often become dependent on a narrow range of emergency food sources that may meet immediate caloric needs but fail to provide the nutrients required for healthy development and long-term wellbeing. This has particularly severe consequences for children, pregnant and lactating women, and other vulnerable groups.

 Integrating food safety and nutrition considerations into humanitarian responses and recovery strategies is therefore essential to ensure that the right to adequate food is fully realized even in contexts of conflict.Addressing hunger in conflict situations cannot be limited to the delivery of humanitarian food assistance. While emergency aid remains indispensable for saving lives, it is not sufficient to address the deeper structural dynamics that drive food insecurity in conflict zones.

A right-to-food perspective encourages a broader approach. It focuses on protecting the functioning of food systems even in the midst of crisis. This includes safeguarding agricultural production, maintaining access to land and natural resources, protecting markets, and supporting the resilience of rural livelihoods.

It also requires strengthening legal and institutional frameworks that protect the rights of affected populations. Access to justice, mechanisms for dispute resolution over land and natural resources, and the recognition of customary tenure systems can play critical roles in preventing conflicts from escalating into deeper food crises.

Equally important is the recognition of the knowledge and capacities of local communities. Pastoralists, smallholder farmers, and indigenous communities often possess sophisticated systems for managing land, water, and mobility under conditions of environmental variability. When these systems are disrupted by conflict, the consequences for food security can be severe.

Protecting these forms of local governance and knowledge is therefore an essential component of safeguarding the right to food.

Accountability and the Future of Food Security in Conflict

One of the most significant implications of framing hunger through the right to food is the question of accountability. When hunger is treated merely as a humanitarian problem, responses tend to focus on relief and recovery. When it is understood as a violation of rights, the focus shifts toward responsibilities and legal obligations.

States and other actors involved in conflicts have clear duties under international law. They must refrain from actions that undermine food systems, protect civilians’ access to food, and allow humanitarian assistance to reach those in need. Violations of these obligations are not simply unfortunate outcomes of war; they can constitute serious breaches of international law.

Strengthening monitoring mechanisms, improving documentation of violations, and enhancing international cooperation are essential steps for ensuring that these norms are respected in practice.

Reaffirming a Fundamental Principle

Ultimately, the right to food in armed conflict is about reaffirming a fundamental ethical and legal principle. Even in the most extreme circumstances of violence, the basic conditions necessary for human survival and dignity must remain protected.

Food is not merely a commodity or a development objective. It is a human right and a cornerstone of social stability. When food systems collapse, societies themselves begin to unravel.

Recognizing and protecting the right to food during armed conflicts is therefore not only a humanitarian imperative but also a critical element of building pathways toward peace, resilience, and recovery.

In a world where conflicts are increasingly complex and prolonged, ensuring that hunger is never used as a weapon remains one of the most urgent challenges for the international community.

Feeding Justice: Challenges and Progress in the Right to Food

      (Fotos by FAO)

Aisha Saleh, a mother of five in Yemen’s Hajjah governorate, struggles every day to feed her family amid a crisis that offers no respite. “We eat only once a day, and sometimes not even that. I skip meals so my children can have something,” she says. Prolonged war, economic collapse and dwindling humanitarian assistance have pushed millions into critical conditions. Her story is not an exception; it is a portrait of the present for millions.

According to the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report, between 638 and 720 million people experienced hunger in 2024. One in eleven people worldwide. One in five in Africa. These figures have not improved in three years. They have stagnated. They demand reflection.

Hunger is not a natural disaster. It is the result of human action—and a blatant violation of the right to food, enshrined in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and further developed in the Voluntary Guidelines adopted by the UN Committee on World Food Security. This right goes beyond caloric intake: it entails physical and economic access to adequate, nutritious, culturally appropriate, safe and sustainable food. To eat, yes—but with dignity.Yet this right continues to be denied in multiple ways.

Climate and hunger

Climate change, driven by our socioeconomic model, has ceased to be a future threat and has become a destabilizing force of the present. The 2023 floods in Pakistan submerged more than four million hectares of arable land. In Central America, prolonged droughts have triggered mass displacement. In South Sudan, sorghum production—a staple crop—has been cut in half due to erratic rainfall. When the climate falters, hunger takes root.

Hunger as a weapon of war

Compounding this is the alarming rise in food crises induced by armed conflict. Violence has disrupted food production and distribution in regions such as Sudan, northeastern Nigeria, Yemen, parts of Ethiopia and Haiti. In the Gaza Strip, the situation reached unprecedented proportions in contemporary international law. As United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently stated, “Gaza has become a place of death and despair. The norms of international humanitarian law are being systematically violated, and the world cannot look the other way.”

Inequality and the right to food

Women and girls are consistently the most affected by food insecurity. Women are often the last to eat and the first to sacrifice their portion for their children. In emergency contexts, the likelihood that a woman or girl suffers from malnutrition is more than twice that of a man.

International cooperation in retreat

The protection of the right to food is also being eroded by the retreat of international cooperation. The United States has drastically reduced funding for international development assistance. Several European countries are also significantly cutting back. The effects are already visible. The World Food Programme (WFP) has announced reductions in food rations for refugees and other vulnerable populations in more than forty countries. According to WFP data, in Yemen three million people have been removed from assistance lists; in Chad, families now receive less than half of the minimum recommended caloric intake.

Concentration of power

One of the most persistent structural obstacles to the right to food is corporate concentration within the agrifood system, where a handful of companies dominate the global food chain. Four groups control more than 70 percent of the global grain trade. Three corporations lead the global seed market. Five major retailers determine what does—and does not—reach supermarket shelves.

This model reduces the decision-making power of small-scale farmers and consumers, drives dietary homogenization and fuels the expansion of ultra-processed foods. In the United States, these products account for 57 percent of caloric intake; in Mexico, Brazil and Chile, they exceed 30 percent. This influx of cheap, calorie-dense and nutritionally poor products has contributed to rising rates of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, particularly among vulnerable populations.

Reasons for hope

Amid this landscape, there are signs of progress. In Europe, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a significant resolution last November urging Member States to recognize and protect the right to adequate food. This political and legal foundation could translate into tangible advances across the continent and beyond, given Europe’s global influence through trade, investment and development cooperation.

Spain has also taken important steps. Parliament recently approved a law against food waste requiring supermarkets to donate surplus food and obliging all companies in the food chain to implement prevention plans. In addition, a recent government decree mandates that at least 45 percent of fruits and vegetables served in school canteens be seasonal, promoting healthier diets, supporting local producers and reducing environmental impact.

In Latin America, several governments are consolidating public policies that place the right to food at the center of strategy. Brazil has revived its public procurement program from family farmers to supply schools, hospitals and social canteens, while actively promoting agroecology. Chile has implemented one of the world’s most advanced policies to combat obesity, particularly among children, pioneering front-of-package warning labels for ultra-processed foods.

Africa also offers compelling examples. In South Africa, more than nine million students receive a daily school meal, improving attendance, child health and links with local farmers. Uganda has launched programs to strengthen the role of rural women in agricultural production and food-related decision-making. These are policies that work—policies that distribute, that nourish justice.

Globally, FAO advances the right to adequate food through technical assistance, training and legal and institutional support. In Nepal, it supported the inclusion of the right to food in the Constitution. Across Latin America, it has accompanied parliamentary processes and trained public officials and civil society actors. In countries such as Sierra Leone and Georgia, FAO has provided technical support to design food policies grounded in human rights principles.

The Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, launched by Brazil during its 2024 G20 presidency, co-led by Spain and technically coordinated by FAO, seeks to mobilize concrete efforts by dozens of partner countries to eradicate hunger. By strengthening public policies, sustainable investments and South–South cooperation, it directly contributes to the realization of the human right to adequate food.

These initiatives demonstrate that where there is political will and social participation, the right to food can move from abstract principle to living policy.

As long as hunger persists, justice will remain incomplete. And where bread is lacking, conflict will flourish.

Starvation as a Choice

Hunger in war is often described as inevitable. As if starvation were a tragic but unavoidable consequence of violence, instability, or logistical failure. International law says otherwise. 

Starvation is not collateral damage. It is not a technical malfunction. It is the foreseeable outcome of human decisions—decisions governed by law, prohibited by law, and yet too often tolerated by the international community. 

What we witnessed in Gaza or in Sudan is not a legal grey zone. It is a collapse of legal protection.

 International law is unambiguous. The right to adequate food applies at all times, including during armed conflict. It is grounded in human dignity and anchored in binding obligations. States must respect existing access to food, protect populations from interference by third parties, and fulfil the right when people cannot feed themselves. Above all, they have an immediate obligation to ensure that no one suffers from hunger. 

These obligations do not disappear in war. On the contrary, they are reinforced.

International humanitarian law explicitly prohibits the use of starvation as a method of warfare. It forbids the destruction of objects indispensable to civilian survival. It requires humanitarian access. International criminal law goes further, establishing individual criminal responsibility when starvation is intentionally inflicted on civilian populations. 

Together, these legal frameworks form one of the clearest and most consistently articulated prohibitions in international law. 

The problem, therefore, is not the absence of norms. It is the failure to apply them. 

 In Gaza, the right to food has been vulnerated across all its dimensions. Food availability has collapsed with the destruction of agricultural land, livestock, fisheries and food infrastructure. Physical and economic access has been systematically undermined by restrictions on movement, destroyed markets, mass unemployment and extreme prices. Diets have become dangerously inadequate, stripped of nutritional diversity and safety. Livelihoods and food systems have been rendered unsustainable, with no realistic path to recovery. 

These conditions did not emerge overnight. They are the result of sustained actions and omissions that progressively eroded the foundations of survival with dignity. 

Too often, famine is treated as a threshold that must be crossed before responsibility begins. This is a profound misunderstanding. Famine is not a trigger for concern; it is evidence that multiple, sustained violations have already occurred. From a legal perspective, responsibility arises much earlier—when access to food or humanitarian assistance is deliberately blocked, when food systems are destroyed, or when civilians are exposed to harm in order to eat. 

The continued use of hunger as a tool of war is not a failure of international law. It is a failure of enforcement. It reflects a lack of political will to uphold the very norms States have collectively created. 

By the time starvation becomes visible to all, the law has already been broken—repeatedly, systematically, and at scale. 

 The question we must confront is therefore simple and deeply unsettling: what does international law mean if it cannot prevent, stop, or remedy the deliberate starvation of civilians in full view of the world?

    Foto- FAO

Why Europe needs a strong right to food framework ?

The European Commission has officially registered the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) entitled “Food is a Human Right for All! Guaranteeing healthy, just and sustainable food systems.” The initiative calls on the EU to legally enshrine the right to food and address the systemic issues that fuel food insecurity and inequality. If it reaches one million validated signatures from at least seven Member States, the Commission is obliged to examine the proposal and decide on possible follow-up action. 

This campaign highlights pressing concerns: rising food insecurity, unaffordable diets, unsustainable production models, and unjust distribution of profits along the food supply chain. According to the coordinators, by supporting this initiative, you are taking a stand against food insecurity and unfair food systems, and advocating for a just and sustainable food system for Europe. ECI offers a rare opportunity for EU citizens to shape policy at a fundamental level — by affirming the right to food as a cornerstone of dignity, sustainability and fairness. 

Paradoxical Europe

The state of the right to food in the European Union presents a paradox. In terms of availability, the EU does not face a structural problem. The prevalence of undernourishment remains below 2.5 percent, confirming that food supply and production are sufficient.

However the challenges is clear when we look at food access and affordability. FAO estimates that 11.5 percent of the population in the EU experienced moderate or severe food insecurity in 2022, meaning that access to food is not guaranteed for a substantial share of people. And this is not because food is unavailable, but because economic and social barriers are there. 

These access constraints directly affect nutritional adequacy. In the EU, 8.3 percent of the population was unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day, an this shows that cost remains a major barrier to adequate and nutritious diets. FAO data consistently show that affordability is a key determinant of diet quality.

Finally, while food supply remains stable, the stability of access is increasingly fragile for low-income and vulnerable groups in Europe. Inflation and economic shocks have undermined households’ ability to maintain consistent access to adequate food over time.

In short, in the EU the right-to-food challenge is not availability, but ensuring equitable, affordable, nutritious and stable access for all.

And here is the bad news. There is a significant legal gap in Europe when it comes to the right to food. All EU Member States have ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This creates clear and binding human rights obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to adequate food. In theory, this should be reflected in strong national laws and clear accountability mechanisms.But this is not the case. No European constitution explicitly protects the right to food, and most countries still lack comprehensive legal frameworks that would allow individuals to claim this right or seek remedies when it is violated. Where protections exist, they are often indirect, fragmented, or limited to emergency or social assistance measures.

At the European wide level, the gap becomes even more evident. The right is not explicitly protected in the European Convention on Human Rights. As a result, protection remains partial and indirect, rather than explicit and better enforceable.

At the EU, the focus has traditionally been on agriculture, food production, food safety and the functioning of markets. While these policies are important, they are designed primarily around economic efficiency and consumer protection, not around food as a human right. The right to food is not explicitly recognized in EU primary laws, and it remains largely absent from the EU’s legal and policy framework.  

There are, however, some concrete advances too. In Italy, the region of Lombardy adopted the first explicit Right to Food law in the European Union in 2015, recognizing it as a fundamental right and placing it at the center of regional food and social policies. In Germany, the Constitution guarantees a minimum subsistence level derived from human dignity, which has been interpreted to include access to food. Germany has also made the right to food a core pillar of its external development cooperation. 

Spain offers another strong example. Recent legislation, including the Waste and Circular Economy Law and the School Feeding Law, integrates right-to-food principles into food systems and social protection. The right to food is also a pillar of Spain’s development, and the Right to Food Observatory plays an active role in monitoring and policy dialogue. 

We could mention many other concrete examples across the European countries: strengthened social protection systems, school meal programmes, food waste legislation, local food policies and nutrition strategies that reflect right-to-food principles.

A major milestone was reached in October 2024, when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted a resolution on the right to food. The resolution recommends that Member States to integrate the right to food into their national constitutions and calls for the development of a European normative framework to guarantee this right for all. However, no real action has follow up on this matter in the Council of Europe on this matter afterwards. 

Taken together, these developments show both the scale of the gap and the direction of travel: strong international commitments, emerging national practices, and a clear need for a coherent European legal framework on the right to food.

Also is good to keep in mind that even if the right to food is not explicitly recognized as an autonomous right in the European legal framework, European courts have sometimes addressed and enforced it through binding jurisprudence, in particular through the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

As shown in the recent analysis by students of the University of Antwerp under the guidance of Professor Tomaso Ferrando and the technical guidance of the Right to food team of FAO, the European Court of Human Rights has examined food-related deprivations mainly under Article 3 of the European Convention, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment.

In Stepuleac v. Moldova, the case concerned a detainee held for months with insufficient food. The Court held that the lack of adequate food contributed to degrading treatment in violation of Article 3. In Korneykova and Korneykov v. Ukraine, the applicants were a detained breastfeeding mother and her newborn child who received insufficient and inappropriate food. The Court found that the failure to meet their specific nutritional needs amounted to a violation of Article 3. In Stanev v. Bulgaria, the case concerned a man confined for years in a social care institution, where food was insufficient and of poor quality. The Court ruled that the overall living conditions, including inadequate food, constituted degrading treatment.

This jurisprudence is extremely important because talking about human rights necessarily means talking about accountability and justiciability. Without judicial scrutiny and enforceable remedies, rights remain mere promises. 

So…Why Europe needs a strong right-to-food framework?

The Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food clearly define what the right to food  entails: not only freedom from hunger, but regular, permanent and dignified access to adequate food, through availability, accessibility, adequacy and stability, guided by accountability, participation and non-discrimination.

The advantage of implementing this framework in Europe is precisely that it can move food policy from fragmented responses to coherent, preventive action.  A right-to-food approach helps States identify risks early, protect vulnerable groups before crises escalate, and address structural drivers of food insecurity like affordability, inequality and exclusion — even in contexts, like Europe, where food is widely available.

Legally recognising the right to food also brings clarity and coherence. It can help aligning agricultural, social, health, environmental and market policies under a single human-rights objective, as explicitly recommended by the Voluntary Guidelines. This reduces policy contradictions and strengthens governance across food systems.

Most importantly, a rights-based framework strengthens accountability without relying on litigation alone. This improves transparency, trust and effectiveness.

Recognising the right to food is not an added burden for Europe — it is a tool for better policy, better prevention and better outcomes, more democracy and more equity and equality.

Eight Essential Comics to Understand Contemporary America

The real history of America isn’t told in speeches or textbooks. It hides in diners and basements, in motel rooms and parking lots, in the quiet space between one life and another. The real America is a country of restlessness, guilt, and a kind of endless yearning — the America of loneliness. 

 Across eight graphic novels —by Alex de Campi, Daniel Clowes, Adrian Tomine, Charles Burns, Emil Ferris, and the Hernández brothers— runs the same invisible thread: the portrait of a nation trying to recognize itself. 

 Alex de Campi’s Bad Karma starts on the road. Two war veterans —one Black, one white— drive across the South trying to fix a crime that can’t really be undone. What they find isn’t redemption, just the same wound running through their country — violence, racism, and denial that never quite go away. The American highway, once a symbol of freedom, feels more like a confession that doesn’t end. 

Daniel Clowes, in Patience and Ghost World, brings that same sense of disillusionment to the suburbs. His America is fluorescent and numb — a world of pastel-colored boredom where people fill the void with irony, fantasy, or small talk. Patience sends a man through time to repair his life; Ghost World leaves two young women wandering through a town that seems drained of meaning. Clowes paints the emotional paralysis of middle-class life: a society so self-aware it can no longer feel. 

Then the nightmare turns inward with Charles Burns’s Black Hole and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. Both turn loneliness into flesh. In Black Hole, a strange disease spreads through 1970s Seattle, twisting teenagers into strange, mutant shapes — an image of shame, desire, and fear. Burns’s heavy black lines make the skin itself look haunted, like America’s uneasy relationship with its own desires. Ferris, meanwhile, turns the monstrous into liberation. Her heroine, Karen, a queer girl in 1960s Chicago, draws herself as a werewolf in her diary. Through her eyes, Ferris creates a sprawling portrait of difference, memory, and resistance. Where Burns sees the curse of transformation, Ferris finds its beauty. Both reveal the same truth: America fears what it cannot name, and yet, in that fear, it finds its most honest art. 

Adrian Tomine’s Intruders brings us into the city. His characters —quiet, anxious, polite— move through apartments and offices like ghosts in plain sight. The son of Japanese immigrants, Tomine captures that feeling of modern exhaustion: the illusion of being connected all the time, while feeling completely alone. His pages are neat, clean, and a little cold — an America that shines on the outside but feels hollow once you touch it. 

Finally, Jaime and Gilbert Hernández open a different door — one that leads to the parts of America the others never draw. In The Education of Hopey Glass and Human Diastrophism, the Chicano brothers bring a bilingual, brown, punk, and tender world to life. Jaime follows Hopey, a woman growing older but not softer, still fighting for her place in a culture obsessed with youth. Gilbert sets his stories in Palomar, an imaginary Latin American town full of noise, humor, and heartbreak. Together, they reinvent what “American” even means — not purity or perfection, but mixture, rhythm, contradiction. Their stories beat with life: brown skin, loud music, and stubborn tenderness. 

Together, these eight works redraw the emotional map of the United States. De Campi and Clowes show its moral exhaustion. Burns and Ferris bring out its monsters — the ones inside, the ones outside, and the ones nobody talks about. Tomine and the Hernández brothers give voice to those who live in translation, caught between languages, between belonging and loss. In the end, what they tell us is that America’s real story —its most honest myth— isn’t about triumph, but about longing. 

Under the highways and billboards, there’s another kind of empire quietly spreading — the empire of solitude. Because the real history of America —its secret diary, you could say— isn’t written in wars or elections, but in drawings, in the dialogue balloons, in the small silences that hold them together